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CONNIE: Do you have a hotline to heaven? A red phone that rings whenever God has a new mission for you to go on? Have you answered God’s call lately? What do you do when Heaven’s On the Line?
Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 year, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko, and I want to say a very warm welcome to you, and thank you for joining us today! Our topic is “When Heaven’s On the Line,”

CONNIE: There’s more than one way to take that title—and I think you intended for us to take it both ways, didn’t you?

LONNIE: Yes, you’ve caught me in a double entendre, you English Major you! Because I want us to begin thinking about the life of Abraham this week, and particularly to focus on God’s call to Him and Abraham’s response.

CONNIE: It wasn’t exactly a telephone call, was it?

LONNIE: No, it was something much more profound—a call to make a complete change in his life. And really, how Abraham answered that call put heaven on the line in a second way. In a very real sense his relationship to God, and his home in heaven, were on the line. It’s hard to imagine how different life would have been for him if he had refused to answer God’s call. So heaven was on the line in more than one way here.

CONNIE:Sounds like an interesting study—and friend, I wonder—is heaven on the line for you today? Is there a call from God you’re pondering? As we launch into these studies, we’ll be speaking with people who have answered God’s call on their lives. First up, we placed a call halfway around the world to speak with Scott and Julie Griswold, who are serving as missionaries in Thailand. Ken Wade spoke with them.

KEN: I want to welcome Scott and Julie Griswold to our program today. We are talking to them all the way from Muak Lek, Thailand, welcome the two of you.

SCOTT: Thank you, it’s good to be with you.

JULIE: Yeah, we are glad to be apart of this.

KEN: Scott and Julie, I thought of calling you all the way around the world because of experiences that we shared together, particularly in Cambodia a number of years ago. I remember coming to your home in downtown Phnom Penh, and visiting with you when you were just a very young and new missionary couple, but the thing that impressed me was the sense that you had taken a call to leave your county and go to a totally different country…What was that like for you? What were your goals and thoughts as you did that?

SCOTT: We were excited to go out because of the incredible need after the war there, and almost nobody had heard of Jesus before, and so we were really excited when we first planned it had all those dreams you know, and the desire that we had to share Jesus with the people and get close to them.

KEN: How do you feel that worked, as far as blending into another country and culture?
JULIE: I’m not so much of an adventuress person so I had quite a hard time saying goodbye to loved ones and heading off into the unknown.

KEN: I remember you being there, and I remember the home that you selected was among other Cambodian families. You weren’t out on a mission compound so to speak. Did you find you were able to learn the language as you interacted with the people there?

JULIE: Yes. I would whole heartedly say that is the way that you can come closer t the people, by living with them and learning…Just by observing them and watching how they live and how they go to the market, buy things, interact, and converse was very eye-opening for both of us.

KEN: Now the two of you spent a number of years there in Cambodia and we had some wonderful experiences seeing how the people came back into the country after the civil war and were able to win their friends and neighbors, then you came back to the US and served here for awhile right?

SCOTT: Yes! We were located in the Bay area for awhile.

KEN: Then you get this call to go to another new culture, Thailand where you are living now, how was that for you facing it a second time?

SCOTT: It was a total surprise for us. We had no plans to come back to Southeast Asia, and frankly we weren’t too excited to go. We had our dreams and other plans back in the states and were quite surprised by the call.

KEN: As Abraham must have been in Haran.

SCOTT: I think so. I think that any time that we sense a need and a call from God to go out of our way that we feel a little surprised and taken back, but it’s only when we surrender to God’s call that we began to get excited about God’s purpose and plan.

KEN: You have two children 7 and 10, and Julie has just given birth to a new little baby that’s been born there in Thailand, how’s it going working in a different culture, one that you did not expect to be a part of?

JULIE: I’m thankful for the little bit of Thai I know thanks to the doctors and nurses around, and sometimes it can get kind of scary when I was giving birth and I was thankful that my husband who speaks Thai was there to hold my hand through it. But it has been a good experience and I’m happy to be doing it again.

SCOTT: It’s just neat to see how people warm up to you when you can speak a little bit of their language, or when you remember so of there stories, or their proverbs that they hold dear, it really just means a lot to them and they instantly warm up. And if we ever want to really share the love of Christ with different cultures we must learn to get close to them and help them to understand it in their language.

KEN: Absolutly! Scott, I know that you are working on developing Bible lessons, and Bible studies and that sort of thing for people with a Buddhist background.

SCOTT: It’s something that a group of us have really been working on to here in a mostly Buddhist area, and we are trying to write these in their language so that they may understand them more easily.

KEN: Thank you for sharing with us your mission and you keep up the good work through Christ.

“I Heard the Voice”, Emily Felts Jones, from I Heard the Voice CD, Track 1

CONNIE: Thank you Emily Felts Jones for sharing that song with us—hearing the voice of Jesus speaking to us—it’s a wonderful experience.

LONNIE: But it can also be a very challenging experience, as we’ll discover as we consider the life of Abraham and other pioneers for God.

CONNIE: You know, we heard our writer/producer Ken Wade talking with the Griswolds a moment ago, and Ken has told me that he’s always been fascinated by the life of Abraham—it’s been a great inspiration to him. So much so that he’s written a whole book about it.

LONNIE: That’s right, Connie. And this book is brand new. In fact the publisher had to rush the printing date a bit to make sure that copies would be ready for us to offer here on this program.

CONNIE: It’s an excellent book—one I know you’ll find very inspirational. It’s called Journey to Moriah, and it focuses on Abraham’s life as a journey. Abraham walked with God, and was always having to learn new lessons along the way, and that’s the motif Ken uses in the book—helping us learn the lessons right along with Abraham.

LONNIE: We’d like you to have a copy of this book, and honestly we wish we could send one out to each of our listeners for free, but we just can’t do that. Frankly, we need your help and support to keep our ministry strong, and we’re asking you to make a donation if you’d like to receive this book.

CONNIE: For your minimum donation of $15.00 you’ll receive a hot-off-the-press copy of Journey to Moriah even before they hit the bookstores! You can reserve your copy by calling us at 1-800-872-0055 right now. I know you’ll enjoy the book, and your contribution will help to keep Voice of Prophecy programs coming your way with good messages like we’re about to hear. Share with us won’t you Lonnie, “When Heaven’s On the Line.”

When Heaven’s On the Line

Go back with me in time, if you will. Almost 4,000 years. To a world that was very different from ours in many ways—but also very much the same.
A few months ago, my wife Jeannie and I had the privilege of going to one of the most amazing places on earth. The place we went is less than 200 miles from our home, and I’ve always wanted to go there, just never made it before. But on a recent trip to the eastern edges of California, we finally got our chance to go up into the White Mountains, and to pay our respects to Methuselah.

Not the biblical patriarch, mind you, but the tree they call Methuselah. Because, as far as anyone knows, it’s the oldest living thing on this planet! We didn’t actually see Methuselah—because he’s such a celebrity that his exact address is kept absolutely secret. If fans from all over the world started to visit him—well, that would be the worst thing that could happen to him. But we did meet a lot of his cousins. And frankly, it was just plain overwhelming to stand there in the presence of trees that have eked out an existence in that dry, barren, cold environment for over 4,000 years.

Scientists who have counted Methuselah’s rings tell us that this patriarch tree is over 4,600 years old! Imagine that! This little tree was literally “older than the oaks” on the day that Father Abraham was born. The tree was two-and-a-half millennia old when Jesus was born!

Standing there in the presence of those ancient trees took my mind back to the time of Abraham.

It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it—that a man who lived so very long ago can still be very much alive? Alive in the sense that his life still touches millions of people. Still gives inspiration and courage to those who set out to know God and to follow His leading.

That’s why I’d like you to journey back with me in time to the days of Abraham—we need to understand this man if we are to fully understand what it means to be people of faith. To live in harmony with the will of God. To answer in the affirmative when heaven’s on the line—with a call for us to set out and follow God’s leading.

It’s a challenging thing—always—when we’re called to make changes. But imagine what it was like for Abraham. Earlier in our program we spoke with Scott Griswold. He and his family answered the call of God to go to a different culture, a place where the people spoke a different language, and lived very differently. But before they went, Scott was able to go to the library and read about that country. He and Julie watched videos and looked at pictures depicting life over there. They didn’t go into it blind when they moved.

But notice what the Bible tells us about Abraham’s call to follow God:

“Now the LORD had said to Abram:
‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father's house,
To a land that I will show you.’ ”
(Genesis 12:1, NKJV)

I think that some of the most significant words in this call from heaven are these: “To a land that I will show you.” A land that I will—future tense—show you. Not some place that you’ve found in your Rand McNally atlas. Not a place that you’ve read about in Travel and Leisure Magazine.

Abraham was called by God to go—to set out on a journey of faith.

Journeys were not something new to him.

Sometime earlier, his father Terah had taken his whole family and moved some 500 miles from home. They’d moved from southern Mesopotamia—southern Iraq—way up north to Haran, which is in Turkey today.

And now God was calling on Abraham to set out on a journey of his own. But this would be different. God didn’t call him to pick up his whole family and move. Notice how God phrased the call:

“ ‘Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father's house.’ ”

It happens all the time today. A young person grows up, goes away to college, and then accepts the call of an employer clear across the country from home. Mom and Dad are living in Nashua, New Hampshire, and Junior is working for someone in Washougal, Washington. It’s hard to leave home even today. But imagine what it was like for Abraham. He couldn’t e-mail Dad every day or chat online with him. He couldn’t take a cell phone with him and make a call back home to say “everything’s going fine here—how are things there?” If his donkey developed a lame foot, he couldn’t call Triple A and have a tow camel sent out with a spare. And Mom and Dad wouldn’t be able hop on a 747 and spend the Christmas holidays with Abraham and the grandkids.

No, when Abraham answered the call of God, it meant leaving family behind; unsure he’d ever see them or hear from them again. And this in a time when family was all-important in a man’s life.

You probably remember that Abraham—or Abram as he’s known at first—was married to his half sister Sarai—who later was renamed Sarah. And you have to ask yourself why a man would marry a half sister. If you know something about the culture that these people lived in though, you’ll understand very quickly why they did it. It was all part of a scheme to preserve the family’s wealth. To keep there from being too many branches on the family tree.

Archaeologists who have excavated towns in the area where Abraham first lived have noticed that whole sections of the city were often walled off as separate communities isolated, all to themselves.

That’s probably where a “father’s house” lived—the extended family of some first father. They pretty much kept to themselves and intermarried among their own clan, so that they could preserve the family’s resources and provide for their continuing prosperity.

That was the whole foundation of society in Abraham’s day.

And when God called him, He called him to leave all of that behind.

The family was your bank account and credit references.

The family was your police department to protect you from fraud and robbery.

The family was your medical insurance and retirement plan.

The family gave you your identity—your right to stand tall when you walked through the market.

And when you left your extended family behind, you left all of that behind.

Not an easy thing to do.

But that’s what God called Abraham to do. And the amazing thing is that Abraham answered the call. Genesis 12: 4, 5 tells us, “Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarah his wife and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan” (NKJV).

Now, I’ve titled my message today, “When Heaven’s on the Line,” and you can take that title more than one way. You can take it to mean that heaven is making a phone call to us—but you can also look at it from Abraham’s perspective and ask the question: What if he had turned down the call of God? What would his destiny have been then?

We remember him as the great father of the faithful—a man whose courage and faith brought blessings into his own life and to his family, and to hundreds of generations that have followed. A man who walked with God and came to know God better and better until they were best of friends.

But what if—what if he had turned his back on God instead of setting out on the difficult road? What if he had said the sacrifice God asked of him was too great—he couldn’t leave his family behind? What if he had said, “But Lord, I’m too old for any new adventures? I’m ten years past retirement age, for heaven’s sakes. Just leave me alone—ask someone younger to go to Canaan.

What if?

Friend, I ask these questions because I know how hard it can be to answer the call of God. And you may be teetering on the edge right now, wondering whether to entrust your future to the Lord or not.

In times like these, the story of Abraham always gives me new courage. I’ve read it over and over again, but each time I learn something new. And that’s why for the next several weeks we’re going to be focusing our attention on this old, old story. To learn from it. To renew our faith. And to find the courage to move out for God.

You know, life might have been easier for Abraham if he’d just said “Sorry, wrong number,” and hung up the phone when heaven was on the line. But somehow he knew that his future would be brighter if he answered the call.

With 20/20 hindsight, the New Testament recalls that “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would after receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8, NIV).

I don’t know about you, but I like to be able to see where I’m going. I hate driving in fog, always wondering what’s just ahead in my path. And there must have been days when Abraham felt like that’s what he was doing.

But he had heard the call of God.

And he had answered the call of God.

And somehow he knew that if he would only keep his ears tuned toward heaven, he would know where to go.

How about you? Have you answered heaven’s call? Are you sure you’re following just where God would have you go? In our next program in this series, we’ll continue our look at Abraham—and how he learned to follow. It wasn’t always easy for him. In fact, sometimes he missed the path that God had laid out for him.

But even when he did that, he learned his mistakes and turned them into learning experiences. As we launch into a series on Abraham, let me invite you to get out your Bible, read through the stories in Genesis again, and join us as we learn from Abraham what it is to be a friend of God!