The death in Haran

The death in Haran means the following…

God moves when we are not ready to move.

As we read earlier God had called Abraham to leave all His familiar surroundings and move unto an unknown land of God’s choice, yet Abraham in his journey to this promise land had stopped in a land called Haran, which by the way was the name of one of his brothers, who died in Ur before they came to Haran. Though they had probably named his brother Haran before they ever came to this land, yet his father Terah decided to stay in Haran where his son was named and even grieve over his son’s death for a long time. However this partial obedience of our father of faith could not nullify God’s call on His vessel of glory, and He had to intervene once again to make Abraham move on to his destiny in God.

In the book of Genesis chapter 12 the scriptures tell us that Abraham was called by God to get out of his country, from his family and from his father’s house to a  land He was going to show Him.

The call of God on all His elect requires an abandonment of all familiar places of comfort to a place of utter dependence on Him and Him alone.

The scripture calls Abraham the Father of our faith and being in Ur of Chaldeans he heard God’s call to leave all he know as his earthly places of strength and sustenance to a new level of dependency which required a complete faith walk.

This meant a change of residence and complete faith in a God who was revealing Himself to Abraham in such a state of utter trustworthy obedience.

In the Bible always the great men of God had many tasks that they had to accomplish for God, yet all these great vessels of the Lord needed to be encouraged or moved out of their stagnancy and complacency to still be used of God in their continual service to their heavenly master.

In this almost all of them either would run away from their assignments or would remain in their places of comfort after they had accomplished their greatest tasks. Abraham had a great call from God, yet His attachments to his earthly father were a great hindrance for His obedience to his eternal heavenly fathers plan for his life.

Haran was a stumbling block for his future destiny with God. The Lord had to allow the death of Abraham’s father to move him out of Haran. So it was with Elijah the great prophet of God. Mount Carmel’s victory was an awesome place of obedience, but then the Lord had to move him from there also.

Many times we too like the great men of the Bible stay in our last place of obedience too long and are so satisfied with its smoothing comforts, but God is already over with those things in our lives. We linger in places, relationships or assignments too much longer that God had intended them for us. The security and comfort they offer is so pleasing to us that God has to bring situations to make us go away from those places of comfort in order to further His plans for our lives.

It is true that we always delay to move, because in those moves many times we must leave our prior states of reliances and trust God with them all over again.

Sometimes we linger longer than He has planned for us, then the Lord needs to take drastic measures and some of them may be the death of a loved one.  Sometimes we find a God given source of survival and even stay attached to it too long, even grief.

With prophet Elijah the Lord supplied him with cakes and water through an angel sent to him on his way running away from Queen Jezebel’s murderous threats. However one day he got up and saw that this source of sustenance was no longer available and his humanistic fears began to make him worried for the next source of his bread and water. There The lord brought him to a brook and had him drink from it for a while and in doing so he also commanded an unclean bird to bring him his bread.

Why was God so rapidly changing his method of provision for him, because first the Lord needed to teach His own prophet that He alone is His only source of sustenance, and secondly to help Elijah recognize his need to move on with God to his next place of sustenance or divine assignment.  Yes sometimes He needs to dry the same brook even twice which He Himself had given to us a while ago.

Although many of us begin to trust the brook or the crawl that were only the vessels of our God’s choices in different times, but the Lord is so kind to us that He would soon come and take them away from us. First to prevent us from holding on to the vessels and not the true source behind them and secondly to make us move from there to our next level of service or obedience to Him.

The loving heavenly Father that He is in His mercy forbids us to stay in a stagnating situation to help us reach our highest goal of serving & trust in Him. This without fear or earthly attachments to anything or any man.

Although while this heavenly transition is happening in our lives we mourn and complain, yet knowing the outcome of all of these heavenly plans He patiently waits for our hearts to return to Him in grace.

I believe today few among us are in this place of stagnancy and the Lord is about to turn things around in your lives to move you into the next place of service, that He has for you, but in your heart you are saying … “ I will go to so and so for help ne, or I will choose this place I used to know as a place of comfort and reliance”. But God is saying no those are your choices and not Mine.

You see even when the Lord dries up the old brooks you and I either do not want to move or do not trust Him in His best choice of places for us. We in our fantasy want to see God work according to our own understanding and plans, but He does it completely in an unknown manner to us. We always want to go back to the people or the families we think they would need us or will help us. But the Lord has a complete different plan for us, of which most of us have no clue. That is why I preached what I preached last Sunday about God being Jehovah Shammah. The Lord who is present with us and sees and knows all that you and I do not see in the spirit. He is the one who Need to direct us to our next place of service and even sustenance. A running prophet like Elijah could by no mean understand God’s plan for his next place of service if he would have the choice. God wanted to help a widow and her only child in Zaraphat which is in today’s Syria. A place Elijah would not dare choose or go, but because of His desperation for survival the Lord was able to take him there to help this chosen vessel of His to minister in a gentile land.

Jesus Christ our Lord mentions this story about Elijah and this poor gentile widow by telling His audiences that there were many widow’s in Israel then, but God sent Elijah to this woman and His son in a strange land and through this the Lord helped someone in need whom He alone know her heart and had heard her prayers. Many times we stay in places and relationships for too long and the Lord will dry up these old brooks to send help to crying heart where you do not like to go.

He alone knows the future and we do not know all things. We love the familiar and the ease and the comforts of our acquaintances, but the Lord soon will come to disturb our places of complacent comforts. He will often make us a little uncomfortable to move us from our eased up lives, since we are in ourselves not ready to move forward.

God seeing the distant future also knew what would happen later on to this mother and son.

Yes the Lord only knew that one day this gentile woman’s son would die and that if Elijah was not sent there she would never receive her son from death. Therefore if you see your brook dried up or your job or house or any comfort zone is being disturbed after you have prayed so much to God, then lets us accept that maybe it is the Lord who is moving you away  from this thing to help you walk into your new destiny with Him. If we would only knew Him and would trust Him more all would have been fine.