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I am using readings from the 49 Week Bible Challenge as the basis for these devotions. I encourage you to join me in this discipline. Today’s readings are Acts 7:1-8; Genesis 12; 29; 30.
Genesis 12:1-9
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
I’ve not been to war. But this much I understand: If your commander tells you to take a certain route and go to a specific place, you better do as he says. This is not just because you’ll get in trouble if you don’t do as he says. It’s because he has laid out protection for you along the route he has suggested and provision at the place to which he tells you to go.
So as God calls Abram (later to have his name changed to Abraham), he directs him to go to a certain place and promises to bless him and make his name great. God will show him this place. And not only will Abram be blessed, he will be a blessing to others.
Abram’s obedience puts him on the pathway of blessing. The initiative is God’s. The provision is God’s. The blessing is God’s. Abram will experience the fullness of those blessings as he follows the pathway of blessing.
These blessings, however, will not often be instant. And in Abram’s case it was anything but instant. Abram will be 100 years old when the son of the promise is born. Sarah will be 90. It will be 25 years before Abraham sees even the birth of Isaac. Much later do we see Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau born, and then years later when the 12 sons of Israel (Jacob) are born (Genesis 29; 30).
But the pathway of blessing isn’t neat and tidy. It is messy. Leah and Rachel will compete for Jacob’s attention and the opportunity to bear his children. They will even give their maidservants to him in order to have more children to claim. It becomes on big mess. They stumbled from the path many times – to one side and the other.
But God can deal with messy. He did that completely through his Son who walked the pathway without stumbling. He earned the full blessing of God and calls us to follow him on the pathway of faithful obedience – however messy it may become. For the pathway of faithful obedience is also the pathway of grace and forgiveness. That is the greatest blessing of all.
David Bahn - Reflections 
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