Before I begin, I want you to take a look around you today… do you notice anything?  See any strange people sitting nearby?  That’s right, you’re not alone.

We’ve been talking the past couple of times I’ve been here about the adventure of faith, looking at the life of Abram, and I think that one of the best and worst things about the journey of faith is that you don’t go it alone – you get to share the adventure with these people.  You can try to stay at home, listen to Christian sermons and watch Christian videos, but you still can’t stop the fact that you are connected to others who claim to follow Jesus across the globe.  And it may sound strange to say this, but I think the younger generations are understanding this better.  Take evangelism for example.  Older generations used to use things like the four spiritual laws, with moderate success.  People would hear the gospel, the story of Christianity, explained something like this – God loves you and created you to be in a relationship with you, but sin separates you from God.  The good news is that Jesus died for your sins, so that if you believe in what Jesus did on your behalf and put your faith in him, you will be saved, have your relationship with God restored, and go to heaven.  And that seemed to work.  But it doesn’t work as well nowadays, because people say – sure that may sound good, but I don’t want to be a Christian!  Because to be a Christian means to associate yourself with Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and all those crazy anti-abortionists and narrow-minded people who oppose gay rights.  To become a Christian is to go to church with all the other stuffy, uptight, holier-than-thou Christians.  In other words, younger generations realize more and more that to become a Christian is not just to give intellectual assent to four spiritual laws, but to identify yourself with a group of people and say that these are my brothers and sisters, for better or worse. 

So look around you today… and realize that you’re not alone on this journey of faith.  By belonging to this church, you are identifying yourself with the elders of this church, the Sunday School teachers, etc.  And that can be a great thing if you like everyone and everyone is cool in your eyes.  But it can be a scary thing if you’re not sure you want to be associated with them.  I know I struggled with that as a part of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Uconn – I wondered whether these people were cool enough for me to associate with (while they were probably wondering at the same time if I was cool enough for them to associate with)?  Whether or not you like everyone here, you’re stuck with them.  You don’t go it alone in the journey of faith.

We’ve been looking at the life of Abram, and this morning as we look at chapter 13 we’re going to see that Abram didn’t go it alone either on his adventure of faith, and he had to learn how to journey with others when things get rough.  Just to recap – we’ve been talking about the adventure of faith, looking at how Abram set out, not quite knowing where he was going.  Last time he took a serious step back, almost losing his wife and the promise of land and descendants before God intervened.  So he returns to Bethel and begins again.  The lesson he could have learned is that God would provide everything he would need as long as he would stay in the land.  In the next chapter, he continues on his adventure with his nephew, a man named Lot, and in the process we learn something about traveling on the journey with other people.  

Let’s pray, and then we’ll begin by reading Genesis 13:1-7.