Category: Devotions

“Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ⁴ “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. ⁵ No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham,for I have made you a father of many nations. ⁶ I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. ⁷ I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. ⁸ The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17 v 3-8)

Throughout this passage, God makes eight promises to Abraham:

1. “You will be the father of many nations” (v. 4)
2. “Your name will be Abraham” (v. 5)
3. “I have made you a father of many nations” (v. 5
4. “I will make you very fruitful” (v. 6)
5. “I will make nations of you” (v. 6)
6. “Kings will come from you” (v. 6)
7. “The whole land of Canaan… I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants” (v. 8)
8. “I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you” (v. 7-8)

Clearly, these were for Abram and not for us. We are not all literally promised to be fathers of many nations. We are not all receiving the land of Canaan as our inheritance. We are not all being renamed Abraham. We won’t all have kings descending from our bloodline.

So what for us?

Relying heavily on the New Testament, in Galatians, we find that we “who have faith are children of Abraham” (3:7-9) and in v29 “and in v29, “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

In the Genesis account, we can see our promises:

• “I will be your God”

 This is the promise that echoes throughout Scripture for all God’s people. In 2 Corinthians 6:16, God says, “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” This is the new covenant promise. He has promised. Whatever path you are on today, He is walking with you, for He is your God who promised you He would walk with you. There is no place that you tread that God doesn’t go with you. If you are entering a new job, a new season of opportunity, or even walking into uncertainty and challenge, He is walking with you.

• Fruitfulness

Not necessarily in physical descendants, but in spiritual fruitfulness. Jesus said in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches… those who remain in me… will bear much fruit.” In effect, Jesus said, “I am the true vine. Not you. Me. Remain in me. Then you will bear fruit. The world will see you as my disciples, and the Father will be glorified. Relationship with me, not empty rituals.”

• New identity

Just as Abram became Abraham, we receive new identities in Christ. We are adopted as God’s children, called saints, made new creations. God still renames His people. Whatever you are going through today, one of the roles of the Holy Spirit and the reason God sent Him is to remind you of who you are. It is to say to you that ‘you are no longer a slave’, but you are an adopted child of the Father. 

• An everlasting covenant

Hebrews 13:20 speaks of “the blood of the eternal covenant.” Through Jesus, we enter into an everlasting relationship with God that cannot be broken. Because we have our great priest, our High Priest, Jesus Christ, who gives us confidence based on what He has done, never on our performance, we don’t prepare to come into His presence; what could that preparation be? It would never be enough if we had to prepare. But we draw near because our High Priest has opened the way and has already prepared us.

• A promised inheritance

Peter writes of “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” kept in heaven for us (1 Peter 1:4). Our inheritance is not earthly land but eternal life in God’s presence. We have future security which our sin, decay or death will not destroy, for it is not held by accomplishments or protection on earth but in heaven.

These are great promises, and they belong to us today!

I’m not sure if any 99-year-olds are reading this today, maybe you feel 99, so we will hold that thought whilst we read a couple of verses from Genesis 17.

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. ² Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” (Genesis 17 v 1-2)

We have to pause for a moment. We are about to see, for the first time, this amazing name of God being revealed, not to a young man, but to someone in their old age: El Shaddai—the One who is more than enough and who has absolute power. It isn’t just a revelation of who He is but an invitation to walk with Him. Again, this old man is given a revelation and an invitation. How amazing is this? There can be a temptation to think, as we get older, that God is getting quieter, that He only works with the young; it’s not true.

The invitation is still before us. It means to live your life with the awareness that you are doing so in His presence. To be faithful to God is to make your decisions not based on social pressure or convenience, but out of your love for God. To be blameless isn’t to be perfect, but it is to have integrity.

Even at 99 years, Abram has still got things ahead of him on this earth. Whatever age you are today, there is still more for you. For Abram, he would soon have a new name signifying a new identity and a covenant for an inheritance he would leave behind for the nations. For that to happen, God is asking Abram to be ready. Even at 99 years, we need to be prepared for God’s next move.

If God appeared to you today with the same request, what would you change?

Perhaps He is, and you need to choose today to walk before Him, be faithful to Him and have integrity. Then you wait for God to do something new with you.

As we have been reading this story, I hope that one of the many beautiful lessons has emerged for you: God cares for you. He sees you. He hears you. He is there, more near than you realise at times and again – He cares for you.

Today, I write a prayer, formed from the story of Hagar. I hope it blesses you, and maybe even just one of the lines can be made into your own prayer.

Prayer of the God Who Sees

El Roi, the God who sees me,

I come to You today, feeling invisible, unnoticed, knowing the wildernesses of life. I desire to escape from everything that I know, but You promise to meet me wherever I am.

You are the God who seeks those who are running away from their disappointments, who have been cast aside, discarded, feeling forgotten by heaven and earth.

Lord, I have come to the end. The end of my tether. I have run out of what I need, and this time feels different—it feels worse than before. The pain and despair have been so traumatic that I cannot see what might be in front of me.

But You are a promise-making and promise-keeping God. You found Hagar on the desert road, and You will find me, no matter where I am today. You see me and You hear me—my pain and my hopes.

I may be crying out to You, but I trust that You have heard me. I am not unknown to You. I am not forgotten.

Help me to remember: this place I am in right now may not be the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in my life. The desert doesn’t win. It becomes a servant for You in my life. Being cast out, losing everything, isn’t the last sentence in my story.

The trauma is real, but so are You, my God.

Like a spring in the desert, bring living water to my driest places. Open my eyes to see Your provision that may be closer to me than I realise.

You don’t wait for my life to be sorted out. You step into my family and into my world. You have the last word on my life, not anyone else.

No pain that I experience has the last word over my life.

You are El Roi—the God who sees me.

Amen.

Hagar’s story has been told through generations, and the Apostle Paul drew upon it centuries later to address a theological truth to the Galatians. Paul did not want to undermine her but to use her story as a comparison to two different ways of serving God.

Paul presented Hagar and Sarah as representing two covenants: the old covenant of law and the new covenant of faith in Jesus Christ. But to understand Paul’s allegory, we must remember who Hagar actually was. She was a woman caught in circumstances beyond her control, used by others to accomplish what they believed God had failed to do quickly enough. Hagar bore Ishmael through human effort and planning, not through patient trust in divine promise.

Paul was addressing those who insisted that followers of Christ must prove their relationship with God through strict adherence to the law. He pointed to Hagar’s story—to her position as a slave woman whose child was born through human striving rather than divine promise—as a picture of those trapped in performance-based religion. These people were carrying burdens God never intended them to bear, just as Hagar carried burdens she never chose to bear. Paul acknowledged he was using the story figuratively, and he didn’t shy away from the uncomfortable reality of Abraham’s choices.

“Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise. These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.” (Galatians 4:21-25)

Paul wasn’t criticising Hagar herself; she had done what she was commanded to do. Instead, he was critiquing what Hagar’s situation represented: a covenant that produces slavery, a reliance on human effort, and an attempt to accomplish God’s purposes through our own strength and timing.

The Jewish believers understood themselves as Abraham’s children through Isaac, heirs of God’s promises, recipients of the Law given at Mount Sinai, centred on the Temple in Jerusalem. Many also believed Gentile converts needed to adopt these same markers of identity to belong truly.

But Paul’s argument was startling. He suggested that, despite viewing themselves as Sarah’s descendants, their insistence on works and performance actually placed them in Hagar’s position. They were living out the very situation they thought they had achieved.

In the last few days, we have reminded ourselves of the story of Hagar. One of the main points of that story is that Abraham and Sarah couldn’t wait for God’s promise of a son. They did it their own way and used Hagar to bring about the promise. They could do it. They didn’t need God; they had Hagar.

Paul challenged those who used circumcision to validate their conversion. They were, in theory, Abraham’s children through Sarah, Isaac’s descendants. But in practice, by relying on their own efforts to earn God’s approval, they had placed themselves in Hagar’s position, bound to human effort.

Culturally, they identified with Sarah, but their lifestyle mirrored Hagar’s story, trapped in slavery to performance. This is what happens when people seek to live with their own righteousness through effort, while being blinded to what Christ has done.

Hagar’s story, then, becomes not a story of personal failure but a powerful reminder: What God promises, only God can accomplish. Human effort, no matter how sincere or well-intentioned, cannot substitute for patient faith in God’s timing and provision. Hagar didn’t fail; the system that used her failed. And Paul warned his readers not to return to that same broken system.

What you see and hear is not everything.

You may think you are only experiencing a dry place, a desert-like experience where your needs outweigh the provisions you have. You may think you have lost friends, even family, or perhaps you are watching from a distance a loved one who is experiencing their own hell, and you are afraid to watch. Even though God may have helped you in the past, it may seem that today is different.

We read the final few verses that tell the story of Hagar, which have been passed down through the generations, so that even the Apostle Paul speaks of her (Galatians 4 v 21-31). Hagar is back in the desert experience.

^“14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. ¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. ¹⁸ Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰ God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. ²¹ While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.” (Genesis 21 v 14-21)

Do you know when you have come to the end? The end of your tether? That rope tied to an animal will keep it in order. But there’s no rope left.

She had run out of water, and though she had experienced the desert before, this time it was different; it was worse than before, and she had a son with her.

Abraham, the man of God, the one who had great wealth and many servants, sends Hagar and his son away with meagre supplies. I still meet men and women of God who seem to be blinded by their actions. They have the ability to help, but they don’t. In fact, doing nothing or very little appears to be unkind. Blindness affects the most spiritual.

Hagar, who had named God ‘El Roi’ because He is a God who sees her, has reached the lowest point in her life. God might have seen her before, but now she cannot even face seeing her own son die before her eyes. God seems blind, deaf, and she has to blind herself because she cannot bear hearing her son cry from thirst. She begins to cry.

Then comes the turning point: “God heard the boy crying.”

Who did God hear? Not Hagar, though surely He did. Just like his mother, this next generation, her son, also had to experience El Roi, the God who sees.

God brings hope, a destiny, and a simple command to obey.

Where did the well come from? Did God create it there and then? He could have done. Or was her pain and despair so traumatic that it had blinded her to what was in front of her? In front of her, all the time, was the well. She had come to the end of her life at the very place which would save her and her son.

This place you are in right now may not be the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in your life. Dry your eyes and look up. God’s provision may be closer to you than you realise.

So Hagar’s story comes to an end, for what we know at least. Ishmael grows up in the desert, presumably with his mother, and she finds him a wife from her home nation. God keeps His promise about Ishmael, for he too births a nation.

 The lesson is this: The desert doesn’t win. It becomes a servant for the purposes of God in your life. Being cast out, losing everything, isn’t the last sentence in your story. The trauma is real, but so is your God. He sees you and hears you. He has the last word on your life, not anyone else.

We like stories when we know who is right and who is wrong. We want them to end well. But that’s just not always how things work out.

“The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned, Abraham held a great feast. ⁹ But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, ¹⁰ and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” ¹¹ The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. ¹² But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. ¹³ I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.” (Genesis 21 v 8-13)

A party is taking place, for Isaac was born a few years ago, and everyone is happy. The promised child is the focus, Isaac, Sarah’s pride and joy. But. That word. The juxtaposition between what is good and what is spoiling. Hagar’s son, Ishmael, was older, probably around 14 years older. In the place of celebration … but. Ishmael’s youthful immaturity was belittling Isaac, and Sarai was protective. Abraham is given the command – get rid. But Ishmael was his son, and this command was too much. He is caught between the two, and God steps in, revealing the future for both boys.

Broken families, mixed families, mixed-up families, flawed relatives, situations broken by jealousies and fear. Even at Christmas, a season of peace and goodwill to all men, brokenness is evident all around. Who is right and who is wrong? This is not the question. Instead, can God step in? Can God bring sense from confusion and a future from a mess? The answer is YES, he can. He doesn’t need perfection from us. Ishmael’s mocking, Sarah’s scorning, Abraham’s distress and Hagar’s fate and yet He is still faithful to His promise.

Perhaps you have a fractured family, and maybe in this season, you are navigating impossible decisions and even hurting from other people’s choices. It’s not easy, and God doesn’t promise it will be. There’s no simple answer. But what you need to know is that God does step in, and sometimes He does that in response to our distress. But maybe you need to invite Him today to step into your family and into your world.

This beautiful story should be a reminder to us all that God seeks those who are running away from their disappointments or who have been cast aside, discarded because they feel forgotten by heaven and earth.

“The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery. ¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” ¹³ She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seenthe One who sees me.” ¹⁴ That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. ¹⁵ So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. ¹⁶ Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.” (Genesis 16 v11-16)

God sought and found Hagar. She was on the road to Shur, heading back home to Egypt.

Hagar, the runaway slave, is now given a promise about her son to be born. It is a prophecy that he will have what his mother hasn’t had: freedom and an independence unhindered by anyone, even though at odds with those around him. He would live a life of struggle, born not into a world of his choosing.

Hagar, the Egyptian woman, a slave, someone running away, seems to be the first person in the Scriptures who gives God a name based on her experience and encounter of Him. God – El Roi, the God who sees me. A well was named in remembrance of this encounter between the God of the universe and an unwanted nobody named Hagar.

It wasn’t Adam or Eve, Noah or Abraham, who first gave God a name based on their encounter with Him. It was this slave girl who realised God sees her and gives her son the name, Ishmael, as He told her, for He also hears her.

Maybe arriving at a place where you feel unseen and unheard is the very place where God will meet you? Perhaps we have to come to our very end for God to give us a new beginning?

Hagar’s life was quite a mess. But God doesn’t wait for it to be sorted out. He found her on the desert road, and He will find you, no matter where you are today, for He is a God who sees you and hears you, your pain and your hopes. You may be crying out to Him; He has heard you. You are not unknown to Him. You are not forgotten.

I am sure you have at times felt invisible. There have been times when you have felt unnoticed. You have known the wildernesses of life. You know what it is to desire to escape from everything that you know. Hagar’s story speaks to you. God gives her a promise that doesn’t take her out of her circumstances but creates a new beginning for her. No pain that you experience has the last word over your life. Let’s read.

“When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. ⁵ Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” ⁶ “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. ⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. ⁹ Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” ¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” (16 v 4-10)

Hagar started to look at Sarai differently. She had been used, taken as a second wife, not for love but for reproduction. She now had something that Sarai only longed for. There was no relationship with Sarai; she was her slave, but now she was to be the mother of her husband’s child. This change affected her thinking about her mistress. She despised her. Things soon began to unravel. Sarai and Abram fall out, leaving Hagar exposed. This ancient story could be written today: the vulnerable often bear the consequences of decisions made by those with more power.

Hagar escapes and tries to go home, back to Egypt. When we are in such situations, we all want to turn back the clock. However, Hagar is different now, and more importantly, she is expecting a child.

How wonderful to know that God knows where we are. Hagar, on the road home, in a desert, pregnant, abused, feeling like she is indeed a piece of discarded property, a nothing to no one, is met by the angel of the Lord. It is even more wonderful to know that this first appearance of the angel in the Bible comes not to someone powerful, but to Hagar. That is a message all in itself.

The angel of the Lord gives to her what she has never experienced: dignity, purpose and importantly, promise. It all happened at the spring on the desert road, hope and relief in a dry place.

This is profoundly beautiful, and there have been moments like this in your life. There will be more. Like a spring in the desert, you carry joy but in a wrapping that has known huge disappointment. God will meet you, wherever you are; His eye is always on you, and what you are carrying or what you have gone through is not the end, for He is a promise-making and promise-keeping God.

There is one question He still asks you and me. “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” It is an invitation to talk to God who knows where you came from who always manages to

There’s something profoundly beautiful about the setting of this encounter: a spring in the desert, a place of life amid death. That’s what divine encounter does—it brings living water to our driest places.

Hagar came to that spring running from abuse, carrying trauma and an uncertain future. She left that spring having been addressed by God himself, holding a promise, with a new name for the Divine in her heart: El Roi, the God who sees.

In our own wilderness moments—when we feel forgotten, abused, or abandoned—the story of Hagar reminds us that we too are seen. Our names are known. Our stories matter. And sometimes, in the places we least expect it, beside the springs of our most profound need, we discover that God has been there all along, waiting to be found by those who thought they were lost.

The question that the angel asked Hagar resonates with us through the ages: “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” It invites us to share our stories with the One who already knows them, helping us realise that even in our efforts to escape, we are ultimately moving toward the God who sees us.

Abram and Sarai have lived in Canaan for 10 years. Ten years ago, God had told Abram to look up and count the stars. He did, and he believed. God was going to give him an heir, a son and a nation would be born. It was a tremendous promise, but God said He would do it. Ten years later, they were still waiting. This is a story as familiar as history itself. The couples battling with infertility, endless grief and are unable to do anything. We can all add our own different stories to this moment. Ten years, perhaps even longer, of whispered prayers of asking God to step in and help and do what we know He can do, and even promised to do. These years can be so long, and heaven can seem silent. What happened to this couple, especially Sarai, over those years? Did Sarai become hardened and bitter? Was the shame too much to bear? Did she become frustrated with Abram, with herself, with God? Many do. Let’s read.  

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; ² so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said. ³ So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. ⁴ He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.” (Genesis 16 v 1-4)

We could think of Abram and Sarai and their pain. We could wonder why, after coming up with a solution, they didn’t first check it with God. However, it is the other woman that we do well to consider. This is her story as much as theirs.

We know from chapters 12, 13 and 15 that Abram was holding onto a promise for a son. Sarai is now 75 years old, and God hasn’t explicitly mentioned that a son would be born through her (that comes in the next chapter). The plan was culturally acceptable. Sarai knew the promise given to her husband, but she didn’t believe it would be directly through her. It is an excellent example for us all when we believe in the promise but cannot accept the method, so we try to help God out if He needs it.

Hagar had no choice. She was not part of the discussion. She was the solution. Being owned as a slave, she was property to be used. Hagar was an Egyptian, a foreigner and less than her mistress in many ways.

One day, Sarai came to her, took hold of Hagar, brought her to Abram, and closed the door. This wasn’t for love. Suddenly, Hagar became a wife, a second wife to this God-fearing man. Becoming a wife is a stretch of the imagination. This was a transaction. Hagar’s womb became a commodity. No one asked her what she wanted. Slaves don’t get asked.

Ten years and nothing. Then, almost immediately, Hagar, the other woman, conceived. The plan had worked. Here was the promise fulfilled. God’s promise comes true. Hagar moved from being a slave to the mother of Abram’s child. Surely if this were not the beginning of the fulfilment of the promise, then Hagar would not have conceived?

There we leave it. The foreign woman. The slave. The surrogate. The mother. Hagar, the second wife of Abram, who carried the promised child … so they all thought.

We have all asked the same question as Abram. How do I know you will help me? How do I know you will keep your promise?

God doesn’t enter into a discussion. He does something that demonstrates vividly that He is committed to Abram’s life.  

“He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” ⁸ But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” ⁹ So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” ¹⁰ Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. ¹¹ Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. ¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ¹³ Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. ¹⁶ In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” ¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadiof Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Genesis 15 v 7-20)

Abram was told to prepare animals for what was a covenant ceremony, where two parties would walk between the dead animals and commit to the agreement. It was an ancient ritual that we obviously find hard to understand. It was binding.

Darkness falls, and Adam sleeps.

Then something remarkable – in the darkness and as Adam sleeps, God walks alone through the fire and the dead animals. He walks alone in the covenant ceremony.

What did this mean?

God was making the covenant regardless of whether Abram (who was asleep) would fail or keep his side of the agreement. This is a beautiful picture of grace.

You may feel tempted to walk through the fire of the covenant yourself. I mean, you want to show God that you can be a good enough Christian to receive the promises He has given. You want to demonstrate you are faithful. He can count on you. But it is never about your performance. You can never be good enough.

Here is the key point: Your salvation isn’t guaranteed because you have made a commitment, but because He has committed Himself to you. God isn’t concerned that you might be asleep or disciplined. The covenant has been made. He has walked through the fire. He is faithful.