Talking With God

Talking With God
-Journey of Faith-
Genesis 12.1-4; Hebrews 11.8
DBC 10.8.06

We are embarking on a journey of faith sermon series over the next two months:

1. Oct. 8th Talking with God (Abraham)
2. Oct. 15th Laughing with God (Abraham, Sara, and Isaac)
3. Oct. 22nd Fighting With God (Jacob)
4. Nov. 5th Reconciling with God (Jacob)
5. Nov. 12th Dreaming with God (Joseph)
6. Nov. 19th Waking With God (Mosses)
7. Nov. 26th Suffering With God (Job)

A journey is a movement from one place to another; it has the connotation of adventure added to it. You might take a mere trip from one place to another, but a journey implies a transformation is underway.

So we could say a journey of faith involves the dynamic movement of God in our lives and of our lives toward God. We could say it this way: God is dynamically working in our lives to transform us into the likeness of Christ and we are moving closer and closer to knowing God more fully.

At this point Abraham serves as a great example of a journey of faith and how that journey is a conversational experience between God and the believer.

-The Call of Abram-

“The LORD had said to Abram [Ab meaning father and ram meaning lofty, “lofty father”], "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.”

Abram was not a complicated man. In fact, he was rather simple and primitive by our standards. His people were nomads and they worked the fields wherever they were. The beginning of God’s conversation with Abram is simply a word for Abram “to go”- and leave everything Abram was comfortable with and everything he knew as a way of life; he is told to leave his country, people, family and go somewhere new where he had never been. Why would God do this (a way of increasing dependence upon God, a test of obedience and faith, change of scenery)?

Perhaps sometimes we have to change our scenery and outlook to see something new. We can get too comfortable and complacent when we’ve been in one place and phase of mind for a long time (Abram was 75 at this time).

Faith is a journey; it’s diligently seeking after God (Heb 11.6). I fear that most believers reassure themselves of where they are and what they already know (about God). Many believers confuse faith as a static possession rather than understanding it as a dynamic and transformational journey.

Faith is an ongoing growth and knowledge of God; it is a conversational experience with God.
God was calling Abram out from everything he knew and trusted in. God was calling him into a mystery. God was growing and changing Abram. God was challenging and stretching Abram’s faith.

"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.

4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him;
and Lot went with him.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran."

Abram’s faith was a conversational faith with God; God spoke with him and he spoke to God. In fact all faith starts like that.

There is a difference between talking at God and talking with God.
Have you ever noticed the paradox of the biblical example of a confident and blind faith (2 Tim 1.12 & Hebrews 11.8)?

Hebrew 11.8 “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

It seems to me that we believe in God (most of the time) based upon what God has done in the past. That is to say that God has a track record. But we are not only called upon to remember what God has done in our past we are called upon to believe that God is moving us forward into the future as well.

Perhaps the future is where blind faith comes into practice. We might know where he is calling us, but we don’t know how it will unfold. We might not know where he is calling us to but we know the character of whom it is that is calling, prompting, and guiding us.

For instance you might sense that God is calling you into the ministry; however, you have no way of knowing how you’re going to end up being a minister and where that ministry will take place . . . but you know that the one who called you into the ministry is faithful and good. Or you sense that God might have called you to start this ministry or go to this place; blind faith would be stepping out and head in that direction knowing that he who called you is faithful.

You might sense that God is leading you to some action or toward a radical change in your life, job, family, faith, or whatever (and it shouldn’t surprise us that faith in a miraculous God would result in miraculous, radical and seemingly impossible tasks and changes in the lives of such believers and churches); however, you might be puzzled and unsure of how that action or change will take place … but you know that the one who called you into that change and commitment is faithful and good.

So among the first lessons that we need to know in talking with God and a journey of faith is that the task, calling, change, journey, and commitment toward God is not always clear, but that the character of the one we have faith in is good and faithful.

I was thinking about the other day how silly I most look to other drivers when I’m in my car singing or talking-- and there’s no one else in the car with me. I was also thinking how weird it must sound to people who don’t believe in God to hear people who do believe in God to say that they talk to God and that God talks to them. And I was thinking that the notion that I talk with God on a regular basis is weird; I mean it’s weird in the sense that it’s not like any other conversation I have; it’s weird in the sense that it’s not natural, it’s supernatural.

And I was thinking of how easy it is to talk about talking with God at church and in Sunday school, but it is (can be) really a hard thing to do outside of church. It can be hard when you pray and pray and you seemingly hear nothing. When you pour out your heart and you don’t feel that your prayers and cries make it past the ceiling, like when the psalmist cried out, “Where are you God and don’t turn a deaf ear on me?”

I can relate with the angst of the Psalmist; but I want to leave you with some assurance that while it does get tough and painful in this life—God is with you. God is present in your pain, suffering, dilemmas, struggles and challenges; and while we may not know what or where life is taking us we can know that God goes and is with us wherever and in whatever circumstances that we find ourselves in. He is our shield (Gen 15.1).