Day 10: Leave your home.

Today’s reading: Genesis 12: 1-20

God has a plan to restore humanity back to Him. We see how God established a covenant with Noah (Gen 9:11) by promising never to destroy the world with the flood and how nations rose from his offspring. God is not done yet and in Abram’s case, God has a plan to use him and his offspring to be the ambassadors of God’s plan for restoration and redemption of mankind. God’s covenant was what God would do for one man, Abram. God does this by calling him out of his comfort zone to a place where God will show him. We see no resistance from Abram; it is no wonder he is known as the father of faith.

God says to Abraham, among other things, that “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). God then follows up in Genesis 12:7 by appearing to Abraham and promising the blessing of the Land. So far, we have three things promised to Abraham: Land (Gen 12:1), Descendants (Gen 12:2), and Blessing (Gen 12:3).

A safety issue.

In Gen 12:11 Abram hatched a plan that would keep him safe or so he thought and had Sarai pretend that she was his sister. We can argue that we are all sisters and brothers on this earth right? Anyway, God punishes the Egyptians for taking Sarai and they return her to her husband. One reason we could say no one was able to touch Sarai was because God was going to use her to be the mother of the promised descendants and it did make sense that no other man would be permitted to touch her.

A marriage covenant, unlike what Abram and Sarai had, should be made before God to love your partner faithfully no matter what happens. This should change how we act towards the perceived failures and imperfections of the other person and make issues of anger, disappointment, fear and even divorce non-issues.

Have you ever made or been part of a covenant? How would our study above impact how you look at covenants? Share your thoughts below.