Genesis 15: All These Things

 

“After these things… the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision…” 

After what things??  After Abram was doing nothing more than being faithful in his everyday life. He had gone back to the beginning… back to where it all started. He had already been promised that he would be a great nation. But God didn’t take Him to that promise immediately. He was just living his life… raising and training his household… rescuing his nephew.  Abram was doing nothing more than being faithful in the little things. He wasn’t even hearing big things from God on a daily basis… but he remained faithful in his daily walk and how he lived his daily life. 

There are days when I don’t hear from God. When I don’t feel His presence… when I feel like I’m wandering far outside His gates. Those days I am tempted to hear my own voice… to make decisions based on the fact that I feel God has left me. May I learn to be like Abram… to be faithful in the mundane and hold fast to God’s promises.

God came to Abram in a vision… took him outside and told him to count the stars… and that would be the number of his descendents. It was a seemingly impossible promise in the natural.


And then comes beautiful verse 6: “THEN… he believed in the Lord….”  Why THEN? Well, what were Abram’s other choices? To say “Sure, I doubt it.”? He could have… but instead he BELIEVED God… and it was counted as righteousness on Abram’s part. He made a decision to stand firm and hold fast to what God promised. The Hebrew word for believe, ” ‘aman, ” translates “support, confirm, uphold, to be established, lasting, verified.”   

Oh if I could only BELIEVE God continually… in the everyday trials of life. If I could just keep counting stars, instead of counting the things that seem to be taken away.

So Abram believed God for his offspring… and God also tells him he will possess the promised land. For some reason… Abram wanted a sure sign from God that the land promise was true. At this point God makes a blood covenant with Abram.

God made a covenant with you and Me as well… to let us know He will remain true to His Word and His promises. The sacrifice for that covenant was Jesus.