TEXT: GENESIS 12:1-9 Fellowship Bible Church Sermon Series: Our Family Tree Genesis Part 7 Born To Respond 04-01-2012 Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr. For the sake of time I am not going to read the text, although this is one of those passages that I would like to read in its entirety before jumping into the message so we get the flow of it. After the message I want to encourage you to go back home and I would like for you to read two passages of Scriptures, Genesis 12:1-9 and then all of Romans chapter 4. You will see the reason for that in a few moments. We are still in our series in the book of Genesis. The title of the series is Our Family Tree. I have entitled the message today Born To Respond. This is the call of Abraham. I want to get right to the bottom line in terms of the heart of what I want to say from the text and what I really believe applicationally God wants to say to us. I want you to look at the screen because I have summarized this. You have to know something. One of the things that increasingly bothers me as I get older, as I get older one of the things that increasingly disturbs me about myself and about other Christians is how lightly we take our lives, how unintentional we are about our Christianity, how we do not integrate our faith and who we are into this moment in history. I think we play into Satan s hands by bifurcating, segmenting, and compartmentalizing our walk and relationship with God. As I read the text I couldn t help but have this thought that just ricocheted inside of my mind, and here is the statement. The moment we are born, we embark on a journey, and the battle begins. Will we follow God and faithfully implement His plan or will we chart our own course? That is the decision every believer has to make not only every day but multiple times throughout the course of our day. The moment we enter this world, this battle begins. What kingdom not only am I going to align with but what principles of that kingdom am I going to embrace and live by? That is what I mean by this statement. Everybody is Christian. Everybody is kind of like religious for the most part. Everybody wants a little piece and a little action of Jesus and everybody wants to use the Bible as nice, warm, inspirational sayings when we get in a hard place; but God does not want us to have a vanilla impact with our lives. He wants us to make a significant difference. I am changing things around a little bit before we get into the text. I am going to give you the application of this passage upfront and I want to make a very simple observation. I think that every believer, and I shouldn t say I think as it is clearly taught in the Scriptures, that if we are followers of Jesus Christ we need to pay very close attention to the stirrings of the Spirit of God inside of our lives. Do not make assumptions about what we ought to do as I have said so many times here. Don't make assumptions about where we ought to be, do not make assumptions about what our children ought to do, do not make assumptions about where our children should live, do not make assumptions about, well, of course, you need to make a decision that honors this or that. We need to pay attention to the stirrings in our heart. Although this is a huge calling of Abraham, and none of us are Abraham (and we are going to walk with the Abrahamic covenant here in a few moments to see the implications of all of that), the principle still exists. And that is that God leads His people. 1
So, having said that, I want to suggest to you three things. If a desire in your heart persists, I suggest we do these three things. 1. Stop and pay attention to it. Do not put it out of your mind because of fear. Do not throw it aside because it is not a part of where you want to go in life. If a desire persists in your heart and mind, stop and pay attention to that desire. Question it. Look at it. Weigh it. Consider it. It could be the Spirit of God redirecting your life. 2. Pray and ask God to confirm it. Pray and ask God to confirm it. LORD, show me what do You want me to do with this? Are you calling me to some place? Do you want me to do something? Is there something different You want me to do? Is there a place You want me to go? Are there other changes that You want me to make? I am completely open to You. Pray about it and look for God to confirm it. 3. Act on it. Pull the trigger. Do what God says and shows. This is the applicational backdrop to what is taking place here in Genesis 12:1-9. It is easy to read this text from a purely theological lens. Don't get me wrong, theology is terribly important, and you miss the implications for us today. Abraham in this regard is no different than we are. When God makes someone great it does not mean that they have a pedigree for greatness. It just means that God in His sovereignty made Him great; but Abraham is no different than we are, and here you find Abraham responding to God. Now let me back up a little bit and say that this is the beginning of a four-part series in our mini-series within the series on the life of Abraham. You are saying, Why are you spending four messages and only seventeen messages on Genesis? Because as you will see in a moment Abraham is the key figure in terms of God s working in human history. From a human perspective Abraham is God s key figure for His working in all of human history. You will see that in a second. His name Abram interestingly enough means exalted father. That is what his name literally means. Abraham is the towering figure in the Bible. He is known as the father of our faith. In fact, all of sanctification, growth, and development in the Christian life Paul puts in his constant references to Abraham, Abraham is a picture of what it really means to have a relationship with God --- everything from justification to sanctification to the development of faith. Abraham represents the prototype of what it really means for a person to have a relationship with God. I would also say the point of Romans 4, the passage that I want you to go back and read after we walk through this text, is that what faith does and what faith is can be seen in the life and journey of Abraham. I could spend a lot more time on the introduction of Abraham. Suffice it to say from an applicational perspective in terms of all of what God is doing in the world Abraham is the key figure in the Bible. So, that is Abraham. Now Genesis 12:1-9 is the central passage, especially verses 1-3. This is the central passage in understanding the theology of the peoples of God and the foundation of the kingdom of God. Some scholars say that Genesis 12:1-9 is the foundational passage of the entire Bible. I do not know if I would go that far, but it is pretty big. It is absolutely huge. What we have here is the Abrahamic covenant, and we will come back to that in a second, but it is a big deal. Now what I want to underscore today is a very simple outline. There are three things that I want to say from Genesis 12:1-9, and here they are. The overall thing is that Abraham models to us the call of God and what the call of God means, and here you have these three simple things. The call of God always means these three things. 2
1. We leave where we are. 2. We pursue His promise. 3. We do what He says. It is as simple as that. As you wander through these nine verses you are struck with the realization, although there are some heady things here and there are some heavy things and we are going to unpack some of these things, really the call of God as modeled by Abraham and God s interaction with Abraham is standardized. It means that we leave where we are. In the words of Henry Blackaby You cannot follow God and stay where you are. That is impossibility. You leave where you are, you pursue His promise, and you do what He says. 1. WE LEAVE WHERE WE ARE We leave where we are. Beginning at verse 1: 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. The first part of the verse up until the line that says to the land that I will show you, that first part of the verse God comes to Abraham and says get up. I want you to leave where you are, but I also want you to underscore this. As you look closely at the text what he is really saying is that, Abraham, I want you to leave certainty. I want you to leave certainty. Our problem with following the LORD and our problem with doing things that we have not done before is that we are unaccustomed to it. It is not certain. We are comfortable with our pattern of life. We are comfortable with where we are. We are comfortable with the resources that we have. Life has become predictable for us, but here he says I want you to leave certainty. I want you to look at the text here. He says Abraham was called to leave his country. I want you to leave your country. By the way theologians say this is the beginning of identifying the peoples of God from this point on with the fact that we are citizens of heaven. We are citizens of heaven. Paul unpacks that, does he not in Philippians chapter 3 when he says, For our citizenship is in heaven. He was saying to Abraham by leaving your country what I what you to model for succeeding generations is that you are not owned by any nation down here. Your loyalty is not owned by Ur of the Chaldees. Your loyalty is not given by the Babylonian kingdom. Your loyalty is to God. Be very careful, and I know I am going to get some mail on this one, but listen to me, listen to me. In this political season I am as a patriotic as they come. I believe in the free enterprise system. I will die for this country. I was old as dirt at 911 when trying to figure out how I could volunteer. Now having said that be very careful that you do not equate biblical Christianity with our free enterprise system. Be very careful of that. Be very careful that you do not equate patriotism with the fundamental elements of the kingdom; for in this text God says, Abraham, I want you to sever ties with your country. He was also told to leave his family. This also suggests to us that now your primary allegiance is to God. It is not to your dad. It is not to your relatives. It is not to the people that you see around there. It is not to their influence. Your primary allegiance is going to always be forever to God, and throughout Abraham s life this one would be tested. You need to leave your household. I could get into some sidetrack issues here, but parents by very careful of using the guilt card in trying to control your children. They belong to God. You are not God and neither am I. There are points in our lives where we have to step back and let them fly, let them make their choices between them and God. Do not edit the will of God for them. Do not narrow the banks of 3
the river. Let them dive in and discover for themselves what God wants them to do. Sometimes in the name of wisdom it is really a way of controlling them. He says, Abraham, you have to go, buddy. You gotta go. Thirdly, he was told to leave his house. This represents the fact that from now on you are going to depend upon Me. You are going to eat from My hand to your mouth. This foreshadows the fact that all kingdom peoples, all peoples of God, whether it is Israel or the church, all peoples of God live by faith. So, when he tells him to leave, he is saying, Son, I want you to identify with the kingdom. When he tells him to leave I want your primary allegiance to be to God. When he tells him to leave I want you to live a life that depends on Him. I need to balance this a little bit by saying this. Look, I think the essence of what he is saying to Abraham is do not build permanent structures. Do not build permanent structures down here. But I would say to us, and it almost sounds like I am contradicting everything I just said, don't assume that God wants you to go anywhere. Some people are just restless and impatient. There are some of us in the name of following the LORD who are not really following the LORD. We are just looking for a platform. We are looking for comfort and we are impatient. There are times in which it takes more faith to stay where you are than it does to go to some place uncertain. So, I am not saying that this is a one-way street here. The issue is always remaining open to God and listening to what He has to say and not building permanent structures in this life, that we are called to be spiritual nomads. Also, I would like to say here that Abraham was told specifically what he must leave, but he was told nothing about the land to which he must go. God does not always make sense. His plan is unfolding. It is safe to say this that as you study the life of the patriarchs and you go through the Scriptures with rare exception, except for the dimensions of building the tabernacle and God giving the vision for the temple of David and all of these kinds of things, God very rarely tells you all that you need to know to do what He is telling you to do, because the faith component has to be there. Abraham was God s journeyman. When he died, check this out. Now on balance Abraham was a very wealthy man. He was probably the wealthiest nomad you would ever want to meet, okay? But you have to understand something, when Abraham died the only real estate he had was a cave he had bought for his family s burials. That is all he ever had. He lived a life that said God is always enough. Even the wealth that he had accumulated, God gave it to him. He didn t necessarily seek after it. Now don't read me as saying that wealth is wrong. Wealth is not wrong. There are many wealthy people in the Bible. I am not saying that at all, but what I am saying as you look at the life of Abraham is that Abraham did not allow anything to tie him down. What was most important to Abraham was making sure that he got to that city whose builder and maker was God and that he traveled light and he was unencumbered. His legacy of obedience is the foundation for our faith. One of the things I want to share with us this morning is that this young leader who we met is an extraordinary leader, a very strategic thinker. This guy has vision. What you need to understand as you listen to his story, and I found this out indirectly through the pastor of the church that is really spearheading this ministry that we came alongside with, this pastor is highly educated with advanced degrees. You might think logically speaking why didn t he pastor one of the larger deformational churches that were grandfathered in prior to the revolution. He could be very comfortable. Why would he waste his life back in those early days by identifying with something that was just an idea in a fledgling group of people with twenty-five folks meeting in a room? He is overqualified. But, he did not follow conventional wisdom. He listened to God. Fifty-none churches later a vision for the country, a farm, other resources and people that God sent his way capturing their imagination and their hearts. Be very careful of always pouring and pulling the will of God through the lens of logic. If you do that there will be nothing supernatural about your life, and that is what Abraham models. He goes and he leaves. 4
Go with God is the second part of this verse. This last line says: to the land that I will show you. The first part is uncertainty. This part is a confidence in God. What I would like to say here, you know, here is the point. The larger issue in our life is not our circumstances and not where we are going to be tomorrow. Most of us are fearful about the future. If anybody says they have never been afraid of tomorrow they are crazy. They have some self-perception problems or whatever. We all have uneasiness about the future. But here is the point I think God was saying to Abraham. He is saying, Look, your concept of Me will determine the certainty with which you face your future. The bigger issue we have to face, and the older I get the more I am drawn to this, the more I am drawn to this. In fact on my sabbatical God brought me back to this whole emphasis. I really believe that what we need to teach people more and more and more and more and more and more is the greatness and grandeur of our God. We have been on this pilgrimage over the last 25 years where we have so reduced God to where we are that we have lost sight of His attributes. We have lost sight of His character. We have lost sight of his magnitude. We have lost sight of His awe-inspiring power, His sovereignty, and if we ever nurture a real big concept of God it will inform our faith and it will give us a stability that we have never known before. Along those lines I would like to recommend two books to read. They are both classics. One of them is The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer, a classic little volume, and the other one is J. I. Packer s classic, Knowing God, and to bury yourselves in reading those books and begin to appreciate the magnitude of this great, awesome God that we serve. Then he begins to eclipse our fears and he begins to eclipse all of the uncertainties of our future. God told Abraham, Look, you go and I will go with you, with you, with you. 2. PURSUE HIS PROMISE Secondly, pursue His promise. Abraham is there and God tells him to go and to leave. Then he unpacks the end result of Abraham s obedience. Abraham would never live to see the day of all of this that is unpacked. He would never live to see the day of the implementation of these promises. Keep in mind, my brothers and sisters, God will probably tell you to do a whole bunch of things before your journey is over that cannot be measured in your lifetime, a whole bunch of stuff. So it is with this Abrahamic covenant. Let me just read again verses 1-3. 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. And 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. This right here is the foundation in terms of how God works today in and through the peoples of God in the world. Now bear with me here. This is the inauguration of the nation of Israel. It is also the inauguration of God s kingdom among us. This is it right here. This Abrahamic covenant is the inauguration of the nation of Israel. It is also the inauguration of God s kingdom among us. By that I mean Israel and the church. Now somebody is going to say, Crawford, the church is not the kingdom. Well, in a certain sense it is. it is the spiritual principles of the kingdom. It is present but not yet, and there will be a literal future actualization of 5
that kingdom during the millennial kingdom and the eternal state. But, I would argue this is the beginning of the peoples of God and the visible representation of the kingdom of God, that kingdom that is to do warfare with the kingdom of darkness. This is how God is going to work for the rest of the time during human history. It is the development of His peoples who together will combat the enemy. I want to say a few words about the nature of this covenant, three important words. This may not seem to be relevant, but you have to hang in there with me. There are three important words about this covenant. There are some who believe in a replacement theology of the church, that somehow or another Israel has been replaced by the church, that we are spiritual Israel. I don't believe that based upon this text as well as based upon how prophecy works its way out. There are three things about this passage that we need to understand, three things about the nature of the covenant. THE NATURE OF THE COVENANT 1. It Is an Unconditional Covenant It is unconditional. It is unconditional. What do you mean by that? The promise of this covenant does not depend upon Abraham s faithfulness or the peoples of God s faithfulness. It is not an if you follow me, if you are faithful to keep My laws, if you are faithful to do this, then I will fulfill the promise of this covenant. There are conditional covenants in the Bible, but this is an unconditional covenant. The reason why it is unconditional is because God has declared I am going to work in this world through my peoples, so how I work in the world is not conditioned upon your response. So, it is an unconditional covenant. 2. It Is A Literal Covenant. It is a literal covenant. This is not to be spiritualized. When God promises the land, well we see that today. Israel exists. It is literal. It is not figurative. It is not a metaphor. It is a literal promise that I am going to give you a land. By the way all of human history has battled over that region of the world. I don't want to get sidetracked by that, but it is a literal property, a literal land, and if you are ever kind of like this way about God s promises this might firm you up a little bit because He said this thousands of years ago and here we have it today. It is a literal land. 3. It Is an Everlasting Covenant This covenant is everlasting. There is an eternal nature to this covenant, meaning that My peoples will always be My peoples. They will always belong to Me. FEATURES OF THE COVENANT Now let me give you the three big features of this covenant that are right here in the text, three big features. 1. There Is a Promise of Land There is the promise of land. Abraham, you go and I will lead you along the way, but eventually there is going to be this promise of the land. 2. There Is a Promise of Descendants There is a promise of descendants that is found in verse 2. 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, the promise of descendants. 6
3. The Promise of Blessing and Redemption Thirdly is the promise of blessing and redemption. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you [here is the line] all the families of the earth shall be blessed. I have to tell you this. The blessing on the nations of the world depends on how they treat the nation of Israel. That is what this text says. The blessing on the nations of the world depends on how they treat the nation of Israel. Let me just be blunt. To be pro-israel is not just good foreign policy. It is biblical. I want to balance this by saying this. There are some of my Christian friends who have gone to the other extreme. God never ever winks at sin, and when Israel is wrong and their decisions are wrong and they are sinful I think we need to denounce them. But to be pro-israel does not mean that you glaze over any evil or sin, but to me you support their right to exist. That is what this text says. It is not foreign policy. This is Bible, and if you bless them you yourself will be blessed. Now with God s call come His promises. I think this is what He was saying to Abraham. Abraham, I am telling you to leave, but I want to give you a vision of what is going to happen. I am not going to give you a time table. I own the clock of the calendar, and I am not going to tell you this. If I tell you when and this kind of thing you might try to orchestrate things and develop this false sense of security and before you know it you stop trusting and depending on Me. So, I am not going to tell you when this is going to happen. But, here is the vision. I promise you, I promise you, there is going to be land. I promise you there are going to be descendants from you, and I promise you that what I do through you will bless the nations of the world. I promise you that. This is our promise today. We have the completed Word of God, and when God calls us to do something we can stand on these promises in 66 books of the Bible. We can draw from God s unfailing track record, and there is never any reason for us to be timid about God s promises. When He calls you to do something you take that step of faith and you get out there and go to it. You stand on the Word of God and you stand on the promises of God and God will never, ever, ever, ever let you down. I stand here as a living witness. I am 62 years old. I have been following the LORD since I was 13-1/2 years old and God has never, ever failed me. Whatever He has called me to do. There have been some rough times and challenges and some hard knocks along the way, but God has always honored His call. And if God is calling you to do something His neck is on the line and He will honor His call. Our promises are given right here in the Word of God. 3. WE DO WHAT HE SAYS Now do what He says. So far God has told Abraham what to do. He has given him a promise. Abraham has a choice. Now he could have sat there and gone, Okay, I understand this and I will get to this and I will work this out. I have to unravel myself from some commitments that I have and, gee, I just can t drop this on my family like that. I mean some expectations that they have here. I have some business interest that will take me awhile to undo, and gee I can work this out. I did hear You and I plan on doing it. Obedience in the Bible is a verb. To figure out what we are supposed to do and to make up our minds to do it is not the same thing as doing it. Obedience delayed is disobedience. Obedience delayed is disobedience. Now let me balance this by saying I am not suggesting that we should be haphazard about responsibilities. Certainly, God calls us to do something He might say, Crawford, you need to plan on doing this and use common sense. The book of Proverbs is there. I am not saying that at all, but 7
neither am I saying that we need to move toward some little arbitrary response to God. The text says, So Abram went. He went. He left. He left. 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. This got him into trouble later on and we will see that. Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Now we make a big deal about this. Sometimes we preachers are a little dramatic. You know, his dad lived to be 205 years old, so he was still a teenager -- not really, but you know. He is 75 years old and he leaves. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Now here is what I want you to see here. Here you have this responsible leader doing what God is telling him to do. He has this whole caravan of people that are following him. They are not going on vacation, you guys. They are not going on vacation. This is not like a short-term mission s trip where they are going to come back and then tell some war stories. This is a change of life. He is leading all of these people into a nomadic life, not knowing when God is going to fulfill the promise, not knowing what God is going to do they leave and caravan. They are gone. So, they come to the oak of Moreh. Verse 7 says: Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. What a word. What a word of encouragement. I know that maybe at this juncture you think you must have misread Me. Maybe you are thinking you have lost your natural born mind. Why in the world am I traveling with all of this cattle, all these people, all this stuff and they are depending on me? What in the world am I doing? And God comes to him and He says to him to your offspring I will give this land. Now verse 8 says: So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. Okay, now here is the second altar. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD. 8
I want to point out a couple of things. Abraham s response was that he went, but secondly he remembered. That is what these altars are all about. Altars are about remembering. The first altar was to mark his encounter with God. That is the first altar. God spoke to me and I don't want us to forget this. I don't want to forget this. I will get fearful. This will become a distant memory. I might think that maybe he didn t say anything to me. I have to build an altar to remember that God spoke to me. The second altar that he built in between Bethel and Ai, the second altar that he built there was to mark his dependence upon God. He began to call out to Him. Isn t that really the context of Christianity? God speaks; we depend. God speaks; we depend. God speaks; we depend. I started not to do this, but let me give you the importance of altars in the Old Testament. I think it is rich stuff. There are seven things about altars that we need to understand. 1. They built altars to mark spiritual milestones, spiritual milestones. You build an altar. There it is. There it is. A number of years ago I went back to northern New Jersey. I went to a small liberal arts college for my first year of college. At the time I was wrestling with the LORD about my direction and I used to go to this little chapel that they had on campus at noon and I would go in there and pray. I was really wrestling about what God wanted me to do, where He wanted me to be, and all these things. It was a big deal. Years and years and years later, and I hadn t been back there in a long time, I was speaking in northern New Jersey and I had some time and I decided to drive on campus. I cannot tell you what happened to me. I had forgotten about the chapel. I just wanted to take a look at what was going on. I crossed a little bridge and I turned right and there was that chapel, and I began to weep. It is an altar to me. It is an altar to me. It is as if God said I heard the prayers of the 17-year-old boy who wanted to know My plan. Build some altars in your life. 2. Altars mark the fact that we worship and it is meant to deepen our worship when we erect an altar. 3. When you look at an altar it is intended to pull us away from self-reliance. There is an altar there. I didn t do it; God did it. 4. You look at an altar and we are reminded the journey is not about us but the journey is about God. There is a lot of talk about finding your story, finding your story. I just have to say something to you. Be careful with that language because what often happens is that we become the restrictive object of what God is doing in the world. At best we are just a bit player in His story. It is God s story that is writing and we come along and we find our fulfillment in accomplishing His purposes, not in elevating what we are all about. When you look at this altar you are reminded that the journey is about God and not about us. 5. Altars declare the glory and presence of God to a watching world. Unbelievers look at an altar and they say, What is that there for? I wonder what happened. The story is told to a watching world. 6. Altars were intended to keep us moving. In the Bible you remember to go forward. You don't remember to relax. The altar says I brought you this far. Do you think you can keep it going? 7. Finally, altars declare God s faithfulness. Fast forward here. I want to suggest to you that in a sense at the end of Abraham s life Abraham himself became an altar. Abraham himself became an altar. God wants us to become His altars in the world. It is not 9
so much about the building of stones as it is about the building of lives. When people look at us are they reminded that is the work of God. When people look at us are they reminded, oh, that is the faithfulness of God? When people look at us are they encouraged to worship the God that you know? When people look at us are they encouraged and say, man, look at this story that God is writing through Crawford s life? We were intended to be His altars. Well, how did he respond to the call of God? In Ephesians 2:8-10 the apostle Paul says: Then he says in verse 10: For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, that He prepared beforehand, [the call of Abraham] that we should walk in them. God s call for all of our lives falls in these two categories. The first is the call to salvation, to come to know Him, to be cleansed and to be forgiven of our sins. Secondly, for every believer, there is the call to service. What are those good works? What are those good works? What is His journey through your life? Let s stand together. As I was preparing this message I felt a little guilty because it seems as if over the last six months or so I keep coming back to this theme. I remember the Serve Conference and I spoke on something very similar, and then it just dawned on me. Maybe there is something that God wants to continue to repeat in our hearts and lives, Fellowship. This is a great church. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I think it is a great church. I am so grateful to God for the brothers and sisters who are here, and I say this not out of legalism. I think it is out of the motivational grace because of all that God has done for us let s be careful of building permanent structures that are hard to uproot and let s carry a tent so that we can easily respond to whatever God wants us to do. Young people, I want to challenge you right now. Those of you in this season of your life, if you are older than 14 years old, I want you to begin praying about what does God want to do with your life. Don't make assumptions about that. Parents, I want you to begin turning to your kids and putting holy pressure on them in this regard. I am not going to answer your future questions for you. I want you to go one-on-one with God, and I want to challenge us as a church let s make decisions on our knees and not just primarily out of best case scenarios. 10