Change of People

Um, I was just blown away a moment ago.

It's something that's probably been right in front of my face the the whole time.

Um, but it just kind of hit me fresh.

I was sitting over here with some some folks and we were watching the uh child dedications, and you know, it's just it's interesting watching kids, even at as young an age as they are, their different responses to being in a foreign environment.

You know, some of them they come up and they bury their face, you know, in their mom's shoulder or uh they want to hide, and then others are like, I'm here, you know, you're welcome.

And you know, and even kind of walking off, you know, just giving you the wave on the way out.

And I just it just made me think about just some of the different hardwired personalities, but also that we know how it goes as you go through life.

Life has a way of training you and and impacting you, and and we're all always trying to process these lessons as kind of leads to the series that we're doing right now that we're calling Choose Your Adventure.

Um, we have actually in our church, we have seven core values that we established before we even named the church, before we ever had one service.

We came up with the things that we always want to value, and one of those things is adventure.

And adventure we've defined as spirit-led risk.

Spirit-led risk.

We don't want to just be taking unnecessary risks or we don't want to get caught up in bravado, but at the same time, we do want to be really sensing what it, God, what are you calling us to do?

And then to not be afraid to step into that risk.

And uh, that's really faith.

You know, we every month our staff gets together and we do um our all-staff meeting and we'll talk through our core values and have a discussion about them.

And when we get on it, when we talk about adventure, uh, we talk about one of the things we say is that the only difference between a doo-doo storm and an adventure is the attitude of the team.

Okay, doo-doo storms and adventures look like the same thing on the surface.

But if the team comes together and says, I know it's gone haywire, uh, but but you know what?

It's just right for us.

We're ready for this, and we're gonna come together, right?

So we that's how we think uh that that you know, if if Bilbo Baggins didn't have to fight a few dragons, he would have just been a hobbit, not the hobbit.

I don't know if it was uh Frodo or Bilbo or whoever you get the idea.

Like you you gotta you gotta go through some stuff, you gotta fight some dragons, you gotta climb some mountains, and and yet what are obstacles or challenges or or sometimes chaos, I can either fall apart and say, well, it's just really hard, or I can say, no, this is an adventure, and I'm gonna walk into it.

And so what we're saying is that to choose your adventure, to choose an attitude, to choose a perspective that I'm gonna walk into the unknown and I'm gonna do it with confidence, and I'm gonna walk by faith.

So we're learning how to do that.

And a lot of that hinges on our attitude and our perspective.

And so I've been giving you this equation that's kind of been the connective tissue through each of the messages.

I'll put it back up here.

It's um it's pace, place, people equals perspective.

Pace, place, people equals perspective.

If you were in the same place, going at the same pace with the same people all your life, you'd have one limited perspective.

But anytime you change pace, you change perspective.

You change people, you change perspective.

You go to a new place, new perspective.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who who's had a change of pace, place, and people all in the last month.

And they were like, you know, I'm uh I'm uh I'm feeling the amygdala going crazy right now, right?

Which is we talked about that last week.

We talked about a new place.

Like, not just geographical place, but when you're going to a different place, what's going on?

When you go into the unfamiliar, right?

And we did a little brain science with it, but your brain, your amygdala is the part of your brain that processes emotions and fear.

And so when you go into unfamiliar places, you have a sense of fear because your your neocortex has not mapped that place.

So you don't have any patterns to recognize.

And pattern recognition is how we find peace and comfort often.

It's like, okay, I know how it works here.

And when you go into a place you don't know how it works, and you feel like a foreigner in that place, or it's it's not in your in your neocortex, uh, your amygdala is overwhelming your neocortex.

And so we we've been looking last week, we looked at uh faith is what keeps us steadfast in the unfamiliar, okay, while while we adapt and while we adjust, and we've been looking at this story of Abraham.

Uh today what I want to talk about is change of people.

When people change in your life.

Um, you know, I think a lot of probably our deepest pain in life comes through people pain.

Uh there's just nothing like it.

And um it's important that you kind of work your way through that in the healthiest possible way because if you're not careful, your impulses or your instincts can lead you into making bad long-term decisions, but you're doing it because you're trying to protect yourself and survive.

Think of the correlation between deep love and deep grief.

Like if you think about the idea of the um, there's a thin line between love and hate.

Right?

Well, why would that be?

Well, because if you love somebody deeply, the volume of those feelings, the volume of that trust, the volume of that love, when it's violated or when it's uh attacked, now all of a sudden that same volume I loved with, I now feel that wave of pain and anger.

And so that's why there's a thin line.

And if you've gone through that, if you've loved deeply and you've lost, even if it wasn't a betrayal, it was just someone died, right?

Like in a sense, like grief, when you're grieving a loss, the deeper the pain, uh, usually it's just telling you something about how deep the relationship was.

So if you're not careful, sometimes when you go through a few iterations of really painful grief, you start to almost instinctively go, you know, I'm gonna keep these relationships shallow because I don't want to go through that, you know, I don't want to hurt like that.

And of course, I think there's a maturation process of understanding that people do come in and out of your lives.

Not everybody's gonna stay with you forever.

Some of these things are seasonal, but it's also a mistake, I think, to keep everything on the surface and and miss some of the great value of life, which is going deep with the right people.

And this can be a tricky process.

So I want to I want to talk to you today, particularly around the idea of when people in your life, you either have to reposition a relationship or someone's repositioned you or repositioning you, how do we walk through this in the right way?

Uh, we're gonna be in Genesis 13, um, but I want to uh just kind of get get us all calibrated to what's happening uh in Genesis 12 that will really make Genesis 13, I think, really pop for us.

Okay, so let's backtrack just a hair.

Abraham in Genesis 12, God calls him to leave his hometown and go to the unfamiliar promised land.

And so when he crosses over the promised land in Shechem, he he's an unfamiliar place and he's got amygdalineocortex issues, and so he builds an altar, the Bible says.

He builds an altar, and what's the altar?

The altar is he's beginning to map a pattern of God's faithfulness, and so he worships at that altar, okay?

Uh God is faithful.

I'm in a new place.

I'm I'm it doesn't feel like a promised land, it feels like an unfamiliar place.

But I'm going to live my life by faith.

I'm gonna live my life trusting God in new places, and so he builds an altar.

Well, he keeps going south past Shechem, he goes south, and there he comes to another unfamiliar place and builds another altar.

And we talked about this last week.

He's mapping a pattern of God's faithfulness.

So after he builds two altars, there's a famine in the land, and he goes from uh Canaan into Egypt, another unfamiliar place.

And in Egypt, he becomes short-sighted from the altars that he just worshiped, reminding him of God's promise.

What was God's promise?

Abraham, I'm gonna take care of you.

Abraham, I'm gonna make you great.

I'm gonna do something great through you, I'm gonna bless the whole world through you, I'm gonna bless those who bless you, I'm gonna curse those who curse you.

Abraham, I am your God, I have your back, I will sustain you, uh, everything you need will come from me.

And that's what he worshiped when he worshiped at those altars, he's being reminded of that.

When he goes into Egypt, the threats overwhelm him, and he forgets about God's promise, and he starts making bad decisions.

So it says in Genesis 12, look at this, verse 13, he says to his wife, Sarah, please tell them you're my sister, and then they'll spare my life.

Look at this, they'll spare my life and treat me well.

So they won't kill me, and they'll hook me up because of their interest in you.

My man, a few verses ago, you were, it was top of mind for you that God was the one who was blessing you, God was the one who was providing for you, God was the one who was protecting you.

But this is how short-sighted we can be when the amygdala takes over, he goes into Egypt, and now he's telling his wife, I'm gonna give you over to Pharaoh so they won't kill me and they'll bless me.

He puts all of his faith now in Sarah and essentially uses her.

It says, sure enough, Abraham or Abram arrived in Egypt.

Everyone noticed Sarah's beauty, and look, when the palace officials saw her, they sang her praises to Pharaoh, their king.

Sarah was taken into this palace.

You have a pretty good idea what happened there.

Verse 16 says, Then Pharaoh gave Abram many gifts because of her.

Okay?

So because of what Pharaoh was doing with Sarah, Pharaoh gives Abram a bunch of stuff.

So when they kick, eventually Pharaoh kicks them out of Egypt because he realizes this isn't your sister, it's your wife.

And he boots them out.

But when Abram leaves, he leaves with all of the wealth and all of that he had accumulated, the gifts, because of what Sarah did behind closed doors with Pharaoh.

Now that's chapter 13.

Now we get into chapter 13.

It says, So Abram left Egypt and traveled north to Negev along with his wife and Lot, who was his nephew and all they owned.

Verse 2, Abram was very rich in livestock, silver and gold.

Partially thank you to Sarah.

And verse 3, from Negev they continued traveling by stages to Bethel.

Verse 4, this was the same place.

Now check this out.

Don't miss this.

This was the same place where Abram had built the altar, and there he worshiped the Lord again.

Don't miss this now.

He builds an altar when he first enters the promised land and he worships.

He keeps going south, he builds another one.

He's mapping God's faithfulness.

He's learning to walk by faith.

We're watching Abraham in real time learn to walk by faith.

Because he got it right two times with these altars, but he goes into Egypt, and Egypt was a different ball game, and he forgets about his altars, and he offers up his wife, and he uses her for his own selfishness, and then he leaves.

As he leaves and it goes bad, now he has some baggage, he goes back to his original altar, and he worships God at that altar.

So he's starting to connect the dots of God's faithfulness and say, when I get in my own flesh and I start thinking I have to fend for myself all the time, and I start use now, I end up using people.

And so this is really important because this he it's at this altar that he now worships God and he gets his mind frame in alignment for the separation that he's now about to have with Lot.

He's about to have a somewhat of a conflict with his nephew.

Okay, but he's in this frame of mind.

So it says verse 5 Lot, who was traveling with Abraham, had also become very wealthy.

Verse 6, but the land could not support both Abram and Lot with all their flocks and herds living so closely together.

So disputes broke out between the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot.

This actually the Hebrew word here for dispute, some of you might have the word quarrels in your Bible, but it's more than like, hey, they were just kind of getting into a spat.

Like it was a big deal.

Like it was uh a harsh disagreement, potentially violent agreement.

It's it's uh it's the Hebrew word reveal.

And so it the connotation is it was it was getting bad quick.

And so these they the disputes raise up, and it's not just the two of them living.

Now there's the the Canaanites and the Perizzites that are in the in the land, and so the land can't support, they're all bumping into each other.

Verse 8, it says, Finally, Abraham said to Lot, now let's not allow this conflict to come between us or our herdsmen.

After all, we are close relatives.

I want to give you five principles that I think will help you in repositioning relationships, and we're gonna learn them right here from Abraham.

I think he does a pretty good job in this story.

The first thing is to initiate important conversations.

Initiate important conversations.

Abraham goes to Lot and he's like, Look, man, I see where this is headed.

I can anticipate.

My wisdom and life experience gives me the ability to anticipate where this is going.

And so he goes to him and he says, Hey man, I don't want to lose this relationship.

You'll always be my nephew, but I don't think you're supposed to be my neighbor anymore.

And he says, Not only do I not want to lose a relationship with you, but they're starting to become collateral damage.

Other people are starting to spill out.

And I want us to do something about it before it gets so bad that we have to do something about it.

Let's not put our herdsmen in a position where one of them crosses the line and creates chaos, and now we got a whole big mess.

And so Abraham has the presence of mind to be proactive, to get out, get out ahead of this thing.

Um, you know, I was thinking about this as I was reading it, and and I know like my instinct usually in my world, people when there's a an issue, I tend to go face first right into it.

You know, I want to clear this stuff up and get involved in it.

And there have been times, many times over the years, I've gotten involved in something a little too quick.

Okay, you learn over time, sometimes you gotta let folks work it out.

The herdsmen aren't getting along, okay.

You just gotta you guys go ahead and you know, and and and eventually sometimes if you if the leader or or mom or dad or whoever doesn't just jump in, you kind of let them work it out.

They work it out and it's cool.

And they and you didn't have to get in there and do that, and it was actually better that you didn't.

But then there are other times that in wisdom you step back and you go, uh, this is different than that.

This is getting worse, okay?

And it's not even that everyone's bad people, it's that the land, it says, could not support this.

Like it's time for a separation, it's time, like something needs to be done.

And often people avoid these conversations.

They avoid the crucial conversation or initiating these because of the fear of losing the relationship.

I'm afraid of if I go have this conversation with Lot, you know, this could do irreparable damage to our relationship.

And so often people avoid the thing hoping it'll go away.

But this is where I think it takes responsible, uh sensitive leaders, wherever you're leading, whether this is your family or your business or your neighborhood, where you see this isn't going to be good and it's not going to work itself out.

And so Abram saw this and he was willing to go to Lot and he was willing to initiate with them and say, our relationship is too valuable, it's not been damaged yet, but if we don't make a change now, it's gonna get bad from here.

I want you to think about, and I got to ask yourself this question you know, where is an area in your life, where's a situation?

What's a situation in your life that's not getting better on its own?

What's a situation in your life that's not getting better on its own?

And it requires a conversation that you need to initiate.

Don't wait on somebody else to do it.

We see Abraham here takes initiative.

Uh the second thing is to make your best effort to see through their lens.

Right?

Essentially, this is empathy.

Do your best job of empathy.

Look through their lens.

Often in these types of things, you got a herdsman are fighting, I'm getting the story secondhand.

Okay, you've got family baggage and history, we're in a new place.

All of us have amygdala issues, we all got this going on, and so often you can end up just only seeing through your perspective.

Let's think about Lot and what he must have been going through.

What we know about Lot in Genesis 11 is Lot lost his dad tragically in Ur.

So Lot lost his dad, and when he lost his dad in Ur, his grandfather became like a father figure to him.

And so his grandfather then takes him from Ur.

They had to flee and get out of Ur.

They go 800 miles back to grandpa's hometown of Haran.

And then in Haran, his grandpa dies of natural causes.

But now he's lost his second father figure, and now his third father figure steps up, which is Abraham.

And Abraham says, Tell you what, Lot, God's called me to leave the family, but I'm taking my wife and I'm taking you.

I want you to come with me.

And so he does the type of things fathers do.

He takes his son along with him, and they go to the promised land.

And so now you have a third father figure.

And that third father figure, once they get, he goes with them to Canaan and he goes with them to Egypt, and then back.

And at some point now, that third father figure comes to you and has this conversation.

He says in verse 9 of Genesis 13, the whole country is open to you.

Take your choice of any section of the land you want.

Now look at this.

He said, and we will separate.

We will separate.

Everything before the word separate is pretty good.

Like you have Abraham saying, Hey man, you pick where you want to live.

I'm gonna treat you like a son.

But you have to think the word separate for Lot had to be triggering.

Because I was separated from my dad tragically.

I was separated from my grandfather, even though it was natural causes, there was a finality to it.

And now my uncle, my third father figure, has come to me and said we need to separate.

And all of a sudden, the fact that the land can't support both of us, and yeah, I'm a grown man, and it's my time to step out, and yeah, he's given me wherever I want to go, all of that is sort of secondary to the fact that I'm being separated from my third father figure.

And when you're Abraham and you step back from the herdsman fights and the fact that we're all in new territory, to look through a lens like that causes you to handle this conflict or this separation in a different way than if you don't.

The thing I love about the Bible is the Bible is uh it's about God, but it's also about people, and it's about people learning about God and people making mistakes and how God responds to that, and it's just it's so it's so good.

If you take this story and you see Abraham and you compare it to like the book of Acts in the New Testament, Acts 15 is the story of the Apostle Paul, and he goes on a missionary journey and he's got a protege, he's got his own sort of lot, like nephew type guy.

It's a guy named John Mark, who's like kind of like a nephew to him.

They go on a missionary journey, they also are in unfamiliar territory.

They also don't recognize the patterns of the places they're going.

They're also their lives are on the line, they're in danger all the time.

And so they're on one of their journeys, and John Mark, his amygdala has overwhelmed him, and he just wants to go home.

I just need something familiar, too much unfamiliarity.

I want to go home.

And Paul says to him, John Mark, it's just your amygdala.

Let your neocortex catch up.

You need to stay.

I need your help.

I brought you on this trip.

We're all overwhelmed, we're all scared, we've all been in prison, in danger.

I need you to buck up, I need you to grow up, I need you to level up, you need to stay with me.

Don't abandon me, John Mark.

I need you right now, I need you to stay.

And John Mark's like, I gotta go home.

I gotta go home.

And Paul's like, if you go home, I'm never taking you on another one of these trips.

Okay?

I need you, I need you to stay.

Don't leave me now.

I won't, I'm telling you right now, you won't get a second chance.

John Mark's like, I gotta go.

And he leaves.

So they're getting ready to go to their second missionary journey, and the Apostle Paul's mentor, Barnabas, says, you know, Paul, I know what happened on the first one.

I just think we need to let John Mark come with us on the second trip.

I think he's grown up.

I mean, you know, he's just let's give him some grace.

Paul's like, absolutely not.

No.

I told him.

I looked him in his eye.

I said, if you leave, and he did.

And I followed him out to his car.

And I was like, I'm telling you, if you leave, this is it.

And he did.

And I fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

No.

And Barnabas, they go at it.

And it says in Acts 15, they had such a harsh disagreement that Paul and his spiritual father Barnabas split over their nephew.

And he says, You want him, you got him.

And it and it wasn't one of those, like, hey, it's cool, agree to disagree type things.

It was a harsh, bitter dispute that they burnt bridges.

It was a schism.

And so they go their separate ways.

And you, you know, you read something like that and you're like, it didn't need to be like that.

Like, I get it.

I get all the emotions.

I get Barnabas' perspective, I get Paul's perspective, I get John Mark's perspective.

I get it.

But at some point, nobody wanted to kind of step back, frankly, look it through the other person's lens and say, you know what?

It's starting to escalate.

I don't want to, I'm you're a good person.

I don't want to hurt you, and we don't need to burn bridges.

But we can't take John Mark and not take John Mark.

We're gonna have to get decisive.

So if you want John Mark, you go ahead and take him.

You might be right.

I wish you no harm.

I got nothing but love for you.

We'll meet up at the end.

One goes to Cyprus, the other goes to Syria.

Both Cyprus and Syria.

Apparently, God wants to do something.

Let's hug, let's pray, let's let's actually be in relationship.

Let's not create casualties and villains and victims and scorch the earth.

But they scorch the earth.

Why?

Because it's human nature.

You get in the middle of those conflicts and your emotions get away from you, and you don't even take the time to get out of your own head and to look at the through the lens of somebody else.

Abraham looks through the lens of Lot, he realizes all he's been through, and so he does the third thing, which is to take the high road where you can.

Take the high road where you can.

Genesis 13, 9, he says, the whole countryside's open to you.

Take your choice of any section of land you want, and we will separate.

He said, if you want the land on the left, I'll take what's on the right.

If you prefer the land on the right, then I'll go left.

He takes the high road.

Um Abraham had every reason here, every excuse in the book to take first pick of the land.

He's the patriarch, he's the veteran, he's the uncle.

Frankly, everything Lot had in some way can kind of be traced back to Abraham.

And yet, what does he do here?

He has the presence of mind, first of all, because he just worshipped at an altar and he just learned how he can screw stuff up in Egypt to go, you know what?

It doesn't matter what land I'm on, God will provide.

God's the one who made the promise, God's the one who will protect and provide.

And so I'm not gonna feel desperate around prime real estate.

You pick the ri you pick what you want.

And he also had taken time to really think of it through Lot's lens, and so he he takes the high road and he gives it to him.

What's what's interesting here is look how Lot responds.

It says in verse 10 Um, Lot took a long look at the fertile plains of the Jordan Valley, the direction of Zoar, and uh the whole area.

Look at this.

So the Jordan Valley, he looks at it, it's well watered everywhere.

It's like the Garden of the Lord.

Okay, it's like the Garden of Eden or the beautiful land of Egypt.

In other words, it is prime, prime, prime real estate.

Verse 11 Lot chose for himself the whole Jordan Valley to the east of them.

The whole, all of it.

I'll take all of it.

He went there with his flocks and servants and parted company with his uncle Abram.

Which leads me to my fourth point, which is expect mixed feelings.

Expect mixed feelings.

Um you're taking the high road, please make sure you're actually taking the high road.

Like, be honest with yourself.

And this comes from a guy who's lied to himself about taking the high road.

Because I've taken the high road before.

Like, hey, take whichever piece you want.

You go east.

If you want to go east, I'll go west.

If you want to go west, I'll go east.

But what I really want is for a lot to say, Uncle Abraham.

How could I take the prime real estate?

I'm just a young buck.

Uncle Abraham, all I have is really attributed to you.

Uncle Abraham, please, you go first.

You know what, Uncle Abraham?

I'm gonna choose for you.

You get the Jordan Valley.

You know, you're tested on when you take the high road.

When you take the high road and then somebody takes the low road and you're ticked.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, we'd all love, I get it.

I get how honor works.

It would have been really cool of Lot to do that, but he didn't.

And to Abraham's credit, you know, he didn't do what I would have done, which is like, you entitled punk.

You entitled punk.

How dare you! And held it against him for the rest of his life.

You gotta be honest with yourself.

If you say east, west, what do you want?

Then you better mean it.

Because they might take the Jordan Valley.

And if you hold it against them for the rest of your life, because they took the Jordan Valley when you offered it because they they didn't get your Jedi mind trick you were trying to do to get them to honor you.

Uh that's not the high road.

If you're gonna offer it, offer it.

If you don't offer it, don't offer it.

But he puts it out there, and and Lot takes it.

Expect mixed feelings.

It's okay to have a part of you that's like, you know, that would have been cool if you'd have honored me, but whatever.

It's okay.

You gotta work your way through the mixed feelings.

Think about this.

I read this and it kind of does get me a little bit ticked off at Lot.

I'm like, this guy has no honor, you know, he should have honored Abraham.

But you know, think about this.

If you're Abraham and you want to work your way through a mixed feeling before you start, like, you know, looking down your nose at Lot.

Where did Lot learn to use people for personal gain?

Did he come up with that all on his own?

I don't know.

Maybe he just saw his uncle in Egypt offer up his aunt to Pharaoh to do who knows what behind closed doors to save your hide and to get the hook up, and you walk out with all this gold and all this stuff, like, thanks, Pharaoh.

Hey, my bad, dude.

I'll never do it again.

And Sarah's like.

So you use Sarah in front of him, and then you're surprised when he uses you right after.

Now I understand that you just had to come to Jesus back at the altar and you came back, and now you got your perspective back, but pardon Lot if he's a few steps behind.

Lot learned from you in Egypt.

So before I just say he has no honor, I might want to just sort of work my way all the way through the mixed feeling.

And go, you know, some of this is my responsibility.

Some of this he got the old-fashioned way.

He got by watching me.

And so I'm I have some mixed feelings, and you got to work yourself all the way through the mixed feelings, and to Abraham's credit, he does.

In fact, we see later that uh Lot ends up in a jam, and Abraham, instead of going, well, you chose it, you can live in it.

He went, he helped him out.

He did what he could to help him along the way.

So expect mixed feelings.

The the fifth point, and then I'll be done, is stay long sighted.

I I I uh I was trying to come up with a good word for this, and so I went to the thesaurus.

I typed in short-sighted, look for the antonym, and long-sighted is a word I didn't even know, but it is.

Long-sighted is an actual word in the thesaurus.

That is the antonym of short-sighted.

I just like the word, I do like it.

Stay long-sighted.

Conflicts, separations, the pain of going through stuff in family, people you care about, people you thought you were gonna go to the promised land together, and then you end up separating, and you never thought you were going to, but here you are, and it's no one's a villain.

We outgrew the land and we had to do this.

Uh, it's easy sometimes to get short-sighted, to get emotional, to get in that.

Now, think long term, think long-sighted.

Verse 13 says, Abraham settled in the land of Canaan and let Lot moved his tents near Sodom and settled among the cities in the plain.

Look at this, verse 13.

It says, The people of this area were extremely wicked and constantly sinned against the Lord.

If you keep reading in Lot's journey, you're gonna find that he picked the land that was the most fertile.

He went into the best business opportunity.

He saw the money, he saw the opportunity to level up in his ambition and to go to the next level.

He saw the opportunity.

What he didn't see is what the people would take from him.

He didn't assess the people.

We're talking about places, places, and people.

Today we're talking about people, and you have Lot who saw the business, saw the money, didn't see the people.

And friend, I know this is for somebody.

Don't get short-sighted in a business opportunity.

Don't get short-sighted in the fertility of the land that you don't analyze the character of the people.

Because if you get mixed up with the wrong people, they can't pay you enough money to make up for what they'll take from you.

And you'll see Lot later in his life, even though the land was fertile and the business opportunities were abundant, they would take from him things they could never repay.

Getting mixed up with the wrong people.

It says in verse 14, after Lot had gone, the Lord said to Abram, Look as far as you can see in every direction, north and south and east and west.

I'm giving all this land to you, as far as you can see, to you and your descendants as permanent possession.

And I will give you so many descendants that like the dust of the earth they cannot be counted.

Go and walk through the land in every direction, for I am giving it to you.

So Abram moved his camp to Hebron and settled near the oak grove in Mamre.

Now look at this, look what he does.

Look what he does.

He built another altar to the Lord.

He's mapping the pattern of God's faithfulness.

He's thinking, man, I just went altar, altar, Egypt, fear, used my wife.

I came back out, new altar, new calibration.

I took care of Lot and God took care of me.

Take care of the people, gotta take care of the property.

Take care of people, gotta take care of the property.

He took care of Lot.

He didn't treat Lot like He had just treated Sarah.

And he learned his lesson and he said, You know, I'm gonna build another altar right here, right now, to commemorate, to be reminded.

I want to map the faithfulness of God.

We are watching Abraham in real time learn to walk by faith.

So now let's bring it into our lives.

When you think about Abraham building an altar, he he was constructing a physical altar to worship so that when he got out of bounds in Egypt and he came back, it reminded him, it shocked his memory.

Oh yeah, God's faithfulness.

Remember where God brought me from, remember God's promise.

And although we don't necessarily go make these physical altars, I want to encourage you to have altars, to find these things.

And it might be a physical thing, it might be a rock with a verse on it, it might be a trinket of some sort, it might be something to commemorate, like don't lose it.

It might be a journal that you write journal entries into, it might be a story, it might be something that you come back to and continue to map God's faithfulness.

Because what that does is it puts you in the right frame of mind to make sure that you don't do with Lot what you just did in Egypt.

That you find God's promises and faithfulness at the top of your mind.

And you go in and you take care of people and you you you take care of business the right way and you trust the rest of it with God.

And God said, Hey, hey, remember when you told Lot, if you want east, I'll take west?

I'm giving you north, south, east, and west.

You were faithful to do right by him, and you were generous, and you took the high road, and you looked through his lens, and you trusted me, and you worshiped at the altar, and I'm gonna take care of you.

I'm gonna give you all, I'm gonna give you all of it.

I'm gonna give you more than you ever thought.

You take care of what you can take care of, I'll take care of what I can take care of, and he continued to build an altar.

So I encourage you, wherever you're at right now, build an altar of God's faithfulness, or maybe you need to return to an altar of God's faithfulness as you're walking through things with people that might have mixed emotions, mixed feelings, but want to handle it the right way.