PRAYER PRACTICE
Spoken Prayer – Out loud, pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.
For more help use this Bible Study method
REFLECTION
Sign Of Promise
by Elaine Pierce
I'll follow you, Lord, wherever you lead. Except don't ever ask me to give up my.....
....career?
....spouse?
....children?
....beautiful home?
How did Abraham respond when God asked him to sacrifice his son, his only son? He responded in obedience. He took Isaac to the Mount of Moriah. He gathered wood for the burnt offering. He laid his son on the altar, on top of the wood. He reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
But God intervened.
"Do not lay a hand on the boy. 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."
And the Lord provided a substitute offering, a ram caught by its horns in the thicket.
There is so much to unpack in this passage. What was going through Isaac's mind as his father laid him on the altar? Why didn't Abraham argue with God about sacrificing his son, his only son? Why did God test Abraham in the first place? I don't have the answers. What I do know is that we serve a good God, I claim the promise he made to Isaac's mother, Sarah:
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised (Genesis 21:1).
What has the Lord promised you, what has he promised me? Claim this verse in Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
Abraham's son, Isaac, was spared that day at Mount Moriah. But we know that God sacrificed his son, his only son, on the cross of Calvary. He died for our sins so that we can stand before the father pure and blameless. Jesus took on our guilt, our shame. We can't earn our place in heaven. But we can, every day, wake anew to the promise that we are children of God. He loves us and asks us to put him first, and to live every day for him. Thanks be to God for this gift!
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