Hayford Pursuing the Will of God

Finding Grace for the Journey
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-956943-21-4
Verlag: Gateway Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 200 Seiten

Reihe: Pursuing the Will of God

Find your purpose and embrace God's call to transform your life. What does it really mean to know and follow God's plan? This question is at the heart of every believer's journey toward a close relationship with their Creator. In Pursuing the Will of God, beloved pastor and author Jack Hayford invites us into the incredible life of Abraham, a man who transformed from a wandering believer into the patriarch of God's chosen people. Pastor Jack explores the pivotal moments that shaped Abraham's faith and shares how obedience in the face of sacrifice leads to unimaginable blessings. As we learn to walk in surrender and obedience, even when the road ahead isn't clear, God instills in us a firm confidence in His loving intentions. His call to every believer still echoes today: 'Follow Me into the unknown, and witness what I will do in and through you!' Let God write His story through your life for His glory.

JACK HAYFORD wrote or collaborated on over 100 books and composed over 600 songs. He was the founding pastor of The Church On The Way in Van Nuys, California, where he served as the senior pastor for more than three decades. Pastor Jack also served as the Chancellor Emeritus of The King's University and an apostolic elder at Gateway Church in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayford, Jack

Leseproben

2
Muddling Your Way in the Will of God
Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD. So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there for the famine was severe in the land. And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore, it will happen when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister that it may be well with me for your sake and that I may live because of you.” So it was, when Abram came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house. He treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.” So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had” (Genesis 12:6–20). Blundering into a Muddle
See if you can identify with this experience. The Lord begins to show you something of His will and purpose for your life. Your days begin to take on new purpose and direction. Puzzle pieces that never seemed to fit together before suddenly fall into place, forming a picture that excites you. You feel (at last!) as though you’ve stepped up to a new phase in your Christian life—and you don’t want it any other way. Then, without warning, you find yourself stumbling headlong into circumstances so confusing, so troublesome, that you begin to wonder if you were on track with God in the first place! Don’t feel alone if you know exactly what I’m talking about. I imagine nearly every one of us who has hungered after the purpose of the Lord in his or her life has experienced something similar at one time or another. Most likely you waded into that messy situation because you were still young in learning the will and way of the Lord. You may even now be young in the Lord, but that doesn’t mean you have to undergo the sort of experience Abraham fell into. The Bible says we can benefit, vicariously, from the experiences of others. In fact, Abraham’s misadventures in this chapter are recorded in Scripture for our benefit. Paul insists that this is so. He writes, “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). This great man, Abram who became Abraham, the one we rightly call “Father of the Faithful,” a patriarch as honored and revered as any in the Scriptures, blundered headlong into about as stupid a situation as you can imagine. Some of us who have slid and slithered into circumstances just about as deep don’t have to imagine. The experiences are all too vivid in our memories! How do children of God get into this kind of quandary? And how do we find our way out? Let’s consider these questions as we look closely at the trouble Abraham created for himself as he muddled forward, fumbling his way in pursuit of the will of God. Genesis 12:1 says, “The LORD had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country … To a land that I will show you.’” In verse 7 we’re told, “Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I will give this land’” (italics added). Notice that the Lord said, “I will show you a land,” and when Abraham got there, He said, in effect, “This is it. This is the land. You’re here.” There could have been no confusion about it. Acknowledging the holy significance of that moment, Abraham built an altar there at Shechem. After that (for no clear reason), he moved a little farther down the road, built another altar at Bethel, and pitched his tent in that place for a while. It was here, we are told, that Abraham “called on the name of the LORD.” In chapter 13 of Genesis, we find that Abraham and his family eventually returned to that place, Bethel, where he had pitched his tent. He came back to the altar he had built and, once again, “called on the name of the LORD” (Genesis 13:4). Both of those moments are certainly among the high points in Abraham’s life journey. But sandwiched between them is an episode that is anything but high, noble, or spiritual. Amid these two events, the Bible records a string of occurrences that seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the will or the purpose of God in Abraham’s life! We’re going to see God at work preserving and protecting Abraham and his family during the “interlude,” but there is no evidence Abraham even once heard God’s voice during this time—or made a single move according to the Lord’s leading. Waiting on The Lord
Recently in my studies I came across a little notation I’d jotted down years ago on this chapter of Scripture. I wrote, “The Case of the Antsy Saint.” Somehow, this title fits. Abraham just couldn’t seem to stand still in the will of God. He got restless—antsy, as they say. He got the proverbial “itchy feet” and kept moving on a line that began in the will of God and then extended beyond it. His movement created problems—problems that seem to begin with Genesis 12:9: “So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.” I think there’s wisdom here for us, and it may explain what’s wrong when the average believer finds himself or herself confused, muddled, or perplexed by where he or she is. So often in our lives we tend to be “going on still,” rather than standing still. So often in our lives we tend to be “going on still,” rather than standing still. These words describe how Abraham left the place where God had appeared to him and confirmed his ownership of the land. How he left the place where he had raised altars to God’s name. How he left the place where his family had called on the name of the Lord. Rather than waiting on God for direction, Abraham kept on the move. He kept drifting south … until he had drifted right out of the Land of Promise! When I think of that biblical phrase “going on still,” I can’t help but contrast it with Moses’ command to the Israelites. The whole assembly, roughly two million people, had gathered anxiously on the shore of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit. In that moment of sheer terror, the authoritative voice of Moses rang out: “Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD” (Exodus 14:13). Of course, the lovely thing about that particular situation was that they didn’t have anywhere else to go! It’s rather easy to “stand still” when you have the Red Sea in front of you and Pharaoh’s army nipping at your heels. When Moses commanded, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD,” he was saying in essence, “Quit dancing around, quit fidgeting, quit whining, quit pulling your hair and biting your nails, quit trying to figure all this out. Just stand still for a moment. Quiet yourself and watch the Lord go to work!” Quiet yourself and watch the Lord go to work! The psalmist, one of the sons of Korah, had to come to the same place in his walk with the Lord. Perhaps he, too, had been “going on still” instead of “standing still” in the presence of God. But there came that time when he also heard the Lord’s voice speaking to his heart: Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! (Psalm 46:10). Many of us find ourselves “going on still,” when if we would only stand still in our faith and be still in prayer and worship before Him, we would see God work in our lives as never before. The Sin of Presumption
Most of us aren’t quite so cornered as those Israelites with their backs to the Red Sea. In most of our predicaments, we can identify options, find a back door, or cook up an escape plan. Yet even so, there is a great need to daily wait on the Lord. The Scriptures highlight this truth again and again. One of the most graphic examples is in the book of Joshua, concerning a little town with a little name—Ai. After the nation of Israel had conquered Jericho, Joshua said something to this effect: “Well, praise God. We got a victory there. Let’s go take the next city.” That next city was Ai. Joshua had every reason to believe that since the Lord had blessed them in the battle of Jericho, the Israelites could continue to romp and stomp right through the rest of the land,...