"What Faith Does!" - Too

"A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him?" (Ecclesiastes 10:14 KJV) 

  "Some time later, God tested Abraham's faith. "Abraham!" God called. "Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son - yes, Isaac, whom you love so much - and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you."" (Genesis 22:1-2 NLT)

  Now, about that "little book," the one that the large angel of the LORD held in his hand. A voice from heaven told John to go and take that book, (or scroll), from the hand of that angel, which he did by asking him for it; and the angel replied, "Yes, take it and eat it. It will be sweet as honey in your mouth, but it will turn sour in your stomach!" (Revelation 10:8-9 NLT)

 There are certain things we just can't explain; as much as try to make sense of them, they just don't fit into the way we think they should be. Whatever situation you might find yourself walking into, your words might try and convince yourself that God's in charge, but your gut tells you that things could get out of control and life changing. 

 Take this little situation the Abraham was walking into. God has already told Abraham that Isaac would be the one by which He would make a nation from; yet, in this situation, God tells Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, and sacrifice him on a mountain; not just any mountain, but one that He would show him. 

 You really need to place yourself in his sandals, making this your little experiment of being tested by God. What would you think God might do? Pretending you didn't know the outcome, imagine what it was like for Abraham to carry this out, as far as he did; all the way to the point of standing over his son, who was tied up and ready to be killed, as he held a knife over him! 

 There are many people that say Abraham believed that God would raise him from the dead, if it had to be done! I don't know about that, except it might have been something that had gone through his mind. As you read into the story, I seriously believe that Abraham truly thought God would change His mind. He might have had a habit of telling lies, but I truly believe he felt God would replace sacrificing his son, with a something else, which was why he told his son what he did: "God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son." (Genesis 22:8 NLT)  

 If there is one thing I have come to understand, God is always there right when you need Him most! You might have to take your testing all the way to be final stage, but at just the right moment, He will flip the whole thing upside-down! What you thought was going to be a disaster, will be turned into a blessing; and not just for you, but for others too, most of which you don't even know who they will be. 

 This faith that we have, is stronger than anything this life will show us. I wish it wasn't so, but we are human, we will have times of doubt; even after God does something spectacular in our lives, we can still find ourselves in situations where we don't know how things will turn out. We might even think God has given up on us, or He is punishing us for our sins. 

 As I have said before, and I will say it again: Israel is a mirror of who we are as God's children. If you want to know what you are capable of doing, then you should look into that mirror and see yourself. If you ever got to see the presentation of "Toy Maker and Son," we are misfit toys that need to be fixed; even when we get fixed, we still need fixing, over and over again! 

 There is something special about putting all of your faith in God: you don't need to put any trust in yourself, because when you do, you will see just how broken you really are... 

"This is what the LORD says, "Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the LORD. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in barren wilderness, in an uninhabited salty land. "But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit. "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve."" (Jerimiah 17:5-10 NLT)