Because you have … not withheld … your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky … and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. Genesis 22: 16-18 (NIV)
It fills a father’s heart with joy to see his children obey. The younger our children are when they willingly and joyfully obey, the more remarkable it is! In our desire to build godliness into our children’s lives, we want to be sure obedience is in place on their character chart.
If the obedience of our children is meaningful to us, how much more it must please God when we obey Him, whether we understand the outcome or not. Abraham did just that. When God asked him to take Issac to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him, Abraham obeyed. We aren’t told of the emotions he felt or the sleeplessness he may have endured through the long night before. We just KNOW that he obeyed and trusted in God.
BOTTOM LINE:
One of the best gifts a godly father can give his child is when the child can observe his father’s heart being obedient to the Lord. So, are we ready to immediately and joyfully do whatever God asks without hesitation? Yes, it may at times be very difficult, and we MAY not fully understand until we see the full effect later in our life’s rear view mirror, but rest assured, God blesses families when their fathers obey.
One act of obedience is worth more than a hundred sermons. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Discovery: Experiencing God’s Word Day by Day June 8 David Jeremiah
I’m always so curious…
Fathers, this camouflaged short simple 246 word devotional has the explosive potential to rock our boats, perhaps thus revealing the needed changes in our embedded fathering leadership patterns, especially when we consider Abraham being commanded to GO, let alone the SACRIFICE component!
First off, is it normal thinking that we men (or even mothers) place ourselves mentally in a similar position as Abraham found himself? I did briefly, and then naively, found myself wondering if I would have even shared the command with Loretta, or if I’d just sucked it up, made the necessary plans the night before, arisen early the next morning and left without a word? Who am I kidding when I can’t even plan and implement a surprise picnic?
And I also keep wondering, where was Sara in all this drama? I’m not aware scripture really addresses that, like her earlier recorded snicker. Had Abraham confided the command with her, or, did he not, but because of her intuition as his wife, was she there undetected in the early morning shadows, watching Abraham’s team departure. Either way, knowledgeable or not, of God’s bizarre command, you wives/mothers can best imagine Sara’s mental anguish from such a heart-wrenching situation .
Back again to my reality. When my brain fog lifts, I realize my suppositions that God would even enter my space and give me such a command was akin to pure foolishness. It is not likely I will ever possess the essentials to warrant such an interaction/intervention from God. How I could ever be so naive to think that I could place myself in that realm of possibility of that command from God ever occurring to me?
But yet, is that not the playing field for all of us today to navigate as we encounter our “altar challenge” in order to spiritually mature? So, perhaps the important question really is: how well am I now obeying His Biblical commands or reveling in the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, so we’re ready for that inevitable future “altar moment”?
Such off-the-wall thinking tends to demoralize my present mental state before God and upon becoming depressed by my intellectual folly, He soon replaces such foolishness by an awe of His greatness. Read Psalm 19. Notice how quickly our warped little minds can run the gamut from our nothingness before an Almighty God to embracing the resplendent empowering three “omni” attributes that characterize Him as all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present culminating in John 3:16, “For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, that whosoever BELIEVETH in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
FYI, Omnipotence means that God is in total control of himself and His creation. Omniscience means that He is the ultimate criterion of truth and falsity so that His ideas are always true. Omnipresence means that since God’s power and knowledge extend to all parts of creation, he himself is present everywhere. Together they define God’s lordship, and they provide us a rich understanding of creation, providence, and salvation.
Greater understanding of God always begins with obedience.
The following scripture was listed on today’s dailylightdevotional.org., again, such an inspiration.
“And being not weak in faith, [Abraham] considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb; he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. And being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was also able to perform.” Rom. 4:19-21 KJV
The Message version reads:
- Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up.
- He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God,
- sure that God would make good on what he had said.