“So Abraham went, as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Heron.”
– Genesis 12:4
I love the simplicity of Genesis 12:4, but I wonder what were all the emotions, thoughts going through Abraham’s head in this picture. Like in chapter 12, verse one, God said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. So God said, leave behind everything you’ve ever known, your country, your family, and go to the land that I will show you. Not even here’s the land you’re going to. It’s like I’ll show you.
Let us pray that God will help us to value obedience to Him above all else.
And then Genesis 12:4 just says Abraham went, as the Lord had told him. I want that kind of obedience in my life, don’t you? To just trust God completely, that when God says do this, don’t sit back and say well, what about that? Or exactly how is this going to look? Or where am I going to end up? What is it going to be like? And how are you going to provide family, community and how are you going to do, and just a million questions start coming to my mind. I want the kind of faith that just says okay God spoke, I’m going to do it.
This Verse Prays For God’s Faith
I pray that God would give me that kind of faith, you that kind of faith, that kind of obedience. God, we pray for this. God, I pray for this. We pray for this, right now as we read your word, you would give us a willingness to obey. Before we even read it, that you would have our yes on the table. That before we even open your word, we would say okay, whatever God says to do in this word that I’m about to read, I’ll do it.
Genesis 12:4 Wants To Walk In Obedience To His Word
That when your spirit, through your word leads, guides, directs us to make decisions, God, that we would obey you in that. God help us, help us we pray, to walk in obedience to your word. Help us not to make the error that we read about in James One, looking at the word, then walking away forgetting what it says. God, help us to walk away and obey it. Help us to do it. Lord, convict us of sin, help us to turn from sin as soon as we are convicted of sin in your word, help us to turn an obedience to you. In areas where we’re not obeying you, in areas where we’re delaying obedience to you, God help us.
We think about each of our lives. There are things that we know you have been convicting in our hearts, we need to do differently. We need to act differently. God, help us to obey, just unquestioned obedience, trusting you that when we obey your word, it will be good that you will provide, that you will indeed direct and guide and lead and provide for us in ways far beyond where we could ask or imagine.
Abraham had no idea all the blessing that was in store for him and his family that he would have missed if he would’ve just stopped and asked all these questions and delayed obedience or disobeyed totally. So God, please help us. Make us obedient children who trust our father that when you tell us to do something, that it is for our good.
Lord as we read your word, as we look through the story of scripture, make us more and more like Abraham in Genesis 12:4, that when you speak we go, we do, we obey as the Lord has told us. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
