A Failure to Trust

NOW, there was a famine in the land. Now. It is easy to keep reading, to keep going without looking back…how do they solve this problem, they head to Egypt. They say they are brother and sister. They find safe haven. Maybe not the life they would have chosen. Certainly not the life they expected when we left Ur, when God promised to bless them. Sarai is taken as a wife of Pharoah, but Abram is well-rewarded for her with sheep and oxen, male and female donkeys, male and female slaves, and camels. But I imagine there was still a famine, an emptiness. Sarai lives in Pharoah’s house. Abram has lots of stuff. But, they are no longer together.

As we read their story, it is easy to see why they went to Egypt. It is easy to understand why they would say that they were brother and sister. They just were trying to survive. Now, there was a famine in the land. But WHY was there a famine? God promised to bless them.

Remember that the Hebrew root word for “blessing” is only related to the root word for “knee”? To be blessed is to take a knee before God, to be in right relationship with God.

And now, there is a famine in the land. What happened? Instead of moving forward into how to solve the problem, let’s turn back. ???

When Abram left Ur with Sarai and his nephew Lot, he went as the Lord had told him. They went to Canaan, passed through Canaan to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. There, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So Abram built an altar to the Lord there. Then he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

All the places in this story are significant, at least their names are. Listen to their journey again, with the Hebrew names translated into English:

Abram journeyed from Ur, the place of light and fire, to Canaan, synchronized unison with God. And then his trust began to fail, he went from Shechem, the place of responsibility resting on your shoulders, to Moreh, the place of reverence and awe. God appeared to him there and promised this land, the land of reverence and awe to Abram’s offspring. Yet, he started living between trusting himself and trusting God, going from taking things on his own shoulders to reverence and awe of God, and then he settled between Bethel, the house of God, and Ai, a pile of ruins, of warped distortion. Here he builds an altar to the Lord, and calls on the name of the Lord. Then, by stages, he found himself moving toward the Negev, no longer building altars or calling on God’s name. Toward the Negeb, literally means “hollow”. Abram was journeying toward a dry and parched place where he was hollow. Now there was famine. He was empty.

Rev. Rick Warren writes, “Anytime we demonstrate faith, we’re relying on something. When you sit in a chair, you’re relying on the chair’s manufacturer to produce something that will hold you up. When you’re on the freeway, you’re relying on every other driver around you. Faith in God means we rely on God…Having faith means realizing that God is bigger, greater and, better than me – and he loves me greatly. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death” (NLT). That’s the problem with relying on yourself. We’re often wrong. Human intuition is not always reliable. In fact, it’s just good enough to make us think we’re right – even when we’re not. Genuine faith is relying on God’s direction and on who he is. God is reliable. He knows what you need, and he wants to meet those needs. Unfortunately, we think we know better. We think we have a better plan. We want to use our logic and get to the answer in a way that makes us look good – and doesn’t require risk. But God wants us to grow, so he takes us a different way.”

Abram chose to go to Shechem, the place of shouldering the burden. He chose to rely on himself rather than God. The truth is, in life, all of us have a tendency to go to Shechem, to take responsibility for our lives on our own shoulders, to worry because “it all depends on us,” to rely on ourselves instead of God. And we, like Abram, settle somewhere between the house of God and a pile of warped, distorted ruins. Then, by stages, if we continue to rely on ourselves instead of God, we journey on toward the Negeb, to a dry and parched land that is hollow. So, how do we go a different way?

Frank Laubach, at the turn of the 20th Century, found himself on that journey. Like Abram and Sarai, Frank was called to leave his home. He became a missionary and was called as God’s ambassador to the illiterate. He set about the task of teaching people all across the globe how to read. But even though he was a devout Christian, at the age of 44 he said that he felt distant from God. He was journeying by stages toward the Negev, toward hollow emptiness. So, Frank set out to answer a question: Is it possible to have contact with God all of the time? All the time when we are awake… awake in his presence and then fall asleep in his arms? Can we attain that? Can we do God’s will all the time? Think God’s thoughts all the time? Is it possible to bring the Lord back into my mind flow every few seconds so that God will always be on my mind? And Frank chose to intentionally go a different way. He began to journal in January of 1930 and continued to record his experiences with God until his death in 1970.
Some of his journal entries are helpful, I think, as we journey and seek to trust in God. He wrote,

Oh this thing of keeping in constant touch with God, of making him the object of my thought and the companion of my conversations, it is the most amazing thing I have ever run across. It is working. I cannot do it even for half a day, not yet, but I have come to believe that I shall someday be doing it for the entire day. It is a matter of acquiring new habit of thought.

This concentration upon God is a strenuous thing, but everything else has ceased to be so. I think more clearly, I forget less frequently, things which I did with a strain before, I now do easily and with no effort. I worry about nothing…. I no longer feel in a hurry about anything…. Nothing can go wrong except that God may slip from my mind if I do not keep on my guard.

And There is a sense of being led by an unseen hand which takes mine…and grows upon me daily….

It is a matter of acquiring a new habit of thought. Maybe you, like Frank, like Abram and Sarai, find yourself in a hollow place, in a place of famine, in a place where you are relying on yourself and not God.
The story of Abram continues after Pharoah sends him away. “Abram left Egypt and went back to the Negev, [the hollow place] he and his wife and everything he owned, and Lot still with him. By now Abram was very rich, loaded with cattle and silver and gold.

He moved on from the Negev, camping along the way, to Bethel, [the house of God] the place he had first set up his tent between Bethel and Ai and built his first altar. Abram prayed there to GOD.
The journey from the Negev, from hollow famine, to Bethel, the house of God, is a journey of intentionally acquiring a new habit of thought. Every worry, every concern, every time you begin to shoulder the burdens of life, concentrate on God. Choose a refrain that helps you trust God instead of yourself. Maybe your refrain will be “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” Maybe it will be “I lift my eye to the hills, where does my help come from, my help comes from the Lord.” Maybe it will be the Lord’s Prayer, or a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, or another favorite hymn or verse of Scripture. Choose one, and practice concentrating on it today, and then tomorrow, and the next day, journeying ever closer to Bethel, to the house of God. Amen.