To Encourage You

Hebrews 11:8 “And he went out, not knowing where he was going.”

I love the sayings of Yogi Berra. One of my favorites is “If you don’t go to your friends’ funerals, they won’t go to yours!” Profound, isn’t it?  Here’s another one: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”  Kind of makes you scratch your head and chuckle at the same time.  It was this saying that came to my mind as I read the verse above from Hebrews 11.  It’s talking about Abraham, who is sometimes referred to as “the father of the faithful.”  The Jews look at Abraham as their father, and he is, in a physical sense. However, in Romans 9:7 we are told, “not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” Then in Galatians 3:6-7 we are told, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.  Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” In verse 29 of the same chapter it says, “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” 

Abraham, then, is held up throughout the Scriptures as a tremendous example of faith.  He believed God. He believed Him when he told him to leave his home to go to an unknown land that he would later inherit. He believed God when He told him and Sarai that they would have a son even though they were well past child-bearing age.  And he believed that God could raise that son from the dead if he obeyed the Lord’s command to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God.  Everywhere we look we see Abraham believing God, and he believed him in the face of great unknowns. 

As Abraham took his first step of faith in leaving his homeland, I wonder if he thought he’d end up “somewhere else,” i.e., a place where his life would fall apart, a place where the promises God had made to him would all prove false.  You see, the moment any person puts their faith in Christ, they, like Abraham, start on a journey where they don’t know where they are going.  Any believer, when obeying God’s call to believe and follow Him, set off on a journey that will take them from what is familiar to them to that which is unknown.  As they take that step of faith to become a follower of Christ, they are brought into unfamiliar territory, a place where they don’t call the shots anymore; rather, God does.  As they follow Him, the reality is that they may be placed in a situation where they are abandoned by friends or even family members. On this journey they must leave their former life of sin and follow in the way of obedience to the One Who has called them.  This new way may be unsettling. There will be many unknowns. It’s a journey they’ve never been on before, so they don’t know where it will lead, at least in the short term.  It’s a journey not walked by sight, but walked by faith in what the Lord has told them in His Word.  It’s a journey to the land of promise in Heaven, and along the way, they find themselves to be aliens in a world in which they’ve lived their entire lives until then.  That’s what the journey of faith is. That’s the journey we see when we look to the father of the faithful. 

So Is that the journey you’re on?  Are you going out, not knowing where you are going, yet trusting the One Who is leading your every step?  For you see, the journey of the natural man will always find its destination to be death, while the journey led by the Spirit of God will ultimately find its destination in eternal life and eternal peace (Romans 8:6). Which path are you following? Is it the broad road marked by the walk of sight but that ultimately and inevitably leads to destruction, or is it the narrow road, the one marked by the walk of faith that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14)? We’re all on one road or the other, for we’re all either children of Abraham, or we’re not.