9/27/2026 - “Into the Story Ahead” - Rev. Anthony Spearhart

So there are moments when God speaks into a life and everything changes.

Not because God explains everything, not because suddenly the whole future becomes clear, but because somehow in the middle of an ordinary life, a voice says there is more.

More than what you can see from here, more than the life you have already known, more than the future you have been able to imagine.

And sometimes the only way to discover it is to trust God enough to move.

That is where our story begins this morning with a man named Abram.

He's 75 years old.

He has a home, a family, a history, and a place that is familiar.

He is married to Sarai, and together they carry the ache of a future they cannot yet see.

And then God speaks.

God says, Go.

Leave your country, leave your kindred, leave your father's house.

Go to a land that I will show you.

Not go and here is the map.

Not go and here is exactly how this will work.

Just go to the place that I will show you.

Abram is being asked to move before he knows where he is going, to trust before he understands, to step into a story whose ending he cannot yet see.

And then God gives him a promise.

I will bless you.

I will make of you a great people, and through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

And somehow Abram trusts the voice enough to go.

He gathers Sarai, his household, everything they can carry, and they leave.

They journey forward, they build altars, they call upon God and they keep going.

Abram does not know the whole story.

He knows the voice.

Let me repeat that again.

He knows the voice.

He knows the call.

He knows the promise.

And for that moment, that is enough.

Because what Abram cannot see yet is where all of this will lead.

There will be waiting, there will be fear, there will be mistakes.

There will be moments when Abram and Sarai wonder whether they heard God correctly at all, even to the point of laughter.

But God keeps speaking, God keeps calling, and eventually Abram becomes Abraham.

Sarai becomes Sarah.

And Isaac is born.

A family becomes generations.

And a story that begins with one uncertain step becomes a story people are still telling thousands of years later.

Abram could not see Isaac.

He could not see the generations.

He could not see how far that blessing would travel.

He simply trusted that God who was speaking was faithful.

And generations later, Jesus says something remarkably similar to his disciples.

Hear these words from the Gospel of Matthew.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Again, go is the word.

Go into the world, go and teach this way of love, and remember I am with you always.

Maybe this is what faith has always looked like.

Not knowing the whole story, not having every question answered, but trusting that God is still speaking, still calling, and still leading.

I do because I have seen it.

I've seen it in a search team that kept listening and discerning.

I've seen it in conversations around tables and in hallways and in homes.

I've heard it when someone says, What if we try this?

I've heard it when you've shared your hopes for what this church might become.

And I've seen it in the way you've been willing to pivot your mission planning when new needs arose.

Rather than clinging so tightly to the plan that we miss the people God is placing right in front of us.

The Spirit does not speak through only one person.

The church does not belong to the pastor because God speaks through congregations, through children, through elders, through questions, through dreams, and through holy imagination.

And our work together is to keep listening.

Later today we will celebrate an installation, and in some ways, the big decision has already been made.

You called me to be your pastor.

I said yes.

We signed the call agreements, and for almost four months now we have already been doing ministry together.

We've worshiped together, prayed together, dreamed together, started learning one another's stories.

And I want you to know I am so happy to be on this journey with you.

And I am grateful that our stories have found one another.

And I'm excited about what God is already doing among us.

But today is not simply a celebration of me coming here.

Installation is about covenant.

And we've talked a little bit about that before.

It's about this congregation, your pastor, and the wider church standing together and saying, we choose this journey together.

We choose to listen for God together.

We choose to dream together.

And we choose to walk into a future none of us can fully see yet.

And that is why the story of Abram feels so right for today.

Because installation is not God's way of saying, you have arrived.

It's God's way of saying, go.

Go together, dream together, love together, become a blessing together.

Because that was the promise to Abram, not simply, I will bless you, but I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.

And that distinction matters.

Church cannot exist merely for itself.

If all we ask is how Lakeview can survive, we are asking too small of a question.

The question is, how can Lakeview bless the world God has placed around us?

Who has not yet experienced the welcome of this community?

Who has been told by religion that they are unworthy or unwanted?

Who is lonely or grieving or exhausted by injustice?

Who is waiting for someone to say, you, all of you, belong here?

I do not know exactly what all of that will look like.

And neither do you.

But Abram did not know either.

We do not need the entire story before we take the next faithful step.

Because the beginning is rarely, the beginning is rarely big enough to show us everything God is doing.

In fact, I think if he showed us the whole thing right away, I think we'd be a little intimidated.

So when I look at us, Lake View, I wonder what we cannot see yet.

I wonder what ministry will exist five years from now because someone has the courage to speak an idea aloud today.

I wonder what child will grow up here knowing from their earliest days that they are beloved exactly as they are.

I wonder what healing might happen, what injustice we might challenge together, what stories people will someday say about what God began among us in this season.

We cannot see the whole story.

But that does not mean that God is absent, it means the promise is still unfolding.

So today we give thanks for everything that has brought us here.

And then we turn our faces forward.

Because Christ still says, Go.

Go and trust me.

Go and become a blessing.

Go even when you cannot yet see what the road holds or where the road ends.

Because God does not call us because we already know the whole story.

God calls us because God is already present in the story ahead.

Abram could not see what was coming, neither can we, but I believe God is speaking to us now.

So we do not need the whole map, we need courage.

We need one another, we need ears to be listening.

And we need enough trust to take the next faithful step.

Because the road is in front of us.

The promise is still unfolding, and God is with us.

And the story, the story is just the beginning.

So let's go.

Praise God.

Amen and amen.

Beloved, go from this place, trusting that together we do not need to see the whole road before taking the next faithful step.

Go listening for the God who is still speaking among us.

Go ready to become a blessing in this community and beyond it.

And go knowing that wherever the story leads, we walk it together, and God goes with us.

And may the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing, so that we may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen and Amen.