Receive Your Inheritance!
Article by Kenneth Copeland from kcm.org
Have you ever been invited to an attorney’s office for the reading of a will?
I haven’t. Where I come from, there was never enough money left for the relatives to fight over when someone died. Most of the people I knew didn’t leave wills…they left bills.
But, glory to God, that’s not the case anymore. I became heir to a fortune more than 40 years ago in Little Rock, Ark., when I gave my life to Jesus. At that moment I was born again into the richest family ever known. I was born into the royal family that owns and operates the universe. I received an inheritance so vast it will take me all of eternity to fully comprehend it.
Some people get excited about tracing their natural family history. They like to know if they have great people in their family tree because it makes them feel they’ve come from good stock.
You and I ought to be that way about our heritage as believers. Our ancestors are the greatest men and women who ever walked the face of the earth. We can trace our lineage back to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, King David…all the way to Jesus. Think about that! Those are our forefathers.
“Now wait a minute,” you may say. “Those are Jewish men. They lived in Canaan and Israel. You’re an American from Arkansas! You’re not part of that family.”
Well, not physically. But spiritually, according to the Bible, yes I am. And if you’ve made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, you are too, because Galatians 3 says:
Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (verses 13-14, 29).
Let’s Read the Will
As a Christian, you are the seed of Abraham! What does that mean? It means everything God promised him belongs to you. It has been passed down to you through Jesus.
Abraham’s blessing is your inheritance! It has been willed to you by the Word of God. So let’s read the will today. Let’s look in the Bible and find out how God treated Abraham, because that’s how God has promised to treat us.
Genesis 12:2-3 is a good place to start. There we see the first promise God made to Abraham: “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
To fully grasp what God was saying here, you must realize when He blesses someone, He is not just telling them to have a good day. He is conferring upon them the power to increase and prosper in every area of life. In fact, according to W.E. Vine and Webster’s dictionary, the true definition of bless is “to cause to prosper, to make happy, to bestow favor upon, to consecrate to holy purposes, to make successful, to make prosperous in temporal concerns pertaining to this life, to guard and preserve.”
It was actually THE BLESSING of God that made Abraham rich! It caused him to prosper wherever he went.
In fact, he became so “very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold” (Genesis 13:2) that he and his nephew, Lot, who was traveling with him, eventually had to go separate ways “for their possessions were too great for them to live together” (verse 6, The Amplified Bible).
Do you know what Abraham did when that happened? He gave Lot first choice of the available land. He said: “Is not the whole land before you?… If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you choose the right hand, then I will go to the left. And Lot looked and saw that everywhere the Jordan Valley was well watered…. Then Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley…” (verses 9-11, The Amplified Bible).
Notice that Abraham wasn’t greedy or concerned about his own welfare. He didn’t have to be. He had a covenant of blessing with God and he knew God would bring him success no matter where he lived.
Put Your Name in the Promise
Financial prosperity wasn’t the only benefit God’s blessing brought Abraham either. It also made him an overcomer. Because God had declared that those who cursed Abraham would themselves be cursed, Abraham could conquer any enemy that came against him or his family.
You can see that fact borne out in Genesis 14. It tells of the time when Lot and his family were taken captive by wicked kings who made war on Sodom and Gomorrah. When Abraham received the news about his nephew, he didn’t sit around wringing his hands wishing there was something he could do. “He armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued…and smote them…. And he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people” (verses 14-16).
Imagine that. Abraham and his servants single-handedly whipped four kings and their armies, then recovered everything and everyone they had taken captive!
What gave Abraham the boldness to go after those kings? He knew he had a covenant with God. He knew God had promised to be an enemy to his enemies, and he dared to act on that promise.
Abraham understood that God was God! Abraham took God at His Word when He said, “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (Genesis 15:1).
We need to do the same thing. We need to take that promise and put our name in it. After all, it’s ours! We’re the seed of Abraham.
Years ago, when Ken and I first started to walk with the Lord, we were facing debts and problems that seemed overwhelming. So I took that promise from God to Abraham and put my name in it. I read it like this: Fear not, Gloria. God is your shield, your abundant compensation, and your reward shall be exceedingly great!
I decided that since I was an heir of Abraham, those words were just as true for me as they were for him. And sure enough, they have been. In the years since, God has protected me and rewarded me beyond anything I could ask or think. He has been as faithful to me as He was to Abraham!
God keeps His promises, and He promised Abraham that He would bless his seed. He said: “I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Genesis 17:6-7).
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