Blessings to all of you and to all of you who are joining us right now on the live stream. Grace, mercy, and love sent your way from San Francisco to wherever you are. I’m going to pray, ask God to bless our time together, speak to us, and may the Lord meet us here. Lord, we come before you. We’ve had a chance to sing songs to you and honor you in our songs. Songs to draw near to you in them, to celebrate you, and articulate our needs. We’ve prayed in a way through these songs, Lord, I need you. As we come to this place, this little marking point, transition, and series that we’re now launching into that’s so connected to where we’ve been, the idea of you sparking things in our hearts and giving us the courage to step into the things that you’re trying to move us towards.

I don’t know the reasons why everyone is here or tuned in. What I know is that you want to meet us where we are. You know everything about us. Nothing’s hidden from you. You know our dreams, yearnings, and struggles that are unique to each of us. You know our pain and hopes. God, whatever the reason we’ve come here today, I ask that your words settle in. I pray for a flow of strength in the name of the Lord. I ask also for some of us to provoke in a positive way towards being courageous with our faith and more trusting of you. We bring our fears before you. We want to now ask you to meet us as we break the bread of your word, that there comes a flow of life. Let us leave here stronger, different than when we came in. I bless everyone here who made a decision to carve out space for you, that it would not be in vain. It would have great meaning. I ask this in your name, Lord, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Again, I mentioned that we’ve been Sitting with Spark, that’s been our series. We’ve had a chance to hear a number of different ones communicate. I wouldn’t expect everyone to necessarily remember each of the details of the different speakers who’ve shared their perspectives. But there have been a lot of things that have been suggested in the series leading up to this one. The idea is that sometimes things get stirred in our hearts. Sometimes it has to do with a desire to see something happen or a dream that we want to see come to pass. Sometimes it has to do, as we heard in one of the messages, with a desire to see an injustice reduced or dealt with or addressed. Other times, it has to do with things that are more personal, like hunger in our hearts or a yearning for peace. The things that that oftentimes God uses to spark life in us.

The times that were most open to the Lord are the times when things actually are the hardest in our lives sometimes. Times when we’re feeling overwhelmed or under a lot of stress. In those places, it’s so good to turn towards the Lord. One of the things that I’ve come to see over the years as a pastor is that oftentimes they become catalytic seasons in our lives that allow God to move in fresh new ways. It’s true in my own life as a follower of Jesus as well. Things get ignited when we turn to Him under pressure. There’s a great psalm that I was sitting with, Psalm 118, which says, “out of my distress.” Just let that linger for a moment. “Out of my distress I called on the Lord and the Lord answered me and set me free.”

The word distress, a very interesting word there, because we think of distress, distress is stress at another level. I think it means more than just “help me.” But there is an element of that there. It’s God, I need you, just like we sang about, I need you. I need you to be there. I’m feeling a tremendous weight. The psalmist is saying that I’m feeling the pressure. Maybe some of us are under pressure right now. Maybe we are dealing with deep anxiety. Maybe some of us have had tremendous stress that we’re bearing or we’ve become accustomed to dealing with low-grade stress as a way of life.

I want to suggest; let us come to the Lord, let us come to the Lord. He wants to bring peace into our hearts. A lot of times it’s out of the places of pain where the most profound things happen to us when we turn to the Lord. I think it was a C.S. Lewis who said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures.” This is a quote that we’ve often heard before in his book, The Problem of Pain. He says we can ignore even pleasure, but pain insists upon being attended to. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, but he shouts in our pains. It’s his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” When you look at that, let’s be clear, I don’t know if it’s that God is speaking louder in our pain. I love what C.S. Lewis is saying here. What he’s basically saying is, we listen better. We listen better because we’re more open. There’s something about being under pressure or feeling pain. Not only does it make us more open, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, and maybe some of us do this more than others, but I was thinking a little bit about why we cry. Why does water flow out of our eyes when we are emotional? Scientists don’t really know why exactly. They have theories, but when we’re in pain, we tend to cry. Why do humans cry?

Not too long ago, something made me sad. I noticed as I prayed and wrote about it in my journal. I was writing about my feelings and what I felt. I was just being honest with the Lord, trying to really be honest with myself. I felt all of a sudden, a tear comes down my cheek as I was writing. I remember it happening.  I thought to myself, why do people cry in times of great sadness? What is it that creates such a dynamic? I was telling myself, as I was writing, don’t cry, but the tears just kept coming. Then I said I’m going to go do a little more research on why we cry when we’re feeling emotional. So why do we do that? What is it? I was reading different articles. One of them inevitably brought me to this TV show. They said there was a connection between crying and this show called, This Is Us. Have you ever seen this show? It’s true. The third season’s in the fall. I’ll just let you know, because I told my wife, “I’m not watching that show.” She says, “Come on, come on.” So I said, “All right.”

I came across this article from this guy, Phillip Perry. I was thinking, Lord, why do we react when we cry? He actually brought together the idea of This Is Us, weeping, and human. Why do we do it all? This is what Phillip Perry writes. He says, “My mom, my sisters, and many female friends are addicted to the show This Is Us. When it’s about to air, one of them usually posts something to their social media like better get the tissues ready. I myself avoid the show like a plague ravaged raccoon.” That was my plan until my wife got me hooked. The writer says, “It got me thinking about this sadness induced physical response.”

I’m just thinking “oh, I have a fellow explorer in the realm of tears.” He says, “We can cry out of sadness or fear. Human beings cry when they’re sad, afraid, or frustrated. They can cry out of anger and even joy.” But why do streams of liquid leave our eyes? What is the dynamic? We all think, oh, it’s because of our emotions. I know. But what is it about the emotions that connect with us in such a way that all of a sudden our eyes start to water and tears come? “The truth is,” the writer says, “no one really knows for sure.” That is to say, scientists don’t even agree why tears stream down our cheeks and we’re racked with spasms. Of course, the tell-tale wailing and sobbing comprise having a full-blown cry. There’s also a great variety among humans. “We all have different thresholds for the act,” he writes. Some of us never even cry at all. But in a scientific sense, this was interesting, we are the only organism that tears up due to our emotions, only human beings. Other creatures do so merely to remove irritants from the eyes.

Science has different perspectives. The idea is that there’s something about a release there. Others, really don’t know the reasons why. Again, this is a uniquely human dynamic. I actually think it’s part of the Image Dei, the Latin for the image of God. I think there’s a part of the imprint of God that is emotional. I love the fact that Jesus wept. I remember it was the first verse I memorized in Sunday School because it was the easiest, John 11:35. Jesus wept. I think, “I can do that one.” But Jesus wept. He wept. Why? In His case, that was at the loss of his friend. He wept. I have a picture in my mind’s eye of the Lord weeping. Crying. It’s powerful.

Pain could be a catalyst for spark. Biblically speaking, it can be embraced as an opportunity for face ignition. Pain, hurt, and woundedness actually can become a mechanism for breakthrough in our lives. I know that doesn’t sound like, “oh, I want that”. What I’m saying is God can use things that are hard to bring forth opportunity in our lives. He always does. Whether it’s because of something that is sparked because we’re under pressure, we feel a lot of hurts, or something is sparked because of something that we want to pursue. It might be something more positive that’s stirring us. When that is stirred in us, we feel something moving in our hearts. A yearning for something, a breakthrough in my life, an end to this, I don’t want to be free of it, whatever it is, that then God will bring us to these places where He then is going to want us to step forward in a certain direction. Inevitably, stirrings invite us into a faith journey, and a faith journey always involves a step. Movement, an action, something that gets faith moving.

Maybe there’s no better figure in all the Bible than, as an example of faith, journey, and life as a metaphor, but also as a real thing that happened in history, than a man named Abraham. Some of us who’ve either grown up around the Bible or are very familiar with it, know that Abraham is one of the key figures in all the scriptures. He’s also historically one of the most important people that has ever lived. From a purely physical standpoint, he is the progenitor of all the Jewish people. They flow from Abraham. If you read the Islamic tradition, as well as the tradition of Judaism, all Arabic people flow from Abraham too. Isaac, the Jewish people. Ishmael, the Arabic people. Abraham the center. In the New Testament, we’re also told that not only is he the physical forefather of Isaac and Ishmael, the peoples that come from that line, but the Bible also makes it clear that Abraham is the father of all those who have faith in Jesus. Look at the verse in your handout there. This is in Romans 4. 

I put two different verses together from the fourth chapter, one from the ESV, one from the NLT. Those are just Bible translations, but it was for a reason. It isn’t in your Bible, you’ll never see a “b.” That’s just me saying that I’m only using the second part of that verse. What does the scripture say? Abraham believed in God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham is the spiritual father of those who has faith. We see that Abraham is not only the physical father of the Jewish and Arab people, but he’s also the spiritual father of all those who have faith in God and specifically in His son, Jesus. It’s a big deal. This is a critical person in the scriptures.

His story alone occupies a quarter of the book of Genesis. In Genesis 12, incredibly, at the age of 75, he’s asked by God to take a journey, a step of faith that will prove to be the greatest act of faith. Well, no, it will be the second greatest act of faith he will ever be asked to take. What Abraham doesn’t know is that his greatest act of faith that he will be asked to take is still years ahead of him. He will be asked a different kind of question relating to the one son of the promise he was given. He’s asked to consider giving Isaac back to God in a way that he could not have envisioned. But that’s a whole nother story. I would say, this is the second greatest act of faith he’s ever asked to do.

We know that when Abraham makes this journey, this step that he takes, we’re told about what leads up to it. I’m not going to spend a ton of time now. I actually had debated whether or not to read through this entire little opening piece in Genesis 11. You can see it in the handout. I’ll just read the opening verse. It says, “this is the account of Terah’s family. Terah was the father of Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Haran was the father of Lot.” We’re told, if you read through that passage, “that Terah, the family head, Abraham’s father,” you can see on that last verse there, “one day Terah took his son Abram and daughter-in-law, Sarah,” Sarai at the time, Abram at the time, “and his grandson Lot,” who will show up later in the book of Genesis in a very significant way, by the way. “They moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.”

We’re told something. Abraham’s family, under the leadership of Terah in Ur of the Chaldees, which most Biblical scholars and archeologists believe was a fairly sophisticated city located right by the Euphrates River.  In the southern portion of what is modern-day Iraq. Iraq is in the news all over the place. I think it’s always helpful to remember that so much of what’s happening in the Bible and is referred to in the Bible is actually very much in the news today. This is the exact place. It’s the center of the world, really.  This is not only good because this is what’s going on in our world today in a very contemporary real way. 

If you look at a map, you will see these different bodies of water and the different places. You see the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Persian Gulf. You see the two great rivers of this region, the Tigress, and the Euphrates. Ur, that ancient city of Ur, in modern-day Iraq, was sophisticated. Evidently, Terah, the father of Abram, felt compelled to take his entire clan and head towards the land of Canaan. Canaan is what we would call today modern-day Israel. The Romans named that region Palestine. It is just along the sliver of the Mediterranean Sea, on that side, right above Egypt. It was known as Canaan in Abram’s time. We know it as Israel, the land of promise, the land given to Abram.

Evidently what happened was Abraham’s father, intending to go to the land of Canaan, made an arc intending to go around and down. He ends up staying for some reason in Haran. They literally decide you know what, we’re going to stop here. That’s where they settled and set up their life. It appears that’s where they were going to die. They had no intention of continuing to move on. That brings us to the 12th chapter of Genesis which I’m going to talk a little bit more about next week. It is considered by those who study the scriptures and Bible to be one of the great chapters in the entire Bible because of the promise it contains. It stands out on its own. Genesis 12, especially the opening verses, set the table for so many things.

It’s like God starts His movement of redeeming humanity by calling out a man. Out of this, man comes a people. Out of Abram comes Israel. Out of Israel comes Messiah. Out of the Messiah comes Jesus, the savior of the world. It’s all connected. It starts with Abram when Abraham is asked to take a step of faith and embark on a faith journey. We read about it here in Genesis 12. Verse 1 says, “now the Lord said to Abram, get out of your country, time to go.” How he said it, how it came to him was an impression. Was it some audible word? Was it in a dream? We don’t know. All we know is that Abraham was deeply impressed that he needed to go and leave Ur. “I need you to lead your family from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.” That starts a journey. A journey that ends up in Messiah.

This is just sort of wrestling with this passage. I started thinking about it. About faith, journey, and stepping forward. I think a lot of times our decisions in life choices affect others. Spiritually speaking, we often position them for struggle or success. This is a lot. This may mean something more to some of us than others. What I’m trying to get at here is, in the same way that Abram was affected by Terah’s decisions, we also will be affected by people in our lives. Whether it’s our parents or grandparents, we are often affected by those who we know and sometimes people we’ve never even known, have affected our lives way more than we realize.

I shared at different times about how I was impacted, particularly by my father and grandfather in different ways. I’ve tried to be honest about the difficulty I had with my father and how hard it was when our family fell apart. Essentially, I lost his presence in my life. We never really got close to my father. Even at the end, I was able to pray with him. I’ve shared about that. I don’t want to belabor that point, but if any of you have ever had a painful relationship with a father, you can relate to that. Maybe with a mother. God also gave me a relationship with my grandfather who became a father in the faith to me and a tremendous person of influence.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how other people, especially our parents, affect us. How the decisions of other people who go before us affect us. Part of that was connected to a lunch I had with an amazing couple. A couple, actually, who’s still in our church. They go to the Lake Merced Campus on the other side of the city. That couple’s name is Melvin and Ellen Johnson. They have been married for an incredible 70 years. They made my wife and I, Cheryl, a surprising offer. It was an honor. These are very down-to-earth, simple, loving God people who are now 90. They asked, “Would you celebrate our 70th anniversary with us? Just the four of us for lunch.” I said yes, I would. This was one of the founding families. There were three families that started the church that ultimately became Cornerstone. At the time, it wasn’t my grandfather who became the first pastor. It wasn’t his idea. It was their idea. They asked him, who at the time was just an evangelist.

This is what happened. I’m sitting there with them and I need to talk to them about the past. I was looking into their eyes. There is still light in them. I say “love for God is real.” They’ve done it. They did it. We had just gotten through having lunch together and I was sitting there at the table. I asked, “Can you guys tell me? I know it was somewhere around 1951, 1952, you guys had this conversation. You were praying. Can you tell me again what happened? Because it affected my life, and in a way, it’s affected all of our lives for the Lord. Can you tell me this?” They said, “Yeah, we had this feeling like the Lord wanted us to try to start a church, but we knew we couldn’t do it. Your grandfather was in the hospital at the time having some minor procedure on something. We asked him if he would pray to consider the possibility of helping us start a church in San Francisco if he would be the pastor. It was ours and one other family. We told him, ‘if you do this, we will back you with everything we have all the way.’”

There was something about the way they said it because they were sitting across the table having done it. That’s when it started, one of the things. I knew I could feel, I was going oh, man. Why do humans cry? I was looking into their eyes. I saw commitment. I saw a passion for the Lord. I saw someone throw their life on the line for God. We’ll back you all the way to the up and the down. We’ll be there all the way. Powerful. They said, “And we did.” I said, “I honor you in the Lord.” I honor you in the Lord because as I thought about it, all the good, only God truly knows, whatever good our church, and I say ours, whoever’s here, it’s yours, have done for the Lord in San Francisco. All the lives of people that we’ve been able to touch or will ultimately touch in any way, shape or form, is connected to that conversation. That conversation created a spark. They took a step of faith and did it. They committed to it and sustained it. It’s powerful. It’s powerful.

It caught me off guard. It reminded me that I need to also let the Lord stir things in my own heart. As I said, none of us are self-made. We’re all affected by other people. Some of us start with deficits. We don’t have great relationships. We didn’t have a great father. Maybe some of us did. That’s an advantage or a mother who loved us. I don’t know. Some of us start with a whole, intact home. Some of us were handed down a heritage of faith. Others of us had stuff thrown at us. However we got to where we got, that’s the thing. It’s usually connected to somebody else. In Abram’s case, he was in this place called Haran. Not because of his own decision, but because of the decision of his father. That’s how he got there. Whether that was coincidence or providence, only God really knows. What we do know is that the choices of others affect us. Whatever the reason, the halfway point for Terah was good enough. He stopped in Haran and settled there.

What God was doing was making it clear to Abram that Haran is not going to be where I want you to stay. I need you to go. I need you to leave. He’s basically saying I want you to break out of your comfort zone and head to a land that I will show you. Head to Canaan, head towards what will become Israel. It hit me. A lot of times when we’re pursuing good things, we can get stuck. I use the phrase hung up in Haran. “Don’t get stuck or no, don’t get hung up in Haran.” Don’t get hung up in Haran. Don’t do it. We’re in the middle of pursuing something good. We get stuck. Maybe we get tired. That’s normal. We’re on our way. We get distracted. We get comfortable. The thought of re-engaging is unappealing. We settle down. We take a break and then we don’t get going again. We don’t. We stop.

That’s always the danger of pulling off on a journey or a project. It’s good to get a rest. It’s good. I actually am more of a believer in pacing. I know there’s a time to rest. We can spend a lot of time on life principles and how to endure well. It’s possible that sometimes we get settled in and we stop pushing. We stop contending. When we stop growing, we stop moving. All of a sudden the dreams or the stirrings that God’s put us in, start to fizzle out. Many times we get stuck in fear because we’re afraid to keep moving. That’s sometimes why we don’t move on our faith journeys. We’re afraid. Sometimes just because we get comfortable and we just don’t want to do it anymore. Other times it’s because we’re afraid. I don’t know if I can do this. So I just feel safer here.

God will call us sometimes to step out. Step out. Trust me. I leave it with this; there are specific seasons where God wants us to get out and get going, to step out in faith and get moving. Abraham, Abram at the time, God says, it’s time for you to get up and move, to leave this country, this place. It’s time to go on a journey. In his case, it was literally, a physical, you need to leave this place. You need to leave your geographical place and go to a place that I will show you. Now, that was a physical thing.

I was sharing with someone. I said, “I really see this as, not necessarily God calling us to have something physical, but a faith journey. There are things God’s calling us to step into, a journey he needs you to make for me, a step out I need you to take for me.” A new season, a fresh adventure of challenging yourself in the Lord to push beyond what is safe or something that I want you to engage in. For some of us, it means re-engaging, jumping back into things that we’ve pulled back from. Some of you have so much to give for the Lord to bless others with. There’s a lot there. Maybe we came here because before some of us were in a place where we were just giving everything. We got burned out. We got hung up in Haran. We stopped. We didn’t stop believing or wouldn’t be here. We stopped really giving on this journey of faith.

Maybe God’s calling some of us to be adventurous again, to be open to new things, and using our gifts. Some of us, honestly, probably should be leading a small group. We should be opening up our homes. We were blessed. God gave us gifts, capacities, knowledge, or experience in the Lord. We are further along in our faith through all of the challenges. We should be able to help others who are younger in the faith. Some of us have been married longer and we need to be able to help those who are struggling. Some of us have been parents longer. Some of us have a lot to give and we’re not giving it.

Maybe we’re tired. Maybe we’re afraid. God may be sparking something to say, I need you to take a journey with me. It’s going to grow you in a new chapter of your life with me. Our church is a place where people if you are a spiritual entrepreneur, want to start a ministry or be involved with a team of people starting it. There are opportunities. There’s community. There are ways to do it. It can happen. There are things if God wants us to give, small ways of giving back to the Lord. All I’m trying to say is the Lord might be calling some of us to move beyond that. We didn’t mean to do it. We just got stuck and things are sort of there.

I use the analogy of looking at the land of Israel. There’s the Sea of Galilee where a lot of Jesus’ disciples were called. The Sea of Galilee. You can see it today. It’s great. The River Jordan comes down from the Sea of Galilee. That’s where Jesus was baptized by John’s ministry. It deposits into what’s called the Dead Sea at the bottom. because it has the water, Mount Hermon, the rains come into the sea, water comes through the Jordan all the way to the Dead Sea. You know what? There’s no outlet. If you go there, you could float because the water is dead water.

God wants us to be the Sea of Galilee, not a Dead Sea. Nothing going out there. He wants us to be a Sea of Galilee, a Jordan River, a water flow. The Christian life coming in, going out, coming in, going out, not coming in, stuck. No. We’re made for that. Someone will say well I’m too old. You know how old Abraham was when he started? He was 75 years old. I know he’s an exception to the rule. I told someone, “Abraham’s best chapter, he didn’t even know it. He was just starting. The biggest impact of his life was after 75.” So don’t say I’m too old. We can’t do that.

Someone will say I’m too young. I’m going to tell you this. I need more life experience. The Bible is filled with examples of young people, young adults, people who were not heavy duty in life experience. Who God says, I need you to do this for me. Will you be my man? Will you be my woman here? Will you stand up for me? Will you represent my heart here? Will you speak my words here? You know, I’m just a youth. I can’t speak. Find somebody else who has more. You know what, the people who tended to make the most excuses for not moving were either the old or the young. God says I’m not limited by either of those things. I’m too inexperienced or I’m not smart enough. I don’t know enough about the Bible. Okay. I understand that. But if God stirs our hearts, come on. Sea of Galilee, no Dead Sea. Got to step out. I’m a woman. They won’t respect my leadership. Is God calling you to step out? Step into the gaps. What is it? Young, old, the need is there, the life is there. Respond to the Lord. 

Let’s pray. Lord, I ask you to take this word that we’ve humbly submitted to you, let it come alive in any way you want to. As we close out the service with the final song, let it be after our offering time, our giving time. I do thank you for everyone who gives so faithfully, especially those who tithe and honor you with the 10th. As we do, it allows our church to even open its doors and pay its bills. I thank you for those who do this. I pray Lord that we would all be open to the new journey of faith that you have for us. Let this closing song be like a prayer that sends us forward. I ask this in the name of Jesus. I love you, Lord. Let those here, let all of our love for you grow, and do not let us be afraid to use the gifts, even small ones in small ways that you’ve given to us. We ask for your blessing, Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.