The Call of Abram

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, good morning. Hope everyone's doing well. It is an honor to be here this morning. Like Drew said, my name is Taylor, and this is my wife Jessica. Our son Ezra is back there down the hall. He's 11 months old and just a little ball of joy most days. You guys are really fortunate and blessed to have the Capertons, the Osters, the Sutors here in this church. They've had a big impact on my life. And I will say, if you guys need any dirt on them, I've got you covered. I got plenty to go around, so you just let me know. We're going to be in the Book of Genesis this morning. So if you guys want to go ahead and start turning there, chapter 11, we're going to be towards the end of the chapter. But before we jump into that story, I think it's prudent that we understand the events leading up to it, kind of understand the context a little bit. So let's buckle up and take a really fast-paced journey

through the first 11 chapters of the Bible. You don't need to follow along as I go through this. You can just listen for now. This is really just kind of a summary of human history up to this point. So starting in Genesis chapter 1, in the beginning, God created everything. Everything was good. There was no sin in the world, and all was well. And unfortunately, that's about as far as the good news goes. It takes an immediate turn for the worst and continues to get worse. For the next nine chapters of Genesis, we see one failure after another of mankind. And you'll see that a lot of these failures are still being repeated today. Chapter 3, we see the first man and woman disobeyed God. They were cast out of the garden. Sin and death have plagued us ever since. Chapter 4, you see that Cain murdered his own brother Abel, and then he lied about it. And it's literally just four chapters

into the story of humanity that that happens. Chapter 5 is really kind of the only positive note, sort of, it just lists a bunch of genealogies and shows how humans are fulfilling the command to be fruitful and multiply. But unfortunately, just as much as humanity is multiplying, so is sin in the world. And so the destruction continues. Chapter 6 through 8, we see that God wipes out the entire earth with a flood except for one family. And to be clear, that is God killing every human on earth except for one family. It's very heavy stuff. It's very heavy stuff. This is the consequence of sin over and over. Chapter 9, we see that the one noble guy in that whole story, Noah, does a very un-noble thing. And so even he's not safe from the impact of sin. Chapter 10, we see that humanity keeps multiplying again. They build a city, they build a tower that's meant to symbolize human power,

human authority, independence from God, and the Lord puts it into that and scatters the people. And so what's the tone of the narrative? If we're driving that ship through the first 11 chapters, we see disobedience, we see murder, we see deception, we see drunkenness, indecency, rebellion, defiance. That's just to name a few. There's more in there. I wouldn't exactly characterize this as a hope-filled story thus far. It's actually quite depressing. So as the readers of this story, it leads us to ask a few questions as we enter into chapter 11. What happens next? Is there any hope for humanity? Is there any good thing coming? Because so far, it's not been a lot of good. Will the cycle of sin and destruction always be the reality, or will something change? And so that's where we pick up here in chapter 11. I'm gonna start in verse 27, read through the end of the chapter,

those five verses or so, starting in Genesis 11, chapter 27. Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran, and Haran fathered Lot. Haran died in the presence of his father Terah and the land of his kindred in Ur of the Chaldeans. And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram's wife was Sarah, and the name of Nahor's wife Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. Now Sarah was barren, she had no child. Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarah his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

So for a little more context, this is taking place around, give or take, 2000 BC, give or take some number of years, but roughly 4,000 years ago. And I will say, going back to the question of the narrative, chapter 27 is really this major, sorry, verse 27 of chapter 11, is really this major turning point in the narrative of Genesis. There's this pivot that happens right there where the rest of Genesis, and really the rest of human history, gives a different direction than what happened for the first 11 chapters coming up to that point. So here's what I mean. First 11 chapters, there are countless generations listed. In the last 39 chapters of Genesis, there are four. So we take this very zoomed out approach, and we start zooming in on this one family here. Specifically, this one man, Abram. And later on, as you may recall, his name changes to Abraham, which is what we typically call him today,

but since that hasn't happened yet in the story, and for the rest of our text today, I'm just gonna call him Abram to stick with the story here. Now I will say, in our society, the meaning of names is not such a big focus. Some people it is, but for most it isn't. But in Hebrew culture, it was. And Abram's name literally means father, or exalted father. And so right from the very first mention of his name, if you know the meaning of his name, we sort of get a clue as to what's coming in the rest of the story. It's this little foreshadowing. And then later on, when God changes his name to Abraham, that name means father of many. So I've heard Tim Keller put it this way, that Abram means daddy, and Abraham means big daddy. So today we're just talking about daddy right now. Then in verse 30, the author says something to set up what's about to happen in the coming chapters.

He says, now Sarah, that's Abram's wife, was barren. She had no child. And that is a very important detail in this story, so keep it in mind as we keep going. In verse 31, we get introduced to the city of Haran. And this was located somewhere around what today is northern Syria. And we know from some ancient Assyrian texts that this city, Haran, was located at really an important crossroads, a major commercial center of that area. And you can actually still see some of those ruins today, from what I understand. But Haran was not always home for Abram and his family. Verse 32 says that they previously lived in Ur of the Chaldeans, and that's modern day Iraq. So that's several hundred miles away, which means at some point in the recent past, they had traveled up the rivers through that region, all the way up to Haran. We don't know exactly why. Terah decided to take his family and his possessions

and make that long of a trek. And honestly, the text doesn't say, so it must not be that important of a detail in the story. But what is important is that this is where Abram buried his father, and this is where he's currently living as we jump into chapter 12. So with that said, let's read the first five verses of chapter 12, and we're gonna camp out here for the rest of the morning.

Says, 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. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran, and Abram took his wife Sarah 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. So in verse one, we get one of what I think is one of the most significant callings of God in all of scripture. He tells Abram to go, and if we break this verse down, we see that the call really kinda has four elements to it.

There's leave your land, there's leave your relatives, leave your father's house, and then go to a new land. So let's kinda break down each one of those four a little bit, starting with land, or your translation may say country. Remember, we don't know exactly how long Abram has been in Haran, but being that it was a substantial city and a major commercial center, we can probably safely assume that Haran had all the comfort and all the amenities that a big city might have. It's a little different than a big city today, but some of the same concepts apply, right? You can probably walk down the street and go get the thing you're looking for versus having to grow it yourself if you don't live in a city.

It has all the ingredients that might come together in the recipe of comfortable living, right? Which is significant because at this point, Abram is 75 years old, and I know that people live longer back then, so you can maybe argue that 75 was like different than our 75, but scripture elsewhere refers to Abram as an old man when talking about the story. So it's safe to say that even 75 then was, he was an aged man. He could live out the rest of his life enjoying his father's inheritance and not worry a whole lot. And God is saying, all that comfort and all that security that you think you have here in Haran, I want you to leave that. Good retirement plan, right? Then there's the call to leave family. And some of y'all might be thinking right now, hey, when that one actually doesn't sound that bad. In those days, people tended to be much more tribal, and by that I don't mean like unadvanced in technology,

I mean grouped together in their tribe. They lived in community in a lot of ways much more than we do, and it was out of necessity. You would usually live among your entire family because that provided security, it provided stability, safety, a support system. It was a safe place to live. And we don't know exactly how many family members were around him in Haran. Scripture does name a few who made the journey, but we also can't assume that it's an exhaustive list either because Scripture tends to just list the heads of household. But it's likely that Abram had a pretty large family tribe around him in Haran and all the benefits that that might provide. And God is telling him, all that safety, all that security, all that comfort, I want you to leave that. And then related to the call to leave family is the call to leave your father's house. The traditions of your family,

what's been handed down to you, even potentially your inheritance, and some of, if not all of your possessions that that might include as well. The stability that comes from those things. God is telling him, I want you to leave that. And then the fourth part of the call isn't what he's leaving behind, but rather what he'd be going towards, and that is the land that I will show you. And as far as we can tell, he does not even know the details about the land that he's being called to. He doesn't have directions, he doesn't have a roadmap, he doesn't have exact coordinates, lat long of where he's going, he doesn't have Google Maps. And so right here in this moment, Abram has a choice to make. And it's not just any choice, but it's a choice that quite literally could change the very direction of human history. It's a choice that might provide the slightest little glimmer of hope

in the midst of the destruction and the devastation that we've seen in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. He has to decide whether to abandon his land in favor of the land God offers. He has to decide whether to abandon what family he has in favor of the family that God promises, which by the way is against all logic. We saw in verse 27 of chapter 11, his wife is barren. How is he gonna have a family? How is he gonna have this family that God talks about that is beyond counting?

He has to decide whether to set aside his own guaranteed blessing, his inheritance, for the inheritance that God describes. And ultimately he has to decide whether he will trust God to deliver on what he's offering, to take that very first step of faith. So when I was entering my senior year of college, I had just finished a summer internship out here in Fort Worth. I grew up in Louisiana and was in college there as well. And I had been given a full-time offer through that internship. And for really the first time in my life, I had to make a major life-altering decision.

And I really wrestled with it because on one hand, I had just worked my butt off for a four-year engineering degree. And I didn't want that to go to waste, but on the other hand, I had this tug. I had this desire to want to take seminary classes and to explore that, to deepen my understanding of Scripture and all that that entails. And so they gave me a three-week period, a three-week window to give them a response. And in that three-week window, I was at a collegiate conference in Glorieta, New Mexico, a beautiful place very near and dear to my heart. And while I was there, I met this guy named Chuck Lawless. He's a professor at Southeastern Bad to See-Logical Seminary that's in North Carolina. And I just kind of called him after a seminar one day and told him what was going on. And he gave me his contact information and said, send me an email, we'll talk next week.

And he made time out of his busy schedule to have a two or three-hour video call that next week, which that alone blew me away that he was willing to do that. And through the course of that conversation, I'm giving him a little bit of my story and how I got to where I'm at. And he started talking a lot about God's call and what God's call looks like. And he said some things that still stick with me to this day. One of those being that when it comes to walking in God's call for your life, you often don't know where the next step is ultimately leading. You just know I should be taking this step. But when you take 10 steps and you look back, you can clearly see the connection. You can clearly see the relationship. You can clearly see how God guided you each step along the way to a specific destination that you couldn't see. All you knew was you just needed to take this step

in this direction, this long of a step at this time. That's all you know. The other thing he told me is that there is no perfect formula for God's call in scripture. Now there are some general callings that all believers are called to. But when it comes to figuring out some specific details for your life, there's no formula for that. And so he provided a couple of helpful criteria, if you will, to consider. One, do people in your life speak towards this? Do they say, hey, Daniel, I think you'd be really good at this, by the way. Number two, do you have a desire to do that thing? Or at least you're not opposed to it. Number three, do you have the ability to do that thing? Are you talking about being an engineer when you don't have an engineering degree? I mean, you have to have the ability to do that thing as well. And then fourth, you have accountability and you're growing in holiness.

You're connected to the vine. You're abiding in Christ so that you can actually hear him in the first place. When those four things come together, it's not necessarily that God is for sure calling you to this, but you can take a step that direction with a clear conscience. And if the door closes, the door closes, but you didn't walk in disobedience. And so for me, I took all of that, I prayed about it, I decided to make that decision, moved out here, started taking classes at the seminary, also took that job because it would put me next to the seminary. And looking back over the last how many years, I can see thing after thing after thing that God worked out through that. I mean, the best of which is sitting right here. I met my wife here at our church and she also came out for the seminary too. So I can give you a lot of examples of how God was leading me towards something specific

that I didn't know at that time. All I knew in 2016 was I need to take this step. And so right here in this story, Abram is being called to take that very first step. But the reality is that God doesn't ask Abram to give up anything that he's not gonna replace with something better. And you compare those things that he's being asked to give up with the things that God is promising. First he says, I will show you. In this very first promise, God is actually calling Abram out of idolatry. If you go back to when Abram and his family were in Ur of the Chaldeans, the entire city was devoted to the moon god Nanna.

And not only that, but Abram's own father's name was translated into the moon. Terra literally means moon. And so we have every reason to believe that the religious practices of worshiping the moon god were probably rooted in Abram's family. There's nothing that says otherwise. That Abram did not know the true God and had done nothing to deserve knowing him. And yet God is graciously calling him. He's telling him, you know that moon god that you used to worship, that you had no relationship with, you had no personal connection to, I'm ready to invite you into a relationship with me. Where I will guide you and I will lead you. Where I will show you the way forward. And that's not a promise for material things, that's a promise for a relationship. A relationship with the creator of the universe. And that's an incredible start to the list here. Things get a little crazier here.

Abram might think that he's got it made with a little piece of land around Haran. Being the head of his household. But God turns that upside down and says, I'll do you one better. Forget being the head of a household. I'll make you the head of a nation. And not just any nation, but a great nation. And then the fourth part of the call. I'm sorry, I got my papers upside down here. Nope, that's right. Fourth part of the call. The list keeps going. He says, I will bless you. Now bless is a very interesting word because it tends to get blurred in our context due to just a very wide array of usages. I mean if you sneeze, you may say bless you. Which I've always found very interesting. It's the only expulsion of air that we say bless you too.

You may say bless your heart if you feel very torn for someone or a situation they're going through. You may say bless your heart is sort of a bad discuss word too. You don't really like that person very much. Bless their heart. Kind of glad that happened to them, right? Sometimes being blessed means encouraged. Sometimes we mean uplifted. Sometimes we mean financially benefited and a whole list of other things. So what blessing is God referring to here?

Well, he's referring to a blessing much greater than any of those things. God is saying Abram, you will be in favor with me. By me blessing you, you will be in favor with me. I will show you favor. You'll be under my protection and my care. I will personally see to it that your life is truly rich in the things that matter. And that's the blessing that God is promising. And then part of that same promise is that God will make Abram's name great. And that's particularly notable because of what just happened in the previous chapter in chapter 11, the story of the Tower of Babel. The people as they were building the tower, what did they say? They said we wanna make our name great. We wanna make a name for ourselves.

But what does God promise Abram? Says you won't make your name great. I will make your name great. And what's the result of God making Abram's name great? That he will be a blessing to others. It's not for Abram's own benefit. It's for the benefit of many others. His intention was that Abram would not just be a recipient of grace, but also a dispenser of grace. To not just be a well of God's grace, but to be a conduit of God's grace. That blessing was to extend well past Abram to others. And it's interesting, the Hebrew grammar used here is actually an imperative word. So not only is God saying that he will do this, but at the same time he's kinda commanding Abram to do it. He's saying as I bless you, go be a blessing. Not just that you will be a blessing, but go be a blessing. So for the next promise in verse three, God says, I will bless those who bless you,

and him who dishonors you, I will curse. You can sort of think of that as an extension to the previous promise. I mean part of God blessing Abram includes the way in which others around him will treat him. The favor that he has with other people. And you really do see this play out as you read the rest of the Old Testament. There are countless stories of peoples or an entire nation who are either blessed or cursed because of how they interacted with the nation of Israel. And in large part that is tied directly back to this promise that God is making Abram. You and your descendants will be blessed, and those who bless you will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed. And then we have the last of the promises. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Abram undoubtedly had trouble understanding a statement like this. I mean, what does this even mean?

You read this at face value, and there's not a whole lot of explanation here. How is one no-name guy living in Iran whose wife cannot have kids, how is he gonna become the conduit of blessing to the entire earth? How are all families of earth gonna be blessed through him? I mean obviously God had something enormously planned here, but how is Abram supposed to understand that? How can he possibly make a logical decision in this moment?

And that's the thing. He's not. As far as we know, God gave no indication of how he was gonna accomplish these things through Abram. He didn't give Abram fully detailed explanation of how all this was gonna play out. And frankly, he didn't owe Abram an explanation either. He's simply asking Abram to believe that his promises will be true. In these verses, God says, I will five separate times, and that's just stressing the surety of his promises. I will, I will, I will. It's asking Abram to believe that. A few books later in Joshua 23, Joshua's on his deathbed, and he's given some final words of wisdom to the other leaders before he dies. And keep in mind, this is a guy who was there for the death of Moses, and aware of all that God had done through the Israelites, through Moses. He had spearheaded Israel's taking of the Promised Land. He was the leader of the nation in a very pivotal time.

And there on his deathbed, Joshua says this, says, you know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled, not one has failed. And that's the same kind of assurance that he's asking Abram to have right here in this moment, to believe that his words are true, to have faith that God will see these promises through completion, even if the how is not super clear. So then we get to verse four, this is the moment of truth. What's Abram gonna do? Says he went. And if you keep reading the text for a few chapters, you'll see pretty clearly that Abram certainly still has some doubts, he had some questions. It's not like he didn't have any reservation at all about what he was doing, but he did have faith that God would do what he promised he would do. He chose to walk in obedience and exhibit a faith

that wouldn't have made sense to most people if we're being totally honest. And you know the funny thing about obedience is that oftentimes understanding actually follows obedience. We like to think that we have to have all of the equation worked out before we can take that step of obedience, but that's not always the way it works. Sometimes understanding necessarily requires that we walk in obedience first, and understanding comes later. And of course there's gonna be times where both go hand in hand. You know exactly why you're walking in obedience, but that's not always gonna be the case. I'm an engineer, I love logic, I've got an Excel spreadsheet for just about everything in life. I wanna calculate situations, I wanna develop a solid rationale to every single thing I do.

But what happens when there's a situation that I can't calculate? Faith necessarily requires that sometimes we have to make decisions without fully understanding every variable in that equation. And to take that a step further, there may even be situations that God calls you to walk in obedience, and we never end up fully understanding the situation. You might only get a glimmer of it. In Hebrews chapter 11, that's sometimes called the Hall of Faith. In verse eight it says, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land. And then a few verses later it says, these people all died in faith, having not received the things promised. Abram didn't live to see the fulfillment of the things that God promised him,

but he had faith that it would happen nonetheless. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we walk by faith not by sight. If we can always see all the details and all the answers to our questions, there's essentially no room for faith. There's nothing to exhibit faith about. It's all right there in front of us. Faith can really only shine through when we don't know all the answers, and we're forced to place our trust, to place our confidence in God. And that's exactly what Abram did. And again, that doesn't mean that Abram didn't have doubts. I mean, you keep reading the next few chapters and you'll see pretty clearly, he had plenty of doubts. He was an imperfect guy, who made some bad decisions too. But even in the presence of that doubt and that worry and that uncertainty, he held onto the promises of God and he took that very first step. So what then? What do we do with a passage like this?

Some of you are probably familiar with this story, but a story that came to mind for me is the story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. They were missionaries in the 1950s. And just to kind of tell that story, in 1952, Jim Elliot walked in obedience to this call that God was placing on his life, to go be a missionary among the people in Ecuador. And there was a people group there that had a very particular reputation for being vicious, for being very hostile towards outsiders. They were called the Auca people, and their name literally translates into savage. It's what they were known for. And so a year into it, Jim had recruited an entire team of people to join him. He had five men, several of those men had spouses. That same year, he got married to Elizabeth and over the coming years, they would strategically start taking steps towards reaching the Auca people and how they could advance the gospel among those people.

One of those men was a pilot, and so they would drop gifts of goodwill as a good gesture of friendship towards these people, trying to show them that they mean no harm. And through that, and through a couple of interactions they had had, they started to kind of build confidence that these people are a little bit open to us, they're a little bit receptive. Let's try to go to their village. And just as they're planning to do that, a group of members from the tribe showed up and murdered all five men. And their bodies were found floating down the river. So what then? I mean, you would think the spouses of these men would probably never in a million years go near those people, right? You'd probably have hatred in your heart towards those people. For the rest of your life, you'd have ill will towards these people, right?

Wrong. Elizabeth and another spouse of one of the murdered men, they made plans to go back to the exact same area and resume the very work that their husbands were doing. And in just three years, three years later, 1958, through some connections with some of the local women, she actually went to live with the Auca people. And those are the very people who brutally and savagely killed their husbands. And in the coming years, she would play a very pivotal role in advancing the gospel among those people and watching as a lot of people came to faith in Jesus, the very people who killed their husbands. It's a beautiful story of forgiveness and redemption and unbelievable faith, faith against logic. So how could she do that? How could she be willing to go back and make that kind of decision? Jim Elliot is famous for this quote that says, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep

to gain what he cannot lose. You see, he and Elizabeth both understood that what they were being called torts was far greater than anything they were giving up. And they had faith that the promises of God would sustain them, that walking in obedience to God's calling, even when it may not necessarily seem logical, was worth it, just like Abram. I mean, consider two members of your own church. We've got Daniel and Caroline Souter sitting here, two friends very near and dear to me. They're counting down the months until they move to the other side of the world. That time's coming soon.

What are they giving up? Proximity to family and blessing that that can be, right? The comfort of living in a place and around people that are very familiar to them. The luxury of being able to eat whatever food you want, go right down the road to whatever restaurant you want. Air conditioning, heaters, being able to walk outside and not smell horrible smells, and a lot of other things. And they're giving all these things up. Why? Because God's calling on their life is far greater than anything they're leaving behind. What He has promised to give them is far greater than anything that they're giving up. They're choosing to walk in faith that while not every single question about their future may be answered, God will provide and He'll lead them. He'll give them everything they need, just like Abram. What made Abram's story significant, ultimately was not anything that he did.

In fact, if you read other stories about him again, you'll see he made some pretty dishonorable decisions too. What made his life significant was God's calling on his life. That's what brought Abram's story, his life, any significance. And it's the same thing that brings significance to our lives. And frankly, it's the only thing that brings significant to our lives. True purpose-filled significance.

God has given us a calling, and that changes everything. It's a calling to be a blessing to the world, to not just be recipients of grace, but to be a dispenser of grace as well. It's a calling to walk in faith and obedience, to advance the gospel around us. It's a calling to walk in the Great Commission, to make disciples of all nations, to baptize them in faith, to teach them to follow Jesus in obedience. It's a calling to live lives of holiness, to live lives in community, to love God, to love others. I mean, these are callings that God has placed on all of us as believers that has given us the ultimate significance in life. From the moment that you place your faith in Him, God has given you a reason for living, a calling that is far greater than anything we can come up with on our own. And let me tell you, when your significance in life is found outside of yourself,

rather than anything you created inside of yourself, there is a freedom, and there is a joy that comes with that. There's one question from this text that we never address, and that is looking back at verse three, is how exactly will all people on earth be blessed by Abram? If you look in the book of Matthew, you'll find a long list of lineage. One generation after another, this person was the father of that person, and it lists out 42 generations. At the beginning of that, you'll find Abram. On the other end, you'll find Jesus.

Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, He's the fulfillment of this promise, to be a blessing to all people, all families of the earth. He's the completion. Through Jesus, all people on earth are blessed. Through Jesus, all people on earth have an opportunity to have their sins forgiven. Through Jesus, all people have an opportunity to personally know the God of the universe, the Creator, the same God that called Abram. Through Jesus, all people have an avenue to receive the greatest blessing that they could possibly dream of.

Through Jesus. So maybe for you, the next step of faith is actually your first step. Maybe your first step is to place your faith in Jesus for the first time. Maybe your first step is the step before that. It's having a conversation with someone about some kind of wrestling you're having. Hey, I'm feeling this stirring. I don't know Jesus. I wanna know more. Maybe that's your first step. If you're a believer, maybe your next step is a whole multitude of things, and I encourage you to pray about that. Maybe it's the person who you work with. Maybe it's a major life-changing decision.

We all have a next step of faith. And so that's the question I wanna leave you with is what's your next step of faith this morning? Because we see through this one man's faith and willingness to follow God's call for his life. We were ultimately given the Jewish nation. We were given the scriptures. And the ultimate hope for humanity came through Abraham, Jesus. That's through one man's faith. Just imagine what impact our faith could have on the world.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your grace in our lives. Thank you for the blessing that you've given us. The blessing of knowing you. The blessing of walking in community with you. The blessing of knowing that you care about each and every one of us. God, thank you for giving us a purpose in life. Thank you for giving us a calling in life. Both the general calling that you've given all believers and also the specific calling you've given each of us in our own lives. God, I pray that you would give us a willingness to take steps in faith.

When we struggle to understand, I pray that you would give us the confidence we need to trust in your promises to take that step. I pray that you would put it on our hearts to know what that next step is for each and every one of us. You would surround us with other people who also wanna take a step. We can take steps together. Lord, for those that are here that may feel a sense of

tugging or just a desire to wanna know more about you, to wanna know what a relationship with Jesus looks like, God, I pray that they would take action on that, that they would be willing to have a conversation with somebody. There's so many people here that want to have that conversation. And I pray that ultimately they would take that step of faith to experience the blessing of knowing you. We're so grateful for your love for us and all that you've done for us. I pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.