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What kind of person do you want to be? Do you want to be a person who in a crisis friend and family members rely on?  Or do you want to be the person who's when one of life’s struggles comes along is the person who adds to the misery of everyone they encounter. Who do you want to be when there's a crisis? Do you want to be the person who adds to the crisis? Or the one that people can turn to for comfort, for strength and maybe even for wise council. I believe a current understanding of the true meaning of sacrifice as portrayed in these ancient stories which will help you be that person who knows how to react when facing life’s challenges or even what might appear to be a seemingly impossible situation? Isn’t that a wonderful thing to know? 

In going through the book of Genesis we have already seen several people face seemingly impossible situations. In the Abraham story we have been looking at recently we can see he has found himself in these kinds of a situations, but I think what is taught here applies to any of us facing a seemingly impossible situation. What I'd like for us to do, is see what God said to Abraham when he was facing a seemingly impossible situation.

Over the next few podcasts, we are going to look at Genesis chapter 17 Genesis. The first couple of verses stand as an introduction to what is a rather long chapter. It begins by saying this.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

(Gen 17: 1-2)

So, we have an encounter, and a conversation between Abram and God. Abram is 99 years old at this point and God addresses him with an interesting turn of phrase. “Walk before me” he says. In the book of Genesis, we have already been told that Adam walked with God. We were also told that Enoch walked with God and now we were told that Abram is to “walk before God”.  Is there any difference in the meaning here? Alexander McLaren 19th century biblical commentator described this phrase as meaning this about this verse[i].

“Walking before God is an active life spent in continual consciousness of being opened before the eyes of him to whom we have to give account.”

A McLaren Expositions of Holy Scripture (1891)

This story of the chapter so far is that God has called Abraham and said you must get into the great unknown and go where I tell you to go. Go to where you're a stranger, go out to the unknown and establish yourself there. Then great things will come of it regardless of the where you end up. I think obedience to that command is the “walking before God” referred to here. So, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless”. It's not like Abraham is stepping out knowing the future this is going to be a leap of faith. It requires a leap of faith for any of us to move into the world beyond our comfort zone because the world can be a dangerous place. You might say there are good reasons for us to hunker down in your spiritual basements and hide there. But you know, that doesn't really help, and it certainly doesn't make things better. 

The thing is God didn’t call Abraham or anyone else for that matter and tell us to go into hiding. A call to faith, is a call to walk before God and in some sense means that like Abraham, we must take the initiative and step out in faith. The person who steps out into the great unknown is taking a leap of faith and about which God says great things are going to happen to them. 

Frustratingly for Abraham, Gods a little short on detail. But imagine if God had laid out the whole story and swept the obstacles out of the way on Abraham's path before him. The Abraham wouldn’t really have really been walking before him in faith then, would he? There would be no real initiate or freewill in his pursuit of God’s plan for his life. 

Here’s a really challenging question, but one that God might be asking all of us. How much trouble do you want in your life?  That maybe seems a strange question, but I want you to think about it for a minute and I’ll come back next time with a few suggestions in the next episode.

[i] Alexander MacLaren Expositions Of Holy Scripture (1891)” – Quoted on Bible Hub