Genesis 12-15

Say hello to Abram!!!!! The LORD just barged into his life one day and said, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." Wow, uh... well, OK! So he, his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot set out with all their stuff not knowing where they were going. We've done THAT:P When they got to the Negev, Abram and Lot's herdsman started fighting with each other over pastureland, because each had so many possessions they couldn't stay together. So Abram said to Lot, "Is not the whole land before you? Let's part company. If you go to the left, I'll go to the right; if you go to the right, I'll go to the left. Lot looked out at Sodom and Gomorrah. Everything was green and nice and had a lot of lakes and such. He figured it would be perfect for all his sheep and stuff, so he picked the best land and moved there. But what he didn't check out before he went there was the occupants of the land - they were a bad lot.

But God said to Abram, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make you offspring like the dust of the earth. God, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you." Then God told him that his number of his offspring would be as great as the stars, even though he was an old man. It says, "Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness." Wow, that's pretty self-explanatory. God told him that he would take over the land, and told Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached it's full measure." God was telling him - years before it actually happened - that the Israelites would be in slavery! And they did come out with great possessions when they plundered the Egyptians! And they fought the Amorites when they were worshiping other gods and sacrificing their children! God always knows what will happen and he doesn't forget when he's supposed to fulfill his promises and how.