Blessed to be …

In Genesis 12:2 God says to Abram,

“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.”

In Romans we are reminded that he was the father of faith. Abram was a prototype of what would happen in the New Testament. He was one of the few OT people upon whom the Holy Spirit had come.

In the New Testament the Spirit of God is poured out on the church to empower us, like our forefather to be a blessing. If we read through Acts we find that after the coming of the Holy Spirit, persecution multiplied: stoning, beatings, gaolings, killings and the list goes on. And yet the church grew.

In the west our priorities are often the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure. Just imagine what would have happened to the gospel and our place in the story if that had been the priority of our early brothers and sisters. The likelihood is that we would all be pagans. The gospel would have been stifled.

The challenge is that we too, like Abram and the early Church have been blessed to be a blessing. I don’t know about you but that makes me very uncomfortable.