READING: Genesis 11-16
God called Abram to leave his land and go to “the land that I will show you” (Gen 12:1). We don’t know all the details of how that happened, but we once again see God communicating with His people. As we have seen before, our God spoke when all the pagan gods in that region had no such ability; they had mouths but could not speak. However God caught Abram’s attention and spoke to him, Abram’s response was clear: he went as God had commanded. Abram was older (75 years old), there were Canaanites in the land, and leaving one’s home was much less common in the ancient world than in ours—but God had spoken to him.
In the midst of his journey recorded in today’s text, twice we read that Abram built an altar and called on the name of the Lord (Gen 12:8, 13:4). He was hardly perfect, but he knew the importance of worshiping God through sacrifice and prayer. He knew, in the words of Matthew Henry, “the natural duty of seeking his God, and calling on his name, that spiritual sacrifice with which God is well pleased.”*
I suppose this devotion sounds remarkably like yesterday’s devotion about Noah’s calling on the name of the Lord, but . . . none of us could ever hear enough this call to spend time with God. May the Lord challenge us each day to pray more in 2023.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: What is your plan to pray today?
DAILY PRAYER: “God, grant me faith to follow You wherever You lead me – and may my journey be bathed in prayer.”
TOMORROW’S READING: Genesis 17-20
*Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume(p. 35). Hendrickson.