Faith, Hope, Love - Faith that Obeys God

Stories in the book of Genesis.

If you measure time by the genealogies in Genesis, the first 11 chapters of Genesis cover about 2,000 years.

So 11 chapters, 2,000 years.

And then God takes 39 chapters from chapter 12 to chapter 50 to cover the lives of one man and his sons and grandsons.

Okay, so you might think this man is important.

And you would be right.

Because not only does God give 14 chapters of his of his uh of Genesis to him, he gives a whole chapter in the book of Romans, he gives two chapters in the book of Galatians.

Abraham is called the father of them who believe.

Abraham three times is called the friend of God, a title that's only given to him, no one else.

And the writer of Hebrews, when he lists the heroes of the faith, he gives more words to Abraham than anybody else.

So, and he says, this is a man we can learn to live by faith from.

And we call him Father Abraham.

He's the father of those who believe because in Abraham started this lineage and journey all the way to Jesus.

This was a promise.

The writer of Hebrews is making a larger picture.

He's painting a larger picture of what it means to approach God, about living by faith, living and approaching God by faith.

That there's a better covenant, there's a better, there are better promises, there are better, there's better blood that was shed, that speaks a better word.

And Jesus is a better mediator.

So the whole point is pointing to the fact that we, just like Abraham was justified by faith, and therefore he was right with God, we are justified by faith in what has been done in Jesus Christ.

And we're right with God.

So we're learning from the lives of these heroes of the faith.

And one of the things that we're learning is that faith is not merely something you have, faith is a way of life.

Faith walks, faith works, faith looks like something.

Faith hears God and responds in obedience and steps out into unknown places and does things that don't make sense sometimes.

It does things that by all measures are impossible unless God is involved.

That's what we see in the heroes of the faith.

So I want to tell you this morning just three things that I saw in this passage as I've been studying it over the last three weeks.

And the first thing is that by faith Abraham obeyed God.

Just what the first words that we read, okay?

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place where he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

So let's go to the passage that this writer is talking about in the book of Genesis, chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

Genesis 12, starting at verse 1.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Abram and Abraham are the same person.

God changed his name when he changed his destiny, which happens quite a bit in Scripture.

So here you're going to read, we're going to read Abram, but it's the same person as Abraham, and I'll be referring to him as Abraham through the sermon.

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 him who dishonors 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.

So here we have a pagan, a man who likely worshipped many gods, and yet he is singled out and called by the one true living God, and who in kindness reveals himself to him.

I think what's revealed in Abraham's story is not so much the faith of Abraham, but the mercy and faithfulness of God.

When God reveals himself to you, it's a gift.

God decided to reveal himself to us.

And this is the gift of God.

But studying Abraham's life, it's a little bit funny because he's really inconsistent, you know?

It's like sometimes he he's a he's upright and he's trusting God, he's doing things that are that are uh really outside of reason because he's believing God.

And other times he's he's like acting like there's no God at all, and he has to take everything into his own hands.

So it's a little confusing when you're reading Abraham's whole story.

If you just read Abraham's story, but if you read the the God of the story, if you study the God of the story, you find out that he is faithful even when Abraham isn't faithful.

He's consistent.

He remains the same even when we stumble in our faith.

So the true hero of Abraham's story is not Abraham, it's God.

And the true story of the true hero of our story is also God.

So everything Abraham lacked was made up in the character and the nature and the faithfulness of the God who called him.

And we read several times in Genesis that God appeared to him.

And that's a gift.

And I'm wondering what must have happened.

We're not told in this account what it was like when God spoke to him.

Other accounts later in Genesis, we are told more details about how God came to him and interacted with him.

But this time we're just told God spoke to him, but he had to appear to him to speak to him.

And what Abram saw was had to be so life-changing that he was willing to change his own life.

Actually, to step out and do things that were that didn't seem to make sense.

Something powerful enough about the the appearing of God that caused him to obey.

Sometimes we get a glimpse of God, and that's all it takes.

We can we can actually step out and do something.

And everything changes in our life because of that.

I was thinking about the stories that we hear of current-day Muslims who see a vision of Jesus out of nowhere, and it's enough.

That one vision is enough to change their whole life.

It's enough for them to risk being alienated from their families, to risk death.

Everything changes because what they saw was worth the change.

So here's my question to you.

Do you remember a time that God has revealed Himself to you?

Either in a vision, like an experience, or over a period of time, like a journey, where he's been leading you, opening your eyes up to the fact that he wants to have a relationship with you?

Have you seen this God?

Has he appeared to you?

Is he making himself known to you?

And if so, and maybe that maybe that day is today, maybe that season in your life is right now.

And if so, you should you should take a tip from Abraham and just obey.

Take a step.

Take a step.

Obey God's call.

Because first Abraham heard the call.

I love the way the King James says it because it says um God repeated to Abraham and he said, Get thee out.

She's a great get thee out.

I think we should we should have like t-shirts.

Get thee out, get thee out.

But that wasn't very easy, you know, because Ur was not a little place.

Ur where Abraham lived, was not, it was like a big city, and it was a center for learning, it was a center for commerce, and it was generally a comfortable place.

I mean, this is a place of security.

But Abraham saw something that made him willing to leave his comfort and his security and go out.

He gave up everything that was familiar to follow a God he did not know at that point.

He had not known up to that point.

So there in that calling, God initiated a relationship.

And this is what I want you to see is that faith is about relationship.

It's not about what you can conjure up and how you can believe God.

Faith is about the beginning of a relationship that continues to grow as you walk with Jesus, all the way until you are with Jesus.

You're growing.

And Abraham went not knowing where he was going.

Oswald Chambers, in his little book, Not Knowing Whither, says this.

Faith never knows where it's being led.

It knows and loves the one who is leading.

The call of God only becomes clear as we obey, never as we weigh the pros and cons and try to reason it out.

When Jesus Christ says, follow me, he never says to where.

The consequences must be left entirely to him.

So if you're going to get thee out, there is a from and there is a to.

Get thee out from your country, from your family, from your father's house.

God said to Abraham, these are all influences that mold a person's life.

They can be real anchors in a person's life, or they can be shackles in a person's life.

It can be positive or it can be negative.

But God's saying, make a clean break from your past, from the things that have defined you, and follow God in His new definition of you.

Ultimately, he changed Abram's name.

So there are things that are trying to pull us back into the old ways of thinking, but I'm asking you this morning, is there anything that God is asking you to get thee out from?

Does he want you to get thee out from a way of living that is not pure before him, from a sin, from a job, from a relationship, from a season of your life that he is changing, and he's saying that doesn't define you anymore.

There's a new destiny.

If that's the case, then do it.

There's your sermon.

Do it.

I have to make it a little bit longer than that, but that's really it.

Just do it.

Abraham, by faith, Abraham obeyed God.

Just do it.

Do it.

Don't weigh the pros and cons.

Do it.

That's what faith looks like.

Get thee out from your country, he says.

Okay, that's a big deal for Abraham, because maybe more than it is from us.

It's not that hard.

It's an issue to, you know, to move from one place to another.

But it was bigger for him.

Get thee out from thy country.

In Abraham's day, land ties were huge.

Land was, most people didn't travel more than a few miles from their home, even.

And land was everything because you pulled your very existence out of the land that you owned.

So if you leave your land, you're leaving that security of provision.

Get thee out to a new place.

Get thee out of thy country to the country that I will show you.

Get you out, get thee out of the comfort.

Step off of the shore onto the boat that's going to sail you to where I want you to be.

That's what God was really saying.

From your current existence to my plan for you.

And then he said, from your kindred, family.

Okay, now we're getting into emotional ties and cultural responsibilities.

And for Abram, there was big cultural pressure to take care of his extended family.

We don't have that as much in our culture, although some of us are in the season of life where we're we need to take care of our family members.

But most of us don't have the kind of pressure that Abraham had.

And there are seasons when we are, when we are, we set things aside and we love our loved ones by meeting their needs.

And that's right, and that's noble.

It's the right thing to do.

But I've seen another kind of family ties that prevents us from stepping out into the will of God.

I've known people who are so tied down to their identity that their family put into them.

Their family of origin put something in you that was negative, and you don't believe you can do it.

You don't believe you could do it.

You couldn't step out.

Like Gideon, and God calls him and says, I want you to join with me on mission, and I want you to save Israel.

And Gideon says, I mean, obviously you don't understand.

Obviously, you don't know who you're talking to.

I'm the least one in the least family, in the least tribe.

And some of us feel that way.

God couldn't use me.

And God calls, and you say, You got the wrong person.

That happens a lot in scripture.

Have you noticed?

The people God shake things up with are the people who think they could never shake anything up.

But who's more qualified to know what you're capable of?

God or you?

It's it's not rhetorical.

God or you?

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if he calls you, there's a reason.

It may not be because you're great.

It may be because you are the least in the least in the least.

But it may be because he wants to glorify his name through the least of who you are.

It's okay.

He gets glory.

But if you don't step out, there's an adventure of a lifetime that God may be calling you into.

And when you're 80 or 85 or 90 years old, and you're looking back, and you'll say, I'm so glad I took a step.

But I've known people who've been ridiculed and belittled by their parents or their family members.

They and it just set a trajectory for their lives.

It set a mindset inside of them.

I can't do this.

And those relatives' voices are like the loudest voices in their head in their life.

And it beats them down and it holds them back until they learn to turn that volume down and turn the volume up of what the scripture says about them or what God thinks about them.

And God wants you to be free from that.

You're not the sum of your family history, brother.

You've been adopted into a different family.

And if God calls you, you can get thee out.

Get thee out of that family identity that has held you back.

Get out.

Step out.

Abraham had to leave his idol worshiping, extended family and follow what he knew was true.

And then we add to the fact that Abraham was a wealthy man, and this wasn't easy to do to get out, because I mean it wasn't like he put his stuff in a couple of carry-ons and went down to the airport.

He had caravans.

We're talking about livestock and at least dozen scores of people that were counting on him, uprooting all these people, and it looked impossible or at least impractical.

And then you added the fact that he didn't even have a destination when he started out.

Okay, everybody, let's go.

We're going.

Okay.

We're ready.

Let's go.

Where are we going?

Um, I don't.

Are we going east or west?

Um, are we going north?

Um, well, he said he would show me as I was going.

Whoo, you gotta be kidding.

How do you how are you gonna follow somebody like that?

It takes, it's not an easy thing that God was asking him to do.

But he said, all he had was not a destination, but he had a promise.

He had a promise.

I will bless you.

I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.

And all you, all the families in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed, including us this morning.

Including us.

For through his seed came Jesus.

We are blessed this morning by his faith.

So as we walk, God's gonna show us.

Faith is about relationship.

As you walk, he shows you.

So is there something God is stirring inside of your heart that's gonna cause you to leave comfort and get the out to a place of blessing, but a blessing to bless other people.

By faith, Abraham obeyed God.

It's really simple, it's not easy, but it's simple.

You you know, you can you can have simple, but not easy, right?

This is simple, and there are natural reasons that always cause us to think it can't happen.

I mean, he was 75 years old.

That's an issue.

Let's go on a journey.

He didn't have clear directions, other people's lives were hanging in the balance of his decision.

The land they were traveling through was not the most fertile in the world.

None of this makes sense.

None of it makes sense.

But you know what?

Abraham believed, if God is with me, what does it matter where I go and what happens?

If God is with me.

You see, Abraham was a friend of God.

There's this presence of God that changes everything about how you look at an unsure future.

This problem we all have, the future's not known.

The presence of God changes how you look at that.

He was the friend of God.

As he was walking, God spoke to him.

As he took a step, God led him and guided him through those things.

Something he saw when God appeared to him made him think everything was worth it.

And he did.

He stepped out.

But we see something similar with Sarah.

So this is the second thing I saw.

Sarah knew the one that she believed in.

Sarah knew the one she believed in.

Look what it says.

It says, By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful, who had promised.

She had an opinion of God.

Now, she also laughed when she heard it.

Okay.

And sometimes God tells us things and it's and it's laughable to us, you know?

So, okay, well, God's very patient when we laugh.

He did call her out on it, and she denied it.

And he said, uh-uh.

You did.

You did laugh.

God might call you to do laughable things.

Things, well, it's laughable because it's not possible.

That's why it's laughable.

But look what it says.

It says, by faith, Sarah herself.

I love how that's put because she did not live vicariously through the faith of her husband.

By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive.

This was not a piggyback kind of faith.

She believed.

She herself believed.

And you yourself have to believe.

Sometimes God, when we're young in the Lord, He connects us to people who have a vision.

And this is good.

And they and we kind of live off their faith.

We kind of learn from their faith.

But there's a time when God calls you to have your own faith.

You can't hang on the faith of your parents or your husband or your friends or your pastors.

You need your faith.

It needs to be you by faith.

By faith.

Chad himself, Trisha herself, Sharon herself believed God and received power.

And God uses women as much as He uses men.

God gifts and empowers and fills women with faith for impossible things, and impossible things happen.

A lot of us, probably here today, are the products of the faith and prayers of our moms.

I'm almost 100% sure I'm here because of my mom's faith and prayers.

Many of us.

So Sarah, why does she believe?

She believed because she considered him faithful who promised.

She saw something in, she believed in God's character.

So again, Oswald Chambers says this faith is not resignation to a power we do not know.

Faith is committal to one whose character we do know because it has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

It's not just a blind faith, it's faith in his character.

It's not even faith in my ability to believe or to make things happen.

It's faith in his character.

I step out because I believe him to be good and able and strong and faithful and trustworthy.

And then when I step out, I find him to be more of those things than I even imagined.

Can I testify this morning?

Give you a story.

So uh years ago, even before Melissa passed, uh, we were we were planning to uh do more of ministry in the nations, and um we were talking to the elders about that.

And so uh, and then and then when she passed away, it was like there was an uncertain future.

Man, you don't know, you don't know what to do, do you?

Those of us who've lost our spouses, we don't know exactly how to go forward.

It's uncertain, but I believed there was a call there.

I believe there was a get the out.

And so there was a there was a time when I'm we're we're praying with the elders.

It's like my I'm full-time at the church.

My I'm gonna be five, six months of the year out of the country.

I can't be full-time at the church because I'm not full-time at the church.

So my salary comes down, so I have to believe God to raise money, right?

So, okay, so I'm up in my head because I'm like you are.

I'm I'm thinking, okay, I'm calculating, okay, I need this much to live on, and so I need you to provide this much, Lord, and I'm gonna believe you.

I'm gonna like Abraham, I'm gonna obey.

I'm gonna step out and believe you, and this is what I need.

So I'm actually gonna stretch my faith, Lord.

I'm gonna believe you not just for this, I'm gonna believe you for like that much.

It wasn't, it wasn't, it was not this, but it was just that.

Yeah, like I'm even gonna stretch.

That's how far my faith could stretch at that point.

It's like, I'm gonna trust you even for this.

And you know what happened?

The first year when I stepped out, he didn't give me this and he didn't provide this, he provided that.

It was just crazy.

It was crazy.

It was, and it was majority of it was from anonymous givers that I didn't know who they were.

Let me ask you, was it my faith that manifested that?

It was not.

My faith was like right here.

It was my faith that obeyed God and took a step.

I just took a step.

It was God's faithfulness that manifested that.

I didn't call those anonymous people and say, hey, you know, I'm going uh out on faith here because you I don't even know who they are.

God did it.

When we step out, this is what we're called to do.

We're not called to know everything, to provide everything.

We're called to just obey.

By faith, Abraham believed God.

This is the way it is.

God will do his part if we do our part.

So, my question to you is what you know of God.

Here's the thing: I knew God was faithful.

He had been faithful to me.

I knew that he honored my obedience in the past.

I knew that he had called me, but I didn't know all of those things as much as I was going to learn those things.

I learned he was much more faithful, much more able, much more willing than I even understood him to be.

So, is what you know of God and his character and his previous works in your life worth trusting him for the future?

Worth getting the out and taking a step?

Is it worth stepping out into something to a destination that he knows but you don't know?

Is he worth that?

Living by faith means you have to resign control of your future to the one who holds the future, and that's how you face an unknown future.

There's your answer.

How do you get bearings for what you don't know is gonna happen?

You give your future into the hand who that holds the future.

If you want to live a life whose designer and builder is God, you're gonna have to turn in your contractor's license.

Stop building it yourself, burn the deed.

I don't know, whatever, whatever metaphor you want to use, you you gotta you gotta release it into the hands that are trustworthy.

So faith is a life of surrender to a God whose character you believe is worthy of surrendering to.

And Abraham and Sarah walked this faith walk together, imperfectly, sometimes blindly, but together.

And the promise had to come through Abraham and Sarah.

One of them alone was not enough.

It takes two to bring a baby into this world, to bring a promise into this world.

And husbands and wives are in this together.

Press in.

Married couples, press into one another.

Press in to God in this walk of faith.

So, what did Abraham and Sarah learn about God when they're walking on their journey?

Well, they learned he was kind.

They learned when they made mix mistakes, he was patient and he was kind and he could make up for those things.

In spite of my bad decisions, his blessing can come.

He learned God is an they learned God is an all-powerful creator.

Look at the stars, Abraham.

Can you count those?

If I'm able to put those in the heavens, I'm also able to create countless airs for you.

Doesn't matter.

In the heavens, in the womb, I'm able to create beyond your imagination.

And they learned that God is generous because he blessed and continued to bless.

And they learned to be generous.

You know, Abraham was generous.

He he just lived with his hands open.

He gave.

He gave Lot the best land.

He said, We're gonna choose, but you choose, you choose.

You choose whatever land you want.

And Lot chose the better land, and God still blessed him, still blessed Abraham.

Abraham tithed before tithing was mentioned in the Bible.

He thed before there was a command to tithe, because he had tithing in his heart.

It didn't come from the outside, you know, to do this thing.

It came from the inside.

I need to just be open.

He lived like this because he saw a generous God and he became generous.

Okay, the last thing I saw in this is that my faith or my lack of faith affects other people.

Everybody who went on this journey with Abraham eventually shared in the blessing that God gave to this man.

The blessing that God put in his life also rippled over into their lives.

Wives and servants and extended family and surrounding people groups and us today, we got we're we're living in the ripple of this blessing of his step of faith.

Your faith affects other people around you.

Abraham let Lot choose the best land.

And Lot chose the portion towards Sodom, and Lot got himself in trouble.

He made bad decisions, and now he's in trouble.

So Abraham had to go and fight for Lot, his nephew.

Some of us, our biggest faith fight right now is for our family.

I want to tell you, God is going to be faithful to give you the wisdom, the courage, the grace to fight for your family.

But he fought together with other people.

It wasn't him.

He joined with other kings and they all went and they did the deed together.

You need the body of Christ, you need brothers and sisters to fight with you.

You need to say, Hey, come and pray.

Would you join with me in prayer?

Would we just can we agree on our families?

Can we agree that God will open the eyes of our children, the eyes of our parents, our extended family?

He could have said, Well, you know, serves lot right.

He made bad choices.

He's got to learn a lesson, he's got to pay the price.

But he did not do that.

He fought for his family.

That's part of the faith, faith walk.

Our lack of faith also affects other people.

You know, there was a time when there was a famine, and Abraham left the land of promise and he went down into Egypt.

Probably one of those times when he took into his own hands or did made his own decisions.

Seems like that's what it was.

He went to Egypt and uh he told a lie, half-truth, which is a lie, about his his uh wife Sarah, because she was like a they were they were they were like half-brothers, brother and sister.

And but she said, This is my sister, not my wife, and it was a it was a big mess.

And and then it that opened up a door for Pharaoh to sin.

He did the same thing with Abimelech later on.

And uh it was a mess.

His bad decisions opened up doorways for sin in other people's lives.

Our sin or our disobedience or our lack of faith can affect other people.

So there has to be a fear of God here.

You're stepping out in faith is not just about you, it's about other people.

It affects you.

Or you're you're falling back and not believing God.

It can affect other people.

And the Pharaoh treated Abraham well for Sarah's sake, and he gave Abraham sheep and cattle and donkeys and camels, and men servants and maidservants.

Later on, Abraham made a big mistake.

At his wife's request, he would try to make God's promise come through his own effort, and he would have a child by a woman who was not his wife, Hagar.

And where was Hagar from?

Sarah, Genesis 16:1.

Genesis 16:1

Sarah had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar.

Very likely one of those servants that came from Pharaoh, from Egypt, from the bad decision, came along back into with them, into the promised land.

And that bad decision opened a door for other bad decisions.

So I'm saying there has to be, there has to be a fear of a Lord as we're walking these this faith walk.

Our today decision to walk in faith or lack of faith matters because it shapes our tomorrow and it shapes the tomorrow of the people around us.

It affects other people.

Okay, so let me end by telling you why I feel like my main lesson, my personal lesson that I got out of this passage is, and that is that it seems to me, the main lesson of Abraham's story is neither my faith nor my obedience, but rather the relationship with God that comes in the process of believing and the blessing that comes through me to others.

Yes, Abraham believed and he obeyed, and our obedience and belief are important, but that's not the end of it.

That's not the goal of it.

The goal of it is relationship.

God wants to walk with you.

It's not about me, it's about knowing God and blessing others.

So I grew up spiritually in what was known as the faith movement.

Okay, and the faith movement in some ways was really good because it was it was a stretching of our faith.

It was a it was helping people understand faith more and stretching faith to trust God for more things.

In some ways it was good, but in some ways it has been really destructive.

And especially in, I see it in other nations.

Because the thing is, the focus is me and my faith and what kind of faith I can conjure up, wrestling to get what's coming to me, manifesting my future.

And now I'm under all of this bondage of these laws that I have to say certain things and not say certain things and believe certain things and not believe certain things.

And it's like a whole new set of legalism disguised as faith.

And it's a mess.

It's a mess.

The whole focus is me.

It's it depends on me.

It all depends on me.

It's a it's like I can.

Literally, it went to the extreme of I'm commanding God to do these things.

Command you, God.

Because what you said in your word, I command you.

I'm commanding God.

I it seems like there's something wrong here.

Rather than me obeying God's commands, I'm commanding God.

I think that's wrong.

Just feels like it's not right.

I'm trying to be God, just like in the garden, that was the temptation.

You will be as God, right?

You'll be like God's.

It's a mess.

It's a horrible heresy.

So, what I'm learning is real faith people don't look to themselves.

It's not just about you conjuring up your faith and you making things happen with your faith.

They look to God and they look to others.

To know God and to bless others.

This is the end of the gospel.

We are right with God, and the blessing of God comes to us and through us.

And we look toward a city whose builder and maker is God, and we live with an eternal perspective.

So, what matters in eternity becomes what matters in my life.

That's a life of faith.

And God is not ashamed to be called their God.

And He's prepared for them a city, a destiny, a future.

So I've learned that in my life that through all the seasons of my life, I never get away from walking by faith.

It's just a new context or a new level.

It's a new faith.

It's a new level of faith.

I but it's always walking with faith because God wants me dependent on him.

God wants me to know him.

He wants to walk with me and tell me where to go.

Later, Abraham would be told by God, take your son, your only son, who you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain, which I will tell you.

Go, get thee out, take what you love, put it on the altar.

I'll tell you which mountain.

As you're going, I'll guide you.

It never stops, church.

Walk of faith never stops because God's interested in walking with us and knowing us.

This walk of faith is a relationship with God, with God speaking and guiding us on mission.

And it's a life of offering what we love to Him.

So this is how you live facing an uncertain future.

The just shall live by faith.

Live by faith.

In the one who we consider faithful, who we know to be faithful.

So we're justified, made right before God by faith.

We commune with Him by faith.

We know and we do His will by faith.

We we parent our children by faith.

We love our spouse by faith.

We work by faith.

We serve by faith.

We receive His provision by faith.

And when we die, we die in faith.

And there's a city whose builder and maker is God.

Okay.

We got lunch back here, so let's end it up.

Can we pray?

If there's a get thee out in your life, if you're hearing a call, then just obey.

This is what faith looks like.

By faith, Abraham obeyed God.

And it can be a respond to a call out of darkness, out of the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of his dear son.

It can be your very salvation.

Maybe that's what God's calling you to right now.

Maybe that's your get the out of here and come into this new life.

Being born again.

Maybe it's a call to live uprightly.

There's one time God said to Abraham, walk before me and be blameless.

There's a call to purity where God calls you out of sin into a life of purity and the blessing that comes from it.

If that's it, obey.

And maybe it is a call into mission, a call to step out into an adventure or an unknown thing that you know the Lord has been dealing with you for a time.

You know, and you've been hanging on to the shore, and the boat is right there at the dock, and you just haven't stepped out yet on that sea because it's uncertain.

Father, I'm thankful to you that you give us gifts of faith, and I pray for you to increase our faith by showing us that you're trustworthy, Lord.

Lord, that when we are putting ourselves in your hands, we're putting ourselves in in great big hands, Lord.

Hands that created the heavens and the earth and hold them together, and hands that touched people and healed them, and hands that blessed children, hands that touched untouchable lepers, and hands that spread out and took nails for us.

Nails into which our name is engraven.

Hands that hands that are faithful.

We can trust our future into these hands, Lord.

You are trustworthy.

We just want to tell you a yes.

Your hands are capable of holding our future.

I pray for people who have struggled with anxiety, Lord, about tomorrow.

And I want to pray, God, that that their eyes would be on you, that you would give them a revelation of how capable and how loving and how willing you are.

How strong and how sovereign you are, Lord.

This is the prayer.

Pray for this church, God.

I'm asking you that your Holy Spirit would draw us together in your mission as well.

Individual lives and families, Lord, but also for us as a church.

Lord, you give us give us faith to step into your destiny for us in Knoxville, through us here and through us in the in the nations.

Lord, give us faith.

We pray that prayer of your disciples, increase our faith, Lord.

We pray that beautiful prayer that you answer, Lord.

Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.

I thank you that that is not a shameful prayer.

That's a prayer you love to hear and answer.

We give you praise for that, Lord.

Thank you, Lord, for walking with us in a prayer in this faith life and speaking to us.

Thank you for wanting relationships.

We give you praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.