He wants our Bad, but also our Good:

If you have been reading along with my blog, this may sound repetitive, but at church today we were learning about Abraham and his mighty story.  He definitely had a lot of ups and downs with a lot of temptations where he sometimes showed great faith and sometimes showed complete fear.  The story that wraps up Abraham’s tale in the book of Genesis is when he was being tested by God through being asked to dedicate his son, Isaac.  

This is not my favorite story from the Bible.  I don’t know what I would do if I was in the position that Abraham was.  I don’t think I could even start the process of walking up to the temple with my son, or even a human being with the intent to give him as a sacrifice.  Abraham shows great faith through this whole interaction.  He faithfully and obediently goes up to the temple with the intention to do what the Lord has asked.  We even see that Abramham really believed in his heart that God was going to provide.  He believed before he went up with Isaac that God would provide the sacrifice that was necessary which was why he didn’t have to bring one along.  We absolutely see great faith, and from the moments of his lack of trust, this is a high moment for Abraham to have.  

The good news, for anyone who knows the story, is that God does provide a ram that is found in the thicket.  This was the perfect provision that Abraham had been hoping for.  This was the replacement.  This also serves as a wholesome and beautiful metaphor to Jesus as our perfect replacement when he died on the cross.  We don’t need to give sacrifices anymore because we have been given the perfect sacrifice who has the ability to forgive all of our sins and will allow us to spend forever with him and his father in heaven if we so choose.  

However, my pastor was able to provide me with something new to think about when it comes to this passage.  There are so many take-aways, but this is a new one that I have never thought about before, and one that I think is important for everyone to think about.  God wants our best and our worst. He wants us to come to him about our hard times, but he also wants us to come to him when we are excited.  He desires a complete relationship, and just like every good and healthy relationship, the two people share their highs and their lows.  

It is actually in some ways harder to give God our best.  However, I am not going to say that it is easy to give God our worst.  There are many temptations and sins that are hard to give over to God.  There is shame that we don’t always want to present before the Lord.  We can have fear.  However, have you thought about how hard it can be to give God our best or our good things?  It can be incredibly difficult to give God our dreams, our passions, and our relationships.  We want to think that because they are our best and most sacred things, they should be kept sealed to our hearts where we are completely in control of them.  We would rather be the ones in charge of the decisions surrounding those things.  

We see this is what Abraham had done.  A great chunk of his story from the book of Genesis was about the promise to be a father of a nation.  Even though he and his wife had struggled to father a child, after desperately wanting one, Abraham and Sarah were promised they would have a child.  They tried to take this into their own hands through Hagar and Ishmael, but still God promised they would have a biological child of their own by each other, not through anyone else.  Then even with the laughter through their age and lack of faith, they finally had their baby, Isaac.  A good part of Abraham’s personality was now matched in with having this child of Isaac and being his father.  Yet, as we see in this story, Abraham was getting ready to sacrifice the child they had been waiting years for to the Lord.  Abraham was willing to give the absolute best part of him and his son’s life to God.  Luckily because God saw that Abraham was faithful, he did decide to bless his two sons with a Ram and a replacement. God provided the future to Abraham and it was completely good.    

We do see that there are many verses that speak to giving sacrifices throughout the Bible. The first one I am going to highlight is from the Old Testament and that is Psalm 66:15, “I will sacrifice fat animals to you, and an offering of rams; I will offer bulls and goats.” We see that God does care about good meat as a gift to him.  Then the second one is Luke 12: 33-34 which says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  This is a reminder not to care about worldly possessions.  We are not to care about the items in this world that sparkle or twinkle.  We are to be more focused on the future world, or the one that we are headed towards and the treasures that will be there.  

How does this really work in our day to day life? What are some ways that we can always give God our best moments and the exciting parts of our life?  How can we avoid just giving him our bad, but commit to giving him our good as well?  The way I best seek to give God my best is through prayer before all my big events.  Every time I am about to seek doing something related to a dream or a desire, I am trying to give more and more attention to talking to God about it.  It is important that I let him know where my heart is with this particular desire.  I need to let him know where my heart is taking me, and where my heart is leading me.   I don’t just try to talk to God when I am sad or I am mad, but also the moments when I am happy and when I am feeling more at peace.  

My challenge this week for everyone reading is to think of one desire or dream that you can put into God’s hands.  What is something that you would like to see in your life?  What is something that you have been afraid to give up to God because you secretly want all the control over it?  I pray that whatever you desire, the Lord will showcase the best possible option for you with that dream or desire.  I pray that you see God’s promise in this dream and in your future.