Abraham – Part 1 - Hindrances
Genesis 12:6” Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.”
Friend, today I share an extract of the message that I preached in our recent ‘Fire Camp’ held in Chennai this month. Turn the hindrances and obstacles that come your way in life into ‘valuable-crisis-lessons’ rather than be stumped by it! Do you hear me? We do get awed by the audacity and the faithfulness of Abraham in packing up his bags along with his wife, brother’s son Lot and all that he owned materialistically and travel to a land that he did not know of. Pretty scary! Well, this is what you would do when you experience God spectacularly; you would go to places where others dread to tread. But wait a minute, never for a minute think that you would not have obstacles in your way. Your astuteness and shrewdness is not in how you start but in how well you finish! Read on….
After a lot of trudging around, Abraham reached a place called Shechem but his journey was not smooth and cool because the place was inhabited by the Canaanites. I am sure the Canaanites were rude to Abraham and did not encourage him to stay in their midst; it is now when he felt uncomfortable and lonely in a foreign land that God again appeared to him and said: “Unto thy seed will I give this land.” (Genesis 12:7) God is not going to leave you to fret and fear but would show up to comfort you; however, comforted by the words of God, Abraham moved from this place and further moved near the mountains on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east. Now, from the description I can say that Abraham had moved away from the crowd into the outskirts of the city near the mountains, where he would be closer to God!
When I read this incident, I want to share my testimony which would help you understand this subject better and pump faith in you. After relocation of our ministry to Hyderabad, we were one day commanded by the Lord to move to the outskirts of Hyderabad and start our ministry. When we asked for specific locations, God placed it in my heart that there would be mountains and small hills near that location. This was the most toughest landmark because we during that time, did not know the meaning of mountain in telugu. We went around some places and asked ‘are there any mountains close by?’ They replied, ‘what do mean by mountains?’ We were in a fix. Finally we got the telugu version for mountains and started our expedition again, after around two weeks of hard trudging we located the area, let me explain this to you, this is just beautiful. After looking at more than 100 houses, I repeat 100 houses, we finally came to the last house that was situated in the corner of that colony. It was almost dark when we got the keys and entered that house to survey it, as my children were scrutinizing the rooms, we stepped out into the balcony and when we turned around, my husband and me were flabbergasted when we saw the entire place surrounded by lovely mountains. Incredible! It is here that we first started our ‘home church’ before moving into the church where we now conduct our services. Even now as I think back, things look like a fairy tale; I’m sure it would be for many who read this devotion today. After the first day of the camp, I was talking to a youngster and asked him which part of the message touched him, he answered, ‘the place where you share your testimony about the mountains.’
“What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude toward it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity.” - J. Sidlow Baxter
