September 23rd, 2024. While preparing a sermon to preach at the Burmese Mission Church’s online service yesterday, where I wanted to focus upon the Old Testament character who gets most exposure among the ‘rollcall’ of faith-heroes in Hebrews 11, I began – rather belatedly – to realise that this is the character I can most identify with – particularly on two main occasions in my life.
The first was in 1984, when, as a pastor some fifteen years on from my first ministry in 1969 and now in my third pastorate. My late wife and I had managed to start buying a home of our own, but a few years on we had added two sons to our daughter and outgrew the house. If someone came to us needing a pastoral conversation, we didn’t have a private room to take them into. We looked at houses for sale and found one that was in our range, but at that stage few people in my church shared our sense of urgency in the matter. Eventually after much prayer we decided to sell our home and soon found a home owned by another church leader which we could rent from him while we looked for another to buy. We felt like Abraham being directed by God to leave Ur of the Chaldees, not knowing where he would be led to. (Gen 12:1-3). God immediately blessed our step of faith when – on the day we were moving our goods into the temporary home – the owner of the house we were hoping to buy, came along, and taking note that we were moving out, asked if we no longer had need for his house, to which we explained this was a temporary move and we certainly were still looking. He replied that his house was now back on the market at the same price, and it’s ours if we still wanted it. So we interested the church deacons in buying a one-third share, and enjoyed three further years in Ashby-de-la-Zouch until we got the call to Wallingford. During that short period, the house’s value had shot up by fifty per cent so it proved a good investment for both parties. I recall that not everybody shared our ‘Abraham’ vision, and one mature Christian rather mockingly greeted me once with “And how’s little Abraham?” Or maybe I was being a little over-sensitive.
The second occasion was in 2018, when I was seventy-two, nine years after retiring early to look after my late wife with dementia. She went to be with the Lord and soon after, God led me to meet Ingria, who – following her friend Adele’s advice – then took me to an unfamiliar African Church, where the leader prophesied – on repeated occasions – that I would have a Healing and Prophetic ministry, and Ingria, who would become my new wife, would be serving with me, using gifts God would endow her with. We knew it would be in Oxford, which is where we started visiting churches over a year ago, and we finally got the ‘Macedonian Call’ (see an earlier post) to help two churches worshipping in the same building. It would not be plain sailing, as is true of Abraham. He was seventy-five when he was called to leave his cushy home in Ur of the Chaldees and follow God to underdeveloped and unsophisticated Canaan. He eventually died aged one hundred and seventy-five, so perhaps his uprooting came in his middle-age, comparatively speaking; but his wife at the time was past the age of child-bearing, barring a miracle (which happened!)
So I rejoice in my Abraham-type experiences, and I can only hope to aspire to his faith – seen most in his obedience to follow God’s calling to follow (Heb. 11:8) and to be ready to trust God when he was called to sacrifice his son Isaac – the only hope for the future of Israel (v17).
*”You can call me Al” by Paul Simon is a favourite song of mine!
Healing in Jesus' Name 