Into the Unknown (Friday Devotional)

“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. 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 the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.”

- Genesis 12:1-4

We hadn’t seen a sign for half an hour. The road had long ago narrowed to one lane, and a tight one at that. To top it off, the 4G signal on our phones, the signal that had been giving us directions up to this point, had abandoned us several miles back. As the car continued to climb the mountainside, never going faster than 20 mph, it was hard to believe we were going the right way.

Lindsey and I were headed to a hiking trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, one recommended to us by a park ranger the day before. It was remote, he’d said, not one of the trails most park visitors attempted, largely due to its distance from the park’s visitors center. That was appealing to us when he told us about it, but as we now made our way up the mountain, we understood others’ hesitation. Climbing the mountain road in our rental car with no hint that a trailhead was near, pressing deeper and deeper into a wilderness we were unfamiliar with, we couldn’t help but wonder: why didn’t we stick with what we knew?

This is the kind of question that must have dogged Abram even in his obedience. While we often focus on the promises God makes in this passage, that Abram will be blessed and his enemies cursed and that he will be a blessing to all the families of the earth, the Lord does not shy away from the demand he is placing on his servant. Abram is commanded to, at age 75, start over—to leave behind his “country and [his] kindred and [his] father’s house”, all for a land he has never seen and to which God hasn’t yet given him directions. His call is to leave behind the known for the unknown.

Moments like these, when your comfortable status quo is threatened by the beckoning of an uncertain future, are perhaps the truest test of your faith in God. When you hear the Lord calling you to make a change, the easy choice is to clamp your hands over your ears and shout, “I can’t hear you!” After all, you think, God has blessed me where I am, so why would he possibly want me to go somewhere else?

One of the greatest threats to faith is such complacency. When you assume you’re spiritually where you need to be, when you’ve closed yourself off to the idea of God changing you, you can no longer claim to be in His will. Especially when your way seems safer and more comfortable than God’s way, faith is what compels you to follow Him instead of leading yourself.

Surrendering your life to the Lord is not a decision you make once, it is something you choose to do every day, every moment. When you know God is calling you to make a change—to serve when you would rather sit, to reach out when you would rather keep to yourself, to forgive when you would rather hold a grudge—which is more important to you, your comfort or His will?