Nothing Held Back
Genesis 22:1-19
“Take you son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…Sacrifice him
there as a burnt offering…” Early the next morning Abraham
got up and …set out for the place God had told him about.
Genesis 22:2-3
There is something intriguing about Abraham’s faith. He held nothing back from God. We can choose to walk with God while holding back with a considerable amount of foot-dragging, but Abraham lifted up his life to God and offered it to him freely. He was willing to give to God the two most precious things he had; his son and his future.
We have never really been filled with the Spirit until we have reached this place. The Spirit is not going to fill us until Christ is absolutely first. God asked Abraham for more than his son; Isaac represented Abraham’s future. Abraham had lived in the light of God’s promise, and now God was asking him to give up the promise for which he had lived.
We are never free until we are detached. Holy detachment comes when we live not for our wishes or for another human or for our future, but only for God. He is our life. It is even possible for a person to peacefully watch the crumbling of a life ministry or the ending of a life relationship because neither is the person’s life.
The experiment appeared to be a success. They kept the boy in the hospital for nine days, and he was fine. After nine days they let him go home, but they kept the father for observation. On the eleventh day the father’s temperature suddenly skyrocketed, and he quickly died.
This is perhaps the best illustration of the Cross that I have ever heard. The heavenly Father has caused his holiness to meet the fatal disease of our sin – all our crookedness and twistedness – in his son. Jesus took our sin and disease in his body, bore our punishment, and died in our place.
This is an excerpt from a book This Day with the Master by Dennis F. Kinlaw. If you would like to buy this book please click here.