Promise

Whoa...I just read my post from last week and I've already failed at my challenge to pray twice a day. Good thing there is grace and forgiveness! I'm going to try again though so don't think you're off the hook. I've preached one or three sermons now in the season of Lent and I've decided to focus on our need to connect with God. We need to be intentional in seeking that connection and even more diligent in keeping outside distractions from breaking that connection. Without our daily intentional connection with the Spirit we can easily miss God's still small voice in our lives and the opportunity to bask in God's presence. I think I preach on our need to be in communion with God because it is something I know I need and don't always do a great job of getting. As I said before good thing there is grace and forgiveness!

Today I was thinking about a topic and I was reminded of the Old Testament verse from Genesis I'm going to preach on Sunday. (Don't worry Carroll it won't be an exact copy of my blog.) :-) The verses come from the 15th chapter and they are God's covenant with Abram. God promises Abram land and descendants. Some of the language and ritual around the sacrifice and covenant ceremony doesn't make much sense to us today, but safe to say the cutting of the animals in half was an ancient way to do a covenant. Today we'd have lawyers present and there would be a lot of signatures. The interesting part of this covenant between God and Abram is not the way in which it was sealed, but in who is making the promises. Read verses 1-12 and see who is doing the promising. God is saying that Abram and his descendants will inherit this land. God is the one doing all the talking. God's promises of descendants and land is not contingent on Abram at all. This covenant/promise is unconditional. Abram has done nothing to deserve this great blessing and he can do nothing to have this promise broken because God is doing all the promising.

It is important to note that unconditional promise here in Genesis because as the history of Israel unfolds the promise starts to have some conditions put on it. We could certainly enter into a lively discussion about what the addition of conditions means, but that would be for another post. Let's focus on the first promise of land and heirs made to Abram and how it was unconditional. That promise is still valid for us today. No, God isn't promising us the promised land, riches, and/or children. God is promising to be with us, to love us, to never leave us or forsake us and to always work for God's purpose in our lives. This promise to us is also unconditional. It isn't affected by how we act or don't act. God has promised us forgiveness and grace as long as we honestly repent and are sorry for our sins. I think that promise can't be overstated as we journey through Lent. As we are asked to work on bettering our connection with God and to take an honest look at our spiritual lives we need to keep in mind that even if we aren't satisfied with what we see God loves us just the way we are. God loves our imperfections and all.

As a parting word we can't take that unconditional love for granted and abuse it. Yes, we can't do anything to make God love us less, but that doesn't mean we have an excuse to live however we see fit and then go back and ask for forgiveness. Asking for and receiving forgiveness is only done when we are truly sorry for what we've done and we have an honest desire to not do it again and to try to live better. We should be living a life filled with gratitude for what God has done for us, and there is no better way to thank God for the unconditional love then to live a life that demonstrates that same unconditional love to all creation as best we can. Let the freedom and joy of knowing that God loves you, warts and all, allow you to honestly confess your sins and seek a better connection allowing you to live a more spirit filled life.