You Are My Rock;
You Are My Fortress
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son” (Genesis 22: 9-12).
We often encounter a wall when a crisis turns our world upside down. These walls are not merely one-time events that we pass through and get beyond. They are issues of our heart that we continue to return to as a part of our ongoing relationship with God. Each time we revisit these issues, God does further work in us, seeking to build in us the person He created us to be.
We see this in Abraham, for whom sons and the legacy they would bring was the primary way that he defined his worth. The dream of a large family that would “bless the nations” was planted in him by God. Yet God allowed Abraham to wait through what seemed an unassailable wall of infertility. For 25 years, he was challenged to continue to believe and root his identity in God’s promises, as he waited for his wife Sarah to give birth to his first child.
A decade or so later, God led him to another wall, one of separation and the grief it brings. We read how Abraham’s unfaithfulness and tension with his wife Sarah forced him to send Hagar and Ishmael (Abraham’s eldest son through Hagar) into the desert. A grieving Abraham, now separated from his son, again had to face the issue of what his identity is rooted in.
Abraham encountered the third wall a few years later when God commanded him to sacrifice his long-awaited, beloved son Isaac on the altar. What we know as we read the story, but what Abraham could not have known, is that this seemingly unreasonable and awful command was an opportunity to scale the wall of disbelief. He is called once again to believe that God is good and has a plan, and to choose God as the foundation of his identity.
When he does, Abraham’s willingness to face that wall and root his identity in God is not only a victory for him, but a poignant lesson for generations to come.
We can see that Abraham appears to have returned to the same painful and challenging barrier numerous times in his journey with God. Why? Thomas Merton explains, “Unintentionally and unknowingly, we fall back into imperfections. Bad habits are like living roots that return. These roots must be dug away and cleared from the garden of our soul. This requires the direct intervention of God.”
The example of Abraham teaches us that God is at work amidst crisis. Though what we face may feel impermeable, these walls are often the place where He is repairing our broken selves and forging a new identity.
—Rev. James R. Needham
PhD, MDiv
What are you rooting your identity in? Is it possible that God may be using waiting, grief, separation or uncertainty to “replant” your identity in Him? Waiting is never easy. Temptations to look for shortcuts and end-arounds abound in waiting. But so does the potential to experience God at His most gracious and loving. Surrender is the key. Pray for the Lord to open your clenched fists, and to reestablish your identity in Him. Pray that He unite your will with His; that Christ might be formed in you. This is an invitation to taste and see that your God is good. Take Him up on the invitation as you stand at the wall and wait. –DH
—David Hoskins, Founder & Care Guide, Sanctuary Clinics