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We live in a day and age when many people are focused on the product or the end of a thing.

For example, many desire that all of our children enter into an excellent school system, learn, and graduate to become anyone they desire to be.

The focus is on the product. However, the process is often neglected.

The process involves each child being equipped to enter into the school system, progress through the system successfully, and become the product or

outcome that you desire

to see.

The process is how the children leave the home and enter into the school, not how they leave the school and enter into

society.

Here is another example. Bermudians have been asked to consider gambling, and to look at it dispassionately.

In other words, look at gambling emotionless and without feelings; just look at the facts.

Gambling

Many want us to look at the product of gambling. Gambling will bring in money.

However, I caution Bermudians to do the research and find out about the process of gambling and what it will do to such a small place as Bermuda.

Let us not get there, to the product of gambling, and then become passionate when we have to deal with the repercussions of such a devious system.

Genesis 12: 2

"And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing."

This passage of scripture lets us know that God knows about the product. God knew what he had in store for Abram and He knows what He has in store for Bermuda. The key becomes the process.

The question becomes, "Will we allow God in the process and then trust the process, or do we desire to move in our own way and call on God when the

product goes wrong?"

In the process, God told Abram, "I will bless."

Now right there is where you need to stop and give God praise.

It is a wonderful thing to know that God is prepared to bless those who obey His voice.

God also told Abram, "I will make." This says two things in particular.

The first thing is that God has something in store for you that you do not have in your possession right now.

The second thing it says is that God is not finished with you yet.

Wow! God is not through shaping and making you. The process is not yet complete.

Yet, you can rest assured of one thing; God said that He will do it, and therefore you can trust the process. God is not a man that He should lie, neither is He the Son of Man that He would have to repent. God has spoken it and He will make it good (Numbers 23:19-paraphrase).

God will make what He has spoken to become visible in the sight of all. What God has spoken shall come to pass!

The challenge here for Abram and for you is to trust the process.

Trusting

You must trust that God has prepared all things ahead of you, that you will be taken to that place He has prepared, and then you will experience the bountiful blessings of the Lord God of Israel.

Now let's take a reality check. If God has set up for you a blessing, you can believe that the enemy of your soul has set up some things too.

The devil has set up either a counterfeit blessing or a curse to impede the manifestation of the blessing.

But have no fear people. For God said, I have taken care of that too. For I will bless them that bless you and I will curse them that curse you (Genesis 12:3).

You see no one can permanently mess up God's plan.

Persons may delay the harvest of God; persons may try to hamper or hinder the harvest of God, but no one can stop the hand of God.

What God has spoken shall come forth. It shall be. Actually, what God speaks actually already

is so. So God spoke those words as a comfort to Abram that no matter what he was to encounter, Abram must remember that the order of the day for his life was blessings. And the rule of the day for any enemy or foe is a curse.

Bermuda, when you choose God and choose to walk in His ways, you can hold onto the promises of Abram for yourself, knowing for sure that your blessings are in front of you, and that God has the product safely secured in order for you to inherit it. Respice finem.

Rev. Dr. Maria Seaman serves as the Pastor of Shekinah Worship Centre, worshipping at the Victor Scott Primary School, Glebe Road, Pembroke.

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