The Banquet Table
April 24, 2024
Are you hesitating?
March 31, 2017
“How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow... ” -1 KINGS 18:21
Abram did not go directly from the land of Ur into Canaan. He made a 15 year detour in a place called Haran. Haran was not a bad place, but it was not the place God was calling him to remain. Haran is a symbol of compromise, of partial obedience. And it is a place with which most of us are quite familiar.
How many of us have joined a church, gone through the motions of repentance and commitment, and stopped short of God’s destination for us? We’re living in Haran—not Canaan—and we may be satisfied, but God is not. We’ve exercised enough faith to make a start, but we are seriously lacking in follow-through. Maybe you are in Haran right now. You’ve made a break from an ungodly relationship, moved out of your cultural comfort zone— maybe even cleaned up your language or your lifestyle...but you are still in Haran. You’ve broken a few worldly habits, but you are still sold out to the world’s agenda.
I have a personal theory that those who leave Ur and stop in Haran are more miserable than those who never left at all. How tragic to hear the call of God and obey it only partially! Compromise is the saddest place in the world to live, because it yields neither the fleeting pleasures of sin, nor the full-weighted blessing of complete obedience.
How many of us have joined a church, gone through the motions of repentance and commitment, and stopped short of God’s destination for us? We’re living in Haran—not Canaan—and we may be satisfied, but God is not. We’ve exercised enough faith to make a start, but we are seriously lacking in follow-through. Maybe you are in Haran right now. You’ve made a break from an ungodly relationship, moved out of your cultural comfort zone— maybe even cleaned up your language or your lifestyle...but you are still in Haran. You’ve broken a few worldly habits, but you are still sold out to the world’s agenda.
I have a personal theory that those who leave Ur and stop in Haran are more miserable than those who never left at all. How tragic to hear the call of God and obey it only partially! Compromise is the saddest place in the world to live, because it yields neither the fleeting pleasures of sin, nor the full-weighted blessing of complete obedience.
