When God Says, "Let go."
The fun of writing is that you may have something written and scheduled to go and God comes along with a sermon that takes some of the idea and has you run on a tangent. Much like my talk of knowing when to hand over the reins last week, a sermon I watched online taught us about Abraham, who was tested to see if he would let go of the promise God gave him, Isaac.
God promised Abraham he would be the father of nations. Abraham held on to this promise, but there was a point that he went with his own plan. His wife never expected to have a child, so told him to stop waiting and have a child through Hagar, her servant. That didn’t turn out well. In the end, Hagar and Ishmael were sent away. This has caused problems ever since.
Embracing the promise does not mean we won’t make mistakes while we are holding on to the answer. The mistakes usually occur because we give God our deadlines out of our frustration of waiting. We need to hold on to the promise, but let go of what we think the plan should be.
God will test us to see if we truly understand the lesson he already taught us and how deeply we trust him. He did this by telling Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him to God. Despite the mistakes in the waiting for Isaac to be born, Abraham saw a son born via Sarah despite their ages and assuming her womb was dead. Though he had never seen a resurrection before, he reasoned God could bring Isaac back to life because of the promise God gave him about Isaac. In a way, God did at the last second by stopping Abraham with the knife ready in his hand and supplying a ram caught in a bush.
Here’s the fun thing about trust. The deeper it is, the fewer details we demand about what is coming and how it will play out. It takes time and test of character to produce deep trust. God tests us to bring us deeper with him. If I don’t know someone well, I will grill them on the opportunity presented to be sure I should invest in it. In an established relationship, I rarely ask much, knowing the plan will be laid out as needed. That’s a hard thing for me to do since I usually had to do all the planning for some of my jobs, and now with my writing business.
I am still learning to step out with God, like Abraham did. He picked up his family and left everything he knew to go to a place God promised. No details of where the place was in distance or time were given. He walked into the promise, knowing God would be with him the entire way. I still ask questions and wonder if I heard correctly. Or like Sarah, I try to force the promise to come because I’m tired of waiting or thinking it could never happen as stated.
When you don’t feel ready, you need to step out when God says go and to let go when he asks you to give him back the promise. God will not give up on you and the promise he gave you. Satan is the one that will tempt you into believing it won’t work out and you should take matters into your own hands. Though more often we can do that without Satan’s help.
Take time this week to determine where you are in your work with God. You could be in a learning phase or a testing phase. Both will deepen your trust in God if you let them play out by his plan rather than your own.
Scriptures you can reference about Abraham are: Hebrews 11:8, 17-19 about how he walked in faith and Genesis 22:1-12 for the tale about sacrificing Issac.