Empowered to give (2)
2022-06-24Genesis 22:16-17 NKJV
God won’t ask us for what we don’t have, but sometimes He will ask for the one thing we really want to keep. It reveals if there’s anything we value or depend on more than Him. Abraham was tested like nobody else in history. But he passed the test and was blessed like very few others in history. Imagine God saying to you, ‘Take now your son, your only son… whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’ (v.2 NKJV).
So many questions would swirl through your mind. But Abraham trusted God. In fact, his faith was so strong that he would be described as ‘the friend of God’ (James 2:23 NKJV) and ‘the father of all them that believe’ (Romans 4:11 KJV). When the test was over (and Isaac wasn’t sacrificed), God said this to Abraham: ‘Because you have done this thing, and have not withheld… your only son… I will bless you, and… multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore… In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice’ (Genesis 22:16-18 NKJV).
So now the question is: what’s God asking of you? Are you struggling with giving it? Are you withholding what He wants, or are you handing it over confidently? Isaac was the hardest seed Abraham ever had to sow, but that seed produced a harvest of blessing greater than anything Abraham ever dreamed of or thought possible. What’s God asking you to do today? When you say yes to Him, you’ll get to see the amazing things He can do and just how far His blessing can reach.