Genesis 12:10-20

10 At that time a severe famine struck the land of Canaan, forcing Abram to go down to Egypt, where he lived as a foreigner. 11 As he was approaching the border of Egypt, Abram said to his wife, Sarai, “Look, you are a very beautiful woman. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife. Let’s kill him; then we can have her!’ 13 So please tell them you are my sister. Then they will spare my life and treat me well because of their interest in you.” 14 And sure enough, when Abram arrived in Egypt, everyone noticed Sarai’s beauty. 15 When the palace officials saw her, they sang her praises to Pharaoh, their king, and Sarai was taken into his palace. 16 Then Pharaoh gave Abram many gifts because of her—sheep, goats, cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels. 17 But the Lord sent terrible plagues upon Pharaoh and his household because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram and accused him sharply. “What have you done to me?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ and allow me to take her as my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and get out of here!” 20 Pharaoh ordered some of his men to escort them, and he sent Abram out of the country, along with his wife and all his possessions.

Abraham focused on the Promises not the problems and secondly on the Provider not a plan and thirdly on

• Faith not Failure

The challenge is not just to start out in faith, but also to stride forward in faith; faith isn’t just the start of the journey it is the sustainer in the journey.  The Bible describes the next painful chapter in Abram’s life, one that resulted in failure, when he departed from the path of faith. Abraham started out wonderfully and then he wondered away, heading down to Egypt because of a famine. This famine tried Abram’s faith and as he started to focus on the food, he lost focus of the Father. No Scripture shows him receiving any direction from God about this; he just pulled up stakes and moved. Whenever we stop living by faith, we start doing what we think is smart or what circumstances dictate. God had told Abram to sojourn in the land of Canaan that was God’s will for Abram. The test for Abram was not really about food, the test was could God care for him in that land even though a famine had arisen. Abram failed the test because he forsook God’s will for food, turning to Egypt for aid instead of the Almighty.  Abraham turned to the world believing that it could support and sustain him. Like Abraham we too can start off well but then end up out of God’s will because as we choose to react to our circumstances instead of Christ. Today our famine may come in the form of an economic pinch and the question that will arise will be “will our faith fail in the famine or will we lean on the Lord?” Sometimes we walk away from faith because we don’t really trust God, other times it’s because our pride causes us to trust in self. Either way we get into trouble quickly and soon find ourselves in a weakened position. When we forsake God’s will we also end up forsaking our time of devotion and fellowship with Him. You never see Abram at the altar in Egypt, it’s only after he comes back to Canaan that we see him return to the altar. One act of disobedience can kill our devotional life, because disobedience brings guilt which causes us to fear God and run from Him rather than to seek Him. When we forsake the will of the Father, we forfeit the assurance of the Father. Up until this point in his life, Abraham was not afraid of the inhabitants of the land, he was trusting in God’s promises. Now, when he wasn’t where God wanted him, he didn’t have that assurance. Fear always replaces assurance, the fear that God doesn’t love us any more, the fear of getting caught, or fear of the future. When we forsake the will of God we also end up adopting and walking in the world’s ways, Abram ended up trying to lie his way out of the situation. When we walk away from God’s plan it also effects other people, as they neared the Egyptian border, Abram took one look at his beautiful wife and said, “Sarai, I see some problems down the road. Pharaoh and his men will desire you, and they’re going to kill me in order to have you, so we’d better lie and say you’re my sister instead of my wife.” That little scheme only half-worked, the world’s ways always create bigger problems than they solve. Abram avoided losing his life, but poor Sarai was led away to join the royal harem. What an outrageous and low-life thing to do to your own wife, he saved his own neck, but risked Sarai’s virtue and future. Sarah was not the only one hurt by her husband’s actions, Lot watched his uncle and learned some bad habits. Not just those around us but generationally, his son Isaac later committed the same sin of deceiving, as did his son Jacob along with many of his son’s. Believers who adopt the world’s ways will hurt those around them. What a remarkable lesson that in the life of faith, we can wander from the promises and plans of God, we can fail miserably but we don’t have to stay there. Abraham got back up and back on track, which required coming back to the place where he left God. How do you do that? Acknowledge that you should never have walked away and this calls for humility and honesty. Admitting you left “Canaan” is called confession, God, you are right and I am wrong, and that is the first step. He also had to act upon his confession and that’s called repentance, turning away from the world and back to the Father. When Abraham came back to the place where he had built the alter, he worshipped God. We need to come back and call upon God, to reconnect and rebuilt the prayer altar of our lives. Before fire fell at Mt. Carmel and revival took place the altar had to be rebuilt. The greatness of Abram was not in his perfect walk but His pursuing walk. Too often we worry about me instead of walking with the Master. We worry about who is forgetting us, who is not giving us credit, who is reaping benefits at our expense, we become anxious about things that are better left in God’s hands. Worry always nips at the heels of faith and tries to drag us down. Faith deals with the invisible things of God. It refuses to be ruled by the physical senses. As Abram came back, God met with him, ready to forgive and restore the relationship. Just as the prodigal’s father waited and longed for his sons return so God waits and longs for you. If you have “gone down to Egypt” why not start afresh today, repent and return, follow in the footsteps of the father of faith. God has promised to receive everyone who comes to him through Jesus Christ our Lord. Don’t hesitate because of how far away you have strayed or what you did while you were there. Don’t be afraid when you don’t know exactly how God will lead and supply, instead, hold onto his hand of hope. So, what’s your next step, will it reveal the footprint of faith?

Genesis 12:1-6

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth—his livestock and all the people he had taken into his household at Haran—and headed for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in Canaan, 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

Hebrews 12:1 says “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” The command to lay aside the things that entangle the life of faith is preceded by the fact that so many men and women of faith have gone before us. We need to learn from those who went before us so that we do not become so easily entangled. When you look back to chapter eleven, where we see some of the names that went before us, they are all prefaced by the statement, “by faith.” As we look at Abraham we saw that first he focused on the Promises not the problems, and secondly on the:

•          Provider not a plan

The book of Hebrews tells us that “by faith Abraham obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going”. He had no map, no GPS, no motel reservations along the way. His caravan simply headed west toward the Mediterranean, and that was that. God had told him that He would show Abraham where to stop sometime in the future when he got to wherever he was going. I think many of us would struggle with this, we want a comprehensive plan for our careers and our churches. Today we do very few things by faith because we want a master plan but for Abraham the Master was his plan.

The truth is Abram didn’t have a clue, if we could have met up with his caravan the conversation could have sounded like this:

“Mr. Abram, where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long will it take you get there?”

“I don’t know that, either. God only said he would show me.”

“You have quite a caravan, who will supply all the food you’ll need? 

“I don’t know, God just said he would take care of me.” 

“You don’t seem to have a security force. Who is going to protect you from the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Amorites, and all the rest of the warring tribes? “

Abram would not have had any real concrete answers to our questions other than God. The question we need to ask today is this: Is God a concrete enough answer for you, is the Father enough foundation for your faith? Just like the Wise men who journeyed to Jesus, they did it by faith both ways. First following a star and second God’s spoken word after He said don’t go home by the same route. Faith is happy to step out not knowing where it’s going because it knows who it’s following. It’s not really a matter of where we are going or when we will get there but who we are going with. Why are we more comfortable leaning on a master plan than the Master? The real reason we resist faith is because we want to retain control, to be in charge of mapping out our own life. We resist because we don’t want to rely on Him, Faith is scary because at its heart faith requires us to submit. Faith means leaning on the Lord for life, the real issue is trust. Why do we want to know everything well in advance? So, we don’t have to rely, and we can redirect what we don’t like. Yet as long as God’s strong hand was holding Abram’s, everything was going to work out. The caravan moved ahead in faith content just knowing that God’s promise would not fail. This is the excitement of walking with God, we are relying on the Redeemer, leaning on Love, trusting in Truth. When we read the book of Acts, we know the end of the story but for those who lived it they never quite knew what’s going to happen with the next turn of the page. The Spirit of God was in control, and that was enough. Paul didn’t follow a formula he followed the Father by faith and God unveiled the route as he went along. The plan at the beginning of the book of Acts was to wait by faith for the promise: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” Acts 1:8. Abram and his wife Sarai had to wait with expectation for what God had promised them, having hope is living by faith in the promises of God. Today we value those who are clever, organized and have a plan over those with the faith of Abram who are willing to trust God wherever he leads. We forget that the Church was founded in a prayer meeting not a planning session. Paul was humble enough to admit to the church at Corinth, “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. . . . My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” 1 Corinthians 2:1, 4-5. This approach to living for God and igniting faith in those around us is rare today. We want people to admire and need us, to follow our plan instead of relying on His. God does have a wonderful plan for you but when and how He chooses to disclose it is up to Him. All he asks is that we take his hand and walk along in faith. He will show us soon enough what should be done. What we view as the problem of having to rely, God views as the promise of a relationship. Don’t try to get ahead of God you will only get behind. Today are you trusting in a man-made plan or the Master?