The Father of Faith

Now the Lord said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,

From your family

And from your father’s house,

To a land I will show you …”

So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him.

Genesis 12:1-4

Abram, who was later re-named “Abraham,” is The Father of Faith. He grew up in the cityscapes of Mesopotamia, but eventually became a pilgrim-nomad, journeying through the land which God sent him to. He moved from place to place as God directed, leaving us a legacy of obedience, righteousness, journeying in God and walking with God in friendship.

God spoke richly into Abraham’s life, responding to the trusting quality of his heart. It takes courage of conviction and moral guts to obey God, so Abraham actually had a lot of spiritual spunk. He left the land he knew, to dwell where he had never dwelt before … and there he discovered new levels of knowing God. He produced a son when his productivity had already dried up, he won mighty battles against mighty kings, he put his son on an altar to sacrifice him (please do not attempt this at home) and moved God to decorate his life with special promises and eternal covenants.

One encounter between Abraham and God which ever speaks to me was at that juncture when Abraham parted ways with his nephew, Lot. Lot grabbed what seemed (emphasis on “seemed”) to be the best land and decided to settle in Sodom and Gomorrah. After Lot had departed, God spoke to Abraham and told him to lift up his eyes and look all around him – north, south, east and west – and promised him that whatever he saw would be his. In other words, God was telling him, “Be encouraged, my son. Don’t look down in despondency or disappointment. I am with you, and as long as you journey in me the possibilities are as limitless as I am vast. What you can feel, taste, touch are but illusions. The landscapes within Me are gardens, groves, savannahs teeming with game, springs fountaining with life. Lot seems to have left you little, life seems to have narrowed its options, but there is a higher reality. Walk the length and breadth of it. Trust that what I say is true and it shall be yours” … and that is exactly what Abraham did … because when God spoke, he drank it all in, like bees honing in on honey. For Abraham, personal crisis was an opportunity to see how God would work things out. It was never a question of if but rather a matter of when and how.

Faith produces possibilities in God through a simple process. God speaks, I choose to believe what He says and prove it by my obedience. It worked for Abraham, so it can work for us. Faith is about child-like trust, friction-free obedience and the by-product God is always after … righteousness. Abraham left his home and his family or what was familiar to him to discover new experiences in God. He settled into a life of spiritual seeking, he dwelled in doing what delighted God and he camped where God’s companionship would fill his tents. Faith was Abraham’s rainbow bridge that took him from one promise in God to another.