DAY 3

He was no boy, by most accounts he was probably about 20 years old by now.  His father though, long past the time where it was easy to make such a perilous journey with old bones and long-ago shrunken muscles.  Three days they journeyed together, with donkey in tow. The father full of love for the boy, and no small amount of hope.  The boy full of love and admiration for his father.  The son knew his father well, and knew that he was going to offer a sacrifice once they arrived, but where was the lamb?  He even asked him as much.  His father simply said that “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  Pain and hope mingled strangely together in those words.  

The father, who you may have guessed, is Abraham. And Abraham was going up to the place God told him to go, but not to sacrifice his son.  He was going up to let God deal with as He might, an idol between Abraham and Himself.  Yes, even the good things have to die.  The author of Hebrews says Abraham considered God able to raise people from the dead.  But he still had to put him on that pile of wood and raise the dagger with the intent of piercing through the hope and promise God had given him, but trusting God that He would show Himself faithful.  

God doesn’t have to deal with the things in our life that we hate.  The things we turn our nose up at aren’t the things God wants us to see are between us and Him.  It is the things we hold dear.  The things that we give our time, affection, money and trust to.  Idolatry is false image-bearing.  The idols in our hearts are the things we attach words like my or mine.  Whether it’s wealth, power, health, food, love, protection and safety or something else that may be on your heart right now, God wants all of the things in our lives to be His.  An easy way to test it is to ask yourself how you would feel if God took (fill in the blank) away today? If there is a sting to it, we may be bearing our own image and not His. If there is a part of you that says, but Lord that is mine…He wants you to bring that to Him.  Will He give it back? Maybe, maybe not, but it first must die in your heart, and then trust Him to know what’s best afterward.  He is faithful enough to trust with all we hold dear.