Abraham: One Nomad's Amazing Journey of Faith

by Charles R. Swindoll

We don’t know how much time passed between Abram’s separation from Lot and the events described in Genesis 14. Months—perhaps years. It was enough time for Abram’s company of servants to number at least 318 men, many of whom had families of their own. Genesis 14:14 describes these individuals as “born into his household,” which doesn’t necessarily mean they were born into Abram’s community as babies. This ancient expression meant “not purchased.” The narrator makes it clear that these men were servants by choice, not involuntary slaves. Back in the days before strong national governments, people sought safety in numbers. Some became citizens of a city; others asked to live under the protection of powerful men like Abram, offering their personal service in exchange for the benefits of community. They were not slavishly bound to Abram; they participated in a business arrangement: provision and protection in exchange for loyalty. Here’s why the distinction is important: Abram attracted a large number of loyal followers because he was a wealthy, influential man. His household grew in numbers because people saw how his community enjoyed provision and protection. Many of them came to him asking to be a member of his household. Meanwhile, other powerful men—rulers of cities, usually—grew more powerful through conquest. They raided their neighbors, took their possessions, killed anyone who didn’t serve their purposes, and enslaved the survivors. Free citizens of their cities paid ...

Great people don’t judge others for having needs—even troubles they’ve brought upon themselves. Great people see the crisis of another as a call to action.

Abram rallied 318 trained fighting men from his camp. Since they didn’t have a police department to call or a national militia to summon in case of attack, Abram and his growing community had to fight for themselves, so they fashioned weapons and were trained to use them. The expression translated “mobilized” is much more picturesque in Hebrew; it has the connotation of unsheathing his trained men. It portrays Abram’s servants as a blade that had been forged, sharpened, and polished into a gleaming, razor-sharp instrument of death.

A quick look at a map shows that Abram’s men marched more than one hundred miles north to the Phoenician city of Laish (see Judges 18:29), later renamed Dan. This city “guarded a major trading route running between Damascus and Tyre, and was therefore an important commercial center.”[14] Kedorlaomer’s army probably thought they were home free when they bivouacked in the valley outside the c...

If I were to boil down all the characteristics of greatness to a single word, it would be humility.

our future is as clear to God as our past is to us.

In Peggy Noonan’s book When Character Was King, one of Ronald Reagan’s daughters reflects on her father’s relationship with God. A lot of things he taught me as a child I didn’t reject, but I didn’t take them on big time until I got much older. He did have something special with God; he talked to God all the time. It didn’t mean that he was any more special in God’s eyes or that he believed that. We all are special with God. It’s not that God’s speaking to anybody more than anyone else, it’s that some people choose to listen. And talk back. And my father talked to God. That’s what I got as a child, I got that he just talked to God all the time. He just had conversations with God. And that’s the way I talked to God when I was a child. My idea of prayer was never that you sit down, clean up your room, clean up your act before you can talk to God. Never. It was always that I knew I could take my mess to God, I knew that I could just get down and talk to God like my father, all the time. When we’d go horseback riding at the Malibu ranch, just the two of us, I knew the way to get him to talk and to have a conversation was to talk about God. And talk about heaven, ask him about heaven—“What do you think God thinks of this?” “What do you think heaven is like?” If I went to that place we would have these wonderful conversations. . . . And he would just tell me sometimes, “Well I asked God about this and this is what He said back to me.” My father told me that my whole life. You as...

V. Raymond Edman, the president of Wheaton College for several decades, wrote a small but profound book titled The Disciplines of Life.

Without discernment, we are, in the words of William Irwin Thompson, “like flies crawling across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: We cannot see what angels and gods lie beneath the threshold of our perceptions. We do not live in reality; we live in our paradigms, our habituated perceptions, our illusions; the illusions we share through culture we call reality, but true historical reality of our condition is invisible to us.”[25]

The late Billy Rose, a syndicated columnist of yesteryear, wrote a short story that drives home the point for me. It helped me change the way I viewed time, circumstances, the world, and my place in it. There was once a fellow who, with his dad, farmed a little piece of land. Several times a year they would load up the old ox-drawn cart with vegetables and go into the nearest city to sell their produce. Except for their name and the patch of ground, father and son had little in common. The old man believed in taking it easy. The boy was usually in a hurry . . . the go-getter type. One morning bright and early, they hitched up the ox to the loaded cart and started on the long journey. The son figured that if they walked faster, kept going all day and night, they’d make the market by early the next morning. So he kept prodding the ox with a stick, urging the beast to get a move on. “Take it easy, son,” said the old man. “You’ll last longer.” “But if we get to market ahead of the others, we’ll have a better chance of getting good prices,” argued the son. No reply. Dad just pulled his hat down over his eyes and fell asleep on the seat. Itchy and irritated, the young man kept goading the ox to walk faster. His stubborn pace refused to change. Four hours and four miles down the road, they came to a little house. The father woke up, smiled, and said, “Here’s your uncle’s place. Let’s stop in and say hello.” “But we’ve lost an hour already,” complained the hotshot. “Then a few mor...

Wise people choose a mate carefully and then plan a wedding when it becomes clear that their walk with God would be more effective married than single. Wise people see singleness as the default status and then demand that the prospect of marriage justify such a radical change. People who don’t approach marriage in this way invariably experience regret—and often end up single again.

Some years ago, I came across the poetic testimony of an unknown Confederate soldier who received a no to every petition and a yes to every motive. I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked God for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing I asked for but everything I had hoped for . . . Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered. I’m among all men most richly blessed.[29]

God can’t shower you with blessing or grant your requests while you’re in rebellion; it’s not good for you.

Dr. Bing Hunter, while serving at Biola University, wrote, God’s delay in giving answers seems to be a major way He encourages faith. Having seen that He is faithful following prayer over a week, you find it easier to trust Him for ten days. Seeing the answer to persistence after a month strengthens me to wait in faith even longer for another. . . . Patience and faith thus develop together in prayer.[30]

To illustrate his point, Paul quotes a pagan playwright in 1 Corinthians 15:33: “Bad company corrupts good character” (Menander, Thais 218).

Convictions must be clearly established before God, or they will be twisted and weakened before others.

Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, said, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”[36]

YEARS AGO, evangelist Billy Graham wrote, “It has always been a mark of decaying civilizations to become obsessed with sex.”[37] No one can pinpoint exactly when it happened, but we can say for certain that in this generation, our Western culture is obsessed with sex. Someone might make the case based on art and literature throughout the ages that humanity has always been sex obsessed, but never before in history has sexual content been more omnipresent and brash. What appears on television and billboards used to be considered pornography. To view pornography, one had to drive to the seedy part of town and buy it in print or on film in a sleazy, dimly lit X-rated shop; today it’s available online for free. According to one large-scale study, 51 percent of boys and 32 percent of girls first viewed pornography before the age of thirteen.[38] As a society, we’re corrupting the imaginations of a whole generation of children before they reach puberty. The expression “youthful innocence” is fast becoming an oxymoron. Billy Graham continues, The immutable law of sowing and reaping has held sway. We are now the hapless possessors of moral depravity, and we seek in vain for a cure. The tares of indulgence have overgrown the wheat of moral restraint. Our homes have suffered. Divorce has grown to epidemic proportions. When the morals of society are upset, the family is the first to suffer. The home is the basic unit of our society, and a nation is only as strong as her homes. The bre...

Dr. Carle Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist who examined the rise and fall of empires through the centuries, paid close attention to the correlation between family life and national life. His book Family and Civilization concludes that deteriorating civilizations follow a reasonably definable pattern and that “atomistic families” dominate the social landscape in decaying cultures. When civilizations began to unravel, they had five characteristics in common. Marriage lost its sacredness, divorce became commonplace, and alternative forms of marriage were accepted. Feminist movements undermined complementary and cooperating roles as women lost interest in mothering and pursued personal power. Parenting became increasingly difficult, public disrespect for parents and authority increased, and delinquency and promiscuity became more commonplace. Adultery was celebrated, not punished; people who broke their marriage vow were admired. There was increased tolerance for incestuous and homosexual sex, with an increase in sex-related crime.[40] Zimmerman’s conclusions are so current, they’re frightening. He appears to have observed the United States in the twenty-first century and then summarized his findings. In fact, he wrote them in 1947, at the dawn of what many would consider the golden age of the nuclear family. His study of history and sociology was purely academic, not a reaction to what he saw as the decline of America. While his description of a doomed civilization describes ...

the church cannot resurrect what the home puts to death.

Billy Graham’s words are, again, helpful on this subject. In a declining culture, one of its characteristics is that the ordinary people are unaware of what is happening. Only those who know and can read the signs of decadence are posing the questions that as yet have no answers. Mr. Average Man is comfortable in his complacency and as unconcerned as a silverfish ensconced in a carton of discarded magazines on world affairs. He is not asking any questions, because his social benefits from the government give him a false security. This is his trouble and his tragedy. Modern man has become a spectator of world events, observing on his television screen without becoming involved. He watches the ominous events of our times pass before his eyes, while he sips his beer in a comfortable chair. He does not seem to realize what is happening to him. He does not understand that his world is on fire and that he is about to be burned with it.[41]

Always remember: passivity is an enemy. I’ve never known a time when passivity was healthy or led to good results. Be alert! Pay attention! Step up! Parent up! The next generation needs you! You have been equipped and placed by God in a place where you must be proactive. I don’t promise domestic miracles, but I can affirm the value of “a long obedience in the same direction.”[42]