Moving First in Relationships

⁵ Now Lot, who was moving about with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents. ⁶ But the land could not support them while they stayed together, for their possessions were so great that they were not able to stay together. ⁷ And quarreling arose between Abram’s herders and Lot’s. The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land at that time.

⁸ So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. ⁹ Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

¹⁰ Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) ¹¹ So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: ¹² Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. ¹³ Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord. – Genesis 13:5-13

I find this action by Abram in the midst of what could have been a family fight interesting.  Abram had been called by God to go to a land he did not know.  He had to go only on faith.  Hebrews 11:8 says, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”  So Abram finally gets to where God has him to go.  It is the Promised Land where his people would live.  God tells Abram a few verses later (14-15) “Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west.  All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.”

Yet it is Abram that goes to Lot when their herdsmen are having trouble to select where he wants to go first.  It would seem natural that Abram would select where he wanted to live since this was the land God had promised for him to live and he had traveled from his home, blindly following God, to this land.  Also, Abram was older, he was Lot’s uncle.  Clearly, Abram should choose where he wanted to live and tell Lot where he was going to live.  That’s my logic.  But that wasn’t what he did.

Abram went to Lot first and said that it was wrong for their herdsmen to quarrel.  To prevent that, he offers Lot to select where he wanted to live, then states that he will go wherever Lot doesn’t select.  All for the sake of not having a disagreement between them.  It is an incredibly humble action.  It turns out to be the right action as Lot was only looking at the land with his eyes and not with a heart pursuing God’s will.  He goes to a land of wicked people.  Soon he is captured and Abram has to go and rescue him.

In the book Pursuing the Will of God, Jack Hayford writes that Abram doesn’t have to endure the hardships of bitterness and unforgiveness because of his actions here.  He writes, “The cost of release from that prison [of bitterness and unforgiveness] is a deep humbling of ourselves before the Lord and before those who have wronged us.  It is a willingness to bear the pain.  A willingness to forgive.  A willingness to pay the full price to redeem a relationship.  Jesus knows all about it.”

Even if we’ve done nothing wrong.  Even if we’re 100% right.  Sometimes the only way to restore a relationship is to sacrifice all of ourselves, whether they ever accept it or not, in order to have a relationship.  This is only Biblical since this is what Jesus did for me.