Tag Archives: Genesis 12

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 4: The God Who Goes With Us

Leave a comment

Read Genesis 12:1–9

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20 NLT)

A lone hiker pauses beside a carefully stacked stone cairn on a forest trail at sunrise. Golden light filters through towering pines as the winding path disappears into the distance, symbolizing the journey of faith and the quiet practice of remembering where God has been encountered along the way.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The God Who Goes With Us” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

A few weeks ago, my family and I packed up our lives and moved to Mount Holly to begin a new chapter in my ministry. As exciting as a new beginning can be, it also means learning an entirely new rhythm of life. New neighbors. New roads. New routines. Right now, my phone rarely leaves its place on the dashboard. Every trip to one of my churches, the grocery store, or just about anywhere else begins the same way: I enter an address and follow the next turn. For now, I’m still learning the roads. I’m trusting the directions one turn at a time.

Abram knew something about new beginnings. Unlike me, however, there was no GPS guiding each turn. There was no detailed map, no carefully planned itinerary, and no assurance of exactly what lay ahead. There was simply an invitation: “Go…to the land I will show you.”

We often read that invitation as if Abram already knew exactly who was speaking. After all, we know how the story unfolds. We know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We know Moses, the Exodus, the prophets, the cross, and the empty tomb. Abram knew none of that.

There was no Bible to open. No covenant people. No history of God’s faithfulness stretching back through generations. Abram came from a world filled with many gods and many voices claiming authority. Before Abram could trust the promise, Abram first had to decide whether to trust the One making it. Faith began, not with certainty, but with relationship.

That relationship unfolded one encounter at a time.

When Abram arrived in Canaan, the journey was far from over. God’s promise had not yet been fulfilled. Yet the Lord appeared to Abram, and Abram built an altar. Then he journeyed on. God met him again, and another altar was built. Then the journey continued.

Those altars were not monuments celebrating that Abram had finally arrived. They were witnesses to an unfolding relationship. Each one quietly declared, “I met the Holy One here.” As the journey continued, another altar testified, “And here as well.”

How often do we miss those moments in our own lives?

We spend so much time looking toward the next destination that we overlook the evidence of God’s presence where we already stand. We ask God to reveal the whole map while ignoring the places where grace has already met us. We keep looking for proof that God is ahead of us, while the journey itself is becoming the evidence that God has been with us all along.

The church can make the same mistake. We become captivated by strategic plans, attendance goals, capital campaigns, and visions of what comes next. Planning is not the problem. But when our plans become more important than paying attention to God’s presence among us, we risk missing the very One we claim to follow. Before asking where God is taking us, perhaps we should first ask, “Where has God already met us?”

Jesus closes Matthew’s Gospel with a promise that echoes God’s invitation to Abram: “I am with you always.” Once again, God does not promise certainty. There is no detailed itinerary, no guarantee of an easy road, and no assurance that every question will be answered before the next step is taken. Instead, Jesus offers the same promise Abram had been discovering all along: presence.

Perhaps that’s why Abram kept building altars. They were acts of worship, but they were also acts of remembrance. Each altar became a testimony that the God who had called him was also the God who had met him—here…and here…and here again. They reminded Abram that the journey itself had become sacred because every step revealed another encounter with the Holy One.

We still build altars today, though they rarely look like piles of stone. They are the Bible worn soft from years of prayer, the journal filled with moments of grace, the waters of baptism, the bread and cup shared at Christ’s table, the photograph that reminds us of how far we’ve come, the hospital room where hope returned, the cemetery where resurrection became more than a doctrine, and the stories we tell of the places where we knew we were not alone. None of these things contain God. They simply remind us where we encountered God.

Perhaps one of the most important spiritual disciplines is learning to remember. In a world consumed with reaching the next destination, faith invites us to pause and build altars of remembrance. Every story of God’s faithfulness becomes another stone. Every remembered act of grace becomes another witness. Over time, our lives themselves become living altars, quietly proclaiming that wherever the journey has taken us, the Holy One has been there all along.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The journey of faith is not measured by how far we have traveled, but by how many places we have learned to recognize the presence of God.

PRAYER
Faithful God, when we long for certainty, teach us to trust your presence. Open our eyes to remember where you have met us, and may our lives become living altars that bear witness to your faithfulness. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

GOD BEGINNINGS, Part 3: The Invitation Before the Instructions

Leave a comment

Read Genesis 12:1–4a

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105 NLT)

A lone person walks down a winding path toward warm morning light while leaving behind weathered coats and garments hanging on a rustic fence. Each discarded garment bears a painful label such as "Not Enough," "Failure," "Shame," "Rejection," "Fear," "Expectations," "I Can't," "Past Mistakes," and "Other People's Opinions." The scene symbolizes leaving false identities behind and trusting God's invitation into a new life.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “God Beginnings, Part 3: The Invitation Before the Instructions” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I am neurodivergent. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m on the autism spectrum. Neurodivergence comes in many forms. I live with the lasting effects of a traumatic brain injury after being hit by a pickup truck while crossing a county road on my bicycle when I was fourteen. I’m also a highly sensitive person and a creative. My mind notices connections, perspectives, and possibilities that many people overlook. I’ve spent much of my life seeing the world a little differently than those around me.

The problem wasn’t that I was different. The problem was that difference made people uncomfortable.

Long before the accident, I had already learned that the world is remarkably quick to hand out labels. In second grade, because I couldn’t answer flash-card math problems fast enough, my teacher humiliated me by calling me “Slowpoke” and “Toad.” Other kids piled on with names of their own: “fatso,” “tub of lard,” “faggot,” “queer,” “pussy,” “wuss.” In sixth grade, another teacher called me “queerbait” in front of the class. High school wasn’t much kinder. I was a goth kid, so I became “freak,” “weirdo,” and, once again, “faggot.”

Those names have something in common. None of them came from God.

And yet, if we’re not careful, we begin to believe the labels other people give us. We carry them into adulthood. We build our lives around them. We let them tell us who we are—and who we can never become.

I suspect I’m not alone. Maybe your labels were different. Maybe they weren’t shouted across a classroom or whispered down a school hallway. Maybe they came from a parent, a spouse, a teacher, a church, a diagnosis, a mistake, or even your own inner critic. Whatever they were, they have a way of sticking. Before long, we stop hearing them as opinions and start believing them as truth.

When we read God’s call to Abram in Genesis 12, it’s easy to focus on the geography. “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family…” We imagine a map, a long journey, and an unknown destination. But perhaps God’s invitation is deeper than a change of address. Every place Abram is told to leave is also a place that helped define who he was. His homeland. His family. His inheritance. His past. Before God changes Abram’s destination, God begins loosening the identities that have shaped his life.

God doesn’t begin with a detailed itinerary. God begins with an invitation.

That matters because many of us spend our lives asking God for directions while still clinging to identities that were never ours to carry. We want to know where we’re going before we’re willing to let go of who we’ve believed ourselves to be. But discipleship rarely works that way. God’s invitation often comes before God’s explanation because transformation begins long before we arrive at our destination.

Perhaps the first thing God is asking you to leave isn’t a place at all.

Perhaps it’s the voice that still tells you you’ll never be enough.

Perhaps it’s the shame you’ve carried for years.

Perhaps it’s the identity built around a failure, a fear, a wound, or someone else’s opinion.

Perhaps it’s the version of yourself you’ve maintained simply because it’s familiar.

God’s invitation is not an invitation to pretend those experiences never happened. Abram’s homeland would always be part of his story. Your story will always be part of yours. But our past is not meant to become our prison.

God does not call Abram because Abram has finally figured everything out. God calls Abram because God sees someone capable of becoming more than the world has told him he is.

The same is true for us.

Faith is not pretending to have all the answers. Faith is trusting the One who knows us more deeply than any label ever could. It is believing that God’s voice speaks a truer word over our lives than every insult, every stereotype, every diagnosis, every expectation, every success, and every failure.

Before God gives us instructions for the journey, God first invites us to trust the One who is calling us by our truest name.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God’s invitation begins where false identities end.

PRAYER
Gracious God, so many voices compete to tell us who we are. Help us release every name that does not come from You and trust the identity You lovingly speak over our lives. Give us the courage to follow Your invitation, even before we see the whole path ahead. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).