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How do you feel about tests? I know there's a few people out there who like tests but I'm not one of them. My palms get sweaty; my heart races a mile a minute and then the panic sets
in. Have I studied enough? Did I study the right stuff? Will I remember what I studied?
Life often can be a series of tests, written and otherwise: driver's tests, college exams, medical tests, aptitude tests and even God tests us.
Abraham was one
of many that God would put to the test.
Abraham had a
dream. A promise from God that He would
make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the heaven. Abraham waited and waited for this dream to
be fulfilled. Days and years and decades
passed but it wasn’t until his old age that God finally satisfied this dream in
the gift of Isaac, his son. And then one day God asked Abraham to give up the
very thing he loved most in this world.
It was a test. This test wasn’t in written form but it was a
test all the same.
When they arrived at the place where God
had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on
the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son
as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel
of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes,”
Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
“Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel
said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for
now I know that you truly fear God. You
have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22.9-12)
God is a
jealous God. He desires full, complete,
and total surrender from those who follow Him. Each of us who claim to follow will have an “Abraham moment” at
some point in our life. Where God will
ask us to lay on the altar the thing we hold most dear. God wants to see if what we say, is what we really
believe. Are we true followers or just fans. Do we love Him more than anything else?
God created an
Abraham moment for me with a dream I had held close to my heart for years. One day
He asked me, “Kristi, will you follow me if I never let you go to the mission field?”
There was no
middle ground with God. He is an all or
nothing God and He wanted all of me.
His way seemed
so hard and my dream felt honorable and right. How could He ask me to give it up? But I felt much like Peter did when Jesus asked him if he would leave
like all the others, “Lord, to whom would I go? You have the words that give
eternal life.” (John 6.68) How could I do anything less than surrender my dream
to Him.
What happens so
often, with these tests, is that often God is just waiting for us to surrender it. And then He returns our dreams and
hopes back to us in ways we never would have imagined or even hoped. These new dreams are
bigger, brighter and more beautiful.
There is fear
in letting go, giving up, and surrendering to God’s ways but that didn’t stop
Abraham from being obedient and neither should it stop us!
Are you a true
follower or just a fan? If you claim to follow Him, God will someday
put you to the test. What will your
answer be?
Kristi
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