I didn’t know I was already deconstructing the day my then mother-in-law told me I shouldn’t be a pastor.
I was dressed up, fresh from church, visiting at her house. I had recently been hired as a full time music pastor at a tiny little church who was eager to reach their surrounding community. I was so excited to both dive into my calling and get to build a program from the ground up.
Somewhere in the conversation she told me, plainly, that she didn’t think I should be a pastor. She didn’t agree with it. It was a whole love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin moment in which she tried to convince me to focus on a career as a Mary Kay lady.
And here’s what I understand now that I couldn’t then: she sincerely believed she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t trying to wound me. She was trying to be faithful to what she’d been handed.
I remember going quiet, kind of speechless and hurt. And underneath the hurt was something I didn’t have words for yet: a small, stubborn knowing that I couldn’t go back to the version of faith that made her words make sense.
That’s how it starts for a lot of us. Not with a decision. With a small knowing.
You took the bracelets seriously - the rubbery ones that were stamped with “What Would Jesus Do?” And somehow, the version of faith you were taught doesn’t line up with the Jesus you know. And the people who taught you faith, the ones who likely gifted you that bracelet, don’t understand why your faith has changed.
If that’s where you are, I want to tell you about Abraham. His story starts in a similar way that yours does.
Why Abraham?
Many of us grew up calling Hebrews 11 the Faith Hall of Fame. It’s a roll call of people honored for their faith. And here is the very first thing it says about Abraham:
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”* (Hebrews 11:8)
Notice what Hebrews chooses to honor. Not his certainty. Not his answers. It honors a man for walking away from what he knew without knowing where he’d end up.
Friend, that is what questioning your faith feels like. You can’t stay where you were, and you can’t see what’s ahead. Many of us were told that this means we’re losing our faith.
Hebrews says the opposite. Not knowing where you’re going is the first thing faith looked like in the father of faith himself.
He left his father’s religion
Here’s the call, from Genesis 12:
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”* (Genesis 12:1)
Listen to how the circles shrink: country, then kindred, then father’s house. In Abraham’s world, your father’s house was everything. Your safety, your identity, your inheritance, your religion.
And that last one matters for us. Centuries later, Joshua remembers that Abraham’s family “served other gods” (Joshua 24:2). Abraham wasn’t just changing addresses. He was leaving the faith of the house he was raised in.
Sound familiar? You may not be leaving God at all. You may be leaving a house of belief that got too small to live in, the way Abraham did. And God didn’t meet Abraham by keeping him in that house. God met him on the road out of it.
The father who stopped
Now here’s the detail that makes this story ours.
It was actually Abraham’s father, Terah, who started the journey. Genesis 11:31 says Terah set out from Ur “to go into the land of Canaan.” Same destination. But when they reached Haran, “they settled there.”
Terah started toward something and stopped halfway. On the plain reading of Genesis, he was still living in Haran when Abraham left.**
This is where your people come in. The parent, the spouse, the friend who doesn’t understand. Most of them aren’t against you. Many of them are Terah. They may have had questions once too. They came as far as they could go, and they settled.
That doesn’t make them bad. It means you’re walking a road they couldn’t finish. And notice that Scripture tells both stories without calling either man a villain. You can grieve the distance without making them the enemy.
Two words worth defining
Faith. The Greek word in Hebrews is pistis. We turned it into “being certain of the right answers.” But pistis is closer to trust, the way you trust a person, not a checklist. If you’re full of questions right now, you are not outside of faith. You may be standing right in the middle of it.
Blessing. God tells Abraham, “I will bless you… so that you will be a blessing,” and “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:2–3). The Hebrew berakah is life that flourishes and flows outward. Look at who it flows to: families. The man called to leave his father’s house is promised that his leaving will become a blessing to families. Maybe even the one he left. Your questions are not a curse on the people you love.
Something to think about
You’ve probably heard this one: Doesn’t the Bible say to honor your father and mother?
It does (Exodus 20:12), and it matters. But honoring your parents means treating them with dignity and care. It has never meant inheriting every belief they hold. Abraham, the father of faith, left his father’s gods. You can leave the house and still honor the people in it.
One more thought, because I promised not to hand you tidy heroes. Abraham’s faith cost other people, too. Right after this story, he passes his wife off as his sister to save himself (Genesis 12:10–20). Leaving is never a license to stop caring who gets hurt. Hebrews honors Abraham’s trust, not everything that he did with it. Clearly, he made some mistakes, but we can value his faith anyway.
So what do we do with this
If you’re in the early, disorienting days of questioning your faith, hear this:
Not knowing is not the opposite of faith. In Hebrews 11, it’s the first shape faith takes.
Leaving the faith you were handed is not the same as leaving God. Sometimes it’s how you finally find God, on the road, in the land you’ll only be shown later. You don’t have to have all the answers up front.
And the people who don’t understand? They may be Terah. You can carry them with you in love, even if they don’t come along for the ride.
So what does that look like in our real lives? Three small things:
Say “I don’t know” without apologizing for it. To yourself first. To other people when you’re ready. It’s ok if you don’t have every answer yet.
Stop treating your questions like a secret sin. Write them down. Pray them out loud. Bring them to one safe person. Questions don’t mean you don’t love God. Questions are not backsliding or drifting away. Questions are how we test our faith.
When someone you love doesn’t understand, picture Terah in Haran. Not an enemy. Just someone who came as far as they could. (It won’t make Thanksgiving easy, but it might make it kinder.)
You’re not the first to walk this road. You’re in very good, very human company.
*Scripture quotations are from the NRSVue.
**Genesis 11:26 has Terah 70 when Abram is born, 12:4 has Abram 75 when he leaves, and 11:32 has Terah dying at 205.
The Greenhouse Preview
This Friday, in the Greenhouse, we get practical about the early days, and we’ll bring our not-knowing straight to God.
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The Closing Question
Tell me in the comments: When did you first sense you couldn’t stay in the faith you were raised in? Was it one moment, or a slow knowing?
P.S. This Sunday on Streams of Grace, I’m preaching on Abraham and what it means to walk without a map. Come breathe with me. Sign up here!