Genesis chapter 22

To me, this is all about faith and about having idols in our heart that take the place of God.

I don't know what was going through Abraham's mind as he made this three day journey in obedience to God.  Imagine, taking your son to be sacrificed, knowing you were going to be the one to kill him, and yet trusting God the while time to fulfill his promise that you would be a great nation through Isaac, the son of the promise.  The test here for Abraham was whether or not he trusted God, believed in His word no matter what or whether or not his love for Isaac outweighed his love and duty and response to God.

The thin g is, He never once questioned God, asked Him if He was really sure about this, and what about the promises He had made about Abraham being the father of many through Isaac.  No, he just got up, packed his bags and left.  Obedience resounding through all his actions.   Maybe he thought Isaac would be resurrected, maybe he thought God would change his mind, maybe he just trusted that God knew exactly what He was doing. 

I'm reminded of Moses and the burning bush.  There is such a difference between the actins of the tow men.  Here, Abraham is immediately obedient, no questions asked, he just gets up and gets going.  Moses, however, is a different matter.  When called by God, his first response is to ask what makes him (Moses) so special that he should be asked to do this.  Then he tells God he won't know what to tell the people.  He then says that they probably won't believe him anyway,  and carries on to say that he's not a very good speaker, implying that God would be better off choosing someone else.  He then asks God to send someone else, at which God finally loses patience with all the excuses Moses is coming out with, and tells him He will send his brother Aaron to do the talking (Exodus chapters 3 and 4).

What about when God calls us to do something?  Do we react like Abraham, jump up and start doing whatever it is we have been asked to do?  Or do we sit there, telling ourselves we are only imagining things, that God couldn't really have spoken to us in that way, we must be wrong, we're hearing things, and anyway, God would never ask us to do that  because He knows how useless we are, ineffective, incapable.  There are others much better qualified and everyone is only going to laugh at us when we try it anyway so why bother?

We may never be called upon to sacrifice our children thankfully, but we may well be called upon to do something that gives us kittens just to think about it as it is out of our comfort zone, or to give something up that is really important to us, something that is maybe so deeply ingrained in our hearts that it has become an idol, something that takes the place of God in our lives.  What about that tv programme we love, that film, that person?  Does our work take priority in our life or our hobbies?  Would we rather go read a book than spend time with God?  What is there in your life, in my life, that we put before God, the thing we have to do, see, watch, read before we have our quiet time?  What about our family, do we put them before God?  Or our possessions, our car, our home, our job, our clothes, our finances?  Do these take priority over God?

There are things we have hidden deep in our hearts, things that maybe God does not like, does not approve of and that draw us further away from God instead of closer to Him.  Like Abraham, we need to give whatever it is to God, to offer it to Him and let Him deal with it.  Pretty soon, you will find the Holy Spirit is at work, changing you from within and removing that idol, those computer games, those magazine, whatever it may be, and replacing it with a love for God, a hunger that maybe wasn't there before because our hearts were full of other things.