The Journey Of Faith by Apostle Arome Osayi: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Look to the Rock From Which You Were Hewn

Isaiah 51:1-2 forms the foundation of this message. The address is not to everyone — it is specifically for those who follow after righteousness and who are deliberate about seeking the Lord. God's instruction is to look to Abraham, the foundational rock from which every believer is hewn.

Just as the strength of a building is its foundation, the strength of a shoe is its sole, and the strength of a tree is its root, God is asking every believer to examine their origin. What God did in Abraham's life is what He intends to do in the life of every believer that pursues righteousness. Abraham's life is not an isolated case — it is a prototype. God generates prototypes because nothing is more powerful than an example.

The Political Setting: Babel, Nimrod, and One Tribe

Before considering Abraham's call, the political context of Genesis must be understood. After the flood, Noah's descendants formed 69 distinct tribes — each with their own tongue, territory, and nation. Babel was the birthplace of human government, and Nimrod was its monarch. Through Nimrod's submission, Satan had colonized the earth. It was in this darkness — with Satan having 69 tribes under his governance — that God began to move upon the face of the earth to find a man.

God was not trying to reclaim all 69 tribes at once. He needed just one. That was the politics of Genesis: one tribe versus 69.

The ability for all these tribes to understand one another before Babel was not a single shared language in the modern sense — it was a supernatural system God had put in place. When humankind used that unity to implement rebellion rather than pioneer God's purposes, God removed that divine capacity. That same ability to understand across diversity was restored on the day of Pentecost through the Holy Ghost.

The Call of Abraham

It was in this season of satanic colonization that God called Abraham. The way Abraham was called reveals everything: God asked him to break off from his country, his kindred, and his father's house. This was not arbitrary. Every nation was already infiltrated by the influence of Nimrod. God could not use a man who was still embedded in that system.

The instruction would have made Abraham countryless, clanless, and fatherless — without any established earthly identity. God sovereignly determined that He needed to set up a new system by which He could have legitimacy to invade the earth.

When there was a need for a nation, God did not speak to a community. God spoke to a man. He isolated Abraham from his comfort zone, his tribe, his nation — and said, "I will show you." God was even sparing with the address of the destination. This was intentional. Everything God wanted to produce in Abraham was tied to a journey, and that journey could only be navigated by faith.

Haran: The First Enemy — Delay

Genesis 11:27-32 reveals something often missed. When Abraham received the instruction to leave, he shared it with his father, Terah. Terah then took the lead of the journey — but Terah's goal was not to fulfill God's mandate. He wanted to control the direction. When they arrived at Haran, Terah settled there. He had no intention of going into the unknown with Abraham.

The word Haran means delay. That is where Abraham squandered 50 years. God had called Abraham at 25. He did not respond until he was 75. Terah's interference — adding Lot to the journey, settling in Haran — was the direct cause of this delay. God had to remove Terah before the journey could continue. It was not cruelty; Terah had made himself part of an agenda he was excluded from and had resisted God for 50 years.

• The major challenge of men of faith is that Satan manipulates them into ending at delay.
• There are infrastructures built around every believer's life designed for containment. If not discerned, a person can spend 50 years in Haran not realizing they were supposed to be traveling.
• Satan does not need to stop the journey outright — he only needs to get a man to camp in Haran.

For God, everything was tied to the journey. Abraham could not become Hebrew — could not learn the new language of faith — without making the trip. The word Hebrew itself came from that journey. All the new possibilities God was inviting Abraham into were tied to the act of traveling.

Navigating by Spiritual Pathways

Abraham was heading to a physical place, but the means by which he would get there was entirely spiritual. God did not give him a full map. Each revelation he received covered only a portion of the journey. He would stop, set up an altar, seek God's face again, receive another portion of direction, then move. The tent was temporary; the altar was permanent.

This is the pattern for every believer: going to a physical place, but arriving through spiritual pathways. The destination is real and concrete. The navigational system is the voice of God.

God will often call a person into a business, a ministry, or a life assignment that is entirely outside their area of competence. This is not accidental. When placed in a position where intelligence, experience, and prior achievement cannot sustain survival, a person learns to sharpen their ability to hear God. God puts believers in situations where the only way to survive is to lean on Him for the next word, the next instruction, the next revelation.

The Four Prison Houses

From Hebrews 11:8-19, four imprisoning questions emerge — each one a form of Haran that prevents the journey:

1. Where? — Abraham went out not knowing where he was going. To walk by faith, the logical demand of "Where am I going before I move?" must be conquered. Remaining in "where" is how Haran captures most believers.

You may also like



How To Deal With Grief And Loss Part 3

by Pastor Dolapo Lawal

arrow_forward
2. When? — Abraham sojourned in tents with Isaac and Jacob, still dwelling in temporary accommodation. The question of timing — "When will the promise be fulfilled?" — is the second prison. Destiny is not time-based. Life is encounter-based. What matters is not the clock; it is what God has said. It doesn't take time. It takes encounter.
3. How? — Sarah herself received strength to conceive past the age of menopause because she judged God faithful. The "how" was impossible by every medical measure. The numbers declared it impossible. But Sarah's faith held that the faithfulness of God outweighed the data. God is asking every believer to leave the "how" to Him.
4. Why? — God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac after 25 years of waiting. Abraham did not ask why. He did not even tell Sarah. He went the next day. He had gone beyond the logic of "why" — and that is the highest level of faith.

Each of these questions, when allowed to govern behavior, becomes a prison cell. Satan formulates each one carefully, knowing the exact question that will most effectively contain a particular person.

The Distinction: Isaac and Ishmael

Ishmael was a product of the will of man — and therefore did not have the adequate wiring to carry the weight of the covenant of God. Isaac was a product of promise, formed by a word of the Lord spoken into biological impossibility. That is why God considered Abraham to have only one son. The one who cannot carry the covenant weight is not counted. The one born of the Word carries both the capacity and the assignment.

God Needs One Tribe

Satan controls 69 tribes. God needs only one — the tribe of faith. Men and women who speak the language of the council of God; who navigate by the voice of God; who refuse to be confined by where, when, how, or why.

Every man of faith is called to be a path maker, not just a path finder. That path never existed before. It is faith that creates it. Everybody in the family may have followed a predictable professional course, and then suddenly the hand of God falls — and faith is required to forge an entirely new path.

The Journey Must Continue

Satan's strategy is to drive believers to a corner and keep them there — so that even if they gather the courage to travel again, they are already old, and faith is harder to sustain with age.

If Abraham doesn't make the journey, he doesn't become what God wanted him to become. There is a journey every believer must embark upon. The inheritance is not on the wayside — it is at the destination.

Not by money, not by influence, not by the people you know — it will be by faith.