Let Everything Go – Part 2

One of the most amazing, mind-blowing, thrilling aspects of hearing the voice of the Lord speak through His Word is that when He does, He reveals that He not only knows what's going on in your life, He understands what's going on.

He understands your fears. Welcome to Living in the Light with Anne Graham Lotz in her continuing study from the life of Abraham. Like most of us, Abraham's life was full of twists and turns, failures and successes, yet when God called him, Abraham obeyed, a choice that began a journey that lasted a lifetime. Today's message, Trusting God Completely.

Here's Anne. Would you open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 15, and we're going to look at this passage as we continue to consider Abraham's life and the example that he sets of someone who's embracing the magnificent obsession of just knowing God and making Him known. Genesis chapter 15, I'm going to read the entire chapter, except for the last few verses and all the termites, so we'll just leave them there.

Chapter 15, verse 1. After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid, Abram.

I am your shield, your very great reward. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I've remained childless, and the one who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, You've given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look at the heavens and count the stars if indeed you can count them. Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. And Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. But Abram said, O sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it? So the Lord said to him, Bring me a heifer, a goat, a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two, arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abraham drove them away.

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. Then the Lord said to him, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, To your descendants I give this land. Pray with me, please. Father, we are to be crucified with Christ so that we can live, and that sometimes we just have to wait for the resurrection or wait for that answered prayer, and now we thank you for the life of Abram once again is teaching us as he waits also. And so, Lord, we ask that you would put into our hearts that if we want to embrace the magnificent obsession, not only do we leave everything behind and let everything go, but we have to trust you completely with everything. We just put our faith in you and you alone. So teach us now from this passage, we pray, breathe life into it, make it make sense to us in the language of our own lives, and we ask this in Jesus' name and for his glory.

Amen. As a story told years ago, and I just have to apologize to you, this is such an old illustration, for the life of me I couldn't think of anything better to introduce what I think Genesis 15 is talking about, and it's the illustration of the acrobat who stretched the tightrope across Niagara Falls, and a crowd gathered, and they couldn't believe this man was going to attempt something so foolish as to walk across this tightrope over this boiling, churning water, but he did, and he stretched the tightrope out over the falls, and then he walked on it, and he teeter tottered across, and he came back and teeter tottered back, and the crowd just, whoa, they were so excited, and then the acrobat went and he got a wheelbarrow, and he took the wheelbarrow and he pushed it across the tightrope, and teeter tottered over, and he teeter tottered back, and oh, the crowd just went nuts. They'd never seen anything like that before in their lives, and he said, all right, you've seen me walk on the tightrope, and you've seen me push a wheelbarrow across the tightrope, how many of you think I could push a man in the wheelbarrow across Niagara Falls on this tightrope? Oh, we believe, and he said, all right, who will be a volunteer? Nobody piped up, and finally this one little man said, all right, he said, I will, and he climbed in the wheelbarrow, and the acrobat teeter tottered across Niagara Falls, and teeter tottered back, and the crowd just went wild, and they all said they believed, but only one man was willing to trust him completely, and we can say we believe God, and we can say we believe his word, and we can sing it, and we can say it, and we can go to church, and we can tell other people, but you know, there's a difference between saying you believe and climbing into the wheelbarrow, isn't there? And Abraham had to learn to trust God completely with everything, and you and I, as we embrace the magnificent obsession, and we seek to know God, and to make him known, and to receive his blessing, and be a blessing, we have to trust God, and God alone with absolutely everything, sometimes even when you don't understand, sometimes even before the promise is fulfilled, and all you have is the word of God to go on, and you can trust him with your fears, and your tears, and your years, and those are the three things I see Abraham specifically trusting God with in chapter 15.

So first of all, let's look at the fact that we can trust God with our fears, and we can trust God with our fears because God knows you, and he knows me, and the first little phrase says after this, and so God is speaking, he knows Abraham, he knows what this is after, and his word comes into Abraham's life in a very relevant way, God speaks relevantly to you and me, so I want to describe to you what this is after, so you'll understand the setting of chapter 15, it comes after chapter 14, 14 came after chapter 13, and you remember chapter 13 is when Abraham and Lot had parted ways, and Lot had insisted on taking the whole plain of Jordan, he had moved down to Sodom, Abraham at the end was left sitting under a tree at Mamre, and in a tent in the desert alone, you know Lot had taken everything, and so Abraham's just sitting there, you know minding his own business, and in chapter 14, these kings from the east sweep through the area, and the area in which Abraham was living, Canaan, was divided up into five provinces we'll call them, and these five provinces were like satellite nations to four kings from the east in the Babylonian-Iraq area, and the four kings of the east had these five provinces under their jurisdiction, and one of the things the five provinces had to do was to pay them taxes, and these five provinces got sick and tired of paying these kings from the east that they never saw, that they didn't benefit from, they got tired of paying them taxes, and so they revolted, and they decided not to pay these kings from the east their taxes, and they thought well you know they live 800 miles away, and the kings aren't going to bother with five little provinces that have rebelled, and so they thought they could get by with it, now the kings from the east came marching 800 miles west, and they marched through the territory, they started at the north, they went down the Transjordan area, they came back up through Sodom, and they destroyed everything in their path, they pillaged, they plundered, they destroyed what they didn't kill, they took his loot and captive, and they swept up through Sodom, and they took everything in the city, the people, the livestock, they laid at waste, and then they went back absolutely victorious, and archaeologists in history gives a suggestion that one of these kings was Hammurabi, and the four kings are totally victorious, they have not had one defeat, they're going back and they've taught these five provinces a lesson, they're taking all the loot and the captives and the plunder, and included in that was lots, and so somebody escaped, one of the captives got free, and ran to that oak tree in Mamre and told Abraham, and Abraham's minding his business, he just doesn't get involved in world affairs at this point, he's not into politics, and so he's sitting there minding his own business, you know, just waiting on God, and this person comes and says, Abraham, you know, these kings of the east have swept through the yes, I've heard that, and they've taken everything yes, I know that, and they've taken your nephew lot, whoa, now they've gone too far, and you see he hadn't been involved until it affected him personally, and I think that's one way sometimes, not to get off on a rabbit trail, but, you know, sometimes God can open up ministries in your life and you're detached, and you're not involved until it affects you personally, and that's one way I got involved in a prison ministry when it just came into my life personally, or maybe you get involved in an abortion clinic because it affects you personally in some way, and this affected Abraham personally, so he's going to get involved now, and to show you how big his household was, Genesis 14 says that he had 318 armed servants in his own household, now those are just the armed men, and then he called his three neighbors together, who he had an alliance with, and he and his three neighbors and his 318 armed servants take off after these four undefeated kings of the east, and they chase them up to north of Damascus, and I'm sure the kings of the east thought, you know, they killed everybody, they defeated everybody, everything they had in captive they killed, and so they're relaxed, maybe enjoying their plunder, and Abraham catches them by surprise, but you understand, he's not a military general, he's not a soldier, but he attacks them, and continues chasing them until he gets every single captive back, all the loot, all the plunder, and he defeats these kings, and now he comes back to the Sodom area, or back to that plain, and he's got all the plunder, all the captives with him, and the king of Sodom comes slithering up out of the slime pits, and he says, Abraham, you know, thank you so much, and you can have some of this, and you can have some of that, and just so condescending, it all belonged to Abraham by right of conquest, but Abraham says, you know, I would never want you to think you made me rich, you can have it all, I don't want to touch any of your stuff, and he said, I just want my neighbors to have their share because they fought alongside of me, about that time a very shadowy figure comes out, Melchizedek, he's the king of Salem, king of Jerusalem, priest of the Most High God, that's always intriguing to me, because you would think if he was a believer in the Most High God, he would be in Abraham's family, you know, but apparently there are other real believers out there that the Bible just doesn't touch on, and Melchizedek, especially is interesting, because the New Testament uses him as a type of Christ, anyway, Abraham ties 10% of everything to Melchizedek, Melchizedek blesses him for what he's done, and then Lot goes right back to Sodom, can you imagine, you talk about a warning from heaven, and he goes right back and sits in Sodom, immersed himself in the world, the other captives go back, the plunder is divided up between his neighbors, and the rest of it goes back to where it belongs, and Abraham goes back to sit in his tent, under the tree, all alone in the desert, and he's sitting there, and I'm just going to imagine now, it's after these things now, that God's word comes to him, but I'm going to imagine that he's very afraid now of what he's done, I mean can you imagine, he's taken on four kings of these, if they would march 800 miles west, to destroy provinces that refused to pay their taxes, what would he do to one Bedouin chieftain who dared to attack them, and so he's afraid, I think of the consequences of having done the right thing, and the fallout of having taken the stand, now what is this coming into your life after, what have you just done, have you just taken a stand for something that was right, have you just stood up against somebody who's in authority, have you just spoken out boldly, and after you've done it, does your heart start pounding, and you just want to go weak in the knees, and you think what have I done, I mean the consequences, I may lose my job, it may cost my husband or my spouse a promotion, this may hurt my children with their relationships, or maybe it's put my marriage in jeopardy, and you know, all of these things crowd into your mind, and you're very afraid of the consequences of what you've just done, or maybe it's where you've just been, where have you just been, have you been in a hard place, or a painful place, or a difficult place, and it's at this time that God's word came into Abram's life, so God speaks relevantly, he knows what time it is in your life, what time is it, and he knows what the time is, and that's when he speaks, he speaks relevantly and he speaks personally, the word of the Lord came to Abram, specifically to Abram, and this is the first time the phrase the word of the Lord comes in scripture, it appears eight times in this passage alone, so this isn't the voice of the creator thundering out, you know, let there be light, this is like the voice of the shepherd, and I wonder if it's the living word of the Lord that came to Abram, I wonder if this is another theophany, and the pre-incarnate living word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ coming to Abram at this particular time, and I know this weekend that the word of the Lord is coming into your life, and the word of the Lord is coming to you as you're here, and it's personal, and it's relevant, and he spoke clearly, said it came to him in a vision, and I don't want to get off on another rabbit trail here, but I'll just say a word about visions, because Abram, you remember, he had no scripture, he had no church history, he had no indwelling Holy Spirit, and God spoke to him in a way that was clear in a vision, for you and me, we have the whole council of scripture, we have 2,000 years of church history, 4,000 years basically of recorded God dealing with man, and I don't think we need visions, I think the application is that God speaks to us clear, you can't get it any clearer than black and white words on the printed page, that's God speaking clearly, if God gave me a vision, or if I had a vision, first thing I would do is go check it out with God's word, because there are other causes of visions, and other invisible elements and spirits that give vision, so don't ever make a decision based on a vision, I have a friend of mine, I've just watched her go right outside of what I believe is God's will for her life until her life is just falling apart, following visions, and I feel like I've not been the friend I need to be to her, although I've said to her, base it in God's word, check it out with God's word, she's still, her tendency is to believe these kinds of visions, and the fruit of them is destruction in her life, so I know they don't come from God, so beware of visions, and if God gives you a vision, and I'm talking about, you know, like a dream vision, and if he gives you a vision like that, just ask him to confirm it through his word, Apostle Peter, who saw the glory of Jesus in his transfiguration, said in his letter, 2 Peter, that God has given us something more sure than that kind of experience, and that kind of vision, he's given us the word of God, so this is more sure, God speaks relevantly at this time, he speaks personally, he put your name on it, and he speaks clearly, he speaks right through the pages of scripture, and he's spoken to Abram's life, when has God spoken to you personally, and relevantly, and clearly, and I pray if nothing else, that you get the fact that God speaks personally through his word, while I was in Dallas, I caught something like a bronchial infection, I know it's going around, because I've talked to other people who have it, but I had to go on a series of antibiotics, I totally lost my voice, God gave me a sound so that I was discernible, and I think that's why I'm still having trouble with my vocal chords, because I used them so strongly while I had no voice, I came home, I had two days to turn around, two days to change my sheets, change the cat box, you know, do all that kind of stuff that your husband doesn't think about doing, and repack and get myself together to come up here, and then I had a week to just plunge myself into preparation for last weekend, and I shared with my family, and my prayer team, that I felt like I was facing a freight train coming at me, and I was tied to the tracks, and feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility of leading a seminar, and being tired, and exhausted, and then trying to change gears, and cramming Abraham into my mind, all the workshops, six messages, and I was just very concerned that what I had to give would not be enough, and that people would be disappointed that, you know how you feel, totally inadequate, which, you know, I know now, after doing this as long as I have, that I am inadequate, you know, so what's new? Just sometimes you feel more inadequate than other times, and I was feeling very inadequate, and I was sitting up in my cabin that week before last weekend, and every day I have a list of names of people coming, and so I read over the list of names, I don't stop and pray for each one, but I read over the names, and I pray for all of them every day, just pray different things, and Thursday morning, before it would begin Thursday night, I was praying, and reading my Daily Light, and this is a little volume that was put out first in the 1700s, it's just scripture morning and evening, God gave me the thrill of publishing it in the New King James Version, but my mother gave me a copy when I was ten years old, I've been reading it every, you would think I'd memorized it, but I've been reading it every day since I was ten, you'll have to read the foreword in it to understand why it's so precious to me, because it goes back generations, and goes down generations, all my family reads it, my ministry team reads it, everybody I can get, so we're all on the same page, but anyway, and last Thursday morning, I was having my devotions, and this is the first thing I read, this prompts me in my prayer, and this is the scripture that was that Thursday morning, and he said, Anne, the mountains will bring peace to the people, the cove, the mountains, and he will come down like rain upon the grass before mowing, you know when the rain comes down on grass before mowing, it makes it grow, so you have to mow it, sort of grows like weeds, like showers that water the earth, in his days the righteous will flourish, and it was pouring rain outside, and I felt like he was promising that he would pour out his blessing, and pour out his presence, and pour out his spirit, and that the people coming last week would grow and flourish, and they would have peace, and oh it just gave me such a sense of relaxation, and knowing that he was in control, and he would take the weekend, and he did, and God blessed, just poured it out, and immersed myself in the messages once again, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, trying to polish them up, and sometimes you think them through too much, and maybe I over-prepared, but just wanting so much for it to be even better, praying for you, and you know the more you do something like that, the more inadequate you feel, isn't that interesting, that as I go on in ministry, I grow less confident in myself every day, until it's almost terrifying to get up, if I wasn't growing in my confidence in what Christ can do in and through me, so I sort of swap it, you know, confidence in myself, I swap for confidence in Christ, but I'm less confident in myself today than when I began ministry, and so I was feeling very, very inadequate at the first part of this week, exhausted from the weekend, everything that went before, and not in my daily life, but in my devotional reading for that morning was that verse from Psalm 72 verse 6, and he will come down like rain on the grass before mowing, and I felt it just leaped up off the page, and don't worry, I've got it in hand, and in spite of your inadequacy, I'm going to pour out my blessing, and the people coming are going to flourish, and they're going to grow, and I'm going to bless them with the peace of my presence. When was the last time God spoke into your life like that?

At this particular time, and he speaks relevantly, and he speaks personally, and he speaks clearly. Makes you just want to go back and read your Bible, doesn't it? Because he speaks through his word, because he knows you, and he knew me, he knew where I was at that time in my life, just like he knew Abraham. He knows you, and therefore when he speaks, he speaks relevantly, and personally, and clearly, but he also understands you, and we find he understands Abraham, and exactly where Abraham is, inside the secret places that Abraham hasn't shared with anybody, and I don't know what the secrets in your heart are, the secrets in your mind, but you think about how you feel, and you haven't shared it with anybody, but God knows, and he understands, and he comes to Abraham, and he says, Abraham, do not be afraid. You know, we would have no clue Abraham was afraid, would we? I mean, he went through and swept out those kings, he looked totally confident, powerful, in charge, told off the king of Sodom, and he comes back, you would have no idea.

I'm sure when he walked through the tent, his shoulders were squared, his head was up, he looked noble, confident, in charge, only God would know. His heart was beating out of his chest, and he was terrified of the retaliation, and that these kings were going to come back and wipe him out, and I wonder if he was terrified even in a deeper way. God, have I spontaneously responded to this emergency crisis in a way that's going to thwart your will for my life, and are they going to come back and kill me before I can have a son, and all these offspring, and descendants, and be a blessing, and have that seed through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed? Have I done something that's going to keep me from fulfilling my potential in your eyes? Do you have a secret fear like that? Do you think that you have done something to thwart God's will for your life? Do you think you've done something that's cost you your potential in his eyes, and you haven't told anybody, but down deep you're afraid? Maybe there's some other fear, and so God comes and says, Abram, don't be afraid. What's giving you panic attacks?

What secret fears are lurking in the deep part of your heart? Abraham's experience teaches us that God knows, and God understands. The peace God gave to Abraham wasn't a dream, wasn't a hope so. It was real as the peace he gave to the shepherds on another starry night 2,000 years later.

He sent angels to announce that the word of God had come relevantly, personally, and clearly, and could be found in a manger in Bethlehem. Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace. How often I found that my lack of peace is directly related to my lack of Bible reading. If you lack peace, if you're afraid, could it be you're neglecting to read your Bible too? The psalmist said, great peace have they who love your law. God will give you and me promises that bring peace in the midst of our panic, but we must tune our hearts to listen to his voice, to trust God completely. Like you, my life has been filled with circumstances I could worry about. But when worries allume, I lean on one of the first passages of scripture I put to memory, a promise of peace from Philippians 4, 6, and 7. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. So, don't be afraid. For further encouragement in God's Word, go to andgramlots.org. You'll find information to further your study in the life of Abraham in what Anne has titled, The Magnificent Obsession. Join us here next week for Living in the Light.