October 4, 2026

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.‘” (Genesis 22.2)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Sometimes, we think the hardest thing to do is “to show up.” How many times in our lives have we not wanted to be someplace, not doing what is expected of us and not being what other people wanted us to be? I know I have had those feelings at some time, if not more than once. Sometimes, life is just hard and we are just overwhelmed. And sometimes, life seems easy and nothing can stand against us. Abraham had faced both those times in his life and more than once. If not for all those times in his life, he would have been ill-prepared for what was about to happen. That, mighty ones of God, is “life.”

Life is the preparation for the life yet to come. Yes, ultimately, there is only heaven and hell as the “life yet to come.” However, we get to those destinations “one day at a time.” Life is always around the corner, living in the next moment. It doesn’t ask for our permission to exist. It waits for us to come to it… ready or not. Only God sees it. He doesn’t just see it better than us. Only God sees it. Not even Satan “sees it.” He can imagine it as much as we imagine it. No matter how great our imagination is, we cannot truly see it until we are in it. We might say, “I am not surprised” when we walk into the space of our own making as if that is all there is. That kind of thinking works so long as we don’t try to move beyond it. The problem is that “life moves” with or without us. When we stop moving, we are as good as dead. And I would say, at this point, there are a lot of people moving but they aren’t going anywhere. That is because they measure movement by their own imagination and not by “what God sees.” And the thing about God’s vision is that it is perfect vision. Even Jesus acknowledges this reality. God saw what it would take to correct our vision about the world and life in it, ours and others. He shared the vision with His Son convincingly in love. His Son accepted the vision trusting the One who was sharing it. Did He see resurrection beyond the cross? I wonder if He did not any more than Abraham saw the ram caught in the brambles when he went up Mount Moriah to submit to God’s request.

In truth, Abraham didn’t see God’s request coming but he was certainly prepared for it when it did. How many “sacrifice” experiences have we reflected upon in Abraham’s life?

Turning away from the worship of many gods, though they were worshipped only one god at a time.

Turning away from a settled, secure and prosperous lifestyle to journey to a land he had never seen.

Leaving behind his father and the community built by him in Haran to go further than he had ever gone before.

Leaving behind the Promised Land because he saw the land more than the God of it and went to Egypt.

In Egypt, he surrendered his wife (and sister) to Pharoah to save his own skin.

In battle to save Lot, his nephew, he was willing to lose it all against a viscous enemy.

He would sacrifice his commitment to sleep only with Sarah to fulfill her desire to be a mother and the means to establish Abraham in covenant with God.

He would sacrifice both Hagar and Ishmael into the desert knowing that God’s covenant was not because of them.

All of those moments in Abraham’s life was leading him to another he did not imagine, expect nor anticipate. The peace established in the land of the Philistines (where he sacrificed his wife’s dignity again to another king) had given him a sense of peace and security. It was the a similar feeling he had following the birth of Ishmael believing God’s will had been done. God had a different plan because God could see perfectly what was ahead far more than Abraham could have imagined or wanted. Abraham continued to settle for far less than what God had “shown” him. He believed that where he was was as good as it was going to get. How could he truly believe that when God kept showing him more and more? And what was the moment? It was a moment of sacrificing all that he believed in for the One who believed in him. First the call to presence. God needed to know Abraham was still “with” Him. Then came the real test: go and offer your son as a burnt offering to give thanks for all that you have received and honor Me. Before you think that God was unfair, unjust, unreasonable and unbelievable, consider what God saw. He saw the opportunity of a reality of the best of “man” to rise like cream to the top. Abraham did not think of those things about God I just mentioned. We don’t see Abraham debate the request with God. He submitted himself to the word and will of God. (Regardless of what he may have felt, he walked by faith and not by sight. If he walked by sight it would have been by what he could see only and not what God saw. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11.1) Before those words were ever spoken, Abraham was living them out.)

Mighty ones of God, all of that was just a visioning for what was yet to come. In the days of Jesus, the Pharisees would say “We have Abraham as our Father and that is enough.” They put their faith in Abraham’s faith instead of putting their faith in God. Jesus would say to the disciples “You have seen Me, the Father and I are one, and seeing Me is enough.) Abraham was no god. He worshipped and served the One True God, he believed in from the days in the Ur of the Chaldees. He continued to believe, after all he had gone through, in that same God who now asking of him the impossible. God would ask it of His own Son as well. The question is not of God but of us as men, people, of God. In the life of Abraham and the story that followed him as his legacy, we are prepared for the truth about the Christ who was to come. And yet, mighty ones of God, that is not enough. We can believe in Jesus as the Christ. We can believe in the virgin birth, His anointing, His ministry and His death and resurrection. But all of that is the mere preparation for what is yet to come: life eternal and abundant or not. You see, mighty ones of God, without the Second Coming and the fulfilled promise of a land without end eternal in the heavens, then what purpose the resurrection of the dead? What God has done in Abraham is the foretaste of what has done in Jesus as the Christ and is what God is doing in those who commit themselves as Abraham did- to follow Him all the days of our lives.

God is asking us two things.

One- Are you really present to Me, with Me and for me?

Two- Are you really willing to lay down the life you love as a living sacrifice?

Do we trust God that much, mighty ones of God? Are we willing to walk by faith and not by sight? (For who among us has actually seen the resurrection but put our faith and hope in it and in Him?)

TODAYS’ PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness endeavor, but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.