Verse of the Day 1/14

Through the Bible - Genesis 35-36, Matthew 12

 

Good morning,
This morning we'll return to Genesis and our thoughts on Abraham.  Abraham trusts God and leaves his homeland for an unknown place of promise.  Abraham trusts God and lives in tents instead of building a city with permanent foundations. Sarah trusts God and conceives when she is barren and past the age of childbearing. Abraham is willing to offer up this son as a sacrifice to God, instead God provides the sacrifice.  Where did such faith come from?

 

He believed in God and His promises, He had a living faith, or you might say he lived by faith. 

 

For today's verse we'll go to one of my favorites from the book of Genesis.

Gen 12:2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.     NKJV

In his sermon on Hebrew 11:7-12, the passage we looked at yesterday, John Piper said that, "Saving faith is not a mere single act of receiving Jesus. Saving faith receives Jesus in order to go on trusting him. Saving faith is a life of faith. That faith is what this chapter (Hebrews 11)is trying to teach us. You can see that most clearly if you look at the verse that leads into the chapter, Hebrews 10:39, "But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul." Do you see what is at stake: shrinking back to destruction; or pressing on in faith to preserve the soul. In other words, the evidence of authentic saving faith is its pressing on. Faith that saves from destruction is faith that lives day by day."

 

Abraham didn't have an easy life, he didn't have an "easy button" to push.  Like us, he had his ups and downs in his faith, but he persevered, he pressed on.  And in doing so he was a blessing, and nations are still being blessed through those who do likewise.

 

But what I'd like to encourage you to think about today is the statement, the promise God made to Abraham, "I will bless you... and you shall be a blessing."  I believe that that is God's desire, to bless us that we may be a blessing to others.

 

Take some time today to consider how God has blessed, is blessing you.  Take some time also to consider how you may be a blessing to someone close to you or across the world.

 

Make Me a Blessing

 

Out on the highways and byways of life,
Many are the weary and sad;
Carry the sunshine where darkness is rife,
Making the sorrowing glad.

Chorus
Make me a blessing, make me a blessing;
Out of my life may Jesus shine.
Make me a blessing, O Saviour I pray,
Make me a blessing to someone today.

Give as 'twas given to you in your need,
Love as the Master loved you;
Be to the helpless a helper indeed,
Unto your mission be true.

 

Blessings,
Mike

mikevw@bellsouth.net
mikesvotd.blogspot.com

Gen 12:1-6
2 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.
2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

4 So 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. 5 Then Abram took Sarai 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. So they came to the land of Canaan. 6 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh.
NKJV