Instead of embracing the story in Acts 15 as an example of how to receive guidance from God based on a "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28 NIV), we dismiss it because we want greater certainty than the apostles and early church leaders seemingly required.
We’ll point to Abram’s call—before he became known as Abraham—and declare we want to be guided in the same way he was. We want a clear clarion call that cuts across everything else and makes God's thoughts about the decision we're contemplating beyond doubt.
Go here.
Do this.
The thing is, God doesn’t actually call Abram in a way that supports our yearning for certainty. We've completely misread Abram's story by starting in the wrong place in Scripture and by starting with the wrong premise.
Starting in the wrong place
Distracted by artificial chapter breaks and a modern disdain for genealogy, we typically begin Abram’s story in the first verse of Genesis 12.
We start with God’s call, forgetting that Abram's story actually began towards the end of the previous chapter. When we turn back to Chapter 11, we discover shocking information.
God was not the first to call Abram to Canaan.
Abram’s father, Terah, was.
These two simple statements will blow up your current theology of guidance.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan.
— Genesis 11:31 NIV
Terah took his son Abram.
And together they set out.
To go to Canaan.
God's not even mentioned.
Starting with the wrong premise
We're told that Terah and his family—including Abram—set off for Canaan in the penultimate verse of Genesis 11. So when Abram hears that famous call of God to “Go to the land I will show you” in Genesis 12:1, he presumably finds it unexpected. However, it was not out-of-the-blue, and neither was it a command or suggestion to go somewhere previously unimagined by Abram.
Abram had already been heading the way God calls him to go.
...together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.
—Genesis 11:31 NIV
In fact, by the time God calls him, Abram is living in Harran. He'd already travelled over three-quarters of the distance from Ur to Canaan.
God doesn't call Abram to a new thing like we've traditionally thought he does.
