Sacrificial Summit Prayers of Ascent - Day #11

Genesis 12:1-3 – “1 The LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”"
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We are blessed to be a blessing.  Straight up.  It does no good asking for God to bless you as you pray in the morning if you don’t plan on being a blessing that day.  This covenant that God spoke over Abram is one of the most powerful utterances in the whole of Scripture.  The core of this text could shake the core of Christianity as we know it!

Several challenges struck me as I perused this passage afresh today…

#1 – The blessing of God is often reserved for the ones who will “go to the land” God has “yet to show them”.  Faith is often “going” before “knowing”.
#2 – God says “I will” when he knows “we will”.  He won’t entrust blessing to someone that he can’t trust with it. 
#3 – It seems odd to say this, but God actually states that he will make us great as long as we will emerge gracious.  He will be generative as long as we are generous.
#4 – You are not given things to ingest them, you are given things to invest them.
#5 – God’s dream for the restoration of mankind is not to bless the world himself, but to bless the world through us.  

We must stop asking God to bless us if we have no intention of being a blessing, I don’t know how else to say it.  We are not meant to be cul-de-sacs…we are meant to be conduits, channels of blessing.  

“Lord, we are not to be consumers of blessing, but distributors.  Give us more so that we can give more.  Freely we have received, help us to freely give.  We cannot outgive you.  You are a bottomless and boundless reservoir of resources, Lord.  Entrust us with more in accordance to our trustworthiness.  Starve the stingy, Lord.  Fill the faithful, God.  Make us vessels of your blessing, Jesus.”