“Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. ‘Abraham!’ God called. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Here I am.’ ‘Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you’ (Genesis 22: 1-2).

Are you waiting on God for a promise to be fulfilled in your life? Abraham is called the father of the faith; he believed God’s promise that He would make him a father of many nations. For twenty-five years Abraham and Sarah waited on the Lord to fulfill the promise of a son. Can you imagine having a name that meant “Father of a multitude,” yet you were unable to conceive? Just think of the shame and the reproach that he must have had to endure while waiting on the God to bless them with a child.

That all changed, however, the day that Sarah gave birth to a miracle—for she was ninety years old! Have you ever noticed that people will sometimes turn to the Lord when they have a need that only He can fill, but once they receive their miracle, they tend to go back to their old lifestyle? But, as we see in our Scripture today, this was not the case with Abraham. Isaac grew to be a young man and that’s when God put Abraham’s obedience to the test. Will Abraham love his son—his blessing—more than the God Himself?

Why is it important for you and me to know about the life and the decisions of Abraham? Because if we don’t understand the principle reason why God asked Abraham to offer his son upon the altar, then we might have a tendency to relax once we get our heart’s desire—missing what lies just beyond the blessing.

“Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. ‘This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed Me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by My own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed Me. Then they returned to the servants and traveled back to Beersheba, where Abraham continued to live” (Genesis 22:15-19).

Had Abraham told God, “I don’t want to obey Your command and offer my son upon the altar, because I love him more,” Isaac would not have had to climb upon the altar, and Abraham would have lived the remainder of his years enjoying his son but because Abraham obeyed God’s command and offered Isaac upon the altar, God granted him great authority. After this one act of faith, God made a vow to Abraham that he would be blessed even more and than his descendants would also be blessed and have authority over his enemies. So how will we act once we’ve been blessed by God? Will we continue to be obedient and faithful to Him when He asks us to give up something that we hold very dear to our hearts? Does God want us to be blessed? Absolutely, but He doesn’t want the blessings to have us. If they don’t captivate our hearts, then He can really bless us!

—submitted by Asa Dockery, US