LETTING GO
“WHEN LOVE’S REVELATION DEMANDS ABNEGATION”
Part 1 of a 3-Part Blog Series on Genesis22
My Recent Morning& Evening Thoughts & Devotions
on GENESIS 22
“The Lord gives
And the Lord takes away
Blessed be the name of The Lord.”
For almost two weeks now my morning and evening devotions seem to have been put under a holding pattern as I have found myself being brought back again and again to the heart-wrenching story of Abraham’s faith being tested when he was told by God to sacrifice his one and only son, his beloved Isaac as an offering in the mountain of Moriah. In as much as I try to let my mind dwell on other lovely passages from the other books of the Bible, I find myself unable to move on from Genesis 22. And the more I allow myself to be drawn to the story, the more I find myself being led to discover newer truths, beautiful insights which previously escaped me in my devotions over the same passage years back. It is so true that if our hearts are truly bent on seeking God and as we set our hearts on delighting in Him, He does “speak” to us by lovingly and personally giving certain verses which do not only reveal the depth of His affections for us but also reveals the beauty of the grand truths of this magnificent love He lavishes on us. How delightful it is when God sweetly reveals to our hearts certain aspects of His truth! Oh yes, God does reveal His hidden truths – but this we learn God does to us one at time. Our Father truly gives His Spirit to guide us into all truth but He does not do it all at once. The Author of our faith chooses to not reveal more than what our hearts, our faith can handle at the present moment. Why? God knows it would be foolish to give us all the answers to the things we want to know when we demand them and He knows it won’t do us any good if He reveals everything that His love and wisdom has prepared for us for He knows we can’t handle it. We, in our limited understanding, can’t handle the whole truth. It is only as we choose to WALK WITH HIM IN DEVOTION, FAITH and OBEDIENCE does God reveal to us glimpses of His truth, His will, His plans one day at a time. And God has promised to disclose to us, to reveal to us “The Secrets of His Loving Heart” one at time as our faith becomes able and ready to embrace a certain nugget of truth which He chooses to reveal during a given moment of our life-journey.
OUR UNFAILING HOPE
Unraveling The Secrets of His Heart
Yes, we can be fully assured of that promise. And this ought to be our confidence, OUR HOPE:
…that ALONG THE WAY Our Father’s LOVE WILL SHOW US MORE AND MORE OF WHAT LOVE IS as we find the satisfying love we are searching for to be actually all present in Him. HE will and HIS WILL will forever suffice.
…And that ALONG THE WAY, HIS LOVE WILL ALWAYS BE THERE TO TEACH OUR WAYWARD HEARTS the very secrets of His heart and that ALONG THE WAY HIS LOVE WILL NEVER, EVER, FAIL TO GUIDE US in all of His truth, in all of His ways and in the path of His righteousness for His Name’s sake. For the sake of Love Himself.
And so the question now for each one of us is this – Will we daily choose to set our hearts to journey ALONG THIS WAY, along THIS WAY OF FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE, along THIS WAY OF TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS? And if we mean to give our “yes”, our “I do” to the Lover of our souls, then sooner or later, as we journey along this highway of faith we shall find our hearts traveling one dark night along the slopes of our live’s own Moriahs, stopping mid-track as the heavens, the skies call out to us,
“Take with you your only son –
yes, ISAAC WHOM YOU LOVE SO MUCH
and go there to the land of Moriah and
SACRIFICE HIM THERE upon one of the mountains
which I’ll point out to you!”
– Gen22:2 (TLB)
ALONG THIS WAY OF ABNEGATION
In the Slopes of Moriah
And so each one of us will one day stand in the foot of “The Mountain of Testing” carved especially for us. And in that place, we will find that there will be no circumventing or escaping the questions we need to answer before the One whom we call The Lord of our lives.
– Will we heed the summons of THE JEALOUS SKY to surrender and offer up the very thing we love the most?
~ Will we take God’s command in faith even if it doesn’t seem to make any sense at all and even if it will bring unbearable pain and loss (Something just has to die in us, you see.)
~ Will we walk towards the summit where the altar of offering and sacrifice is to be done and in darkness trust the “Hiddenness of His Ways” and in obedience proceed to carry forth His demand?
And allow me to once again quote here Elisabeth Elliot, an American missionary and an author whom I greatly admire.
“A thousand questions cluttered my mind. But THE QUESTION TO PRECEDE ALL OTHERS, which finally determines the course of our lives is:
~ What do I really want?
~ Was it to love what God commands and to desire what He promises?
~ Do I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?
Until the will and the affections, are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not began to understood, let alone to accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the heart’s affections, will reveal the heart’s truth. My heart, I knew, would be forever a lonely hunter unless settled “where true joys are to be found.”
– Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity
– Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity
I believe whenever God brings a child of His in this mountain of testing, He never forces His way upon His child. Along the way the choice is always left to us. The choice is always ours to make. But the choice we make will affect and define our future.
“And if we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test…we will be brought one by one to the testing place…At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us – just one and an alternative – but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.”
– A.W. Tozer
And to those who surrender to the call, He abundantly gives His grace. He will enable every child of His to make the difficult choice. He knows we can’t do it on our own. He knows it takes grace, and only grace, to slay our heart’s most precious thing. And grace He gives abundantly still as we are left to die inwardly at the wake of our abnegation, the surrender, the sacrifice of our beloved Isaacs.
LETTING GO
“And so now I put you in the altar…”
And so there goes my thoughts as He “urges” me to extend my alone-time with Him (which are my times of personal devotions – “my sweet precious moments with Him at the wake of dawn, dusk or late evening”) in the slopes of Moriah as an unseen spectator to the drama, the tragedy unfolding between the age-old Partriarch Abraham and his one and only son Isaac. As I devote myself to thinking through this passage for the past days until today, (and until God knows when..I can only happily and thankfully oblige 🙂 ) it is as if God is relentlessly pursuing me once again to lovingly unravel a facet of Love’s truth which He wants me now to learn and live out. And Genesis 22 undeniably holds a painful truth to be learned and lived through by those who intend to love, obey, and follow the Lord. Honestly, I wish I can be protected from such an experience! For who wants to voluntarily sign up to experience such agony, such a painful loss?! Really, I wouldn’t…It is grace that brings me here in my own Moriahs! The place, time and object of our sacrifice can never be of our own choosing. He determines our Isaacs to be offered and when they ought to be surrendered and “slayed” from within us. But, you see, the more I study the story of Abraham & Isaac closely, the more faith tells me this agonizing truth can ultimately be a most-rewarding experience when chosen to be lived out.
Yes, I believe His revealing of the truth – “to lose is to gain” is not for nothing. It is not a truth which He reveals to me so I can have something profound to think about in my quiet mornings and evenings and to have another moving theme to write about, to blog about and to write poems about. I know HE SHOWS ME HIS TRUTH SO I CAN ACT, LIVE IN, AND LIVE THROUGH HIS TRUTH. And in that manner, I know He protects me from buying the world’s belief systems, the norms, or the erroneous thought patterns, those lies that are out to jeopardize the future of those who choose and live through them. The Moriah experiences that we often think are made to simply break and tear our hearts actually hold the truth that will build and restore our hearts anew.
So, here I am again, searching my heart for the Isaacs I need to surrender and sacrifice to God and as I “slay” and offer them at the altar, the words below come rushing forth from my pen. The verses of the poem are written as the thoughts ramble on in my head. So there isn’t really much time for editing and improving the construction of the poem. I choose to share it now here in my blog as it is – hoping its simplicity captures the rawness of my heart’s sentiments as I write each and every word.
So with this poem, I offer all the Isaacs I cherish and treasure so dearly and most affectionately: offering them all to God moment-by-moment. Forever trusting in His Unfailing and Everlasting Love.
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“Letting Go”
January 29, 2013
To lose my dearest, my heart’s most precious thing
Is to gain the blessedness of possessing nothing
And yet in this lonesome valley You grant me the ultimate blessing
You have become the answer to this mighty Longing, the One Thing
The One in whom my searching heart now finds my all, my everything
My highest and sweetest reward when I make this painful offering
To be gazing now at Your beauty is unlike anything
There alone flows grace, faith, hope &love in all things and for all things
May I ever seek Your face as You lead me in the path of my Lord, my King
I love You above all and this I shall remember in every added earthly blessing —
To delight in You is to always and truly be in want for nothing
Yes, this heart of mine will be satisfied, be content in whatever life shall bring
– MVF
Psalm 27:4
Psalm 37:4
Matt 6:33
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Let me end by sharing a few more quotes taken from my favorite chapter (Ch.2 “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing”) in A.W. Tozer’s timeless classic “THE PURSUIT OF GOD”.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kindgom of heaven. – Matt. 5:3
THE WAY TO A DEEPER KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS THROUGH THE LONELY VALLEYS OF SOUL POVERTY AND ABNEGATION OF ALL THINGS. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the “poor in spirit.” They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word “poor” as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
– Tozer
I know that quote is quite a mouthful! 🙂 .. If you have the time, do go through the entire chapter. I guarantee it will really bless you so..
Ch.2 The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing, “THE PURSUIT OF GOD”, A.W.Tozer
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In my next posts, I will be continue on with Gen.22..
Part 2. LETTING GO AND LETTING GOD
Part 3. LETTING LOVE OVERFLOW
**illustrations by Jago Silver, from “Jesus The StoryBook Bible” by Sally-Lloyed-Jones
The Massive Impractical Day Dreamer 