Pulpit & Podium

What does it look like to follow God when the path is unclear, the promises feel distant, and the cost is real? In the story of Abraham, we see the beginning of God’s redemptive plan unfolding through one man called to leave everything familiar and trust in what God has said. This sermon traces Abraham’s journey—not as a story of perfect faith, but as a story of growing trust. Again and again, Abraham is faced with the tension between what he can see and what God has promised, and his life becomes a living picture of what it means to walk by faith and not by sight.

Yet Abraham’s story ultimately points beyond itself. The promises given to him—land, offspring, blessing—are not ends in themselves, but part of a larger plan to bring restoration to the world. Even in moments of failure and doubt, God remains faithful to his word. And in the near-sacrifice of Isaac, we see a profound foreshadowing of the gospel: a father offering his son, and God providing what is needed. This sermon reframes faith not as certainty, but as trust in the character and promises of God, even when the outcome is unknown.

I unpack:
  • How faith is not blind certainty, but trust in God’s promises in the midst of uncertainty
  • Why Abraham’s failures reveal that God’s faithfulness, not ours, is the foundation of the covenant
  • How the story of Isaac points forward to Jesus as the true provision of God
📖 Key Passage: Genesis 12–22
🎧 Listen and reflect: Where is God calling you to trust him right now—even if you cannot yet see where that path leads?

What is Pulpit & Podium?

An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Lectures

Well, church, I want to invite us to pause for a moment and pray this morning
as we feel the weight of our world in light of all that's unfolded in Minneapolis
this past two weeks. We prayed, as we do every year, for the dignity of every human life.
Two weeks ago, we prayed for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Last week, we prayed for Sanctity
of Life Sunday. These prayers remind us, as we know, that every human life from conception to
final breath is a sacred masterpiece of our Creator. Yesterday, many of you received our
Saturday email that included a blog titled, How Long, O Lord, from the president of our denomination,
the EFCA, which is headquartered in Minneapolis. It reminded us that lament is a prayer in pain
that leads to trust and today we stand in that tension we recognize that recent events and policy
shifts regarding immigrants and refugees our neighbors have left many in our pews in our
cities feeling unsettled feeling fearful or grieving we also recognize that god ordained
the role of government and the enforcement of the law to protect the vulnerable and uphold
the rights of all. And we acknowledge that the after effects of these complexities will not be
resolved in a single news cycle. They'll take time. And so we seek a way forward that is biblically
compassionate and also just. And we're also mindful of our local partners, local partners
that are doing good work, like Mission Adelante and Mission Southside, whose hands are the hands
and feet of Jesus to the immigrants in our city. And so in a posture of laments, let us now turn
to the Lord, not with partisan identities, but with a humble cry of the people of God. Please pray with
me. Father, who sits enthroned above the earth, our help comes from you. We come to you with heavy
hearts, filling the fraying of our world, we inhabit a time of unrest, where the paths of
peace feel hidden from our eyes, and our Monday world feels filled with uncertainty. We cry with
the psalmist, how long, O Lord? We regret the ways our systems and hearts have failed, and we admit
we are often shaped more by our culture than by your truth.
And we lift up those who carry the burden of authority.
For our leaders and those in law enforcement,
we ask for safety, God, but also for wisdom.
Grant them a spirit of discernment and a hunger for true justice,
that they might maintain order without losing sight of mercy,
seeking peace that allows all people
to live in quietness and peace.
We pray for no more loss of life.
And our hearts ache for the sojourner.
We see the immigrant and the refugee.
And we see the family in flight.
And we recognize that they bear your image.
We lament the fear that casts shadows.
And we pray for compassion.
We pray for our partners at Mission Adelante and Mission Southside
who are serving the immigrants in our city.
Provide for them abundantly, God.
And may we, the church, be a people who offer more than just words
as we serve with them and support their work.
In the long months ahead, let your church be a steady and guiding presence.
Not driven by fear, but led by the spirit of peace.
Remind us we were once strangers, brought near only by the blood of Christ.
When we are tempted to despair, remind us that you are our king who never lets us down.
We wait for you, O Lord.
We wait for you.
Lead us, Lord Jesus, until a day when every tear is wiped away and all is made new.
And all God's people said, amen.
Well, now if you're able, please stand with me for the reading of God's word.
And as we bring the brokenness of our world before God, we now turn to a story that reminds us that this is not new.
Genesis is filled with waiting and failure and fear, but also with a God who draws near and speaks
hope into impossible circumstances. Today's scripture reading is from Genesis chapter 17,
verses 1 through 8. Hear now the word of the Lord. When Abram was 99 years old,
the Lord appeared to him saying, I am God Almighty. Live in my presence and be blameless.
i will set up my covenant between me and you and i will multiply you greatly then abram fell face
down and god spoke with him as for me here is my covenant with you you will become the father of
many nations your name will no longer be abram your name will be abraham for i will make you
the father of many nations i will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and
kings come from you. I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future
offspring throughout their generations. It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of
your offspring after you. And to you and your future offspring, I will give the land where you
are residing, all the land of Canaan, as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.
This is the word of the Lord.
You may be seated.
Well, you know, before moving here from California, I was really not that into football or sports.
I'd watch occasionally growing up, you know, especially when I was playing football in high school.
You know, I was on D-line in high school.
I don't look very large, and I'm not very large, but D-line was the easiest practices.
And during that time, I'd watch a ton of football, but, you know, I lost interest as I began to kind of wean myself off that sport.
But being here has a way of drawing you back into sports, right?
Being in Kansas City Metro.
And I was really remembering watching sports this year, watching football this year, how frustrating it is to watch football.
And one of the most frustrating things about football, and from a spectator's point of view, and especially my point of view,
is when the team you're rooting for the team you're cheering for they're marching the ball
down the field one yard at a time making great progress they're on the brink of something so good
and then they get a penalty that's so frustrating and you know what the most frustrating penalty of
all to me when this when this is happening is a false start i mean the play hasn't even started
yet and you've already messed up and it leads to a loss of momentum it leads to a loss of
a fight and sometimes it just leads to a straight up loss it's frustrating false starts are
frustrating aren't they and we experience this in sports often but also in our lives
you might experience a false start in your work projects in your relationships
or maybe you've experienced a false start in your new year's resolutions it's february 1st
and that reminds you how are you doing on those i'm not doing well i experienced this a lot i set
really big goals for myself, fitness goals usually. But the problem with that is I have an
autoimmune disorder. And so don't feel sorry for me. It's okay. I'm good. But I have a lot of false
starts because I get going, I run well, I might lift well, and then I don't manage my autoimmune
well. And thank goodness Christina is not here this morning giving me the eye. She knows this
well. And I have a false start. I have a flare-up and I can't do anything for a couple days, a couple
weeks, sometimes a couple months. False starts are really, really frustrating. False starts are
frustrating, but here's the thing. False starts are about all we've seen in the book of Genesis
so far, and that is frustrating. If you're new with us or have missed the last couple weeks,
we are in a 52-week-long sermon series titled With God, and we're going to be journeying from
Genesis to Revelation in these 52 weeks, and we're spending a lot of time here in Genesis.
Nathan Miller was here last week and he told us that if we continue at this pace, we will finish the Bible in 8.3 years.
But don't worry, there's just two more weeks left in Genesis.
And so far we've seen two things in Genesis.
First, a very positive reality is that God wants to live with us.
It is out of the outflow of the triune God's love for the persons of the Trinity,
that creation came into existence
and is inviting us into that fellowship with God.
God wants to live with us.
It's a great and precious reality.
But we've also seen, almost immediately in our story,
a second, much more sobering reality.
False starts are the norm for humanity.
False starts are the norm for humans.
God created the heavens and the earth,
and it was good. But in week two, false start. This good life with God came to a close. And in
a sense, this good life with God, in a sense, died. And from there, we see a couple chapters
overflowing with sin and death, further and further and further away from the good life,
until we meet someone named Noah. And Noah, he was righteous and blameless. And so God,
because of his righteousness, because of his blamelessness, because Noah walked with God,
God commissioned him to build an ark, and God saved Noah and his family.
It's going good.
God tells Noah, hey, Noah, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.
Sounds like creation, doesn't it?
And Noah and his family disappoint us with another false start.
It's going good.
Noah's saved.
Noah's going to redo what was lost in Eden,
and then he gets drunk on his own grapes, his own fruit,
and his son dishonors him.
False start.
Not long after this, we get to the Tower of Babel, where humans are spreading, they are
multiplying, they are filling the earth, but, oh wait, they want to make a name for themselves
apart from God.
So they build a tower, another false start.
Kind of reminds me of this clip.
Check out this clip from an NFL game.
Oh, there's no sound.
I'll tell you what he says.
everybody but the center maybe in our case everybody but Enoch who walked with God and was not
thank you
well we've seen false start after false start after false start after false start and then we get to
story of abraham or abram in our passage this morning we learned three things we learned his name
we learned his age and we learned that he has a profound encounter with god we see it in verse one
when abram was 99 years old the lord appeared to him what appeared to him this is not the first
time we encounter abraham or abram we first encounter him was a much younger man a couple
chapters later in genesis 12. abram lived in ur which is in the mesopotamian region of the
ancient worlds in modern day iraq and abraham was a polytheist he worshipped false gods many gods
of the ancient near east but then the one true god speaks to abram the one true god encounters
abram and tells him to leave mesopotamia the homeland that he was in and to go to a different
land that god has for him and in this call abram answers the call and in the call abram god makes
abram a three-fold promise he's three-fold promise a land a seed and a blessing he tells abram he will
possess a land that god is giving to him he tells him that he will have a seed that will spread into
a multitude of descendants. He will greatly multiply Abram. And God is promising Abram that
he will be a blessing. He will be a good and godly influence on the world, that the nations will be
blessed through Abram's seed. And so again, placing his trust in God, Abram leaves. Abram exhibits bold
faith and he leaves all that he knows yet there's a big tension in abram's story god's promised a
land he's going and doing that god's promised a seed but sarai abram's wife is childless
and remains childless in spite of the fact that god has promised this seed
God has promised them to be fruitful and multiply, but Sarai is childless.
And this tension of being barren drives the story forward.
And as the story unfolds, Abram and Sarai have ups and downs, successes and failures.
They navigate this with God life that was kind of thrust upon them when God appeared.
And God reinforces Abraham by giving him faith and repeating his promises, his covenant in Genesis 15.
In Genesis 15, God promises Abram, again, many descendants.
He takes him outside and says, Abram, look at the stars.
Can you count those?
Your descendants will be like that, innumerable.
And Abram's saying, yeah, thanks, God, but Sarai is still childless.
The months and years go by, there's no pregnancy.
And eventually, we see a false start.
Abram's wife, Sarai, she takes Hagar.
You can kind of hear echoes of Eve taking from the tree.
Sarai takes Hagar.
Hagar was an Egyptian slave who served Sarai.
Hagar, her name in Hebrew is closely connected
to the idea of the immigrant.
Who's vulnerable, who has very little power.
And so Sarai takes her and tells Abram to sleep with Hagar and have a child through her.
We're going to make this promise of God happen one way, Abram.
So take my Egyptian slave and have a child through her.
And the result is disaster.
And once again, it's the most vulnerable person in the story who bears the cost.
They wait for God.
They've done this thing.
They've had a false start, and they wait for God in agony.
I think some of them knows that this is not how this promise is going to come forth.
So they wait in agony for God to keep his promise and for God to speak again.
And you can feel them asking, is this the with God life?
You can feel that Abram is not living the life that he was promised,
and he's not living the life that he longs to live.
Has God abandoned them because they've had another false start?
What they did to Hagar, is that why God's not fulfilling the promise?
Is this how the story ends?
And as Genesis 16 comes to a close, we're intentionally told something.
We're told that Abram is now 86 years old.
86 years old.
And then the very next verse reads in 17.1, we read that Abram is now 99 years old.
The Genesis writer wants us to pause and reflect on his advancing age
in the long 13 years of waiting on God's promise.
13 years between Genesis 16, 16, and 17.1, a decade plus of nothing from God.
There's no doubt Abram and Sarai are way, way beyond their childbearing years.
What were those 13 years like?
Imagine long days, long nights, long years.
Imagine the doubts, the disillusionment, the despair they must have felt.
Late passing day, things were looking more and more impossible.
Well, God seemed more and more distant, and his promises seemed more and more hollow.
Maybe you can relate to that this morning.
I like this picture from Mark Chagall, this lithograph.
You can kind of sense here the tension that Abram and Sarai might feel.
It's a little blue, right?
Sadness.
They have Ishmael, though.
They have a son, but something's longing there.
Something's missing.
They know that God's promise is not fulfilled in the way that he said it would be fulfilled.
Maybe you can relate to this this morning.
Maybe you're waiting.
Maybe you're wondering if God will show up in your life.
You're wondering if his promises are real.
You're wondering if the with God life is really possible.
Yeah, we preach all the time that you have the presence of God in you if you're saved,
god's presence is here but i don't feel it maybe that's you this morning maybe you're wishing
for god's promises wishing for a job maybe you're wishing for a spouse maybe you're wishing for
children maybe you're wishing for a house maybe you're longing for the rekindling of a burnt out
relationship. Again, I can only imagine what those 13 years were like for Abram and Sarah as I grew
older and older and older, wondering if this was it. Or maybe they just settled with Ishmael.
We've got our promise. Maybe the 13 years are Abram saying, ah, he's old enough now. He's a man
now. We've secured a little bit of what God promised us. Are you settling for a pseudo promise?
in your life are you settling for something that is kind of like what God
promised you but is not the full extent that's not the with God life there's no
partial goodness with God if this was the end of ad Abrams and Sarah's
relationship with God was this there where their failures that had thwarted
God's promises? Is it all coming to a close? But then, all of a sudden, when hope seems all but
lost, when God must have seen utterly and uncaringly and completely absent, he actually
breaks into Abram's life. He shows up. He appears. Verses 1 through 2 again. When Abram was 99 years
old the Lord appeared to him saying I am God Almighty live in my presence and be blameless
I God will set up my covenant between me and you and I God will multiply you greatly in Genesis 17
after these years of silence Abram is given more than a promise he's invited into a transforming
relationship with God. To be known by God himself and to know God himself. That is the truth I want
us to carry away this morning. If you write anything down in this message, write this one
sentence down. God is inviting us into a transformational relationship with him.
God is inviting you into a transformational relationship with Him.
That is what our text is showing us this morning.
And as it shows us this, it shows us three characteristics of this transforming relationship with God.
There are three distinct characteristics that constitute a with God life.
And the first one is deepening intimacy.
God is drawing us into deeper intimacy with him.
God is drawing us into deeper intimacy with him.
This is what he's doing when he appears to Abram.
First, God reminds Abram who he is.
God Almighty, El Shaddai.
This is the first time this specific name of God is used in Scripture.
El Shaddai.
And it highlights God's unrivaled power to bring something out of nothing,
kind of like a child out of a woman who is well beyond her childbearing years.
And after God reveals that he is the Almighty,
the one who has the power to keep the promises that he's given Abram years and years and years ago,
he invites Abram into a deepening life with him,
a life of intimate relationship with him.
He says, Abram, live in my presence.
Live in my presence.
Now, most English translations read, walk before me, or walk in my presence.
A very literal translation of these two important words is, walk in my face, eye to eye.
What I think of when I think of that is Christina and I's first wedding dance.
Eye to eye, dancing together, being before Christina.
That's what God is talking about here.
Intimate relationship, eye to eye, walking in his face.
This is an incredible moment in the biblical story after Eden.
The infinite, holy, sovereign creator, God of the universe.
He takes initiative to invite sinful and finite creatures that he has made from dust
to become his intimate friend.
That's how Abrams described later in the New Testament,
a friend of God, a friend.
This is an invitation to experience outside of Eden
what Adam and Eve were meant to experience in Eden,
walking with God in the cool of the day,
living in God's presence every moment.
And despite their massive failure and sin against Hagar,
this immigrant god is not giving up on this couple despite our failures god is not giving us up on us
he keeps his promises and friends through jesus's death burial and resurrection
this intimacy this the secure attachment between you and god this friendship with god is made
possible for us. And it's God who's taking the initiative, again, to come to Abram and to
continue pursuing Abram. You know, we often talk about searching for God. What does that really
mean, searching for God? We search for God, but then in our fear and our sin and our shame and
our addictions, we don't actually want to find him. We want to hide. That's what Adam and Eve did.
They left God, they left his presence, they stopped walking with him,
they stopped walking before him, and they wanted to hide.
Here's how C.S. Lewis puts it, speaking from his own conversion story in Surprised by Joy.
Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about man's search for God.
To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse's search for the cat.
If you're not a friend of God, it's sort of scary to draw near to God, isn't it?
I mean, we see this, there's a little bit of spoilers here.
We'll see this in Leviticus, that when the people of God set up the temple,
fire comes down to consume their sacrifices, and they all fall down in praise,
but also fear, because would you be scared if fire just came out of nowhere
to consume what you offer to God?
That's God's presence, and it's a fearful presence,
especially if you are not living a whole, integral life.
And so for us, if we are not friends of God,
if we are not living blameless, living whole,
then yeah, searching for God is a little bit like a mouse searching for a cat.
But, praise be to God that the with God life starts with God seeking you.
And if you're here seeking Him this morning,
It's a sign that he's already at work in your life.
If you're seeking God this morning, it's because God is pursuing you.
He's inviting you into a transformational relationship with him.
He's drawing you into deeper intimacy.
He's inviting you into deeper intimacy.
And he's drawing you into a transformed, transformed, transformed life with him.
Intimacy with God means a transformed life with God.
And so what immediately follows God's invitation to walk before him in his presence is a call to
integrity. God is forming Abram to have increasing integrity, and God is forming in us increasing
integrity as we walk with him. God is forming in us increasing integrity. And the Hebrew word here
is translated blameless or whole, but this word is one of the most important words in all of
the Old Testament because it conveys the good, true, and beautiful life of wholeness that God
designed and desires for us. It's a Hebrew word, tom, or tamim, and it points to an internal reality,
internal wholeness it points to a transformational way of being becoming and living in the presence of
god in in the world as well to put it simply biblical integrity is when your inner heart
and outer actions both align with god's design when your inner heart and outer actions both
align with god's design you might think of it from an engineering perspective a bridge doesn't
have integrity just because it looks nice it has integrity because the internal structures
and stresses match the external load and if the outer load exceeds the internal structure it will
lack integrity and fall apart the beam has a microscopic fissure or it lacks tome
if it lacks wholeness it'll hold for a while but it's not really whole
or think of a really nicely handcrafted wood table that's all one solid piece of wood it's
whole it's integrated it's not from ikea you don't get frustrated when you put it together
and it doesn't fall apart over time because it's made up of different materials it's no one
solid piece it's whole what's on the outside is deep on the inside too
and what makes this invitation into this wholeness this growing intimacy and increasing integrity so
amazing is that it comes after Abram's failure with Hagar notice the ordering
here it's not be whole and then walk before me it's not be whole and then I
will invite you into my presence no it's walk before me and then by walking as a
result of walking as a result of looking and beholding me eye to eye that will
result in your wholeness. Listen to how scholar Beno Jacob explains what God is saying. If you
want to become whole, which is my God's request for you, you must walk before me. You must place
yourself under my exclusive supervision, my exclusive guidance and protection. This image
is taken from the shepherd who walks behind his, her, directing it by his calls, or from the father
under whose eye the child walks. So when the questions arise, you shall take direction only
from God and be devoted to him without reservation. That's a transformational relationship, and that
can only happen if you are already walking in God's presence. So this idea of walk before me
you will be blameless. That's the idea. And it's not two commands. It's not walk and then a command
to be blameless. No, no. The wholeness, the blamelessness, the tone is a result of the walking.
God does not say, get your act together, be blameless, and then you can be my friend.
No, even after he fails, he said, come be my friend. Come walk with me. It's the only way
into this whole life this is because god is after a relationship not merely adherence to a set of
rules god is inviting us again our big idea god is inviting us into a transformational relationship
with him not a relationship that's a result of already being transformed
in fact this is the mistake of religious approaches to god right if i just keep all the rules
God will give me a decent life and leave me alone.
God doesn't want to leave you alone.
God wants to be your friend.
And you won't have that decent life unless you are God's friend.
And when you're God's friend, you'll have more than a decent life.
You'll have a good, a true, and a beautiful life.
God's not interested in all that rule following for rule following's sake.
He's after life with you.
He wants to live with you.
you with him there's only one way to wholeness there's only one way for the
life that Abraham longed for and also that we long for and that is walking with
God in this moment in this invitation Abram is given a new name in Genesis 17
verse 6 your name will no longer be Abram your name will be Abraham for I
make you the father of many nations the name god gives abraham abraham now means something
right names mean something and isn't it wonderful when god gives us a name that that means something
that that gives us our purpose and haven't we seen when when a people tries to make a name for
themselves how that goes but it's god who gives abram his new name abraham you'll be a father of
many nations abraham with your new identity which results in increasing integrity and wholeness you
have a new fruitfulness a growing influence in the world because this is the name and identity
i'm giving you and this is a third mark of our with god life it's growing influence
the more intimate we are with god the more integrated our lives become and the more
fruitful and influential we will be God is bearing fruit through our influence God is bearing fruit
through our influence this again was a mandate that was given at the beginning of creation all
the way back in the garden you might often hear it called the cultural mandate to be fruitful and
multiply and rule over the earth and this single word fruitfulness captures god's original blueprint
for humanity for human flourishing and then bridges two essential pillars of our existence
of our existence of our life here marriage which is a call to procreate and build families and
work the call to be productive and to steward the world but again fruitfulness is not just
about having children it's a comprehensive job
that defines how we are meant to work and live with god in creation the more intimate we are
with god the more integral we become and the more influential or the more fruitful our lives will be
Again, notice the sequence here.
Deeper intimacy forms greater integrity
that leads to increased influence.
Deeper intimacy forms greater integrity
that leads to increased influence.
This is all good,
but this is not just an ancient Near Eastern invitation
to one man in the East.
This is an invitation for the New Testament church as well.
We see this in John, John 13 through 17.
I really encourage you to read 13 straight through 17.
It's such a fantastic just collection of scripture
because here Jesus transitions his followers
from servants to friends.
And he invites them into this life
that God was inviting Abraham into,
abraham into a life defined by the same three characteristics he calls his friends to intimacy
he says abide in me abide be intimate grow close to me he calls his friends to integrity
a call to be sanctified in truth grow in integrity friends a call to be made whole
and jesus calls his friends to influence they call to bear much fruit proving their discipleship
through their impact
jesus redefines a christian life as a deepening friendship with god that results in personal
wholeness and outward fruitfulness personal wholeness that leads to the outward flourishing
of humanity deeper intimacy forms greater integrity that leads to increased influence
it's right something that we this is something we should be actively interacting with and
responding to so here's one practice that you can take this week and enter this with god life more
fully. Take a walk. I know it's cold, right? Cold's kind of just a state of mind though, right?
In California, I enjoy the cold right now. I know it's snowy, but there's nothing really
truly like taking a walk to remind us that we are humans designed for a human pace in God's
presence. We are just human. We're not designed for the pace that this world is operating at.
we're humans designed for a human pace in God's presence walk with God take a walk walking is a
central theme and metaphor in the passage walk before me it's a metaphor right it's a metaphor
for living all of life in the presence of God but walk Abraham literally walked everywhere maybe
rode a donkey maybe with a camel but he did quite a lot of walking I don't think he was worried about
getting his 10,000 steps in every day.
But the point is he lived life at a human speed.
Many people in that time did.
Abraham and Sarah walked everywhere,
but we don't walk everywhere.
We don't tend to operate at that speed.
In fact, we get kind of frustrated
when we have to walk somewhere.
Japanese author and theologian Kasuki Koyama,
in his book Three Mile an Hour God,
the speed of humans walking, three miles an hour,
here's what he explains. Love has its speed. It's a spiritual speed. It's a different kind
of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our
life, whether we notice it or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk, and therefore
the speed the love of god walks it's a human speed god walked with adam and eve in the garden
god calls abram now to walk before him and jesus invites all to come and follow him
so this week just let's walk take 10 to 15 minutes no exercise don't catch up on a podcast
I'll listen to music, maybe even go with no phone.
I feel your anxiety right now.
Just do it. Practice silence. Be with God.
Because here's the thing.
Oh, man, I experienced this a lot in farming.
You know, driving a tractor at 2.5 miles an hour for 12 hours is really boring.
I always have podcasts, always have music.
And one day I said, you know what, I'm not going to do that today.
Wear earplugs. No music.
The most stressful day of my life.
Because I realized something, God is always talking to me, and I was always, sometimes
still am, always drowning him out, distracting myself.
What if God is trying to speak to you, but you always have earbuds in?
You're always on social media.
And again, friends, I'm here with you, trying to reduce my screen time this year, too.
But what if God is speaking to us, but we're always too busy to listen to him?
So take a walk this week.
Will you pray with me?
Father, we thank you.
You are a God who does not give up on us after our false starts.
God, thank you for not giving up on us when we sin.
You are the God who comes near, who speaks, who invites us to walk in your presence.
And what we confess, God, is that we often want the fruit of life with you without the closeness of walking with you.
We want integrity without intimacy.
We want influence without obedience.
We want transformation without surrender.
So forgive us, God, for trying to live ahead of you instead of before you.
Draw us closer, Lord.
Form us in a deeper intimacy with you that our hearts might become whole.
Where we're divided, heal us.
Where we are impatient, slow us down to three miles an hour.
Or we're tired of waiting, remind us that you are faithful to keep your promises
and teach us to walk with you at your pace, in your presence, and under your care.
And as you make us whole, let our lives bear fruit for your glory and for the good of the world.
God, because our world needs that goodness right now.
And we pray all this in the name of Jesus, the one who walked with us,
who gave himself for us, and who invites us even now to come and receive grace.
Amen.
Thank you.