Letting go isn’t always loss
2022-06-17Hebrews 11:17 NKJV
In Genesis 12, God told Abraham to leave his country, his family, and his security. When he said yes to God, he travelled along an unknown path to an unknown destiny based on the strength of God’s promise. Without hesitating, the seventy-five-year-old patriarch ‘went, as the LORD had told him’ (Genesis 12:4 NIV).
Now fast-forward twenty-five years and Isaac is born; the miracle son who would fulfil God’s promise that through Abraham’s descendants ‘all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed my voice’ (Genesis 26:4-5 ESV). Then God makes a heart-wrenching demand: ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering’ (Genesis 22:2 NIV). And in obedience to God’s Word, ‘the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two if his servants and his son Isaac’ (v.3 NIV). God’s promised blessing hung on Abraham’s willingness to let go of what he loved most. Holding on to Isaac would have been natural and understandable, but it would have short-circuited the promised blessing.
Are you clinging to something that’s blocking God’s blessing? Is it a particular friendship, your reputation among people you’re close to, power, possessions, comfort, or habits? Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac was the ultimate act of faith. ‘By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.’ How could he do it? ‘Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life’ (Hebrews 11:19 NLT). Abraham believed that, with God, letting go never means losing, but getting back something better.