July 3, 2026:

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. And I will make you in to a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse and all people on earth will be blessed through you.’” (Genesis 12.1-3)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

The promise of God to Abram is not essentially for Abram and his family but for all the world. There is really no other means of understanding the move of bless you and bless them, they who curse you will be cursed. What is the true blessing can never be seen as ultimately the prosperity of a nation among all nations. The true blessing is the promise of redemption and salvation of God’s people, that is- all the people. Ultimately, we see in the call of Abram (a man of unique faith in the midst of a people of many faiths) as the greater fulfillment of what was said to Eve’s offspring. It is there that the Messianic promise begins. It is the promise that all will be saved by the One who will oppose and defeat the true enemy of God and humanity. Of course, God cannot be defeated. The Enemy, Satan, still does not understand this ultimate truth. The denying of this truth is another example of how Satan, the fallen and cast out Lucifer, is guilty of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. (It is also an example of “insanity” which some have identified as “doing the same thing over and over believing you will get a different answer or solution that will actually better you and improve your position.”) In the “curse” spoken to Eve that she will bear children with pain (leaving us to suppose that before the Fall childbirth would be painless), we hear that one of her offspring will crush the head of the Serpent and put the true source of human misery and chaos to an end. Perhaps the infestation of the earth by sinful generations who died in the flood was a demonstration of how the Enemy was still attempting to eliminate God from the “life” equation. Even if there was but one person who remained faithful to God, evil would be defeated. It is a theme that is repeated many times in the Old Testament (as in saving Lot from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah). It is, of course, the leading to the “only one” whose faithfulness to God before the Enemy will bring salvation to the people of God. That “one” is Jesus Christ, identified as the Lion of Judah, the future offspring of Abram by which the promise of salvation is realized. It is also the means by which all people can be blessed through Abram. It is not by mimicking his behavior and thus assuming a worldly blessing (as seem as want to do and we would hear it in the Pharisees retort to Jesus “We have Abraham as our father”). It is by adopting the faith in God as did Abram/Abraham who was willing to lay down “his life” for the sake of all others. Yes, I am speaking of the willingness to sacrifice his only begotten son, Isaac. Isaac was Abraham’s life. Isaac was the sign of God’s promise of fulfillment. Through Isaac future generations would share in the blessing which God had put on Abraham. Without Isaac, there would be nothing but the curse, as was exemplified in Ishmael. Though Abraham loved Ishmael, the promise of God for salvation (through the offspring who would be the Lion of Judah) would not be realized.

Mighty ones of God, it is by adopting such faith so as to believe in God among all other gods as did Abraham that we would be led to the true Promised Land. That Promised Land is not Israel (nor is it the United States.) That Promised Land is where God will lead us. It is the Kingdom of God in the midst of us. It is, as Jesus said to the woman at the well, “the place where we will worship God in spirit and in truth.” Mighty ones, it is time to claim that we are in that place wherever we are worshiping God and God alone in spirit and in truth. We bear witness of it and to it before all the world. We make ourselves willing to be known as descendants “not by blood” but “by faith.” This not only was Jesus answer to the Pharisees and their cohorts as they claimed their right apart from Jesus, it was His example as He took up His cross and followed the word of God. Jesus is the antithesis of blaspheming the Holy Spirit by being obedient to the call of God as a ransom for many. It is the same call made over our lives and for which we are anointed by that same Holy Spirit to be “a priesthood of all believers.” We are being called into the “pride” of the Lion of Judah as the Church, the body of Christ whose heel will crush the head of the Enemy of God and humanity. Let us take “pride” in that and be blessed to be a blessing as the gospel lives in us and through us. AMEN.

TODAY’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.