Living for the Lord

 Genesis 22:2

God said, "Now take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah.  Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains there, the one to which I direct you."

When is the last time you were asked to make a hard choice for God?  How did you do?

Abraham had waited most of his life to have a son with his wife Sara, and then God told him to sacrifice his one and only son.  Abraham had a hard choice to make.

In the rest of chapter 22 we are told that Abraham made the right choice.  He valued God's commands above the life of his own son.  Abraham truly placed God above everything else.  He was so committed that he was in the process of slaying Isaac when God stopped him.  Isaac was tied up on the altar and Abraham had his knife raised to kill Isaac when the Angel of the Lord (Jesus) stopped him.  Abraham was all in.

Abraham displayed his faith by living the command that Jesus would later give in Luke 14:26-27:

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."  Jesus is using hyperbole to drive home the point that He is to be the most important thing in our lives.

We will never be tested like Abraham where God asks us to sacrifice our own child, but we are asked to sacrifice for God.  Maybe that means that our kids can't be in every sports league.  That certainly means that there are times when our children need to told, "NO."  No human being, or anything else,  is to be our center of the universe.  That spot belongs to our God, and to him alone.

God bless.

Jason Fredrick