The Life of Faith: Blessing, Obedience, and Partnership
Three Key Takeaways
God is a God of blessing who works 24/7 to bless. The word "blessed" appears five times in just three verses of Genesis 12. God wants to bless Abraham, but He also wants to bless the whole world. God has never stopped working to bring blessing into human brokenness since this moment.
The life of faith requires both blessing and obedience. Abraham received God's blessing, but he also had to obey and leave everything—his country, his kindred, his father's house. God blesses us, but He also calls us to costly obedience. It's not one or the other; it's both together.
The life of faith is a quest, not an adventure. You choose to go on an adventure, but a quest chooses you. Abraham didn't go for a few years and come back. He spent the rest of his life wandering, fundamentally changed. The life of faith costs everything, but God works through us to bring blessing beyond what we can imagine.
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The Life of Faith: Blessing, Obedience, and Partnership
After four weeks exploring what kind of church we're building—God-centred, making disciples, sent on mission, learning to love one another—we're beginning a new series called The Life of Faith. For the next couple of months, we'll be following Abraham's journey through Scripture.
It's easy to set goals and a vision. The challenge comes in getting there. Life with God rarely works as a straight line from point A to point B. It's more like going this way, then that way, backwards, down, up—a journey involving struggle, faith, and the supernatural working of God. Abraham's life is one of the best examples of this in the Bible.
Over seven weeks, we'll explore different moments in Abraham's story. This week focuses on the beginning, found in Genesis 12:1-3, three of the most remarkable verses in Scripture.
THE CALL
"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 dishonours you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'"
Two questions help us understand what's happening here: What does this tell us about God? What does this tell us about us?
God Is a God of Blessing
The word "blessed" appears five times in these three verses. That's deliberate. The word only appears five times in all of Genesis 1-11. The repetition signals something important: blessing has been sparse, but now it's coming in abundance.
An editor might suggest finding a synonym, but the repetition makes the point. God is saying, "I'm going to bless you and you're going to be a blessing. I'm going to bless those who bless you, and through you, the whole earth will be blessed."
The God we serve wants to bless. Not just Abraham, but the whole world. God works 24/7 around the globe to bring blessing. He's never stopped. From this moment onwards, God has been looking to bless humanity.
Blessing Comes Into Brokenness
Genesis 1-11 tells the story of human brokenness. God creates the world. Adam and Eve sin and get expelled from the garden. Cain kills Abel. Wickedness grows so severe that God sends a flood, starting again with Noah—who promptly gets drunk after leaving the ark. The Tower of Babel introduces tribalism and division amongst nations.
It's a bleak progression showing how sin produces brokenness in humanity. Then comes Genesis 12: "I'm going to bless."
God doesn't sit back and wait for humanity to sort itself out. He speaks into the darkness and says, "Through you, Abraham, I'm going to bless the world." God's blessing comes into human brokenness.
The Cost of Obedience
God blesses, but He also calls Abraham to obedience. The call comes in three parts, each more painful than the last:
Leave your country—your culture, food, language, people. Leave your kindred—your extended family and relatives. Leave your father's house—your immediate family.
God asks Abraham to leave everything familiar and everyone loved, to go somewhere not yet revealed. "I'll tell you when you get there." It's a costly call to obedience.
Both Blessing and Obedience
Sometimes Christians emphasize blessing: "God wants to bless you. Come and receive God's blessing." That's true—God does want to bless.
Other times the focus shifts to obedience: "You need to obey God. Follow His commands. Do what He says." That's also true.
Abraham's story shows we need both. God blesses Abraham and calls him to costly obedience. Abraham must obey, but he also receives God's blessing. They're inseparable. It's not one or the other; it's both together.
A Life of Partnership
This raises a question: Is faith about what God does, or what we do? The answer is both. The life of faith is a life of partnership.
The Struggle Is Real
PAbraham's faith wasn't unrelenting victory. As we'll see throughout this series, Abraham makes mistakes. He does wrong things, lies to people. Things go wrong. He has to fight for faith. Cynicism creeps into his and his wife's hearts about having a baby.
The life of faith involves struggle. But that's the nature of faith—struggling and overcoming. That's what Jesus leads us into.
Quest, Not Adventure
Tim Keller draws a distinction between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is an adventure—a "there and back again" story. You go somewhere exciting, then return home to tell everyone about it.
The Lord of the Rings is a quest. You can choose an adventure, but a quest chooses you. When you embark on a quest, you might not return. Even if you do, you're so fundamentally changed that the person who comes back isn't really the same person who left.
The life of faith works like a quest. Abraham didn't take a gap year in Canaan. He left his father's home and spent the rest of his life wandering—through Israel, Egypt, various places—never settling. He didn't see all the promises fulfilled. Many were reserved for his descendants.
But the quest caught him up, fundamentally changing him. He did things he couldn't have imagined at the start. God worked in him, changed him, and ultimately worked through him to change the whole world.
Half the world's population considers Abraham their spiritual father. He might be, after Jesus, the most influential person in history—father of the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish faiths. Pretty remarkable for an idol worshipper from Haran with a barren wife.
God spoke. Abraham said yes. He got caught up in something far bigger than his own life, something that took everything.
Would Abraham regret it at the end? Would he wish he'd stayed in Haran, avoided the difficulty, pain, and struggle? He might have had an easier life. But he wouldn't have been caught up in what God was doing across the earth.
The Journey Ahead
The vision is clear: a God-centred church that makes disciples, sent on mission, learning to love one another. But getting there won't be project management. This isn't a company launch. It's an adventure of faith where God leads.
There will be times of feeling barren, needing to pray, "Lord, nothing seems to be working. Please richly bless us." There will be moments when God asks for everything—painful, costly obedience that feels like it demands too much.
Jesus was clear about the cost. It requires everything. If that's not a price worth paying, don't start. Because this isn't an adventure. It's a quest.
The cost is everything. But it's worth it. God might do something in us and through us that brings blessing far beyond what we can imagine.
At Redemption London
Redemption London is learning to walk by faith together. We're not looking for an easy adventure where we return unchanged. We're embracing the quest God has called us to—knowing it will cost everything, knowing there will be struggle, but believing God's blessing is worth it. We're a community caught up in something bigger than ourselves, trusting that God is at work to bring blessing to London and beyond.
