Today my focus will be on Abraham. I will begin with this scripture from Genesis 22:1-2. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
I love Angie Smith’s take on this event. She says, “You know that son I promised? The one I said was going to father many generations? The one you love? Yeah, him. Now I need you to go ahead and start walking in this direction, and then I’ll tell you exactly where to go. Once you get to that spot, you’re going to kill him.”
What she said next is my focus for us today. It is very powerful! “He (Abraham) is obedient to a situation that doesn’t make sense to him because he trusts God more than what he can see with his own eyes.” Wow, just wow! That is so powerful. It’s all about trusting and about faith. Abraham packs up everything and goes willingly to where God commands. I just can not wrap my little human mind around that. What would I have done? Go kill Lane? Go kill Russell? Have any of you ever sat with this thought and pondered the weight of it all?
Do I have a fraction of faith to think, like Abraham, that everything would turn out just fine because I trust God more than what my eyes could see?
I believe that the only way to even begin to obtain that kind of faith is to completely forsake myself, reach up to Heaven where God is, and totally surrender my life to Him and seek His will for my life. Maybe, just maybe I will then someday learn to trust God with more than my eyes can see at this moment. He knows what He is doing. He already sees what I can’t see, and He has given me a really good life which is certainly more than I deserve.
Psalm 61:3-4 brings me solace when I pray it back to God. “You have been a shelter for me, a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in your tabernacle forever. I will trust in the covert of thy wings.”
I love how Angie pulls this all together. “Why would a loving and kind God ask a man to kill his own son? That leads to another question. Why would God sacrifice His only Son, His only begotten Son, whom He loves? We’re transitioning to Jesus right here. Isaac had to carry his own wood up the mountain on his back until he came to the place of sacrifice. Sound familiar? It should. Because 2,000 years later, another man would do the same. In fact, He would do it on the same mountain range.”
Abraham knew he served a trustworthy God and as the story ends, we see Isaac and his father coming back down the mountain together. Can we say the same thing today? Are we confident in the fact that we serve a trustworthy God? I pray that today’s devotion gives us much to think about. May we strive to stop trying to figure things out that don’t make sense and give it all to God.
“For we live by faith, not by sight” 2 Corinthians 5:7
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