This sermon focuses on Abraham's journey of faith, highlighting the challenges and crises he faced as he learned to fully trust God with his life and future. Despite encountering severe famines and impossible situations, Abraham struggled with doubts and fears, yet God was leading him to a deeper level of faith that required complete surrender and belief in the miraculous power of God. The message emphasizes the importance of trusting God in the midst of hardships and allowing faith to transform the heart, rather than solely seeking deliverance from difficult circumstances.

Abraham had nothing to do with that. Abraham simply say faith is simply trusting your life, your future fully into the hand and care of the Heavenly Father. An obedience to a call to yield my life fully into his hands that just shall live by faith. He went out not knowing where he went. All right, you can check your map. It was about a 300 mile trip and it was a rough trip no doubt. There were a few watering holes. There were all kinds of hot sun beating upon him and he finally gets to a wilderness, an abandoned awful looking wilderness called Canaan and the Lord stops him. Now what do you get when you set out to walk by faith? Say I'm going to give everything into the hands of God. I'm not going to call the shots. I'm going to pray and trust God to lead me the rest of my life. I'm going to obey him. I'm going to love him. I'm going to be intimate with him. I'm going to get into his word. I'm going to seek him as never before. What does it get you? She's right. You know what he got? A famine. A severe famine. God says, Abram this is the land that I have promised you. There are no trees now. Everything is withered. There's no water for the cattle. There's no pastor. There's nothing and God said it's all yours. Everywhere you put your foot is yours and he's thinking I don't want it. We know he's thinking that because of what he did next. He built an altar and I can tell you knowing human nature know what he did next. You know what he's praying. Lord I don't understand this. I have walked in holiness before you. I have built an altar. I'm a worshiper. I'm intimate with you. He's called a friend of God. He has intimacy. He walks with God. He's in righteousness. He's in total obedience to the Lord. He's doing exactly what God tells him to do and he winds up in a severe famine. He's looking around and he's saying to his wife, I must have heard the wrong voice. We can't eat here. There's nothing here. There's no food. We have children. Lot was with him and his family. He had servants. He had all this cattle. There's a range full of cattle and he said what are we going to do? The famine was grievous in the land it says. Have you ever prayed that? He said Lord never in my life have I obeyed you more than I have now. I've been in your word. I've loved you. I've walked by faith the best I know how and suddenly you're face-to-face with a crisis. God says I'm leading you and finally when you get to the place where the Lord just says stop and then suddenly you are face-to-face with an absolutely impossible situation. There's trouble. There's a crisis right in front of you and this man must be thinking did I miss it somewhere? Did I get out of his will? Did I listen to the wrong voice? How can a dry, barren, unfulfilling place be a reward for obedience? After all I've desired after you Lord how could I end up in a famine? How many of you here tonight right now in this building at this very place you know that you love God with all your heart and you've been faithful to him and after all your fasting and all your praying and your devotion to the Lord, your cry for holiness, you're being led into a crisis. It doesn't make sense. It seems contrary to everything you know about the Lord and his leading. Now let me give you a few examples of that. Here's someone that's been praying for a better paying job and believing God and through prayer God opens it and you get that better paying job and you begin to thank him. Thank you Lord you've been so faithful. You are leading me. It does pay to pray and read the word. Look God's given me this wonderful job. Two weeks later the company downsizes and the last hired first fired. And suddenly you're out without a job face-to-face with a crisis. What about that telephone call that somebody gets from someone close to them in the family and there's somebody hysterical and the other the line and says I I don't know how to tell you but I have cancer, inoperable cancer, and I've been given six months to live. And you say wait a minute that's my family and I've been walking in covenant with God and I've been praying, I've been fasting, been seeking the Lord and now I'm led into this. Is this the reward for faithfulness? There's a young lady who prayed and prayed for God to bring somebody into her life, a spiritual man, because she wasn't lusting or anything up but she had spent a lot of time in faith with the Lord and she knew God would answer. She met a spiritual young man and that young man and she seemed to be so right and she felt good about it and she thought this was the answer to her prayer. He just walks away one day and gives no explanation. He says I don't care anymore. You can be holy, obedient, devoted, walking in faith, walking in the measure of faith God has given you and be led by God right into the test of your life. He was led by God to this severe famine. It was God's leading, wasn't the devil. All right, you ready for the next step? Whatever measure of faith Abram had up to this time it still lacked a dimension and many of us are lacking this dimension. God led him into a crisis that demanded an even bigger leap of faith. He had to take a leap of faith to leave everybody, everything and make a decision to commit his life and his future and his direction in the hands of the Lord, to take direction from the Lord and to totally yield his family, his future and everything into the hands of God and now God has brought him into a situation that demanded another leap of faith. God has brought Abram now to a place where he was going to bring Israel to the rim of the Red Sea, where it was humanly impossible to be delivered outside of a miracle. Abraham had been led into a place where his very life is now at stake, the life of his family, his children, all of those people with him, nothing to eat, no way to survive. Do you remember what the devil said about Job? The devil said, skin for skin, all that a man has will he give for his life but you put forth your hand now, you touch his bone and you touch his flesh and he'll curse you to your face and that's the same accusation the devil flings at God concerning every one of his children today. He said, oh yeah God, your brother, your sister, that child of yours, they'll serve you until you touch their belly. You start putting them in a hard place, you bring a depression, you bring hard times and when there's no food in the belly and they feel their hunger pains, they feel pain and they're in a hard time and you allow some crisis to come into their life, they'll turn on you and curse your face, God. That's still the accusation from the pits of hell. Abraham is brought to a place, he's either got to move into the miraculous and believe God for the impossible or take matters in his own hands. And folks, that's why God brings us to this point, to see whether you're going to absolutely believe him to be the miraculous God of the impossible or you're going to take matters into your own hands and do it your way in the flesh. Did Abraham pass the test? No, he miserably, miserably failed and Abraham went down to Egypt to sojourn. He wasn't willing to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. He's not ready to take that leap of faith into believing that God can do the impossible. You know what David said about people in famine? He said, God delivers his people from death and he keeps them alive in famine. David said, now this is later, but see this is the heart of God. David was revealing it was always the heart of God. In the days of famine, they shall be satisfied or they shall be fed in the days of famine. In fact, a hundred years later, his own son Isaac is in another famine and the Bible says there was a famine in the land and you'll find this generation Genesis 26 chapter. This is a hundred years later. This is his son Isaac. There was a famine in the land beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham and the Lord appeared unto Isaac and said, do not go down to Egypt. God said to Isaac, if you'll just stay here, I'll feed you, I'll take care of you and God did that. God fed him, God kept him through the famine. He learned to hold on by faith, but you see, Abraham, faith began to shake. You see, faith begins with a total abandon oneself into God's hands, but faith is never passive, but it's always active. There must be full confidence that God can and will do the absolute impossible, the impossible. Jesus said, with God all things are possible and in Luke 137, for with God nothing, nothing, say it folks, nothing shall be impossible. Nothing shall be impossible. Faith says God's enough. God's enough. See, the Lord here is making a man of faith. He's trying to make a man of faith. He's led this man into a hopeless crisis now, hoping he'll just give up all human thinking and say, God, live or die, you sent me here. You have been leading me. I've been living by your word. I've been living honestly before you. Take over. Live or die, I'm the Lord's. That's what God wanted. God wanted totally. Lord, here I am. If I have to sit here and die, I'll die in your will. I'm not moving. I'm gonna stand still and see the salvation of God. Folks, there's, listen to me now, there's no greater peace on the face of the earth than to trust God for everything in everything. There's no greater peace than to have had, to have absolutely abandoned yourself to faith in God's power to do the impossible when you've given up control of everything in your life to Him. Fear and doubt overwhelmed Abram, and now he's crying, Lord, get me out of this. Get me out of here. But you see, the truth is, faith is not meant to get you out of a hard place, but to change your heart in the hard place. It's not about changing your conditions, but changing you and changing me. God most likely is not going to change any of our circumstances. Occasionally He does, but you see, if you are not changing, if God just plucks you out of it, you have not learned to trust Him. You've not learned the lesson at all. You've not really learned the grace of faith at all. You see, the Hebrew children met Jesus in the furnace. Daniel saw the grace of deliverance in the lion's den. If he'd have been suddenly pulled out, he'd have never known the miracle. He'd have never seen the miracle. He would have never had a faith built on knowing that God does the impossible. Jesus, remember, is in the back of the boat when the storm hit the disciples' boat. And in panic, they wake him up, said, Master, don't you care that we're about to drown? Jesus is fast asleep. The wind is blowing, howling, the waves, water coming in the boat, and Jesus is fast asleep. Probably a beatiful smile on his face. Jesus is awakened, and he stands up and says, Peace. The wind stops. The rain, everything is calm. And they say, What kind of man is this? And they're marveling at this great miracle, but they missed the biggest miracle of all. They missed the greatest evidence of faith. They missed the real miracle. The miracle was the man asleep in the storm. There's the testimony of someone so resting in the hands of God. He's committed everything.