Dear friends, this week I started reading two small paperbacks that have stared at me from my bedroom bookshelf for weeks.  Sister Mary Rose McGeady has written Are You Out There, God? and Please Help Me, God, incredibly sad stories about kids living on the streets, kids as young as ten years old forced into running drugs, prostitution, theft and types of sin we don't even want to think about.

          The kids who check into her Covenant House - and occasionally die there - are not our kids.  Our kids have little if any danger around them.  Our families are safe and secure, and even our poorest homes and worst schools are wonderful havens of refuge compared to life these kids live.  Some kids have run away and others have been kicked out of their homes.  They live in boxes, under stairways, in cars and in the back alleys.  They do terrible things to survive and yet they all want two things -- to live and be loved.  They're all very young but already very old.  They are the unwanted kids of an affluent society, and Covenant House tries to give them a few needs -- a meal, clean clothes, love and hope.  Each one of her brief and tragic stories just about breaks your heart.

          With run-away kids on the street, jobs in jeopardy, and families in trouble, why do pastors so often talk about an old guy named Abram who lived 4000 years ago?  With all the sadness around us, shouldn't every Sunday sermon deal with helping us in the here and now?  To some people, Bible history is out of place.  But our God is a God of history.  He knows the troubles of mankind, and He has seen families in pain and He knows all about layoffs and runaways and crime throughout history.  The true but ancient story of Abram and God can still show us modern folks important lessons in living, living with each other, living with God, and thus living by faith.

          I hope you and I don't come to church just to find a support group or to hear tips on fixing your troubles.  We're here because God fixes things.  He supports us in all kinds of troubles every day.  And most importantly, His Son Jesus has already fixed everything that matters by His innocent death on Friday and His resurrection on Sunday.  Jesus is Savior today, yesterday and tomorrow.

          There's nothing wrong with history, especially if we remember it's "His-Story".  A few years ago some rock star had the gall to label his latest album "His-Story", referring to his own life.  People have forgotten that man's name, but they have not forgotten Jesus.  Our history is really Christ's story, His-Story of being promised for 2000 years, His-Story of being born in a stable, and His-Story of dying and rising again, of being our Savior now for the past 2000 years.  It's also His-Story of how He's coming again, a time that's closer than we think.

          Historically, it's about 4000 years since God first spoke to Abram, the first person mentioned in the Bible whom we can accurately date.  And Abram is the first person after Adam and Noah to whom God related in such a close, personal way.  In this text we're told once again that "Abraham believed the LORD, and He credited it to him as righteousness." (Genesis15:6)   Wouldn't it be great if it could be said of us, "They believed God and He credited it to them as righteousness"?

          Abram had a pure faith.  He didn't need any proof; he just trusted what God said.  Think of it -- God just spoke to him like a voice in the wind, and Abram knew it was the voice of God.  More importantly, he believed what the voice said.  He believed God when no one else had heard Him speak.  He believed God when there was no Bible, no church, no seminaries, and no Christmas.  Abram believed when he had nothing to refer to.  And when God told him they would become parents well past their time of child-bearing, he believed God again.

          That's faith -- to believe something in the face of facts that tell us otherwise.  It takes no faith to know you're old and past childbearing.  It takes no faith to think a Bible story might be true.  And it doesn't even take faith to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being.  But it takes pure faith, true faith, to trust and believe the voice of God when He tells us something unbelievable.

          The Bible tells us a lot about Abram's faith.  His first encounter with God came when God told him to leave his homeland and go to a new land his descendents would later possess.  Abram's faith was about something in the future.  He believed God and went on a journey.  We're all on a journey as we travel through life, and like Abram, we're all "Going Forward in Faith."

          When God told him he'd be the father of a great nation, again Abram believed God.  When God told him He'd have a son in his old age, Abram believed God.  Do you get the drift?  When we hear God speak, we need to believe.  God speaks to us through His Word, through His people, through events and even through prayer, and we need to pay attention when God speaks.

          God made good on all His promises, as He always does.  He gave Abram and Sarah their son.  Then when God told Abram to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, he was ready to do it.  You see, faith obeys even when it doesn't like what it hears.  Faith that doesn't obey is not real faith.  Faith and obedience go together, even when it doesn't understand.  Fortunately God didn't want Isaac dead; He just wanted to test Abram's faith.  Faith needs to be tested, and testing always involves risk.

          Sister Mary Rose asks the kids of Covenant House to write down their thoughts and many do, some of them in poetic rhyme.  Daniel, age 16, wrote this:  "Scared and cold, first night on the streets, your body hurts from your head to your feet.  You miss school, not the work -- it's the friends.  Thinking what you'll say when they ask where you've been.  Gotta dollar-fifty, every penny gotta spend;  Make a wrong move...  Boom -- your life comes to an end."  Janice, another 16 year-old, wrote, "If all lips spoke the truth, all pride was cast aside;  If greed was packed and stored away and jealousy subside;  If love could rule the universe, Kindness was shown to every race,  Then one could glance into a mirror and view God in His face."

          There's little that's more important than believing your life has meaning, and that you're worth loving.  God believes we are.  In Christ He loves us all with an everlasting love and He loves us no matter what we've done or what's happened to us.  It's up to God to show us His love, but it's up to us to believe that love is ours.  Therefore it takes someone to love us in place of God, to be the gentle arms of God, and to be the loving voice of God.  It takes the Sister Mary Roses in New York City, but it also takes you and me here in Castle Rock or Denver to share God's love with those who need it most.

          Faith in God's love needs no proof, only trust.  The Bible says one night God took His friend Abram outside to look at the stars.  "Look around you," He said, "Count the stars -- that's how many your descendents will be." (Genesis 15:5)   That was a mighty big promise God made, but He made good on it.  God does that with every promise He makes.  God lives up to His Word.  Those who trust in His promises are God's friends, and they will see their blessings mount up like the stars.

          Pastor Fred of southern California once told me he went camping with his youth group out here in the Rockies.  Fortunately, they hired a guide so they wouldn't get lost.  The first night out, Pastor Fred took a walk out of camp over a nearby ridge for some quiet time alone.  Soon he came stumbling back into camp and frantically begged the guide to go with him.  Over the ridge again, he pointed and asked, "What's that up in the sky?"  The guide smiled and said, "Pastor, that's called the Milky Way -- those are all stars."  Pastor Fred from the big city with its bright lights was completely star-struck by all those real stars he'd never seen before.

          That's how it is with us modern people.  Our world is so much with us and we can get so star-struck by our modern gadgetry and bright lights that we no longer see reality.  Our materialistic abundance puts up a wall between us and God.  Our minds are so full of things and our hearts are so divided we can't see the obvious.  We're so distracted by a thousand loyalties that the really important things, love and forgiveness, faith and the things of God and eternity are blocked out and hard to recognize when we see them.

          A man once called his wife from a phone booth on a street but didn't close the door.  His wife shouted over the phone, "Jim, close the door behind you -- I can't hear you over the traffic!"  And that's our plight -- the world is so much with us -- the glittering lights of gadget stores, furniture stores, toy stores and restaurants -- that we can't hear God.  We need to close the door.

          Did you know the word "restaurant" comes from a French word for "place of rest"?  And have you ever found rest in our restaurants?  Last week I went twice to the Crowfoot Restaurant, a trendy little place where you're almost worn out by the noise of trains and fire engines and trucks in that so-called "place of rest".  As God's people we all need a place where we can close the door and listen for the voice of God.  For me that's my front room sofa early in the morning.

          Faith always looks toward something that will happen but hasn't yet.  It looks to the future with hope, but lives in the present.  It's somewhat like a group of ladies making a quilt.  They gather once a week for weeks, even months, patiently and carefully sewing each piece of cloth in place.  And as they sew, they talk about life.  They are working towards the future result of a finely sewn quilt, but they are enjoying the process of getting there.  When the quilt is done, perhaps they'll start another, perhaps not.  But they go forward in faith towards the goal of completing something useful.

          So do we.  We're "Going Forward in Faith," and as we walk in the Lord, each day is filled with useful and good things to do.  Yes, there will be wrong stitches, maybe some bad sewing and perhaps a few pricked fingers, but the goal is bigger than the momentary pain.  No matter what the pain of today, we look past it, because our goal is life with God by faith in His Son Jesus.  May we all trust in Jesus Christ, the son of the God of Abram, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Holy Bible, our true and only God who loves us no matter what.  Amen

Copyright © 2001 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.