WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: ‘Then Abram bowed face down on the ground’ (v 3). Ask God to overpower you with his presence (if you dare!). On our level Our Creator is well beyond the reaches of our human ability to imagine or describe. His thoughts, actions and purposes are mysterious, awesome and complex beyond belief. And yet he deals with us on our own level. The grand story of creation, fall, redemption and new creation all happens in the dirt of the earth, on our scale, in our reality. Rescue plan So here we have the initiation of a rescue plan. And it involves a conversation between God and an elderly man, who begins the interaction called Abram (‘exalted father’) and ends it with a new name, Abraham (‘father of many’; v 5). God wishes to make an agreement, a covenant that will bind him to his people and them to him for ever (v 7), the sign of which will be male circumcision (v 10). Descendants of the promise We, as followers of Christ, are descendants of Abraham in fulfilment of this promise (v 7). God Almighty, El Shaddai, is our God. And he still takes our humanity seriously. He still meets us, right where we are (on the number 65 bus or in the bath), and talks to us by name. What is our role in this story? Respond: God’s desire for Abraham to ‘walk before me faithfully and be blameless’ (v 1, NIV) is his desire for us too. Pray that he will show you what it means for you to walk faithfully and blamelessly through today. http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-04-09