Faith | The Detour - Genesis 12

Amen, amen, and amen. It is good to worship together with you today. And y'all, I know it's warm in here. I know it's hot. I see the church mothers have busted out their fans. And if you think it's hot in here, may I suggest baptism? If we've not met before, my name is Lydia. And I always consider it a privilege to get to see you from this point of view. And I gotta say, everybody's looking kind of tan. I think that's because it's summertime and the sun is out. And for me, summertime means road trip season. Real quick, by show of hands in here, how many of you have ever taken a memorable summer road trip? Yeah, a lot of us. This year, my summer started with a road trip back home to Missouri to visit family. And it's about a 10-hour drive. So my husband Tristan and I like to leave at about four o'clock in the morning in the hopes that our two-year-old will sleep for the first few hours of the trip. This time, he did not. But do you know who did? Me. I am a grade-A passenger princess. Now, of course, I am co-pilot when I need to be. I am often on toddler entertainment duty. But when I have an eye mask, a podcast, and a Zofran,

baby, I am dead to the world. At the first stop we made when I finally woke up, Tristan confessed to me that he had accidentally missed an exit. And in doing so, cost us almost an extra hour of driving. It was kind of an unintentional detour. But really, he shouldn't have told me anything because he could have totally gotten away with it. And I would not have known a thing. We've been together for nearly 10 years and made that trip close to 50 times. And I have never, ever, not once driven it myself. You know why? Because I'm married well. That man has driven me all over God's green earth. And I wouldn't know a detour if it smacked me upside the head. All I know is that a lot of good summer stories begin with a road trip. And today's story is no different. You and I are going to road trip with Abram through Genesis 12 today. And at the same time, we're gonna look at a little road trip story of our own. Now, Abram's road trip story has got scandal, sister wives, camels, curses, plots, plagues, harems of hotties, and a whole lot of lying. It sounds a lot more like the stuff trash TV is made out of, but it's in the Bible, if you can believe it or not.

It is the kind of story that you start for the intrigue, but you stay for the ending. And in the end, this is a story of faithfulness. But you're gonna have to hang with me to get there. So if you've got your Bibles and your notes, if you're not using them to fan yourself, go ahead, pop those out today. We're gonna be taking some notes. Your key word is faith. And our text today is Genesis 12, 10 through 20. Now, before we get into our text, I wanna just quickly review what leads up to this point. This is what Nicol talked about last week. Out of the riches of his grace, God has promised that he's gonna bless the world through Abram. Now, Abram and his wife Sarai are old, and they don't have any kids. And yet, God has promised to make them into a great nation, to make Abram's name great, and to bring blessing to all of the earth through him. And on top of that, God promises to give him this huge expanse of land that he's gonna lead him to. So this is a massive, mighty, miraculous promise. And in an act of faith, Abram says, okay. And he packed up everything he owned, he left the land that he knew, and he followed the God who made him this monumental promise. Now, we're gonna do something a little bit different

here today. If you've got your notes with you, you actually have to do a little bit of drawing today, okay? We're gonna make a map. And I wanna be clear, this is not an actual geographical map of Abram's journey, although if you've got one of those big, giant study Bibles, you might be able to find something like that in the back. But this is going to be a map of Abram's story. We are going to watch the spiritual journey that Abram's story shows. We're gonna look at the same map in our lives, too. Now, I'm not an artist, I went to Bible college, but all I'm asking you to do is, in your notebooks, draw a map that looks like this, okay? If I can do it, anybody can do it. This is the shape we're following. And I'm gonna give you some words to put on this map along the way, so be listening for what those are. But let's go ahead and get started. The road trip begins. Like we said, Abram packs up all of his stuff and he travels hundreds of miles. He goes from Ur to Haran and down to the land of Canaan, which is where God was leading him. Now, we learned last week that Abram kind of struggled to go in with a full obedience at first, but finally, he does make it to the promised land. And along the way in the promised land,

Abram stops and he builds altars and he worships the God who gave him this wonderful promise, thanking him for what he's done. So when we pick up with Abram right now in verse 10, Abram is fresh off of receiving this world-changing promise. And at one of these altars he's built to worship God, he kind of has this really special experience with him, sort of a mountaintop moment. It was one of those. those times when our encounter of God feels almost transcendent. So you could say that Abram was kinda on a spiritual high, he was kinda on a spiritual mountaintop. And if you've ever had a moment like that, I wanna tell you that that's a good thing. I think that God often gives us experiences like that, and again, they often happen in worship, to help maintain our faith and reinforce our awe of who God is. But the thing about spiritual mountaintops is that as wonderful as they are, the direction off of most mountains is down. So it is not uncommon, right after having this special mountaintop experience, to then pretty quickly face trials or temptations on the other side. In Abram's story, this shows up in verse 10. This is where we pick up today, here's what it says. Now there was, underline this, a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there,

for the famine was severe in the land. Respectfully. What the heck? What do you mean there was a famine in the land? Isn't this the land that God had promised to lead him to? Isn't this the same land that is famously described as flowing with milk and honey? Honey, there was no milk. I don't know if you noticed in the text, but it said that the famine was severe in the land. Which means it's not like everybody was just kinda having to scrape by on a PB&J. It meant that all signs pointed to starvation if they didn't find food and quick. So the first thing that you need to write on the map of the story today is famine. Now how does this make any sense? Why would God lead Abram to a promised land that almost immediately seems destitute? This wasn't what Abram expected. Certainly was not what Abram wanted. For Abram's story, it was a famine. For yours, it might be something else. Told you we were gonna look at your story today too. And maybe there's something that you didn't expect or something that you didn't want that's a part of your story. Maybe it's something from your past that has haunted you for years or something that just came out of the blue

to knock you down when you finally felt like you were doing good. A diagnosis, a divorce, a death, depression, desperation, devastation, disappointment of some kind. The suffering in your life might not be a famine, but it might be throwing a wrench in the way that you thought things would go. And for those of us who follow Jesus, sometimes that can come from a misplaced belief that if you love God and do what he says that everything should pretty much go okay for you in life. There are a surprising amount of Christians who seem to expect that following God should mean freedom from suffering and usually that exposes the fact that they don't read their Bible. Nobody is getting out of here today without hearing this loud and clear. You will suffer in this life. Just what you were hoping to hear this morning, I know. But I tell you this, because I love you, there is a false gospel that gets preached that says that if you follow God, he will make you healthy, wealthy, and you'll have a one-way ticket to a premium prayer subscription where God just gives you whatever you want. And I would like for that message to die a quick death because it is a lie and it does an unbelievable amount

of harm when suffering does come and people either get blamed for not having enough faith or they blame God for something that he never promised to prevent. In John 16, Jesus says, in this world, you will have trouble. In Acts 14, Paul says, we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of heaven. In 1 Peter 4, 12, it says, dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. So dear friends, do not be surprised when suffering comes. Now, the suffering that we face might be the consequences of personal sin. It might just be the reality of a broken world. It might be the direct attack of the evil hand of Satan. But hear me, sometimes it is the good hand of God that leads us to a place where we have to face suffering. Now, let me be clear, God never tempts us to sin. James 1 13 tells us that. God is never trying to trick you to do the wrong thing. He doesn't ever force you into a poor choice. But God does allow us to be tested. Maybe you've heard this one before. You can tell me if you have. A faith that can't be tested can't be trusted. And when you test somebody in school, you're not trying to flunk them. You're trying to figure out what they've learned

and what they know. So we should never blame God for the kind of suffering that is caused by sin. But we should expect that God allows suffering to be a refining fire that forces our dependence on him. Because some of us don't learn that God is all we need until God is all we have. God allowed Abram's faith to be put to the test. leading him to a famine. Now the Bible doesn't tell us whether or not God caused the famine in Abram's story, but we do know he wasn't surprised by it, it didn't bamboozle him. God knew that there would be a famine in the land and he called Abram there all the same. But Abram saw that his road trip had brought him to a famine and he panicked. Rather than staying on the course that God set him on, he decided to take a little detour. Now when we face the troubles or the trials of life, we are always given two options for which path we will take forward. We either choose faith or we choose fear. And what's interesting about both faith and fear is that they both require you to believe in a future that hasn't happened yet. Fear assumes that the worst will happen and it will be the end of us. Faith assumes that whatever happens, God will bring us through it.

Having faith does not automatically mean that we think that things are going to go well, it just means that even if the worst does happen, we know that God will bring us through it. Fear puts the outcome on us. Faith puts the outcome on God. And what decision does Abram make? Well you see in verse 10 it says that Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there for the famine was severe in the land. Rather than staying on a path of faithfulness, Abram detoured down a path of fear. Now I wanna point out just really quickly here that the Bible does not actually make a moral pronouncement on whether it was inherently right or wrong that Abram left the promised land and went to Egypt in search for food. But we use the Bible to interpret the Bible and one thing we see throughout scripture is that Egypt often becomes a symbol of running away from God rather than trusting in him. It's where people go when they don't wanna be where God has them. Now that doesn't apply 100% of the time but it does seem to be true here that Abram is focused on the famine in the land and not on the God who led him there. God told Abram to go to the promised land. Did God tell Abram to go to Egypt? No, Abram did that all on his own.

When faced with a famine, Abram kinda seems to think well this must be bigger than God, I guess better take things into my own hands. In our life, fear is what happens when suffering comes and instead of trusting in God's promises, we start believing that he will not provide for us. We look at God and we say actually no thanks, I got this. We find out pretty quickly just like Abram that we don't in fact got this. So the next word that you're gonna write on your map is failure because the problem with taking the path of fear is that like a snowball rolling down a hill, eventually that fear will grow and it will give way to a spectacular crash in the pit of failure. Now let's see how this plays out in Abram's story. Verse 11 says this, when he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai, his wife, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance. Now pause. Fellas, I'm gonna give you this one for free. Abram should have stopped right there. When you wanna tell your girl that she's gorgeous, that you are attracted to her, that she's the prettiest girl this side of the Mississippi, there should be no ifs, ands, or buts after that. Just tell your girl she's a looker and let it stand. Abram did not follow this advice. We're gonna keep reading. And verse 12 says, and when the Egyptians see you,

they will say, this is his wife? Then they'll kill me, but they'll let you live. So say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you and that my life may be spared for your sake. Abram had a problem, all right. And it seems at first like the problem is that his wife is indeed beautiful. And I know that some of you single guys out there are thinking, lady, that doesn't sound like a problem to me. If having a beautiful wife is a problem, then Lord, afflict me. The real problem was not Sarai's beauty per se, though. It was the pinch that her beauty could put them in. Abram knew that Pharaoh was powerful and he figured that if Pharaoh saw a woman he wanted, he could just take her. That was pretty normal in that culture. If she already had a husband, Pharaoh could just have the husband killed without thinking twice about it. But if a woman was unmarried and she had a father or a brother that was looking out for her, a lot of times there would be negotiations or gifts or some kind of bride price involved. And so Abram's thinking was, if Pharaoh believes I'm her brother instead of her husband, maybe I can buy some time and stay alive. But one thing that you need to know about this story is that Sarai actually was Abram's half-sister.

Now, if you were here last week, then you remember Abram got his start in a pagan moon worshiping tribe. So he was not following God yet when he married his sister wife in the first place. And also another thing to know is not everything. that is historically accurate is morally prescriptive. So just because Abram married his half-sister does not mean that you should. We're Kentucky, we're not that Kentucky. So in saying that Sarai was his sister, Abram was really telling a half-truth. But my mama was real clear that a half-truth is a whole lie. And obviously, Abram was being deceptive to save his own tail. One of the side effects of taking the path of fear instead of faith is that it makes you self-centered. Faith requires you to set your sights on God and trust him to be the one who brings you through the famine or the suffering. But fear requires you to set your sights on your own self and become consumed by how you can take control to save yourself. Fear only sees what it stands to possibly lose, not what it has already gained. If you remember, Abram already had a promise from God that guaranteed his family, his future, and God's protection. But Abram wasn't looking at any of that.

He took his eye off of God's promises and he turned inward to look at his own fear and it made him selfish. You can hear it in his voice. It's not just that he decides to lie about his wife, but he asks his wife to lie too. Listen to this. He said, say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life will be spared for your sake. This little part here is Abram saying that he believes his chance of survival specifically depends on Sarai lying about her relationship to him and then willingly being subject to whatever it is the Egyptians want to do with the fact that she's beautiful. And can I just remind you that God will never make a promise that depends on us sinning in order for it to be fulfilled. Abram's concern was not unwarranted, but his logic was bad and his fear led to failure. So let's see how this scheme actually turns out, verses 14 through 16. When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful and when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake, he dealt well with Abram. Abram ended up with sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys and camels.

Well, Abram was right that his wife was a babe and the Egyptians took notice and he was right that because she went along with his lie, no one decided to murder Abram. And on top of that, Pharaoh's negotiations with Abram for Sarai made Abram a whole lot richer. He got sheep and donkeys and a camel out of the deal. But if we distill this to what it actually comes down to, Abram traded his marriage, his personal integrity and his faithfulness to God for a petting zoo. Abram's plan had stopped short of what happens now. See, now he found himself stranded from the land that God had promised him, outside of the boundaries of the plan that God had told him to follow and his wife was now a part of Pharaoh's harem. It's kind of hard for your family to become a great nation if you sold your wife out to a whole other one. Abram's plan here was more than just insufficient. This was failure, the pit of failure. This was disaster. But before we're too hard on Abram, maybe we should acknowledge that most of us have sold out for a lot less than a camel. Most of us know a thing or two about being in the pit of failure, facing the consequences of the path that fear took us down, facing the reality of the sin that we engaged to get there. Some of us today are trapped in addictions

because we numbed our pain instead of facing it. Some of us are buried in debt because of impulsive shopping or that gambling app on your phone that's not just for fun anymore. Some of us are alienated from our kids because we never dealt with our anger or crushed by shame because of choices that we made in secret or exhausted by lies that we wish we'd never told or returning to bad habits over and over and over or standing in the wreckage and disappointment of a life that we never imagined because we compromised on things that matter. Your story has a pit. My story has a pit. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and that fall leaves us in a place with no hope to save ourselves. We already tried doing things our way and that's what got us here in the first place. But what about Abram's pit? How is God going to keep his promise when Abram has so royally fumbled the plan? Well, let's keep reading. Verses 17 through 20. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. So 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's my sister so that I took her for my wife? Then, here is your wife, take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. Now here is the account of how God chooses to rescue Abram and Sarai, and ultimately bring them back to the promise. God sends plagues of some kind on Pharaoh's house, and if you feel like it's unfair that Pharaoh is the one getting plagued when Abram is the one who lied, God had a purpose in that. God clearly needed Pharaoh to be upset and uncomfortable in order to expose the fact that something was wrong with his most recent addition to the collection of trophy wives. We don't know exactly how word got back to Pharaoh, but eventually it did get out that this last woman was actually married to somebody else, and Pharaoh had unknowingly taken another man's wife, and in so doing, brought curses upon himself from a holy God. So Pharaoh confronts Abram, and he brings him and he talks to him about it. And I just gotta say, it is a bad day when there's a heathen Pharaoh who is chastising you for not following your own faith. But Pharaoh decides to kind of hit Abram

with all these rapid fire questions. He accuses him and condemns him for selling off his wife, and it's interesting to me that in the Bible, there is no response recorded from Abram. I think it's hard to say whether that's because Pharaoh was just so disgusted with him that he didn't even give him the time to respond, or if Abram truly couldn't say anything because he had, in fact, done all of the things that Pharaoh was accusing him of. But at the end of it, Pharaoh's fed up, and he realizes that Abram and Sarai are a curse on him, and so he sends them out of Egypt and where? Straight back to the promised land. They are escorted out and sent on their way back to where they came from, and boy, think about the drive home after that. I can kind of just imagine Abram clearing his throat and trying to get ready to defend himself, and Sarai going, buddy, I've got a mean streak and a big camel, and if I put that thing in four-wheel drive you'll end up with a hoof where the sun don't shine. Now, the Bible does not say that she did that, but would you blame her if she did? I don't know if Sarai was sassy, but I know that the only reason why that marriage survived was because of God's faithfulness to protect Sarai, not Abram's. See, that's actually the point of this whole story. I told you that in the end this is a story of faithfulness,

but the story actually is not centered around Abram's faithfulness. It's centered around God's. As we keep studying in these next several weeks through the life of Abram, I want you to remember that Abram is not just like this biblical example for us to follow, clearly. He is a reminder of our need for grace. The Bible is not a written record of perfect people, besides Jesus. From beginning to end, God's word points out, in painful detail, the mistakes that its character makes, and if Genesis 12 was primarily about Abram's faithfulness, it would be discouraging, but instead it points to a God who is faithful even when his people are not, and that's why the next thing you're gonna write on your map today is faithfulness. This is what gets Abram out of the pit of failure. What he did got him into it. What God did got him out. The rescue never depended on Abram's faithfulness. It always depended on God's. Now, I wanna go back to your pit for a minute, and I wanna speak this morning specifically to those of you who are just in it right now. Those of you who took the path of fear and landed in a pit of failure, and you are surrounded by sin and brokenness, this is what I want you to hear. You can't out-sin God's faithfulness.

There's a man that once fell into a pit, and he couldn't get himself out, and an empathetic person came along and said, I really feel for you down there. An objective person came along and said, it was only a matter of time before someone fell into the pit. A psychologist came along and said, you only think you're in the pit. A Pharisee came along and said, only bad people fall into pits. A mathematician came along and calculated how he fell into the pit. An engineer calculated how to get him out of the pit. A professor gave him a lecture on the principles of the pit. A reporter came along and wanted an exclusive story of his experience in the pit. A charismatic said, just declare you're not in the pit. A geologist told him to appreciate the rock formations in the pit. An IRS agent asked if he was paying taxes on the pit. The county inspector asked if he had a permit to dig the pit. A passive person came along and avoided the subject altogether. A self-pitying person came along and said, well, you haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit. An optimist said, well, the pit could always be worse. A pessimist said, ugh, the pit will always get worse. A churchgoer came along and prayed for the man in the pit.

His father told him, you've made your bed in the pit, now sleep in it. A doctor told the man to make an appointment with his office next week so he could take a look at the wounds from the pit. A lawyer offered his services to make the responsible parties pay for. His children asked him if that meant that their trip to the mall was canceled. His wife asked if he could pick up a gallon of milk on his way home from the pit. But Jesus, seeing the man in the pit, reached down, grabbed him by the hand, and pulled him out of the pit. The gospel truth is that God saves those who cannot save themselves. The point of Genesis 12 is not that Abram was faithful. It's that God was. There is no such thing as pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps in the Christian life. Our salvation has always depended on God's faithfulness. In our fear and our failure, He is faithful. Do you know that we see it in the language of the promise that God gave Abram to begin with? I want you to notice what God says six different times in His promise to Abram. Let me read it for you again. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And then God finishes out the promise by saying, To your offspring I will give this land. Now it's important to remember that this promise is not to us. This is a specific promise to Abram.

The promise isn't to us. But it is a promise for us. Because it shows us the kind of God that Abram followed. The same one that we do. He is a God who out of the riches of His grace decided to bless an undeserving world through an undeserving man. Abram could not have accomplished that promise on his own. But God said, I will. And when we are lost and unable to save ourselves, He says, I will. The same God who made a way out of Egypt for Abram when he messed up is the same God who makes a way for us too. It all comes back to Jesus, you know. Every story whispers His name. And you didn't think I was going to let you out of here today without telling you this. You see, through Abram came Isaac, who had Jacob, who had Judah, and so on and so forth. Through the line of David from which came a girl named Mary. And do you know what her son's name was? Jesus. Through Abram came a blessing to the whole world. And the promise of Genesis 12 is just a whisper that points to the promise of John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. And that promise is to us. If He never did another thing, He has already made good on His word because of what Jesus did on the cross. That is the faithfulness of God on its fullest display. Unable to be defeated even by death, He has promised us salvation. And because of what Jesus did, it is ours for the taking. And here's the last part of your map today. The only sane response to God's faithfulness is for us to follow. Now the first step of following is to receive the salvation He has offered from the pit of sin. This is the moment when we surrender and lay down our plans and our control. And like Abram, we follow God and we say, okay, God, where You lead, I will follow. And if that's what you need to do today, let God lead you straight into the waters of baptism.

Nobody is automatically born into the family of God, but anyone can be reborn into it. But when the decision that you will follow has been made, then the next part of that is choosing to stay on the path of faith instead of detouring back down the path of fear when we face tests or trials or troubles or temptations. See, following God is not just about letting Him save us, but letting His faithfulness have its way in our life. Today and tomorrow and the next day and the next. It is letting God lead you and then letting Him keep you. So here's where I want to talk to those of you who are facing that crossroads of fear or faith. This is the practical thing. Over and over and over in the Christian life, we will either face suffering of some kind or some kind of moment when there is a decision to make that forces us to choose a path forward. And I'll be honest, we don't always know whether the tension that we face or the test that we feel is something that Satan is attacking us with or that somehow God is leading us to to build our resilience. But do you know what's crazy? Either way, our response is the same. The right response in either situation is to take the path of faith. And what does that mean? Well, it means obeying what God has clearly told us to do in His Word, relying on the Holy Spirit to give us... discernment for our responsibilities and then leaving all of the outcomes to God. When you're faced with an opportunity to either tell the truth or be deceptive, you remember that the Lord detests lying lips, but He delights in those who are truthful. And so because God has been faithful to you, you choose to follow and you tell the truth and you leave the outcome of that to His hands. When you are faced with a mountain of grief that is so high you think you'll never see the other side of it, you remember that He walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death, that He is close to the brokenhearted, that a day is coming when He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain. And so because God has been faithful to you, you choose to follow Him and you stay connected to Him in your grief and you leave it to Him to bring you through it.

Can I tell you what this looks like in my life right now? Several months ago, my husband and I realized that we were at a bit of a crossroads moment and we had a decision to make about what path we were going to go down. I had been in vocational ministry for eight years, five of them being here at Southland, and I was in a position where I was getting to uniquely serve some of the women at this church and I was getting to see God work in powerful, wonderful ways. But at the same time those ministry efforts were growing and thriving, my family was not. Tristan and I were like ships in the night, just trading child care days with our son Benaiah who was also struggling with both mom and dad being gone for long stretches of time and coming home weary. And don't get me wrong, there was no one more supportive of that ministry than those boys. They are the men behind the women's ministry. But staying on the path that I was on was coming at a cost to them that I couldn't manage anymore and so for us, taking the path of faith instead of fear meant that I was going to have to say goodbye to a really good thing so that I could say hello to the best thing. After several months of prayer, we knew that God was leading me to step away from my role on staff here so that I could embrace the role of stay-at-home mom. I know that it is a privilege that I even have the ability to make the decision to stay home with that little boy that I love more than anything in the world. Some women would kill to have that privilege, but can I tell you the truth? It's one that I didn't really think I wanted. And I remember the Sunday at 5 p.m. when I sat right over there and we were singing that song, Crowns Down, and the line came around that says, and I will lay my crowns down at your feet and I will give my life as an offering. And do you know what I said in my heart to God? I don't want to. I don't think I want to lay my crowns down like this. God, I don't think that I want to give my life as an offering like this. Oh, I was fine with it when it meant a ministry that asked a lot of me but was fulfilling. And let's be real, it came with the perks of getting a pat on the back and an atta girl

from a lot of people, see? That's the kind of sparkly old crown that I like to be able to give to Jesus because if we're honest, it kind of makes me feel good about myself along the way. But now, God, now it feels like you're asking me to give you a crown that looks like this. And here's where my fear turned to selfishness. God, I love my boy, but what if it feels unfulfilling to stay home? What if I lose the ability to have an intelligent conversation because I spend all day with a toddler? God, why can't I have it all? And really, what I was really asking is what if I leave all this behind only to find out that I was never enough to begin with? What if it turns out that I won't be able to fulfill everything that my husband and my son need? What if I can't hold everything together? God, I can't save them, I can't save myself, I can't be enough of what anybody needs, I won't be able to do it, I can't be enough, I won't be enough. And do you know what he said to me? I will. My little meltdown was humbled by that reminder. Of course I am not enough. God's promises are for me, too. And thank God, they have never depended on my ability to fulfill. They have always depended on his. There's a two-year-old in the children's ministry right now who does not give a hoot that I am on stage, but he gives a big hoot how I show up at home later. And so when I step off of our staff in a couple of weeks, I am doing my best to do the next right thing by taking the path of faith instead of fear and trusting God with the outcome. I got to tell you, I know for a fact that when I stand before the Lord someday and we look back over the story of my life, what we will see is not great as my faithfulness. but great is thy faithfulness. Oh God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with

thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as thou hast been, thou forever will be. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me. It's my favorite hymn because it reminds me that my salvation has never depended on me, and the one who it does depend on has already delivered. He proved his promise at the manger, the cross, and the empty tomb, so I will trust him with my today and with every tomorrow because he is faithful. We will follow. Pray with me. Oh Father, faithful you are. God in the pit of our sin, our failure, our despair, you have lifted us up. That is when you came, when we were still sinners you died for us. God thank you, thank you for the promise. The cross is proof that you love us and the resurrection is proof that you will make all things right again, and God we cling to that. Help us to live out of that, help us to follow because you have been faithful. Lord we love you, we are grateful for you, we thank you, and in Jesus name we pray. Amen.