God's Difficult Requests

"He said, 'Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him." -Genesis 22.2-3

I wonder what was going through Abraham's mind as he heard this? He came out of a pagan culture where child sacrifice was a common practice, so I don't think God asking for this would have been a shock to him. But the fact that God has promised him a son, who would be the beginning of a nation, and Isaac is the son of promise, he's probably wondering how God will fulfill the promise. At the time he doesn't know what's going to happen, he just knows that God has given him a command.

We are able to look at the whole story, we know the ending just as we know the beginning. But Abraham didn't. And yet look at his response. God says do this, and Abraham does it. He gets up early, gets ready, and prepares wood for the offering, and then goes to where God told him to go, planning to do what God told him to do.

What is your response to the requests of God. God has never asked you to sacrifice your child to Him, but what has he asked you to do, or to stop doing? Your fantasy league? An addiction? Overtime that takes you away form your family? Maybe it's a food, or working on your car. Why are they so difficult to let go of? Why is it so hard to do what God has asked?

And maybe He isn't asking you to give up anything. Maybe He's asking you to accept a calling. Maybe He wants you to leave everything behind and go to an unreached people group in Africa. Maybe He wants you to stay right here, and go to the unreached people next door.

God was testing Abraham, and in this test He showed Abraham more about Himself, and saw Abraham's unquestioned faithfulness to Him. What are you unable to learn about God because of the things you are refusing to do? What is God seeing about your faithfulness? God will requests of us that are difficult, but all of it is for our good, and our gain.

When we give up something temporal, and physical, we gain the eternal and the spiritual. When we are willing, and determined, to obey everything God says, we grow into Men of God.

What is God asking you? What is holding you back?

"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."

To God alone be the Glory!

Strength and Honor