So Abram Went

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Genesis 12:4–5

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The Bible often phrases things so simply and yet so powerfully. God has asked Abram to leave his country and any land he might have owned behind. God asked him to leave his people and his extended family behind. Basically, God asks Abram to leave everything and follow Him. And Scripture simply says “So Abram went.” Amazingly, Abram seems to have made this giant step of faith and sacrifice without pause. Presumably, Abram was willing to make these sacrifices to obey God’s call because he reasoned that the blessings of obedience would outweigh the sacrifices that God asked of him.

Following God’s call on your life will always  require sacrifice. What are you willing to leave behind to follow God? What is He asking you to sacrifice? Money? Friendships? Time? Your plans for your life? No matter how much sacrifice it requires to follow God’s call, I assure you that you will be happier living inside God’s will than you will be living outside of it. So, I urge you to trust God and willingly make any sacrifices He asks of you.

One other thing I should point out is that when Abram obeyed God’s call, he didn’t even really know where he was going. God didn’t tell him the whole plan. He made some specific promises to Abram and He told him that He would show him the land, but that was about it. Hebrews 11:8 puts it well when it says that Abram “obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Often that is exactly what following God’s call in your life feels like. You have no idea where you’re going. You don’t fully know where He is leading you. God seems to only tell us what we need to know to be able to obey. Perhaps that is because He wants us to obey based on faith instead of knowledge. It could also be because He knows we couldn’t handle knowing the whole plan. Either way, you don’t have to know the whole plan to obey. Just step out in faith and obey what He has revealed to you and trust that He will show you the rest along the way. That’s what Abram did.