Day 2928 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Genesis 22:8 NIV

We’ve been talking a bit about perspective and perception over the last couple of days. But, so often they're both viewed from only what we want. And when what we want is the priority, as it often is, then having what we want taken or fail to come to fruition will inevitably cause some serious contention within our faith. After all, if all we care about is getting what we want, if all our faith is for is granting our every request and fulfilling our every desire, then our not getting everything we want and not receiving the blessings we desire will lead to a fractured faith.

And to put it bluntly, a fractured faith is all but worthless. Because as humans, we instinctively search for any and every reason to doubt so that we can crawl back into the comfort found within not having to trust, or hope, or believe. Those things are all truly difficult, and I think we all know how we all feel about all things difficult. Let’s just say that our clear preference for comfort and the very uncomfortable reality posed by difficulty aren’t the best of friends!

Which is why we tend to look for every reason to jump off of this ship called faith. Not only does it rarely look like it's heading the direction we want to go, but thanks to our perspective, which is at best slightly selfish and at worst entirely unwilling, it may often seem to be sinking. So we always look for any excuse to reject this path, simply because this path is hard and therefore clearly not what we'd ever choose for ourselves.

But that's not the kind of faith we witness here in the story of Abraham's being tested. That's not the faith we discussed yesterday in the story of Joseph rising to just the right place at just the right time to help save countless lives during a crippling famine, after having been sold into slavery and thrown into prison that is. It's not the faith we talked about the day before in Moses' leading the stubborn Israelites toward a promise they were desperate to give up on ever finding.

And it's simply not the kind of faith that we're called to have either. You see, the entire premise of faith is built upon our surrender. We have to be willing to surrender our desire for control to God’s control if we truly want a better life than what we've managed to find or have or do or be on our own. We have to be willing to let go of the dreams and plans and goals and ideals we've long cherished if we actually want to experience the plans and purposes that lead to the promises that He has for us.

And as we see here, we may even have to walk an impossible path toward a request we simply don't want to uphold.

But if God calls us to it, then all we need to know is that He has a reason and our faith is our display of trust that His reasons are always to fulfill His purpose. And so, if we're to walk by faith as we're clearly called to do, we must always trust that His purpose and the plans and paths that lead us to it are all for the good, for our good. Even when it so clearly appears otherwise!

I think the most gut-wrenching part of this story is found in that last line of this verse. "And the two of them went on together." I can't imagine the emotions that Abraham was feeling in that moment. Walking alongside this son that he had finally been given only to know that they were walking on together toward what seemed an impossible request. How long Abraham had prayed and hoped and believed for this son that God had now asked him to sacrifice as a burnt offering.

And now, in this moment, walking with this son he'd wanted so badly for so long, he was not only willing but he was ready to let that blessing slip back through his fingers in order to honor God. Even after having waited so long and prayed so hard and trusted so fully in God's promise to give him a son, Abraham was ready to kill this blessing he'd finally been given just because God asked him to do so.

That my friends is why Abraham's faith was credited to him as the righteousness that God desires but that we cannot fulfill. Our faith in the face of the most impossible situations and circumstances is the best we can possibly give to the One who gave us everything we have, everything we hope for, and everything we are.

All of this hit me extremely hard a few night ago as I began the story of Abraham. In Genesis 12:2, God promises that He will give Abraham offspring and descendants, at the ripe young age of 75! Then in 13:15, God tells Abraham that these promised offspring will inherit this vast land stretching out before him and become as countless as the dust of the earth. In 15:4, God tells Abraham that he will in fact have an heir of his own flesh and blood, again pointing to a son still to come, but still obviously not there yet.

But it continues onward in 15:13 where Abraham is told about how these offspring, the first of which he has still not received, will be strangers in a strange land, and that there they will be tested as slaves who are mistreated for 400 years. 400 years of offspring that Abraham has still never seen or held or heard!

Then in Genesis 17:1, God's covenant with Abraham is established in that God will increase Abraham's number, his offspring, his descendants, and that He will be their God too if Abraham will walk faithfully and be blameless before Him. Abraham is 99 at this point. 24 years since that first promise of making Abraham into a great nation filled with his offspring and heirs. But still no son to even begin to make that happen.

17:19, Sarah, who is unable to conceive will have a son, again a promise that seems impossible. But not only a promise or a hope or a future fulfillment, but this time he has a name to be given, Isaac. Now the promise that Abraham has believed in for nearly three decades has a name. How many of us would have held out hope in what seemed an impossible promise for 20+ years only to ever hear a name that will be given to a son we've still never had?

But then it all picks up a bit of speed in Genesis 17:21 in that this promise that Abraham had waited for for all these years, this promise hinted to some 20+ years ago, will now be fulfilled in one year's time. And wouldn't you know it, one year later, when Abraham is 100 years old, Isaac is born. The promise fulfilled. The hopes satisfied. The trust and the faith has finally paid off in what could have only been one the happiest moments of Abraham and Sarah's lives.

Because what shouldn't have been possible had now been fulfilled by a God who is not limited by our understanding of time or of what's possible or what makes sense.

But as this verse today show in chapter 22, it wasn't over yet. Abraham had waited over 20 years for this son who had finally arrived and so clearly fulfilled all of the hope and trust and faith that he had held to for all those years. And now God asks Abraham to do the impossible. He asks him to go and sacrifice this son that he had wanted, had believed in, had trusted God to provide for a long and grueling time.

Did God not already know Abraham's heart through his willingness to keep waiting and to keep trusting for all that time? Was Abraham's faith not proven in full by his tenacious trust in God's promises that had taken so long to be fulfilled?

Sounds much like some of the questions we often wonder about. Is what we've done not enough? Is our patience and trust and continued belief not sufficient? Have we not proven ourselves in God's eyes?

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is why we're always so quick to assume that we've done enough. Why are we always seeing this faith of ours as a box to be checked rather than a life-long commitment that will not be finalized until we're done breathing? Why do we need to have done enough? Is it not so that we don't have to keep trying so hard?

Abraham, who many consider to be one of the best examples of this faith we carry as humans, didn't withhold this treasured blessing of a son from what God asked of him. God asked him to take Isaac and go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering, and though he would have obviously been torn to pieces by the very idea of being the one to kill away this promise he'd hoped for for so long, Abraham packed up and set out to do what God asked him to do.

What a faith to have. What a courage to display. What a truly remarkable showing of a kind of surrender that few of us have ever felt or would readily embrace should the request be issued. But again, this is the kind of faith we're called to have. It is often impossible. It does ask of us things we're not ready to do or give. It calls us to places and situations that our human perspectives perceive as impossible.

But as we see in this verse, Abraham held to his faith even in the midst of a journey too miserable for words. He told this son of his, which had finally fulfilled an impossible promise given so many years before, that God would provide the lamb. For all he knew, Isaac was the lamb and this fact is shown in 22:10 when Abraham takes his knife and begins to fulfill God's request.

God did provide the sacrifice, only it wasn't the son that Abraham obviously didn't want to kill. It was a ram caught in the thicket nearby.

This whole journey had been a test, and an impossible one at that. But Abraham went, he tried, he arrived at the very moment of doing what God asked him to do. He did it because God asked him to do it. And He asked him to do it because God wanted to see just how resilient his obvious faith truly was. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

So you see, God was never going to have Abraham kill his son Isaac. He was never going to actually require that this impossible task was carried out. But since Abraham didn't know that, his willingness to not even withhold his one and only son showed that his faith was truly what it was supposed to be.

And this my friends is a lesson all of us need to learn. That sometimes in life God will promise us something. That sometimes those promises will seem like they take forever. And that even once those promises are fulfilled, the story of our faith and our trust in God is still never done.

I don't know what you're trusting God with at the moment. I don't know what promises He has given you or even those you still know nothing about. But I do know, as this story shows, that our faith is never finished. It's not a race with some finish line that we can cross and then sit down and rest and sip some refreshingly cold water. It simply isn't about only being given promises and them being fulfilled.

Our faith is our daily willingness to trust in God, to follow His path, and to serve His will no matter what may be asked of us. Will He ask us to do things that seem impossible, illogical, insane? Yes. But will He provide? Every single time!

We have to let go of our concerns for things like time and comfort and even rationality. Much of this pathway ahead will make no sense, will veer wildly from what we want, will take longer than we want it to take, and will ask of us some truly fearless faith. But if we can offer that kind of faith that Abraham had, that Moses had, that Joseph had, then maybe it can be credited to us too as the righteousness that God desires.

The fact is that we have nothing else to offer Him. Nothing at all. So our willingness to trust even when, especially when it makes no sense is our best and pretty much only way to show Him that we do believe. That we do trust. That we will serve. Him. Him alone.

Because it’s one thing to say you believe when you’re simply waiting patiently for an exciting promise to be fulfilled. It’s a whole new kind of believing when you’re holding a knife ready to kill off that promise that you had been so excited about for so long. We don’t prove our faith to God by waiting patiently for Him to give us what we’ve always wanted. We prove our faith in Him by our willingness to let go of everything we’ve always wanted in exchange for the opportunity to do what He calls us to do.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold