The Bottom Line About Faith

24 May The Bottom Line About Faith

Read Genesis 11:27-32 (NLT)
Thought for the Day: The long slow walk of faith!

Contrary to Pumba’s famous declaration in The Lion King “you gotta put your behind behind you”, many of us spend too much time stuck in the past. Instead of trusting God, we let our past rent space in our heads. Think about it: many of the ideas we label as “possible” for our future are related to what has or hasn’t worked in the recent past. And – the experiences and limitations of the men and women we look up to can cause us to artificially define “possible” and “impossible”. Because it is so hard to keep our past in the past, the successes and failures of then often get in our way today.

Before he was called Abraham and became the first Patriarch of the Israelites, Abram was a man who lived in the shadow of his father’s failures. God had called Terah (Abram’s father) to travel to the land of Canaan. Instead, he only went halfway and ended his journey in Haran. After Terah’s death, Abram confronted the limitations of his father’s partial faithfulness. Abram had a choice: would he stay in Haran like his father or continue to follow God’s leading for the rest of the journey? He chose obedience. Then, for an incredible number of years after, this meant Abraham had a daily regimen of walking slowly in the wilderness.

Like Abraham, we always have a simple choice: will we trust God or stay stuck? Every morning we wake up, we get to choose whether we will stay stuck in the successes and failures of yesterday or trust God today. Let’s learn to remember the lesson of Abraham. Life is best when each day we take a few steps in our long slow walk of faith.

In Christ,
Pastors Stan and David