As we continue through our Great Minds series, we are going to look at today the call of Abraham that is so important to what Abraham did for his family and for his faith and so important for us in our lives. When God called Abraham, he said, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. Where’s he going to go? Anybody pick that up? Where are they going? Wherever God shows them.
They’re just called to go. Go from your country and kindred to your father’s. Well, you know the end of the story.
When God called Abraham, where did he tell him to go? Where I show you. Sometimes God calls us wherever he wants us to go. Go where I show you.
He doesn’t say, go here, do this, and then do this, and then I will come again, and I will do this. Sometimes God just says, go. And if we’re obedient, then God will say, now do this, and we go.
So Abraham left his kindred and his family, and he went to the land of Canaan, and God showed him this land, and he said, if you follow me, I will make you a great nation and bless your name, and you will be a blessing. In other words, you’re going to become the father of many nations. And does anybody know how old he was when God said that? 75.
Don’t raise your hand if you’re over 75. But God’s got a plan for each and every one of us in any stage of our lives, and that plan goes beyond what we may think it is. So Abraham went, and he took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot, and they settled into this land.
And this is the key part. Once they got to the land, it said, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your offspring, I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.
The first thing he did was not say, okay, what’s the next step? What do I do now? How do I do this? He built an altar to God. When God calls us to go, building an altar is important, or worshiping God, or praising God, whatever that may be in the instance, that’s where God calls us to be. Now, he was in the place where God wanted him to be, and then there was a famine in the land.
They had to leave the land where God said, this is what I showed you, and they went to Egypt, and they went through some turmoil there, and they came back, and they came back to the same place. Now, a lot of times when we’re thinking, where do we want to be if we have difficulty somewhere, if we have trials or difficulties, we may think, okay, this was a problem. I need to go somewhere else.
There’s someplace better for me to be, but they went back to the same place, and they had some other issues. They grew, and they grew, and they grew, and Lot’s family started fighting with Abram’s family, and they just started stepping on each other’s toes. That never happens in homes as kids grow up and take up more space, right? And they were arguing, and it was just too much, and Lot’s family and his cattle and everything and his sheep were growing so much that Abram took him out, and he said, look to the east, and oh, now I’m getting into the actual scripture.
So, when they started having the troubles with each other and the livestock, and they were getting the livestock confused, this is what Abram did. Will you stand as you are able? We’re looking at Genesis 13, 8 through 18. Then Abram said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are all kinsmen.
Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot lifted his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere, like the garden of the Lord, the land of Egypt, like the land of Egypt in the direction of Zohar.
This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So, Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other.
Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord. The Lord said to Abram after Lot had separated from him, lift your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward.
For all the land that you see, I will give you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring can also be counted. Arise, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.
So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the Oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord. The word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God, thanks be to God. Amen.
You may be seated. When they needed to figure out where to go, it says, so Lot lifted his eyes and he saw greener pastures, and he went to the Hebron valley. The world offers us the temptation of greener pastures that mess with our minds.
This looks better. This looks like a better place to go, or this job looks better, or this thing looks better. Believe it or not, God isn’t always calling us for the most money, or the most livestock, or the most things.
God is calling us first. Well, on the other hand, Lot went there, and it said he went to the valley, and it looks so beautiful, and he said, this has got to be it. I’m leaving this place, not going through this famine, or anything bad again.
Lot faced one thing after the other. First, coming up in Genesis 15, we see that, remember, the foreshadowing of the evil that was there. Eventually, Lot will be attacked by other kings of the land, and Abram has to go save him.
And then, of course, Lot is living in the place of where they sinned greatly against the Lord. And, I mean, it’s not like you could guess that pillars of fire were going to come down and destroy your city because of all the sin, but that’s what happened to Lot. How do you know in advance that things are going to happen like that? You don’t really know, but Abram said, I trust in the Lord enough that instead of looking and seeing with my eyes what is the greatest thing, I’m going to let you choose, and you find what you think is best, and you go there, and I am going to just stick with God.
Lot lifted his eyes and saw the beauty of the Hebron Valley. God said to Abram, lift your eyes, look around, look a little further, go a little deeper, and you can see that I will bless you. The first thing that Abram did again in this new place was build an altar.
I mean, that’s pretty much the answer. Wherever you are, build an altar. Wherever you are, praise God.
Whatever you are in the midst of, give God the glory. Verywellmind.com had an article about focusing illusion. Arian Resnick said, the notion that the grass is always greener is thought to be a repercussion of what is known as focusing illusion, which is a way that gets our brains all mixed up, and we think that certain parts of our lives are important and other parts are more important, and we’ve misplaced our focus.
It can make us think we are happy only if we are rich or living in a different city. In turn, we can become unhappy with any part of our current lives because we mistakenly think a single change would fix our whole mentality. Alternatively, we could always be in the hunt for something newer and better, and that actually has been shown not to lead more happiness at work and in our lives.
If we’re not satisfied, if we’re not happy, if we don’t just feel the awesomeness of what God has blessed us with, then we want a little more, and we want a little more, and we want a little more, and we have an insatious appetite that just keeps going. Now, Resnick quoted Dr. Patricia Patrice LaGoy and she said, who said, shifting your mindset is also key. We can also work on releasing the scarcity mindset that tells us that if something good happens to someone else, there is now a shortage of good things that will happen to you.
LaGoy adds that a friend’s win or a family’s member win should feel like a win to us too. The supply of happiness and satisfaction in the world is a bottomless well, and there is no need for you to be afraid that there isn’t enough success or fulfillment life for you. This is kind of connected to some things you’ve probably heard.
All that glitters isn’t gold. Some people will say I’m headed for greener pastures, or of course the grass is always greener on the other side, looking over our neighbor’s fence and seeing the difference. The thought process of Abram versus Lott is simply scarcity versus abundance.
Scarcity says that we don’t have enough, and it also says that if we just have a little more, then we’ll have enough, but when we get there, the truth is we still have that same mindset, and we want a little more, and we want something else. Abundance says that God gives us more than enough. God gives us more than enough.
So is the glass half full? Is the glass half empty? Is your cup overflowing? How does our mind work with what we have around us, and how can we trust in God? When God says go, do we say what’s in it for me? Well, God told Abram what was in it for him, and that was that he would make his name great, and he would be a blessing. He would bless those who bless him, and curse those who curse him, and his ancestors would be like counting the grains of sand. Dan Wells, in Keeping the Heart, said, I am by nature a glass half empty kind of person.
That means I tend towards a scarcity mindset in my thinking. Scarcity means that there isn’t quite enough of something. In the example, the scarcity is water, but my scarcity mindset can think that way about a lot of things.
How much time I have to get things done, for example, the resources needed to complete a project, the people needed to make an event happen, whatever it is, thinking tends to worry that there isn’t enough. An abundance mindset, he says, does the opposite. Its default mode is to assume there is enough of what we need, enough water in the glass, enough time to get things done, enough resources to accomplish our goals, enough people to help out.
And to back up his point, he gives us some scripture. Psalm 23 5. Let’s read these together. You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.
When’s the last time you told God my cup overflows? Unless you were reading out of Psalms. When’s the last time you said my cup overflows? God, you are so amazing, my cup overflows. Thank you for providing for all my needs.
Thank you that I have more than enough. Thank you that I am so blessed like Abram. John 10 10.
Let’s read this together. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. Followers of Jesus, he told us that he wants us to have life to the full.
We’ve talked about not worrying last week. We talked about not stressing out. We talked about worrying so much about what’s going to happen down the road that we miss the beauty of what’s in front of us today.
The fullness of God is amazing. The simple things like when we pray together, when we meet together, when we let God move in our lives. Second Peter 1 3. Let’s give us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
He’s given us everything we need. What do you need? Contentment. We just need more of God.
When we ask, we ask for more of God. What do we need more in our lives? God, just give me more of you. Fill me with your spirit.
Help me to overflow with thanksgiving in my life. What we’re called to do to make this shift in our minds is to adopt an ethos of the eternal. We read this verse last week, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
An ethos of the eternal, an ethos is our belief or a community mindset or the values that we have. What do we value? Abram, when he left his homeland and went, got to Canaan, he built an altar to the Lord and the Lord appeared to him. Then he went through hardship, had to leave that land, had to come back when the famine was better, and they were blessed.
They separated he and Lot. He trusted God. He looked where God told him to look.
When he says, look to the left and to the right, the inference there in the Hebrew is that when you say, look to the left and to the right, it means a big decision is going to happen. When you’re looking out across the horizon, it’s a big decision. Lot chose the temporal, what he thought would bring him immediate gain.
Abram chose the eternal and he turned and God showed him the land. God showed him what he was going to give him and God appeared to him and he built an altar. An ethos of the eternal says, where I am at today, where my feet are planted, where my family is, where we are, I’m going to build an altar.
I’m going to build an altar to God. I’m going to look instead of all the things. Can you imagine what our life would be like if we believed every commercial and started buying all that stuff and doing all those things? God calls us to look to him, to trust in him, to keep our eyes on Jesus and to focus on the eternal.
Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you for the blessings in our lives. Help us to keep our eyes on the prize, to turn our eyes to you, to adopt a mindset, an ethos, to value you more than everything else.
Help us to see the blessings that you give us and to build an altar to praise you, to worship you, to know that worship is just as important as it was at the beginning of time, at the beginning of creation, that we are still called to worship you. The only thing that’s greener on the other side is when you say go and we look up and we follow you in Jesus name. Amen.