Gotta go - Devotion for 10/9/08

Gotta go – Devotion for 10/9/08

Everybody wants something for nothing, right? Who doesn’t like getting some kind of a free coupon? I have a friend who was employed by a certain fast food establishment, and every now and then he’d give the church free ice cream coupons, and I’d get one of those and go so fast you could hear the sonic boom! Every body loves a freebie! But how often do we actually get freebies? You may occasionally get that free ice cream cone, and maybe occasionally you’ll BOGO (buy one, get one free), but it is not too often in life that we get too many freebies. Yet somehow we seem to expect God to fill our lives with all kinds of freebies.

Last night as I was teaching Bible Study, I was really reminded of something powerful. In Genesis 12, God calls out to Abram, and He tells him to “Go forth from your country . . . to the land which I will show you.” (verse 1) Now once Abram goes, then God will do many great things: He will make him a great nation, and he will be blessed. What’s awesome to me is that God is willing to do these amazing things for Abram – but Abram first has to go. To receive these abundant blessings, Abram has to first go. This is not a freebie offer by God to Abram – there is a cost – Abram has gotta go.

So many times in the church we pray for this and we pray for that, and we expect God to pour out all these blessings upon us. What makes us think that God works like that? To receive a blessing from God we’ve got to be willing to go. Go where? Well, look again at Genesis 12, particularly the end of verse 2: “And so you shall be a blessing.” You see, if Abram goes he will be blessed, but he will be blessed so that he will be a blessing “to all the families of the earth” as verse 3 states. So many churches in this day and time seem to think that if they just offer a wonderful worship service that they will grow because God will bless them. Maybe God will, but the way I understand how God works, He intends us to use some of the gifts and energy He has provided to go out into the world to be a blessing to the world. Though God freely offers his love and forgiveness, if we want the abundant blessings in this life, we can’t sit and wait for them to come to us – we’ve gotta go just like Abram. Where is God calling you to go?