- Faith Answers When God Calls

05 - Faith Answers When God Calls
THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN outright, vocal critics of the Bible. Among them are those who try to generate sympathy for Old Testament Abraham.
These insist that Abraham was comfortable and well adjusted in Ur of the Chaldees, surrounded by relatives and friends. Probably he had his own business. He may have been about eligible for Social Security. He had stature in the community and status with his neighbors.
Into that happy, successful situation, a spoilsport God, with utter disdain for Abraham’s personal feelings, called him to a nomadic, isolated existence.
But the critics have failed to see the most important element in God’s approach to Abraham. The living God made an almost incredible offer to the patriarch: “I want to be your Friend, and I want you to be My friend!”
The man or woman who by faith is a friend of God has lost nothing but sin and guilt. He or she has come into an eternal kingdom that assures everything that is good, forever and ever!
I want to make here a case for faith. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews gives us a summary look at Abraham and at the nature of his faith:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 1:1-10)
I have discovered that if I want to learn more about God and faith and righteousness, it is profitable to think deeply about Abraham. I have tried to decide which were the most critical moments and the most important events in his life.
The single most critical, most important time in Abraham’s life was when he heard and answered God’s call.
Life’s most important decision
Some people consider the hour of physical birth, when we begin to breathe and live and function as unique people within the human race, as the most important moment in life. Others mark their marriage as the most meaningful lifetime decision. But many, many have testified to the great importance of their spiritual decision—the act of faith whereby they committed themselves and their entire futures to God.
Undoubtedly (as I said) Abraham’s single, most important moment was when God unexpectedly and dramatically revealed Himself to him and called him to be a pilgrim. So it was that, when he was called, Abraham by faith obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.
We have all wondered at times about the method or methods God may have used to get through to Abraham. Do you suppose that Abraham had his own quiet times and considered the possibility ofan unseen domain beyond the world he knew? Although Abraham did not have the privileges in the grace of God that we have, I am sure he was not afraid to think for himself—perhaps even about the mysteries of creation and life.
We do not know how much preparation Abraham had to make within his own soul to be ready for a direct revelation from God. I for one am perfectly satisfied to leave that theological question to the Calvinists and the Arminians!
In my own contemplation’s, though, I have found great comfort in the doctrine of prevenient grace. Prevenient grace, simply stated, is the belief that before a sinful man or woman can seek God, God must first have sought the man or woman.
God has told us in many ways that He is a person. In making Himself known to us, He uses the familiar pattern of personality. He is able to communicate with us through the channels of our minds, our wills and our emotions.
If we hold to our belief that men and women were originally created in the image of God, we also must believe that therere sides within our beings a capacity to know God. That is why Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about an invisible but transforming new birth from above!
The response must be ours
We are humans, and we confess that we do not know all of God’s ways. We do not know the steps of searching and seeking that brought about the actual friendship between God and Abraham. Perhaps we can glimpse a clue in the confession of Augustine: “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee!”
We discern that a loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees in the Garden of Eden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people are responsive and receptive.
If God had not in His own way first moved toward Abraham, Abraham would never have moved toward God. I do believe that! I also believe, however, that if Abraham had been insensitive, he would never have heard God’s voice calling him. That was indeed the critical moment in the life of Abraham. Abraham was a man. It is well known that many men have set their jaws and stubbornly clenched their fists as they confidently assured themselves, “I am self-sufficient! I will not bow to this business of religion!”
If Abraham had rejected God’s overtures, he would have returned to making bigger and better idols for men and women intent on choosing their own brand of deity. And you can mark this down, too: If Abraham had refused the calling of God, the whole history of the world would have been vastly different, and different for the worse.
The Bible record of God’s calling people is varied, yet always consistent. Moses was alone with his sheep in the desert when God send, “I have heard the cry of my people. I want you to go to Pharaoh and say, `Let my people go.’“ Moses tried to squirm out of that call. But the hand of God had been laid on him and he could not escape.
Jacob also was alone in the wilderness. He was running away from a bad situation at home. He had a night vision of heavenly angels ascending and descending, and there God spoke to him. God called him. And through that call Jacob the cheat became Israel, a prince with God.
We need to get quiet
The gospel invitation is offered to one and all, but many are too preoccupied to hear or heed. They never allow God’s call to become a reason for decision. Their relationship with God never becomes a personal encounter. As a result, they live out their entire lives insisting that they never heard any call from God.
The answer to that is plain. God has been trying to get through to them, but their line is always busy! They are engrossed in a host of worldly pursuits.
In our activistic, achievement-oriented era, there is a prevailing notion that no person really amounts to anything if he or she cannot be described as a “go-getter.” The go-getter is the person who never allows himself or herself to be quiet or still-not even for a minute. He or she is our ever-ready nominee to get things done. Given time, he or she will turn the world up side down.
But it is surely necessary for us to have times when we stop what we are doing and think for a season. I try to practice the art of quietness often, for there is not a person alive who can meditate while involved in the non-stop, hundred-mile-an-hour pace of the ambitious go-getter.
The Quakers had many fine ideas about life, and there is astray from them that illustrates the point I am trying to make. It concerns a conversation between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and a Quaker woman he had met. Maybe Coleridge was boasting a bit, but he told the woman how he had arranged the use of time so he would have no wasted hours. He said he memorized Greek while dressing and during breakfast. He went on with his list of other mental activities—making notes, reading, writing, formulating thought sand ideas—until bedtime.
The Quaker listened unimpressed. When Coleridge was finished with his explanation, she asked him a simple, searching question: “My friend, when dost thee think?”
God is having a difficult time getting through to us because we are a fast-paced generation. We seem to have no time for contemplation. We have no time to answer God when He calls.
When the important matters of the soul are at stake, the most useful thing we can do is to do nothing, even if only for a short time. There are times when we can go the fastest by not going a tall. We can go farthest by standing still for a while.
Then, too, we can talk the loudest by not saying a word. We will not be taking the Lord by surprise; He will speak His message.
Abraham was listening
Abraham was listening. He was probably alone some where when God spoke to him. In our day, we are so socially minded that we cannot endure being alone. People say they are in misery if they are alone.
I knew of a young man who was hospitalized and forced to lie quietly for a time. He implored his father, “Dad, bring my record player or something to keep me busy. Otherwise I just have to lie here and think.” Then he added his own commentary on the nature of his personal life, “And it is hell to think.”
If we do not give God a listening ear, we will miss His best for our lives. He wants to bring us into the right place, the best place for His will in us to be accomplished.
For Abraham, Ur of the Chaldees was not the right place. The eternal God had plans for something far better. In order for Abraham to be known as “the friend of God” and “the father of the faithful,” he had to go out from the place that held him. Either he would act in faith, going against the voice of reason, or he would respond, “I can be satisfied to think that all gods and all religions and all worship are pretty much alike and all lead to the same conclusion!”
Abraham made his choice, and by faith he demonstrated that there is a difference in following a God and Creator who lives eternally.
The world around us wants to put us in the same restrictive strait jacket that would have kept Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees. “We will talk to you about religion” is the seemingly kindly offer people give us today. But then they add the disclaimer: “Just do not make religion personal.”
“Christianity is all right,” they assure us, “if you are willing to be tolerant and not try to make something exclusive of your Christian faith.” Most people seem to have come to terms with an acceptance of religion if it does not have the cross of Christ within it.
But as soon as you begin to quote the words of Jesus and the Scriptures that declare there is only one mediator between God and mankind, as soon as you insist that Christ has given us the only way to God through His death and atonement, you are dead!
“That is bigoted, narrow dogmatism,” they shout. “No more dialogue with you! You have no place on a panel where we are cooperatively interested in intellectual ferment!”
I lived on the farm long enough to know what happens when things are allowed to ferment. If that is what the modern intellectuals are trying to achieve, I am glad I have never had time to take part in their religious panel discussions! They have predetermined to agree only upon religious tenets that bring no offense to anyone.
But when God calls out men and women, their faith will be an offense to the world. It was so in Abraham’s day, and it is so in our day.
God calls us out and into
But there is in Abraham’s life another profound truth about the call of God. God does not just call us out, period. He is completely faithful to call us into something better!
I do not consider that Christian believers are fully on the right track when they proclaim, “We are separated! We have come out! We are paying the price! We are trying to endure! Pray for us that we can stick it out to the end!”
In his faith, Abraham was against idolatry and idol-making, but that was not his crusade. Because of his faith, God led him into a promised land, into possessions and into the lineage that brought forth the Messiah. The call of God is always to something better. Keep that in mind.
God calls us into the joys and reality of eternal life. He calls us into purity of life and spirit, so that we may acceptably walk with Him. He calls us into a life of service and usefulness that brings glory to Himself as our God. He calls us into the sweetest fellowship possible on this earth—the fellowship of the family of God!
I hope I never hear any Christian bragging even a little bit about what he or she gave up and how much it cost him or her to answer the call of God. Anything that we were or any abilities that we possessed were as nothing compared to what God has called us into as His believing children.
Why is it so difficult in our churches for us to be honest about our lives and our condition as sinners alienated from God? We did not give up anything when God in His love and mercy called us unto Himself and into the blessings of grace and forgiveness and peace.
I have been asked more than once what I gave up when I was converted and became a believing child of God. I was a young man, and I well remember that I gave up the hot and smelly rubber factory. I was making tires for an hourly wage, and I gave that up to follow Christ’s call into Christian ministry and service.
As a youth I was scared of life and I was scared of death—and I gave that up. I was miserable and glum and unfulfilled—and I gave that up. I had selfish earthly and material ambitions which I could never have achieved—and I gave them up.
That forms the outline of the worthless things that I gave up. And I soon discovered that in Jesus Christ, God had given me everything that is worthwhile.
God gives us far more
If God takes away from us the old, wrinkled, beat-up dollar bill we have clutched so desperately, it is only because He wants to exchange it for the whole Federal mint, the entire treasury! He is saying to us, “I have in store for you all there sources of heaven. Help yourself!”
If Abraham had ever grumbled to the Lord about leaving the beggarly idols of Ur, God would have let him go back. We are free to do the will of God, but God never makes us His unwilling prisoners. God called Abraham out, God gave him the promised land and God said, “Abraham, from among your posterity will come the Messiah in the fullness of time!”
This is the gracious reason why we should tell people everywhere to hear and heed the call of God—so He can lead them into everything that is good and blessed and worthwhile.
We are called to share these matters of truth and life with a wider circle than we sometimes care to admit. On occasion someone has advised me not to accept preaching engagements with non-fundamentalist groups. A so-called liberal church invited me to speak for nearly a week at a Bible conference in Minnesota. They wanted to hear Bible exposition on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When this was announced, I soon had a letter from a Christian brother warning me against going. “Don’t you know that they are just using you?” he asked.
My reply was that I expected God to use me, for I intended to glorify Him—Father, Son and Holy Spirit! I intended to tell that conference of ministers and lay people what God the Holy Spirit can do in the lives of those who will answer His call.
Let me repeat: God wants to call us out into a more abundant and fruitful Christian life than we have ever known!
The late evangelist “Uncle Bud” Robinson well summarized all I have said. “Abraham went out not knowing where he was going, “Uncle Bud said, “but he knew Who he was going with!”
Abraham was interested in a dwelling place that would never decay. He looked forward in faith to a city with eternal foundations, whose builder and maker is God. It is important to us that our Lord Jesus Christ confirmed Abraham’s choice when He told the Jews, “Abraham saw my day, and was glad!”
Abraham in faith dedicated himself to eternal things. No writer needs to spend time making a case for that. The long, glory-studded history of faithful Abraham is its own justification.
In simplest terms, God blesses anyone and everyone who will believe and trust and obey. And He speaks to everyone of us with a heavenly call.
If we are genuinely and irrevocably committed to our Lord Jesus Christ, if we are willing to follow Him at any cost, we dare to pray, “Oh God, make me like Abraham in faith and obedience, with spiritual vision of the eternity to come!”