Going Without Knowing

My Young Life leader and I were hanging out yesterday, when it dawned on me. I need something that will help me want to spend time in the Word and really get to know it. I never really used a devotional book before, with the exception of the little booklet we had while at Work Crew before, and I thought about asking for one for Christman. I still will probably do that, but my Young Life leader looked at me, and told me to take one of his old ones... Score!

The book is called "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. I've read two pages of it so far, and I really like the insight that I have gotten from looking at what the man says about certain different situations, and especially passages from the Bible. It's pretty sweet.

Today when I was reading, the verse it gave me was from Hebrews 11:8 - "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going."
I think this is awesome. The whole verse is out of context, but we were focusing on the last part "...obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." He went there out of full sacrifice to God's will. He wanted whatever it is that God was going to give him, so he just went. He didn't know where he was going, how long it would take, or what he might have to go through in order to get there. The point is, he went without question.

Another thing that the devotional went into has to do with people wanting to know what God's will is, or what He is going to do with something. The thing is, God's never going to tell you ahead of time what He is going to do specifically. If He did, we would probably be lulled into a sense of an ideal Christian walk. If we didn't want to be a part of something He was doing, we would listen to His plan, and go far away, because it would be difficult for us, or require a lot of sacrifice that we don't want to give up. This is the reason He doesn't tell us ahead of time. It forces us to make the decision to follow Him willingly or not. We can't make the decision based upon what we know, but by how much faith we really have in God. If we go out like Abraham, and just go with faith without really knowing where we're going or what's going to happen to us, our faith in God will be even greater afterwards. We will also be able to come closer to Him. We can walk in faith and soon, there will be nothing separating us from God spiritually. Not just when we go see Him in heaven.

I just thought it was something cool to think about.

TJ