Three words from Genesis 12:4 have been echoing in my mind all week:
So Abram went.
No description of his feelings. No record of his hesitation. No strategic plan. Just: He went.
In a season when our church is asking "What is God calling us into now?" ... these three words feel like a direct answer.
Not an explanation. Not a guarantee. Not even a clear destination.
Just an invitation to move.
Two weeks ago, we read about the Tower of Babel ... that moment when humanity gathered to make a name for themselves.
"Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves."
Sound familiar?
It's the same impulse we feel in every season: the desire to build something impressive. To secure our position. To make sure our significance is guaranteed.
And God's response was to scatter them.
But the story doesn't end there.
Immediately after the scattering, after the judgment, after the division ... God turns to one man and speaks.
Not a rescue plan. Not a system. Not a set of laws.
A call.
"The Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you.'"
THE CALL: Three Words That Change Everything
What God Actually Says
Look at the structure of Abraham's call. God asks him to release grip on three concentric circles:
Go from your country... his world, his sphere, his familiar landscape
Go from your people... his community, his belonging, the ones who know him
Go from your father's household... his family identity, where he comes from, who shaped him
Each circle moves closer to the center of who Abraham is.
God isn't just relocating him. He's asking him to release everything that has defined him.
And Abraham is 75 years old.
He has a life. A history. Decades of accumulated experience that tells him how the world works. He knows what's worked and what hasn't. He's built a map of the territory.
And God says: "Go to a land I will show you."
Future tense. Not a destination already named. Not a strategy already planned. Just: Walk with me, and I will show you as you go.
Why This Matters
The call of God is often an interruption.
Not a confirmation of the path you were already on. Not an endorsement of your five-year plan. An interruption ... a word that comes from outside your experience, outside your expertise, outside the accumulated wisdom that says "here's how things work."
The real question underneath every call is this:
Will you trust the one calling you more than you trust what you already know?
THE TEMPTATION: When Experience Becomes a Cage
I'll be honest: I feel this tension deeply right now.
After eight and a half years of leading King's Cross, I know what has worked. I know which doors open and which stay locked. I know the patterns. I have a map.
And when God starts speaking about something new ... a new season, a new direction, new ways of moving ... there's a voice in me that sounds very reasonable:
"Been there. Done that. It won't work. We tried something like that before, and here's what happened."
Experience is a gift. It truly is.
But it can also become a cage.
"The greatest danger in a new season is not that we lack experience. It's that we trust our experience more than we trust the living God."
Knowledge can start to feel like control. Control can start to feel like faith. And suddenly, the map we've been holding ... as useful as it has been ... becomes a substitute for trust instead of a tool within trust.
I don't want to lead this church by assuming that because I know how God moved before, I already know how He must move next.
THE PROMISE: Blessing Before Performance
Before Abraham takes a single step, God makes him a promise.
"I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great."
Stop and notice the contrast with Babel.
At Babel, people tried to seize significance. "Let us make a name for ourselves." They were building upward, trying to secure their own blessing, their own glory.
With Abraham, God doesn't say: "Go build something impressive, and maybe I'll bless it."
He says: "I will. I will. I will."
The promise comes before the obedience.
This flips everything we normally assume. Most of us think: I need to prove myself first. Then God will bless me. We imagine we have to earn it, demonstrate our faithfulness, build something worthy of God's approval.
But Genesis 12 inverts that completely.
God doesn't say, "Go prove yourself." He says, "I have chosen you. I will bless you. Now walk with me."
We are not moving forward to earn God's blessing. We are moving forward because God has already been faithful.
This season isn't a stage on which we prove ourselves. It's a place where we receive grace.
But notice the direction of the blessing.
God doesn't just say, "I will bless you."
He says, "I will bless you so that you will be a blessing."
That little phrase so that changes everything.
The blessing was never meant to land on Abraham and stop. It has a direction. A destination. It's meant to flow through him to others.
Look around our congregation on a Sunday. People from almost every continent. Different countries. Different languages. Different prayers.
God didn't gather all these nations in one room so we could simply enjoy community together ... though we do, and it's beautiful.
He gathered us so His life could move through us into the city.
To people in your office who don't yet know that God kneels down to give gifts to people who don't deserve them. To your neighbors who have never experienced the kind of love and welcome that flows from the gospel. To the weary, the searching, the ones who don't yet know they're hungry for God.
You are not the end of the blessing. You are the middle of it.
And then we get to verse 4.
Three words: So Abram went.
The writer of Hebrews reflects on this moment and says something remarkable:
"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out ... not knowing where he was going."
Not knowing where he was going.
That's emunah. The Hebrew word often translated as "faith."
But emunah doesn't primarily mean intellectual belief. It doesn't mean having all the answers or feeling confident or understanding the plan.
Emunah comes from the same root as Amen ... which means firm, solid, reliable.
Emunah is steadfast trust expressed in action.
It's trust that moves your feet even when your head doesn't have the full picture.
Abraham's faith didn't manifest in a feeling of certainty. It manifested in the going. His faith became visible in his movement.
He had a word from God. And he moved. And in the moving, the faith was being formed.
THE QUESTION: Where Are You Waiting?
So here's the hard question:
What area of your life has God already spoken into, but you're still waiting for more certainty before you move?
Maybe it's a conversation you've been putting off for months. Maybe it's a decision that's been sitting on the table. Maybe it's a relationship you know needs to change. Maybe it's a step of generosity that terrifies you.
Here's what I know: You cannot will yourself to stop being afraid. You cannot manufacture the faith you need.
If you could, you wouldn't need God.
The only reason any of us can move into the unknown is because someone already moved first.
Into the dark. Without a map. Without a guarantee. Further than any of us will ever be asked to go.
Gethsemane.
"Not my will ... but yours."
That's not confidence speaking. That's not the presence of a map. That's emunah ... steadfast trust in the Father even in the place where everything screams to turn back.
The cross.
The place where Jesus couldn't see three steps ahead. The place where He had to trust the Father in absolute darkness.
And the Father raised Him from the dead.
Which means something has fundamentally changed about the road ahead of you.
Jesus didn't just show us how to be brave. He went into the darkest place a human being can enter, and He came back. Death has been walked through. The grave has been claimed. The worst thing that could happen has already happened, and it didn't win.
So you are not going alone. You are not going first. You are not going into territory that hasn't already been claimed by the risen Christ.
The question is never: Is this road safe?
The question is: Is God with me on it?
And the answer because of what Christ has done is always yes.
So what does this look like for you?
It looks like making room.
Not grasping. Not controlling. Not clinging so tightly to what's familiar that you can't see what God wants to do next.
It looks like asking: "Lord, what are you calling me into now?"
And then moving. Not because you understand everything. Not because you have it all figured out.
Just because you trust the one calling you.
On the unmapped road. In the disorientation. In the season where nothing is going according to plan.
You don't need to know where you're going.
Just who is going with you.