Genesis 12 1- 3 The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. 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. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

This is an ambitious title for a blog because volumes can be written about these men and their relationship with God. However, what I want to focus on is the God who keeps his promises. To each of these men God made promises and kept them even though it took generations for some of those promises to be fulfilled. The major promise that God made to each of these men in their turn was that through their offspring all nations of the earth would be blessed. (Read the accounts in Genesis, chapters 12, 26, and 28). We are the recipients of that promise as Jesus Christ is that offspring through whom everyone has access to God and every believer can embrace the joy of living a God-directed life.

The other soul-gripping aspect of God’s promises to these men is how emphatic God was that he would be the one to guarantee the realization of these promises. I challenge you to count how many times God said “I will” to these men. Why is that? (a) Because God is Sovereign and there are things which he does in defense of his own name; (b) He knows we are not perfect and neither were these men.

Lastly, the passage of time did not negate God’s promises. The blessings he promised to these men were to them and their descendants. Are you a parent like myself and are there things you have prayed to God about in regard to your children and God promised to sort them out? Time has passed. Are you now looking at the situation they are in and thinking it’s not making any sense?  I hear you. But “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19) Go to God in prayer and tell him you remember what he has promised and that you will continue to wait on his timing. I’m right there with you.