The Covenant of Circumcision

Prayer Practice

Cup Prayer – This prayer will help you pour your heart out to God (Ps. 62:8). Begin with your hands folded together like an upside-down cup. Pour out before God all your fears, anxieties, guilt, sin and shame. Tell Him what troubles you. Take time to be specific. When you feel like you’ve poured out your heart, flip your hands over, folding them like an open cup, ready to receive from God. Sit in silence, asking God simply to fill you with His Spirit. If your mind runs back to sin, shame, anxiety, or concerns of the day, flip your hands back over and pour it out to the Lord. When you are finished praying, read today’s Scripture and listen as God shares His heart back with you.

DAILY READING

Genesis 17:1-14

REFLECTION

Sign of Promise

by Mary Alice McGinnis

Do you remember the story of Abram? The name Abram means “Father of many.” Yet, when God called Abram out of his home country at the age of 75, he was childless.  God later appeared to Abram and told him that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars and the sand. At age 86, he had his first child, Ishmael, through this maidservant Hagar. But his wife, Sarai, remained childless.

 

Now he is 99 years old. He has waited nearly 25 years for God to fulfill his promise, and 13 years since God had last appeared to him. 

 

When God appears in today’s reading, he gave Abram (father of many) a new name:  Abraham – the Father of many nations.  It must have seemed to Abram that God had forgotten His promise to him. But the Almighty, the El-Shaddai, all sufficient God who has His hand on everything, gave him a new name. This new name signifies that God had indeed NOT forgotten His promise but was making it ever more grand!!

 

To top it all off, he commands Abraham, this one promised to be the father of many nations, to mark each male child with a sign of this promise, this everlasting covenant.  The sign of circumcision. God called them to cut off the foreskin of the very organ of procreation. 

 

Doesn’t that just shout, “Don’t depend upon your own flesh to make this happen!” 

 

Abraham did not have the power within himself to make this happen. He had tried to “help God out” by trying to make the promise come about through having a child with Hagar. God said to trust Him, to walk before Him blamelessly, in full dependence upon His faithfulness.

 

How about you? Do you know the promises God has made to you?

 

Colossians 2:11-13 says, “In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.”

 

Do you find yourself wondering if God has forgotten you when His promises seem to be a long time in being fulfilled in your life? 

 

Do you ever find yourself trying to take things into your own hands? Confess that before God right now. He promises to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  

 

God has made an everlasting covenant, an unbreakable promise that is as sure as the promise to Abraham. He is our El-Shaddai, the Almighty One, the One who is all sufficient and will supply all our needs.

 

When seeds of doubt come knocking, remember God’s covenant. Remember His promise to Abraham, though long in being fulfilled, was even grander than he could have imagined.   

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore. Hebrews 11:8,12

 
Lord, thank You for Your covenant love for us!  Teach us to have faith like Abraham.