Don't Stop Short! Life is a Journey, part 1
Wondering what’s going on? Where’s my blessing? This series starts with a quest to get on track with God’s plan for you.
Through this series, you’ll learn how to live well & enjoy God's promises. You are loved by God; He knows your name. He has a plan for your life. Get helpful advice, encouragement, and hope for a life well lived in 2021 and beyond.
Are you walking in faith and victory? Set your eyes on the promises of God. You only have one life journey; say yes to Jesus. Like Abraham, leave your past with all its entanglements behind. Do not stop halfway.
Determine Your Destiny
Your Decisions Determine Your Destiny.
We are all on a journey. Life is a journey, beginning at birth, filled with choices. We are all headed somewhere. At times, we are not certain where life’s journey will take us.
You may need to ask yourself:
Am I headed in the right direction?
Do I know where I am going?
Have I considered the consequences of my decisions?
Have I arrived at my destination or do I continue?
What do I do when I get to a fork in the road? Do I settle down or continue and go left or right?
To reach the destination of life’s journey will take time, and there is a process. Often the process has its ups and downs, starts, and stops. The process is not always fun. The process will usually involve some right and wrong choices. The decisions and choices made in your journey will determine your physical and spiritual destiny.
Each one of us has a predetermined number of days to get through life’s journey. How you walk through the journey physically, and the choices you make during life’s journey, will determine your physical and spiritual outcome at the end of your earthly journey.
Consider the following scriptures:
“A person’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed” (Job 14:5, NIV).
“My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies, from those who pursue me” (Psalm 31:15).
“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:14-16).
“Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matthew 6:27).
‘For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’ (Jeremiah 29:11).
These verses mean nothing to you if you refuse to believe in God. The verses mean nothing to you if you cannot acknowledge God as creator of the universe. You and this universe did not just happen by chance. You were formed and created by God. You have a heart, soul, and a conscience.
One thought to consider: The verses will haunt you at the end of life’s journey if you think they are untrue.
Do not stop short of the truth.
You:
Had no say when you started this life journey.
Had no plans about your future in the early days, weeks, or months after you were born.
Have little control over when life’s journey will end.
Are loved by God and He knows your name.
Can have a hope and future.
No infant or person can add even an hour to their life because our lives are in God’s hands. God knows the number of our days and He has a plan for your life. You may think you know your future, but all your plans can be cut short by some unforeseen event.
In Luke, we find an example of a man who had planned for his future but did not leave room for God. This man lived and only considered life’s physical journey not realizing there is more to life than the physical:
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:18-21).
Every person is on a physical and spiritual journey even if they choose not to acknowledge or believe it to be true.
Your life can change without warning. A virus pandemic; a job loss; a storm, or accident of some kind, can change your life in an instant. The path you start out on may not be the path you follow all your life. The path you start out on may not be the path you want to end on. What you think today may not be what you come to know to be true tomorrow. For example: studying for one profession yet serving and working in another. The life you live today may not have been your first choice.
The life you live today will change for better or worse depending on the choices you make.
Life’s journey is filled with choices:
Joy and pain.
Ups and downs.
Hopes and disappointments.
Questions and answers.
Faith and fear.
Wins and losses.
Doubts or faith.
Wondering or wandering.
Promises yet to be fulfilled.
Promises kept and unexpected situations.
Get back to God’s Plans for you.
Life’s journey will have some stops and starts, ups and downs, all along the way. It can also have a time of remembering when, and a time of retracing one’s steps, to correct some previous poor choices.
At times in life, we will make some bad choices and or wrong decisions; however, we can always get back on the right path if we will seek the Lord with all our hearts and obey the plans God has for us.
His plan for your life may not align with the personal desires or plans you have held on to for years. Truth is, personal desires and worldly desires can get in the way of God’s plan.
You may begin to follow the plan of God, but something happens, and you get sidelined for a time. Or something worse, you decide to stop listening to God. You may choose to stop or take a different path that leads away from God. You may find yourself stuck on the wrong path for a while, but if you will start making good choices, focusing on faith and obedience in God, you will find your life journey has changed and is no longer on the wrong path.
Life’s journey is a process; there are no good manmade shortcuts. Just ask Abraham. When Abraham attempted to help God out, things got messy. For example:
He wanted Sara to lie and say she was his sister to save his life.
He had a child with Hagar when Sara was to bear the child of promise.
Have you Acknowledged your wrong choices? We need to acknowledge our wrong choices and decide to believe, step out in faith, and trust in God. The first step is always the hardest. To admit and learn from our wrong choices and decide to journey toward the blessing and promise of God is a huge first step of faith.
we can learn from Abraham’s life.
I want to begin this Life is a Journey series with looking at Abraham’s life and journey. Abrahams journey appears to begin in Genesis 11 with his father Terah. They are living in Ur of the Chaldeans. Terah will take his son Abram, his grandson Lot (the son of Haran), and Sarai (Abram’s wife), and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans and head for Canaan. But when they arrive at Haran, they decided to stop and settled there.
They stopped short of where they were headed.
In Genesis 11:32 we learn that Abraham’s father Terah dies in Haran at the age of 205. We cannot be sure of the reason why Terah chose to stop short and settle in Haran. It’s in Genesis 12 that I want to pick up Abrahams life journey.
Here we find God calling Abraham to step out in faith once again, and to go to a land that God would show him.
‘The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there’ (Genesis 12:1-5).
This life journey was a physical journey Abraham was to undertake, and yet it is also a spiritual journey. It is a physical and spiritual journey consisting of choices, both right and wrong, good and bad, a time of learning to walk in faith and trust God. It is a journey to a physical land that was unknown and unseen by Abraham in that he had never traveled that way before. It was also a spiritual journey where Abraham needed to learn to trust God and walk-in faith and obedience to God’s words. Abraham was to leave the country he knew, the people knew, everything.
God told Abraham to leave behind all ties to his past; his country and people including family ties. Abraham did, except for his wife, his nephew Lot, and those who worked for him.
This journey of learning to trust God and believe in the promises of God, even when things looked dire or did not make sense, must have been hard. Abraham needed to learn God was with him every step of the way.
Can you imagine:
Being asked to leave everything you know behind and start out on a long physical journey?
To go a place you have never been before?
To believe a promise that sounds too good to be true and, at times, even impossible?
Remember, Abraham’s roots were back in Ur of the Chaldeans. All his connections were back in Ur, and then lately in Haran. Maybe Abraham remembered that this was not the first time God called him to leave his country, people, and family. It happened back in Ur of the Chaldeans and now in Haran.
In Gen 15:7, God reminded Abraham that it was God who brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans. At times we need reminding to stay the course with God: “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
In Acts 7:2 Stephen tells us that God called Abraham back in Ur. However, on the journey to Canaan, Terah, Abraham’s father, decided to stay in Haran. Abraham stayed with his father until his father died, and God once again called Abraham to leave and journey to Canaan. At 75, Abraham continues his life journey that once again involves traveling hundreds of more miles on foot in the hot sun, only to arrive in a land which he will wander in, like a stranger.
Soon, Abraham experiences a famine, and they travel down to Egypt. I can only wonder what might be going through Abrahams mind. What is going on? Where is the blessing? Did I make a mistake starting on this journey? Can I trust God? Yet, Abraham believed God and he believed that his descendants (at the time he had none of his own) would one day become a nation and possess the land.
On a promise of God, Abraham believed that God would bless him and all the people on the earth would be blessed through him. On a promise of God, Abraham believed that God would make him into a great nation.
Abraham journeyed to Canaan. Abraham left his country, people and family. Abraham left his old life behind. He severed ties with his country and homeland. He broke off past relationships and friendships in Ur and Haran, leaving behind family ties that could possibly tempt him to disobey the word of the Lord.
Abraham’s call to leave his past lifestyle and be completely dependent on God is much like how we are to walk away from the world and trust Jesus on our life journeys. To turn away from the sinful lifestyle, old habits, old desires, old plans, and old dreams. We are to look to God almighty.
In other words, like Abraham, we will need to break off ties of the past in the same way Abraham did when he set out for Canaan, from Ur and later from Haran.
How is your life journey going?
Remember, you started your life journey at birth. But where are you now? Are you walking in faith and victory? Are you still living in Ur or are you on your way to Canaan? Did you start out for Canaan, but have you stopped short and settled down in Haran?
God’s call to Abraham was to obey and leave for Canaan.
Have you heard the call of God yourself? A call to leave behind your past sins, past worldly desires and ties to trust Jesus? To step out in faith and continue life’s journey of trusting God?
The first step is the hardest.
Leave the past worldly lifestyle or Ur and Haran, and continue your life journey to the promised land with all the promises God has for you.
Abraham decided to leave Haran and continue the life journey God laid out before him. Remember, God called Abraham to leave his country and people back in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.
Refrain from stopping short at your Haran.
I believe God gives every person ample time and reminders to obey his call. But sadly, not everyone says yes to God and they ignore and forfeit God’s blessing. Some need more reminders than others, but one day if a person refuses to respond, God’s grace will be withdrawn, and life’s journey will end.
Where will you be when life’s journey comes to an end? Ur, Haran or living and walking in faith and victory?
Will you be like Paul: obedient, believing in God’s promises, and turning away from his old ways; gaining the promises of God?
He used to persecute believers until God confronted him and called him to leave his old lifestyle and follow Jesus. Paul’s life journey changed that day. He turned his back on all that he once thought was important, and all the empty promises in life and followed Jesus. Paul chose to believe in the promises of God and receive the blessing of God and the righteousness of Christ. Paul’s journey was a process. It was a physical journey and painful at times, but the spiritual journey and blessing of God was real and the promises of God true. In all this, Paul trusted God.
Or will you be like king Saul: disobedient, stubborn, blaming others, and hanging on to his old ways; missing out on God’s blessings?
King Saul was confronted by a prophet, but he ignored the need to change and continued down his physical and spiritual journey in rebellion to God. He didn’t do what God asked of him. Saul later attempts to blame others rather than to admit the truth. Saul was spiritually blind. He refused to listen and obey. His life choices of rebellion and disobedience kept him from the blessings of God.
Friends, the choices we make reveal our hearts and they will determine our physical and spiritual life’s journey. A life journey of obedience, faith and enjoying the promises of God; or a life’s journey filled with rebellion, fear and rejection of God’s call.
Step out in faith and like Abraham. Set your eyes on the promises of God.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
You only have one life journey; say yes to Jesus. Like Abraham, leave your past with all its entanglements behind. Do not stop halfway. Do not think you have time to decide another day. Decide today that your life journey will end with enjoying the promises of God.
Suggested Praise and Worship
This and other sermons brought to you by Faith Chapel, an Assemblies of God church in Pleasanton, CA.
Genesis 37:2-4, 50:18-21: Learn how to live with integrity and see past your circumstances. God will use you if you let Him. Like a spiritual marathon runner, keep the faith and see the hand of God in your life.