The Destination Doesn’t Make the Journey
Day 6 — Headwind: Genesis 15:1-6
Introduction
Yesterday you named what you’re holding. Maybe you identified the next step and took it, or at least wrote it down. Maybe you spoke Abram’s three words out loud — so Abram went — and felt something in you respond to them, some small movement toward the release.
Or maybe you’re still on the platform. Still running the numbers. Still scanning the horizon.
Either way, today we follow Abram further into the journey — past the initial obedience, past the first miles from Ur, into the years of living inside an unresolved promise. Because here is something the story of Abram teaches that the first three words don’t capture: releasing the bar is not a one-time event. It is a posture you hold for the entire flight.
And the flight is longer than you think.
Scripture
After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”
But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
— Genesis 15:1-6 (NIV)
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
Time has passed since Genesis 12. Abram has left Ur. He has traveled. He has waited. And the promise — the great nation, the blessing, the offspring — has not materialized. He is older. Still childless. And he is honest enough with God to say so.
What can you give me since I remain childless? This is not rebellion. It is not faithlessness. It is the prayer of a man who has been walking in obedience for years and is still holding an unresolved promise, and who brings that honestly to God rather than pretending it doesn’t press on him.
God’s response is not a rebuke. It is a reorientation. He takes Abram outside — into the night, under an open sky — and says: count the stars if you can. So shall your offspring be.
And Abram believed. Not because the circumstances had changed. Not because Sarah was suddenly pregnant. Because God spoke, and Abram chose, again, to trust the One who was speaking.
God called this righteousness. Not the arrival. The believing.
What This Means for the Reader
Here is what the years between Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 contain that we tend to skip over: they are the years where the character of Abram was being formed that the destiny of Abraham would require.
The man who would become the father of faith did not start as the father of faith. He became it — in the uncertainty, in the waiting, in the repeated choice to trust a promise that hadn’t arrived yet. The destination did not make him who he needed to be. The journey did.
Yesterday you took a step — or you named one. Today the question is what happens when you keep stepping and the horizon doesn’t get closer. When the next step doesn’t resolve into a destination. When you’ve been obedient and faithful and the promise still feels like a star you can see but cannot reach.
This is where most people quietly give up — not dramatically, not in a moment of visible rebellion, but in the slow erosion of expectation. The prayer gets shorter. The trust gets more guarded. The hands that were open start to close again around something safer and more manageable.
Abram didn’t do that. He brought his honest question to God and let God reorient him. And in that moment of reorientation — not arrival, just reorientation — something was credited to him that no destination could have produced — Faith.
What God builds in the not-knowing cannot be built any other way.
The uncertainty you are in right now is not a waiting room you pass through on the way to the real story. It is the real story. The faith being formed in you in this season — the trust that chooses to believe without seeing, the obedience that moves without a full map — is not just a byproduct of the journey. It is the destination.
Abram needed to be the kind of man who could father a nation. That man was not born in Ur. He was formed between Ur and Canaan, in the years of the unresolved promise, under a sky full of stars he couldn’t count.
You are being formed too. Right now. In this headwind of uncertainty.
Grace Note
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. — Hebrews 11:1-2 (NIV)
Hebrews 11 is the great hall of the uncertain — men and women commended not for arriving but for believing before they could see. Abram is in that hall. So is every person who has ever released the bar without seeing the next one. The commendation is not for the destination. It is for the posture held on the way.
Prayer Prompt
Father, I want to be honest the way Abram was honest — bringing You the gap between the promise and the present without dressing it up or pretending it isn’t there. The step I named yesterday is real. The obedience is real. And the destination is still not visible.
So I’m bringing You the in-between. Not asking You to explain it. Not demanding a timeline. Just coming back to You the way Abram came back — with my honest question and my willingness to be reoriented by whatever You say next.
Take me outside if You need to. Show me something I haven’t been looking at. Reorient my eyes from what hasn’t happened yet to who You are right now. And let the trust I’m choosing today — without the evidence I’d prefer, without the clarity I’d find more comfortable — be the thing You credit to me.
I want to become, in this uncertainty, the person the destination will require.
Amen.
Response
1. Carry the Step Forward (Connective): Pull out the next step you identified yesterday. Did you take it? If yes — write down what it cost and what it produced, even if what it produced was simply more uncertainty. If not — write down what stopped you. Either answer is honest and both are worth bringing to God today.
2. Bring Your Honest Question (Written Reflection): Abram didn’t hide his frustration — you have given me no children. What is the honest version of that sentence for you? Write it out as a direct address to God: “You have given me no ________.” Don’t soften it. Don’t theologize it. Just say the true thing. God is not surprised by your honesty and He is not diminished by your questions.
3. Go Outside Tonight (Kinesthetic): When it’s dark, go outside and look up. You don’t have to count the stars. Just stand under them for five minutes without your phone. Let the scale of what you’re looking at do something to the scale of what you’re carrying. God took Abram outside for a reason. Sometimes the reorientation is physical before it is spiritual.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way