The Call of Obedience

“Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’"—Genesis 12:1-3

When God speaks to us, He expects us to obey His voice. It is foolish to disregard the voice of Almighty God when He calls—for who can thwart the will of Almighty God? Who can question His wisdom? Who can fathom His great and mysterious purposes?

When God calls, we are to obey, and our obedience is based upon the one who calls us. And because of who God is, we know that His call upon us is to be completely trusted, for He will not lead us to a place where He is not willing to go. God does not drive us to obedience—He calls us to it, drawing us out from our old way of life into complete and perfect trust in Him. We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). We can walk by faith because of the one in whom we are trusting.

In our passage for today, God called the great patriarch, Abram (soon to be renamed “Abraham”) to leave his homeland and travel to a land that God would show him. Faith is always tethered to something, a promise, a hope, a belief rooted in the character of the one who is making the promise. And Abram is the supreme example of faith tethered not only to a promise but to the one who makes it. In the midst of Abram’s call, God gives him a three-part promise of what is to come: (1) He promises to make of him a great nation, (2) He will bless those who bless him, and (3) all of the families of the earth will be blessed through him. The reason that Abram could trust this tripartite promise is because of the one who made it—it was God Himself. God does not lie, and what He promises He fulfills, so when Abram took the step of faith to leave everything behind, it was not for a vague promise of some unsavory character or pie in the sky ideal; it was rooted in the changeless character of Almighty God.

Abram obeyed, left his home country for a land that God would and did show him. And while Abram sojourned in the land of promise, he didn’t receive the fulfillment of God’s promise in his lifetime. But Abram’s faith enabled him to see past this temporal world to a new earth, when God will reign, as the author of Hebrews describes, “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God”—Hebrews 11:10.

Abram believed in the promise that God had made. God did make of him a great nation, and all of the earth has been blessed through him, because through Abram’s line came the Savior of the world—Jesus the Christ.

God’s call for Abram to leave everything he knew to go to a land that he did not know of as yet took amazing faith. As believers in Christ we are to have a similar faith—to leave the lives that we know behind and to pursue Christ, to do His ministry, to trust in His Spirit to bring fruit. We are enabled to walk in trust and surety because we know the promise we have is from the same source of Abram’s promise—God Himself. God did not lie to Abram, nor does He lie to us; and as with Abram, He will not lead us to a place where He is not willing to go with us. God does not drive us to obedience, but He does lead. When He called Abram, Abram didn’t know where he was going. We may not either, but as believers in Christ, we are His sheep and we listen to His voice (John 10:27), trusting in Him to guide our lives and lead us to a place where we will see His hand working in magnificent ways. May God give us clarity and faith to walk in obedience like Abram did, knowing that we trust not in the promise alone, but the one who makes it to us—Jesus Christ, the one who gave Himself for us. Amen.