Genesis 12 bursts with a turning point in the life of Abraham. He was called out of Ur and called into a heavenly vision.

This passage holds particular personal significance. I was training as a pastor on a government sponsored training scheme still living at home with my family. My father was terminally ill with cancer.

I had the habit of being in the church between 5 and 6pm. Praying.  It was in these times God would speak clearly. And very subtly God showed me my father’s death and a turning point in my life.

The night he died a friend of mine who was not even a Believer spoke in the strongest terms to depart to Brixham in Devon.

Another sign was a letter arrived from a friend who is a prophet who wrote upon the lines of precisely Genesis 12.

The loss of my father was great and yet this sense of call was much stronger than my loss in that life was propelled forward not only geographically but spiritually too.

So when God calls us out is because He is calling us into something greater than what we are being called out of.

Abram in Genesis 12 recognised God’s voice and obeyed. He had a vision of a city. Whose maker and architect is God. Hebrews 11 shows us the motivating call for Abram. He had a vision of something glorious.

God took him out of a glorious city to show him a even more glorious community whose God was the designer and inhabitant with that godly community.

The challenge to us today is to hear the call and obey that call. In doing so we see doors closing and new ones opening. 

What we need to do today is look back and see if we have retained the senses of Call and retained the same degree of obedience.

It was not easy because that heavenly city would not descend yet. As prophets were, their visions seem so real and impending that over time we learn wisdom.

What Abraham had to learn was that the community that would make up the heavenly city would belong to many generations.

Today there is much preaching and praying to reach our generation.  But what about the future generations?

When you are called out is because you are being called in.

Shalom.