2016 You Are Included

God is in covenant with you. He has spoken a promise over your life, one he will not break. He is in agreement with how he will care for you, how he will bless you, and the future he has waiting for you. The crazy thing is, you may not be in agreement with him – you may be fighting him. You may not even believe him. But that does not change God’s covenant with you. We really don’t talk about covenants much today. Now, we sign contracts for our agreements. And we often break our contracts and cancel our agreements. Yeah, I thought I wanted to stay here for a full year, but now I don’t, so I’m breaking this lease. I thought I wanted to be married to you for the rest of my life, but nahhhh, I’m not feeling it now, let’s get divorced. Contracts are now something we scroll through to simply get to the bottom of the page, click agree, and submit a digital signature. They don’t even mean anything to us anymore. But a covenant – a covenant was sealed with blood. A covenant is irreversible and forever. And God has a covenant concerning YOU. He made that covenant with Abram, and it was a promise for all his descendants. 4,000 years later, you and I are his descendants. We are among the counted stars God promised him so long ago. My sister, YOU ARE INCLUDED. You were included then and you are included now. A blood covenant was a seal of a promise, and while the scene of a covenant would look quite gruesome to us today, in the day of Abram, it was quite familiar. Animals would be killed, and their carcasses would be split in half. The two halves would then be laid out on the ground with a narrow path between them. So, essentially, you would have the left side of cow on one side of the path, and the right side of the cow on the other side. The same with a goat. Each animal split in half, divided with a narrow path between them. Then, the parties going into agreement with one another would walk that path together, often holding hands. They would recite the terms of their agreement together as they passed through the slain and divided animals. Each would make a commitment that if they broke the promise to the other, they themselves would be torn apart like these sacrificed animals. Blood would be on them and their families if they broke their promise. A covenant was never made with the thought of breaking it in the future if something changed. A covenant was never a decision made in the moment like a midnight wedding in front of Elvis in Las Vegas. A covenant wasn’t a “let’s give this a whirl and see if we like it” kind of thing. A covenant was an all-in commitment with agreed upon non-negotiable terms. If you and I walked hand and hand through a path of split animal carcasses, making a covenant to go into business together – You and I were in business together forever. No loop holes, no expiration, no addendums. Done deal. Hmmmm, imagine if weddings today looked like true covenants. Animal carcass is a very different color choice than most are going for these days. And that level of commitment is hard to find too, huh? So, remember how God makes a promise to Abram that his descendants will be as many as there are stars in the sky, and while Abram and his wife are now old and can’t have children, he dared to BELIEVE GOD, and because of his faith he was counted as righteous. That was an awesome moment of faith. Wow. Then, God makes another promise to Abram. (And that’s really how God works. If you can believe him for one promise, then he’ll make more promises to you. If you trust God with one thing, he will trust you with more.) So God sees that Abram will trust him with something as impossible as children at this point in his life, so God starts making more promises. Genesis 15:7, “Then the Lord told him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur to give you this land as your possession.'” This land was the sought after land of Canaan. Abram had no way of obtaining this land. No way of fighting for it, buying it, or claiming it. So he couldn’t understand HOW God was going to give it to him. And that’s when Abram says, “Lord, how can I be sure that I will actually possess it?” Remember, it’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to believe and have unbelief at the same time. God can handle our questions. He can handle our fears. He can handle our tendency to over-think. And he will handle it if we give it to him! Just give him those doubts. That’s what Abram did. He didn’t pretend to understand what he couldn’t understand. He didn’t try to manufacture a feeling that wasn’t there. He didn’t hide behind fake faith. No, he honestly said, “Lord, how can I be sure?!!!!” And now, you have to know what God does next! This is how God responds to the questions of our heart. This is how God responds when we bring him our fears and doubts. He makes a COVENANT. What we’re going to read next has probably never made sense to you before, but now that you understand more about the scene of a blood covenant, you’ll understand, just as Abram did, what God was asking for. Genesis 15: 9-10, the Lord told him, “Bring me a 3 year old heifer, a 3 year old female goat, a 3 year old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side …” This is the scene of a covenant. Abram knew God was calling him into covenant. They were about to make an agreement together. A commitment that could not be broken. And again, remember, a covenant was an agreement between both parties as they walked through the narrow path between the carcasses together signifying whoever broke the covenant would be torn apart like these sacrificed animals. Blood would be on them and their family with a broken covenant. Now, here’s the amazing part … God walked the path alone. The covenant was his to make. The terms were his to assume. Abram didn’t make the covenant with God, God made the covenant alone for Abram and his descendants. Verse 17, “After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day.” This is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus as the ultimate blood covenant for us. A promise God alone would fulfill to save us, redeem us, and give us a hope and a future far beyond anything we could ever hope, dream or imagine. You see, that covenant is for YOU. The promises are over YOUR life. Here’s how we know – Galatians 3:29, “Now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.” What are those promises and what do they mean to you today? God’s covenant promises to Abraham were to give him descendants as many as the stars, a promised land, and to be a blessing to all nations. Now, through Jesus, we are heirs of this promise. We have a promised land awaiting us. We blessed to be a blessing. We are set apart, chosen, called, anointed and appointed. We are in covenant with God. He assumes all responsibility because he did it for us. He walked the path for us. The blood was his. Our job is to simply live like we know we are forever covered in his promises. Follow Pamela on Instagram – https://instagram.com/headmamapamela Or Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/pamela.crim Find out more about BIG Life – http://biglifehq.com