“This is the account of Terah’s family. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran was the father of Lot. But Haran died in Ur of the Chaldeans, the land of his brith, while his father, Terah, was still living. Meanwhile, Abram and Nahor both married.. The name of Abram’s wife was…
Category: Abraham
Living with Resolve: The Promises of God (part 3)
The third obstacle that Abram had to overcome was his lack of patience. God gave the promise of a land and a people to Abram when he was 75. God delivered on the promise (Genesis 21:1-5) when Abram was 100. Do the math. It’s daunting for us to think about Abram waiting 25 years for…
Living with Resolve: The Promises of God (part 2)
God’s promise to Abram was that He would give him a land and then a people. Abram embraced the promise quickly, but standing on that promise would not come without challenges. He would have to utilize a deep faith in God to overcome several obstacles. Today I’ll post two of them and tomorrow catch the…
Living with Resolve: The Promises of God
Have you ever had a person break a promise? Hurts, doesn’t it? I think the thing that hurts the most is the disappointment that comes…not because an obligation went unfulfilled…but because of the violation of trust. When promises are broken, relationships change. A promise, after all, is only as good as the one who makes…
Living with Resolve: Places and Spaces (part 3)
Reading through Genesis 12:4-9, the biographer reports on two occasions that Abram stopped and erected an altar in the midst of pagan people. If you read on you’ll observe that through his life he built many more altars that would become spiritual markers for him. In the midst of all of the transition, change and…
Living with Resolve: Places and Spaces (part 2)
The story of Abram begins abruptly in Genesis 12:1-3. Following the death of his father, Abram received a special call from God to leave the security of his comfort zone and begin living the adventure of faith. God’s first word to Abram was “leave.” The reader might expect the first word to be “go,” but…
Living with Resolve: Places and Spaces (part 1)
Do you ever reflect on how you came to live in Central Iowa? Some of us may be natives who have never really gone far from home. Others are native, who, after a time of checking our greener grass in other places have returned. Others among us are transplants, traversing from faraway places while navigating…
Living with Resolve
Since I’ve been married I’ve moved seven times. Seven times in nearly 25 years. Some of those moves were simply across town. Three of them crossed state lines. The moves across town were aggravating because we didn’t take the time to pack as carefully as we did when we made a major transition, so some…
Living With Resolve: Participating in God’s Mission
Many of us began 2010 by making New Year’s Resolutions. This common practice is usually accompanied by the common practice of breaking the New Year’s Resolutions. Why do we have a hard time keeping those pesky promises we make to ourselves and to others?The basic definition of a resolution is “a formal expression of a…
Living with Resolve
Here’s the artwork for my new weekend series on the life of Abraham!
