When the Lord calls Abram, he goes. Abram does not
hesitate. He does not wonder whether he is doing the
right thing. He does not think about the cost or the risk.
He simply follows the Lord’s command without murmur or
objection.
The lives we lead today often make it difficult to follow
Abram’s example. The ties of the material world bind us
tightly. Busy with work, our families, and the thousand
demands of daily life, we cannot easily imagine surrendering
them and heading off to a new place because the Lord has
called us to go there.
Our greatest temptation comes in not seeking the one
true God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ and whose
timeless and perfect will always binds us. Instead we seek
a lesser god, a god who will never ask us to do anything we
do not want to do, to surrender anything we do not want to
surrender, or to go to a place where we do not want to go.
At the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John
Winthrop told his flock that God does not care what we
possess but whether, when God knocks on our door and
demands that we surrender what we value most for the
Lord’s sake, we will answer. If we find we never have to
give up anything, we may not be following Christ. He may
demand that we give up cherished material possessions
or cherished political views or a cherished position in our
community. But the one thing every Christian knows for
sure is that sooner or later the Lord will come knocking.
By Stephen L. Carter from The Upper Room: 60 Days of Prayer for General Conference 2016