Walk Where You Can’t See Series

This is our 5th week of talking about your bucket list. I want to say how encouraging it was for our student ministry to jump up and challenge us last week to say what needs to be said! Their enthusiasm is contagious, and catching that is a whole lot better than catching the flu, isn’t it?

This whole idea of creating a list of things to make sure we get done while we still have time isn’t so original – but there aren’t enough people who do it. How’s your bucket list?

Have you…

invested in what matters?

figured out what’s true?

gotten uncomfortable?

had an awkward conversation with someone?

We’ve seen how each of these are really items that the Bible shows us we need to buck up and do! Once again, this week, I heard of another small group that’s undertaking a project to invest in what matters. You can do that as a group, or as an individual. And then, Sunday, Feb. 26 (3 weeks!) we’re going to share the news of those projects on Kick the Bucket Sunday!

This morning, I want to challenge you to add to your list “Walk where you can’t see.”

Walking where you can’t see is simply another way of saying, “Do something that requires faith.” In fact, it gets to the very essence of faith! I get that idea from a couple places. One is…

2 Corinthians 5:7

We live by faith, not by sight.

And the other is…

Hebrews 11:1-2

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.

One of those “ancients” is Abram, later renamed Abraham – the poster boy of walking where you can’t see. We join him in Haran. He had traveled there from Ur with his father and family, nearly 600 miles on the way to what is modern day Israel. But when they arrived at Haran, Abraham’s father stopped traveling.

Genesis 12:1-6

The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go 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 left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. 6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

It takes just a few sentences to read, but what that describes is a major journey of some 500 miles over treacherous conditions. Abraham left security and instead went where God told him to go. Listen to Hebrews 11 describe it:

Hebrews 11:8-10

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. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Did you see that? He did not know where he was going!

Walking where you can’t see can be hard, but a man of faith named Abraham handled it. That one act of faith in Abraham’s life becomes just one of many. And Abraham is just one example of many of people who are told to do something that requires faith, and they do it. Walk where you can’t see. Before he died, Abraham was able to check this off his bucket list.

I’ve ridden some pretty exciting roller coasters over the years. I like to think it’s a courageous thing to strap yourself in and get hurtled all over, turned upside down, and then dumped out at the end of the ride. (This past summer, we helped Jacob Knowlton, age 10, become a man by getting him on Raging Bull!) But really, before I ever get in that seat, thousands of people have already been in it before me. And when it goes hurtling through the air, it’s following the exact same track that it has done thousands and thousands of times before. I trust that it’s completely safe, and my life isn’t in danger.