THE BLESSING OF THE LORD AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD !

THE BLESSING OF THE LORD AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD ! (Isaiah 51:1-2-3) . "Listen to me, you that followed after righteousness, you that seek the Lord; look unto the rock from which you are hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you are digged. Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah, which bore you all; for I called him on, and Blessed him, and increased him. For the Lord shall come forth Zion; he will call for all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like The Garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found in it, Thanksgiving, and the voice of melody." Abraham had struggled for decades with that issue of having a child of his very own. Because his wife has been barren all their married lives, he hadn't been able to figure out how God could make him a "great nation." Though God has promised it, the thought boggled his mind. So, on the heels of Abraham's bold confession of tithe and faith, God did what was necessary to help him take his next step of faith. He apperared to Abraham and said: He that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them, and he said unto him, so shall thy seed be. And he believed in THE LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am THE LORD that brought thee out Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it ? And he said unto him, take me and heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a round of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon (Genesis 15:4-9). What happened next changed Abraham forever. He took the animals as God instructed, prepare them as covenant sacrifices, and with his physical senses suspended in a kind of vision sleep, he watched while God came down and made a covenant with him. He saw the flaming fire of God's glory pass through the pieces of the sacrificed animals. I'm convinced he saw God's footprints as He walked the traditional figure eight in the pathway of blood. When Abraham saw the fire of God in the middle of that blood and heard Him swearing the covenant oath to him, suddenly THE BLESSING took on an even greater meaning----a blood-swore oath. He realized that God was saying, "I swear by Myself. I will die before I will ever break My WORD to you. I will shed My ongoing blood like these animals have shed theirs, if necessary, to see to it that through your Seed all the families of the earth are BLESSED." That dark night, the fire and the blood anchored Abraham's soul forever in God's promise. From that point on, he never doubted God again. With all human reason for hope being gone, Abraham: . . Believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about 100 years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he has promised, he was able also to perform (Romans 4:18-21).