Main Idea
What if the life God is calling you into requires leaving the life you’ve learned to control? Your life isn’t defined by having every detail figured out, but by trusting God when He calls you to leave what’s familiar and step into a story bigger than yourself.
Scriptures
Genesis 12: 1-9
The Call of Abram
12 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.[a]
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”[b]
4 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. 5 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.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring[c] I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.
9 Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.
Genesis 11: 27-30
27 This is the account of Terah’s family line.
Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. 28 While his father Terah was still alive, Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, in the land of his birth. 29 Abram and Nahor both married. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milkah; she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Milkah and Iskah. 30 Now Sarai was childless because she was not able to conceive.
Discussion Questions
- Did you grow up assuming that following God meant He would always give you the details first? Why or why not? Read Genesis 12:1–3 aloud.
- God tells Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household and go to the land He would show him.
- What stands out to you about God calling Abram to go before giving him the full map?The sermon says, “Some of us are not stuck because we don’t love God. We’re stuck because we’re scared.”
- Where do you see fear keeping people from obedience? What is something familiar, comfortable, or safe that God may be asking you to leave behind? Read Genesis 12:6–7 aloud.
- Abram built an altar before the promise was fully fulfilled.
- What does it look like to worship God before the answer comes?
