Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
Genesis 12:1 KJV

This verse for me represents a shift in my walk with God. It is clear that when God brings change to our lives He sometimes takes us to new geographical locations.

What strikes me about Abraham’s journey from Ur to Canaan, is the multifaceted process we need to walk out.

Ur represented the commercial centre and spiritual centre of the then known world.

The image above does not give justice to what was Ur in 2000BC.

Ur was a great city and yet God wanted Abram to leave. He was only Abram at this point. The act of separation God was doing was to separate Abram from the culture of Ur in all spheres of life. They did not know Yahweh as Abram knew Him. They worshipped many gods.

The departure from Ur was a process by which the revelation of Yahweh would develop along Abram’s spiritual journey.

I would suggest that God is calling some of you to make similar journeys right now!

Maybe God wants you to leave a sphere of influence, leave a circle of friends, a location, a congregation. It may not be understood.

Abram did not know where he was going. He simply went where God was leading. The place he would arrive at, would probably not make sense. However Israel as it is known now is part of God’s eternal programme.

It was to be a meeting place between him and God in covenant. (Refer Genesis 15). God was to bring Abram to the fulness of his revelation of God and change his name. He would become Abraham. Father of many nations.

The covenant was both descendency and ascendancy. He would see birthed natural sons from a supernatural birth through Sarah bringing in Isaac and spiritual sons in Christ. Through a miraculous birth through Mary.

Our separation unto God is not just geographical but also in the realm of our affections. Colossians 3:1 shows us that we need to set our affections on things above. But how?

When the things from above are birthed in us by the Holy Spirit we must therefore live where He places us.

God is bringing a separation of our lives right now, so that there is a restitution to the things of God.

I shall never forget the time in 1990 when I received the above text in Genesis 12. I had a season of prayer for one month between March and April. I was training in my church in Nottingham UK. The presence of the Lord came very near at that time and took me into that Scripture. He prepared me to be a “Abram” in the level of going away from earthly attachments of things I always knew and to be joined to things eternal.

In the joining (Hebrew “Levi”) I would transition to become an “Abraham” knowing that I would not only father physical children but spiritual ones too.

What sustains and gives us a context about Old Testament Scripture is to see it in the New. Hebrews 11 tells us what sustained the focus of Abram to becoming Abraham. He had a vision of an eternal community united and intertwined with Jesus.

What I have come to realise is that in the same way I must even close my attention to our own Church reality today. There is so much division, power mad people, false ministers, abuses. If we just have our attention on those things we lose the heavenly vision. Those things need confronting in prayer and the arm of justice on many levels. In favour of that heavenly vision.

Our spiritual journey must reveal the true God that brings us into Himself and bring us into a life of preparing for other generations with our example of faith and obedience. The type of faith that risks everything on something invisible and inexistent. We believe on what God says rather than what our senses tell us.

Heed the call to come away!

Shalom!