What is your Isaac?

What is your Isaac?

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
      "Here I am," he replied.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
      "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
      "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
      "Here I am," he replied.
 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "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."
 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
From Genesis 22


This story ALWAYS comes to mind on certain days... mainly the birthdays of my 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th children....

  My husband and I had never intended to have more than two children.  Two boys, at that.   Just days before Evynn was born (our 2^nd) we were talking with my OBGYN about our options for permanent birth control.  Circumstances beyond our control (but clearly within God’s) kept us from taking any steps in this area.  When my daughter was just two weeks old, she started suffering from what we thought was colic (she would cry every night from 1 am to some time after 4am).  This went on for a few months and right in the middle of it all, my husband had double hernia surgery which left him completely laid up for some time and I started experiencing some late arriving complications from the delivery. 

It was at this moment that God spoke clearly to my heart.  Isn't that just like Him?  I love that about Him.  He does not wait until my baby is sleeping through the night and my husband is at 100% to speak to me about this.  He goes in at the worst possible moment and says "Trust me".  The storm is raging and He says "GET OUT OF THE BOAT!!!"

Our church had been doing a sermon series on Abraham and trusting God.  I can remember this moment like it was yesterday.  Keith and I were sitting in the back of the room, in the newborn care area with Evynn, when our pastor asked THE question… 

“What is God asking you to trust Him with? What is YOUR Isaac?”

The answer was immediately clear to me and tears sprang to my eyes.  God wanted me to trust Him with my child-bearing decisions.  Now, God had been laying ground work for some time.  A friend had recently introduced me to several families who had already come to terms with this in their own lives.  I had been reading books, studying the Bible & praying.  Keith and I had had countless conversations about it.  My head knew quite clearly what God was calling me to do but my heart was not willing to agree.  I wanted my life, my way. CONTROL.

So there we were, sitting in church and it was like God was standing in front of me saying “Trust me.”  

Keith saw the tears and asked what was wrong and I simply replied that I did not want a hundred children and I do NOT want a 12 passenger van.  He knew immediately what I meant and he smiled at me.  He took my hand and said “It will be okay, if this is what God wants than He will take care of us.”

The story of Abraham and Isaac has SO many layers, it is so rich in meaning.  I imagine that Abraham and Sarah, after so many years of waiting, could have easily slipped into those well-meaning parents that place their child at the center of their universe.  We have all done it.  This child, clearly from God, needs to be THE most important thing... maybe more important than God? Perhaps this act in obedience was about reminding Abraham WHO was really at the center?  Perhaps, in the few years since his birth, Abraham had forgotten the miracle that this child was?  Maybe he needed to be reminded who was The Provider of all?  I don't know.  I will not pretend to know WHY God does anything.  But I do know there is a lesson for all of us here.

As I sat in that church, almost eight years ago, I had NO idea what my life would look like.  Just as, I am sure, Abraham had no idea how God would provide a sacrifice.  But he had trust.  Radical trust.  

Today is the first birthday of my sixth child, the fourth one to bless us since that moment.  Some of the thoughts I had in that moment have come true. This life is crazy.  And it is hard.  

God has used this trip into Moriah for me in so many ways.  He uses it daily.  I have learned so much about sacrifice and how to serve.  I have been pushed beyond my limits emotionally and physically.  I have been brought to my knees more times that I can count and I am daily reminded that, just as Abraham said to his son "God will provide..."   


I do not share this story to bring up the ever controversial issue of whether or not to control.  I bring it up because we all have an Isaac.  Some of us have more than one.  We all have something that we love so much that we cannot imagine sacrificing it to God.  Maybe it is something given to us by God, a blessing beyond imagination that we never expected but now we have. Sometimes the biggest blessing in our lives (the ones given to use from God that answer the desires of our heart) are the very thing that stand in the way of our true, radical dependence on God.   We are holding on to it so tightly we no longer see God in it, we just see it.  

Abraham, walking out to sacrifice the promise of God, was about as radical a thing as had happened up to that point in the history of man.  And it is a mere shadow of the radical sacrifice the world would witness a few thousand years later, when Christ walked up that hill at Golgotha (a hill that can be seen from the spot that Abraham laid his own son on the alter to sacrifice).  And it is what God has been calling us to from that point on, radical sacrifice.  Sacrifice that clears the way for us to have more of God.  That is what God has wanted for us from the beginning.  Him.  All of Him.  What do we need to give up to have that?  Christ cleared the path, He made the way 2000 years ago, that is true.  But we all have something that has gotten in the way, something that we hold on a little too tightly that keeps us from truly experiencing all that God has for us.  Something that keeps us from complete reliance upon Him.  And even as I live each day, I realize, I have a whole lot more Isaacs that I need to let go of.  What is your Isaac?