offering up isaac

I love the way God speaks to me in the moment. He shows me things that are yet to come as well sometimes, but usually, He shares with me revelations that are relevant for me today. He has been leading me into a place deeper inside His heart where I am learning to trust His perfect will and plan for my life. He has been teaching me about the importance of living in His perfect will, praying according to His perfect will, and finding that place in Him where the fruits of His Spirit can manifest His works in me.

I have had many prophecies and promises spoken over me by the Father since first hearing about Jesus as a small boy. I have pursued my own will rather than His will for most of my life, and even now, as a son of God, I still find myself trying to help God figure out what His plans are for me while I am living here on this earth. Writing this post has taken me a bit longer than usual because the Father has been teaching me, it is more important to precisely write His words according to His will rather than my own. Someone might be able to use their gift to write in a way that is intriguing and motivational, but if the calling is to write according to the words of God, it is more important to seek Him and make sure the written word is as accurate as possible. My good intentions and love for Him often get in the way of what He wants to see happen in my life, and recently, He has been teaching me this lesson from the life of Abraham in the book of Genesis 12-25 (NASB). How did this “father of faith” learn to trust in God’s perfect will, and how did he finally show God that he truly feared Him and trusted in His perfect promise?

When God first showed Himself to Abram, He made him a promise. God told him in Genesis 12:1-3, “Go from your country, And from your relatives, And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you into a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” The scripture says that Abram took his wife, Sarai, and his nephew, Lot, with him along with all their possessions and persons that he had acquired in Haran. God told him to leave his relatives, but Abram chose to take his nephew anyways. As we will see later, this act of self-will was one of the first decisions Abram made that caused conflict later in his life because he was not acting according to the perfect will of God. God allowed it though because He wanted Abram to learn more about Him, and through Abram’s weaknesses and mistakes, he would begin to learn about God’s mercy and grace. He would learn what it means to love God through his absolute obedience.

The scripture says Abram went forth until he came to a land that God showed him near the oak of Moreh. Here the Lord once again appeared to him and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” It is important to note that the land was not promised to Abram at this time, but rather, to his descendants. In the first promise, God told him He would “show” Abram the land, not give it to him. It says he built an altar to the Lord on the spot near the oak of Moreh. He then proceeded from there to another place away from where God had just appeared to him, and it was there that he pitched his tent. He built another altar at the second location between Bethel and Ai and “called upon the name of the Lord.” Why did he proceed further from the place where God appeared and spoke to him? God had appeared and spoken to Abram when he had set foot on the promised land. It was here that God spoke to him, but Abram had to “call” upon the Lord when he came to the second location because God was no longer showing Himself, and Abram was no longer hearing His voice. When we step ahead of God’s will, we often step out of His manifested presence, but because of His mercy, He will often allow us to stay within His grace and favor while we learn from our mistakes.

Abram did not have the benefit of having the Spirit of God living in him as we do today, so when God stopped appearing to him and he no longer heard God’s voice, Abram was presented with a few choices. He could return to the last place where he had seen and heard God speak to him, he could call on God and wait for God to appear to him and speak to him again, or he could make decisions according to his own understanding of what he believed God wanted from him while hoping his decisions were aligned with God’s will. The scripture shows us that he chose the last option and left the land God had shown him to find food in another land. It says that because there was a famine in the land, Abram decided to sojourn down into Egypt where he thought there might be a better chance of survival. Maybe, he did not trust God to take care of him on the land that he had been “shown” because his understanding, at that time, was that the land was promised to his future generations and not to him, but it is easy to see his lack of faith or trust in God when he told his wife, Sarai, they should not be completely truthful about their relationship while they were in Egypt because Abram was afraid that the Egyptians might kill him and take her as their own since she was a beautiful woman.

As the story goes, Pharaoh saw Sarai and took her to be his wife without any objections from Abram. As far as we know from the scripture, Abram did not even call upon the name of the Lord to intervene, but instead, he was compensated by Pharaoh with livestock and servants. Despite Abram not calling on God for help, in His mercy and grace, God intervened on Abram’s behalf and struck Pharoah and his household with a plague. Pharoah sent them away, and Abram went up from Egypt a wealthier man and settled in the Negev with his wife and nephew, Lot.

The scripture says Abram was very wealthy in livestock, silver, and gold. God had not instructed Abram to go to Egypt, but He used the moment to show His power and glory to Abram and Pharaoh. It might have been easy for Abram to believe he had chosen the correct path since it appeared that he was rewarded for his efforts when he left Egypt, but in hindsight, it was more likely that God wanted to use Abram’s mistake as an example or type of foreshadowing for the prophetic word that God would give to Abram later about his descendants. He told Abram that his descendants would be enslaved in a land that did not belong to them for four hundred years, but they would leave that land with great possessions. Egypt was that land. God might have also been allowing Abram to receive a type of prepayment for the work his descendant would be doing as slaves for Pharaoh in Egypt. The point is that Abram had not been told by God to go into Egypt, but God allowed him to travel there anyways and used it to teach Abram about God’s heart of mercy and grace and His ability to protect Abram and his household.

Because God had a covenant with Abram, He blessed Abram even when Abram followed his own way rather than seeking God’s way and waiting to hear directly from the Lord. It is possible that God spoke to Abram when he “called upon the name of the Lord” between Bethel and Ai where he had pitched his tent, but the scripture does not say that He did. When Abram left Egypt and settled in the Negev, it says he pitched his tent in the same location where he had previously built an altar between Bethel and Ai. It was the same place where he had called upon the name of the Lord before he ventured down into Egypt. The scripture says, he again “called upon the name of the Lord,” and again, it does not mention if the Lord responded to him or not. I have also found myself calling upon the name of the Lord after I have already invested my time and efforts into a failed plan. I have asked God why things have not worked out the way I have planned. He told me, if I had taken the time to seek Him first about His will and waited for His reply, I would not be asking Him that question. I don’t know if God responded to Abram in that moment, but I can imagine what Abram must have been asking the Lord.

The scripture does say, Abram’s and Lot’s herdsmen had strife between them because the land could not sustain them all. This is the first time we have seen a consequence of Abram’s decision to bring Lot. Instead of obeying God’s perfect will and leaving his relatives behind, Abram chose to partially obey God’s will and partially satisfy his own desires. If he had left Lot as God commanded, he would not be dealing with this problem right now.

This was also not the location where God had appeared to Abram and specifically promised the land to his descendants. This was the land where Abram had decided to move to pitch his tent after God had appeared to him. The distance from the location where God spoke to him and where he ended up pitching his tent does not matter. He should have stayed exactly where he was until God told him to move. After the fact, it is easy for us to see his mistake, and we are only privileged to his conversation with the Lord by what we can read in the scripture, but the audible voice of the Lord is not something anyone should take lightly.

God’s audible voice or manifested presence brings with it a greater responsibility to act precisely on the word being spoken. We see an example of this in the life of Moses. He was not allowed entry into the Promised Land because he did not precisely follow the commands of the Lord’s audible voice. He allowed his own flesh and his own will to be inserted into how he performed actions according to the word of God. Because he struck a rock out of anger instead of only speaking to it as commanded by God, he was forbidden from entering the Promised Land.

If you hear the audible voice of the Lord, make sure you don’t move from that place until you have a full understanding of God’s will in that moment. If He doesn’t reveal the fullness of His will to you, do not do more than He has commanded you until you hear from Him again. Make certain you are doing exactly what He wants you to do and not only something you think He might want you to do. Seek Him diligently and wait patiently. If Abram had sought and waited on God’s further instruction, he would not have pitched His tent anywhere other than where God had shown Him. God was teaching Abram the importance of obeying His will perfectly. He was allowing Abram to learn what might happen if he chose his own path rather than the Lord’s, even if his own path seemed innocent enough to him at the time. God is going to manifest Himself and move powerfully in the earth soon, and those of us who are seeking Him, listening for His voice, and hearing His words will need to make sure we are being diligent in following His words precisely. He will not trust us with this sort of physical manifestation if we are not showing Him now that we have a heart willing to precisely obey Him when He speaks to us in our spirit.

Abram decided, along with Lot, to go their own separate ways to avoid any further strife between them. Lot went into the valley of the Jordan, and Abram settled into the land of Canaan. After Lot separated from Abram and God saw that Abram’s feet were once again precisely standing upon the land God had promised to Abram’s descendants, the Lord spoke to him. He said that all the land to the north, south, east, and west, as far as he could see, would be given to him and his descendants forever.

This time, God told Abram that he would also be given the land, and God told him to walk the entire piece of property because He was giving it to him. It does not say that Abram walked it as he was commanded by the Lord, but it does say he moved his tent into the land by the oak of Mamre located about 1.2 miles from the oak of Moreh where the Lord first appeared to him upon arriving in Canaan. This time, he was pitching his tent in the land described by God as “all the land which you see.” He once again built an altar to the Lord. God “spoke” to Abram when Abram was in a place where God wanted him to be or when God wanted to send him to a place where he was not at already. Abram “called out” to the Lord when he was not hearing from God or did not experience the manifested presence of God. God was still with Abram watching over him and protecting him because He had a covenant with him, but Abram was not obeying God’s will precisely, at least, not yet.

Now that Abram was settled in the land that God promised him, God increased his understanding of the promise He made him by visiting him yet again in a vision. He promised Abram a son. He told him, “One will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” God told Abram that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and it says, “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” God loved it when Abram had faith in Him, but not every action taken by Abram showed evidence of his faith in the Lord.

The first time the Lord spoke to Abram about the land, He said He would show it to him. The next time, He said He would give it to his descendants. The third time, He said He would give it to Abram and his descendants forever. The fourth time in Genesis 15:7, He says, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it” as if to say, “I have already given it to you. Now, possess it!” Abram’s response was not one of thankfulness, but rather, it was a question. He asked, “How may I know that I will possess it?” That was the last time that God told Abram that He was giving the land to “him.”

It reminds me of the time when the children of Israel question going into the promised land. God tells them because of their fear and unbelief, they will wander around in the desert until they die, but their descendants will still possess it. They did not thank God for their Promised Land either. Perhaps Abram’s response derived from a place of doubt or lack of thankfulness, but whatever the reason, it caused him to miss a part of the promise that he could have seen manifested during his own lifetime as his descendants would also experience. Have you ever asked God that same question about a promise He has made to you rather than thanking Him and waiting for the “suddenly” to move into the promise…to cross the Jordan?

Later, in Genesis 15:16, God tells Abram that his descendants would return to this promised land in the fourth generation to punish the Amorites but not until then “for the wrongdoing of the Amorite is not yet complete.” I asked the Lord why Abram’s question was offensive to Him if his descendants were not going to return for a very long time anyways. The Lord brought a scripture to my mind. Psalms 23:5 is a verse that was written by one of Abram’s descendants, King David. It says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.” The Lord showed me how He wanted to do that very thing for Abram. He wanted him to possess the land, so the Lord might show the Amorites His strength and power through the life of Abram while he lived amongst them. Abram feared the Amorites and his question showed a lack of trust in God’s protection and provision in the same way that his descendants would offend God by questioning their own ability to enter and possess their Promised Land.

Every time the Lord references the land again, He refers to it as land that He has given to Abram’s descendants, not him. God visited Abram while he slept and gave him more details about the future of the land and his descendants ranging from their slavery in Egypt to what generation would come to occupy the land. He makes a covenant with Abram and tells him, “To your descendants I have given this land.” It might seem like there is a lot of focuses being placed on the tense of the verbs and the exact words God spoke to Abram, but it is important to understand how God slowly revealed the full vision of the promise to Abram. As Abram walked in obedience to God’s will, the promise manifested in real time before him. The promise was revealed to him progressively as God saw the need to help increase Abram’s faith. God does the same thing with us today.

He might give us a prophetic word, but it might lack details. As we trustfully obey Him, He will reveal more of the details to us to increase our faith. God’s promises are fulfilled in His timing and not our own. If He allows us to walk into the promise early, it might not carry with it the same anointing as if we wait for His perfect time. God might bless our ill-timed actions as He blessed Abram’s in the form of his son, Ishmael, but it will not be a part of His direct promise to us. The importance of His timing will be emphasized later when it describes the moment of Isaac’s birth, “So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him.” This is the exact moment in time that God wanted Abram to wait for and believe in.

Abram had now been told in Genesis 15:18 that the land had already been given to his descendants by God even if his descendants would not fully possess it for another four hundred years or more, so when God told Moses and the children of Israel to cross the Jordan and possess the land, they were actually being told to take back what already belonged to them. Abram was told that he would have a son from his own body, and his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth or the stars in the sky. As far as we know from scripture, Abram does not share any of this information with his wife Sarai. He might have told her about what God spoke to him, but the scripture does not say that he did. Historically, it would not be hard to understand why he would not share this information with his wife because, at that time, women did not make authoritative decisions for the family like some do today. For the moment, we will address the scripture exactly as it was written and assume he did not tell his wife the details about his encounters with God, or the promises God made personally to him.

Whether Sarai knew of the promise or not, she presented Abram with an alternative for producing an heir “from his own body.” Sarai told Abram in Genesis 16:2, “Now behold, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” If she knew that God had said that Abram would have a son from his own body, and she knew that she could not bear children, it would make sense that she would try to find a way to make that happen. If she did not know of the promise, it still would make sense that she would want Abram to have an heir since she was not able to give him a son.

It was the custom at the time for barren women to allow their husbands to take another woman as a surrogate, so they might have an heir. Was she trying to bring about God’s promises, or was it only an attempt to give Abram an heir because she loved him and felt shame for not being able to produce a son? Either way, what we do know is that Abram knew God told him he would have a son from his own body, and when Sarai presented Abram with this idea, it would be easy to see how he might have thought this was God’s plan as he was promised. God had not revealed yet to Abram that his son would be born from Sarai. The scripture does not say that Abram sought God on the matter nor waited on Him to respond before taking the matter into his own hands. It simply says he agreed with his wife and had a son whom he named Ishmael.

Sarai quickly became disappointed in their decision because once her maid, Hagar, conceived, she began to despise the sight of Sarai. Sarai complained to Abram, and even though Hagar carried the baby who Abram must have considered to be the son that God promised him “from your own body,” he told Sarai to “do to her what is good in your sight.” He was giving Sarai permission to end Hagar’s life if she thought it was a “good” idea, along with the unborn child, or at least, cause Hagar to miscarry bringing an end to Sarai’s embarrassment and shame. Abram might have been having second thoughts about this being God’s plan, and he might have thought he had made a huge mistake and was simply hoping for it to disappear. Have you ever wondered why Abram didn’t go after Hagar when she fled from Sarai, or at least, why he didn’t send some of his men after her? He gathered all the men of his household to rescue Lot when he was taken captive, so why would he not attempt to bring his own unborn son back home? It says that the angel of the Lord found Hagar in the wilderness by a spring on her way to some other place.

Maybe, God did not want Abram’s mistake to be covered up or forgotten. He could have allowed Hagar to wander off in the wilderness to be eaten by wild beasts or die of thirst or starvation, but He didn’t. Instead, He blessed her because of His covenant with Abram. He told her to “return to your mistress and submit yourself to her authority.” There are many lessons that can be learned from that one statement, but the lesson we need to focus on here is that the covenant Abram had with God would not allow Abram’s seed to be destroyed. God was revealing His faithfulness to Abram by redeeming his mistakes to a point. Ishmael became the nation of Islam, and they have stood in opposition to Israel even to this very day because Abram tried to make God’s promise come into fulfillment according to Abram’s timeline rather than waiting patiently for God to fulfill His promise in His own way and in His own time.

God had not yet told Abram that Ishmael was not the promised son. Ishmael was thirteen years old when God decided it was time to give Abram more details about His promise. Abram had thirteen years to convince himself to accept Ishmael as his heir and promise from God. The scripture does not say that Abram sought God on the matter, and it does not say that God appeared or spoke to Abram during those thirteen years. Imagine focusing all your efforts on something you thought God wanted you to do for thirteen years only to find out that all your efforts were in vain and not God’s will at all. God might have been waiting for Abram to simply ask Him if his efforts were aligned with God’s will or not, but the scripture doesn’t say. We do know in their culture, at that time, a boy became a man around the age of thirteen, so it makes sense that this would be the time when God decided to step in and clarify a few things with Abram before Abram could cause any irreparable damage like giving Ishamel the birthright blessings that God meant for Isaac.

Abram would have been in the process of training Ishmael to take over the family when Abram left the earth, but God, in His own loving way, would explain to Abram that He always had other plans. He was going to explain to Abram that he and his household would have to be circumcised as a bond and testament to a new covenant with Him. The cutting away of the foreskin would be symbolic, but the act of being circumcised would be painful and real. He would be symbolically cutting away his past efforts and increased gains from following his own will. God wanted to know if Abram truly feared Him enough to fully trust Him to fulfill His promise, or if Abram would continue to try to make things happen on his own. He wanted Abram to show his allegiance through suffering because Abram had made a point to avoid suffering in the past, and that avoidance led him to turn from God’s will. God wanted to know if Abram feared Him more than man, and He wanted to see if Abram desired God’s will over his own.

God told Abram He would give him the new name of Abraham, and He would give his wife, Sarai, the new name of Sarah. He explained that Abraham would have to circumcise himself and all the males in his household now and forevermore. God further explained in detail about how He would cause his son to be born of Abraham as He had promised, but his son would also come from the womb of Sarah. Sarah would conceive from a circumcised Abraham, unlike Hagar, who conceived Ishmael before the new covenant. It was about God’s timing. He allowed Abraham to make the mistake of having Ishmael before he was circumcised because God’s promise would involve his son, Isaac, not Ishmael, and Isaac would be conceived and born under the new covenant.

God allows us to make many mistakes in our life as well before we are bonded to Him through our covenant with Christ. He still allows mistakes after we are bonded in covenant with Him as He did Abraham later in his life, but God’s grace and mercy did not allow Abraham to make any decisions that would prevent God’s promises from being fulfilled. The Father watches out for us in the same way. He continues to reveal His mercy and grace to Abraham while sharpening his vision of God’s promise to him. He even tells Abraham that Sarah would give birth “at this season next year.” These sorts of details must have increased Abraham’s faith, but at the same time, it was in this moment that Abraham must have understood he had made a huge mistake with Ishmael.

Knowing he had missed God’s will, he still asked God to allow his own plan to serve as the promise instead of God’s original plan. He asked God if Ismael might live before the Lord instead of his promised son, Isaac. Have you ever spent so much time and effort on something that you hoped and believed would be pleasing to God only to find out it was not what God wanted for you at all? Have you ever thought you were living in the will of God only to find out your ideas were your ideas alone? Have you ever convinced yourself that you were obeying God, but after the Holy Spirit brought some clarity and conviction, you were able to confess that you were walking in disobedience subjected only to your own will? If you have experienced these sorts of moments in your own life, you might begin to understand the disappointment and shame Abraham must have been experiencing.

Abraham asked God to do something that was not aligned with His will when he asked God to allow Ishmael to live before God instead of Isaac. God not only told Abraham “No,” but He told him he would have to circumcise the product of his own will. He would have to cut away the foreskin or flesh of Ishmael. God said He heard Abraham’s prayer though, and He would bless Ishmael and make him fruitful and multiply his descendants. Because Abraham tried to force the timing of God’s promise instead of patiently waiting and seeking Him for His perfect timing and will, Abraham brought into the earth a people who would largely hate and despise God’s chosen people and the nation of Israel. Ishmael’s descendants today are Arabs, and they have been a thorn in Israel’s side from her beginning. Most Arab nations align with Islam and believe they are the chosen people promised to Abraham. This is a simplistic approach to a much more convoluted argument, but it will suffice for our purposes. Abraham agreed to the terms of the new covenant and circumcised himself, Ishmael, and all the males of his household. He took on his new name and formed a new covenant with the Lord, so he might be able to see the fulfillment of God’s promise to him.

This moment for Abraham was a type and shadow of our own moment of salvation. When we decide to serve God, He forms a covenant with us as well. He promises us salvation, and in return, we agree to cut away all our old life. We agree to circumcise our flesh. Everything we idolized to achieve greatness and prosperity in this world, we cut it away. God told Abraham that every male who joined his family in the future would also have to be circumcised. In the same way, we must also cut away our own desires and will from everything that we do in the future. We must acknowledge publicly that God’s will is our own, and our will belongs to Him. God wanted Abraham to perform an act that would mark him and his household as being in covenant with the Lord. Our lives should also appear obviously different to others because we are transformed into the image of Christ, and we are walking in the Father’s perfect will. As it says in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” God chose to reveal to Abraham more details about His promise, yet again, in order that his faith might be increased, but God was still waiting for Abraham to show Him that he was ready to walk fully trusting in God’s promise.

The Lord told Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son that would come from them both, and He even told them when Sarah would give birth. God was removing any room for doubt in their hearts. We can see why He might feel the need to do this for them because of their past performances and because it says that Sarah laughed when she heard the news. Abraham also laughed the first time God told him that Sarah would bare him a child, but that was after Ishmael was born to him. His laugh could have very well been a nervous laugh knowing that he had possibly offended his God by not waiting and trusting in Him to bring about the fulfillment of His promise. At the very least, it was a shocking laugh that might say, “So, are You telling me that I have wasted the last thirteen years on Ishmael?!” This would account for his request from God to allow Ishmael to live before God instead of Isaac. Sarah’s laugh was more from doubt evidenced by the fact that she lied and said she did not laugh when God challenged her on it. It says she denied having laughed because she was afraid. She was afraid because she had been caught doubting the Almighty God.

After all his mistakes, Abraham might have been a little more careful about pursuing his own will. At least, he might have learned to seek God more diligently to find out exactly what He wanted, so he would not waste time and effort doing something that God did not want him to do. Remember Lot? He had moved down into the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah when he left Abraham, and now he was going to once again cause distress for Abraham. God was going to destroy those cities because of the great outcry of sin that was coming from them. In Genesis 18:17, it says, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” Abraham knew his nephew, Lot, was living in the cities that God planned to destroy. Abraham had followed his own desires before when it came to his nephew, and God knew he might do it again if He told Abraham what He was planning. God knew that Abraham would intercede on Lot’s behalf even if it was not a part of God’s perfect will to save him.

When God said that He was going to go down into the cities to see the situation for Himself, Abraham immediately interceded. He knew God would have to destroy the cities because God is just. We know the story. He asked God to spare the cities if He found enough righteous people living in them and negotiated God down from fifty righteous people to only ten righteous people. God agreed to withhold His judgement for the sake of ten righteous if they could be found. God already knew there were not ten righteous, so it would have been a safe promise for Him to make. Abraham was probably thinking that Lot and his household would equal ten at least, but when he awoke the next morning and saw the smoke from the cities, he must have known that ten righteous people could not be found. He must have also believed that Lot had perished along with the rest of the population as there was no way of knowing otherwise.

Abraham was not interceding for the cities simply because he was being compassionate or loving towards the people who lived in them. He had not interceded for Pharaoh or his family when God struck them with a plague. He had not interceded for the Amorites in the land that God was going to give him. He had not even interceded for Lot or the people of Sodom when they were taken by Chedorlaomer and the kings, but instead, Abraham went to war with the kings killing them all and taking Lot and the people of Sodom back on his own. Abraham did not have a history of interceding before God on behalf of anyone else. He was interceding on Lot’s behalf, but he didn’t want to ask God directly for Him to spare Lot because Abraham had learned that the pursuit of his own will brought shame to his relationship with God. Why did Abraham not say anything when he saw Sodom and Gomorrah burned to the ground? It doesn’t say that he knew Lot had been spared, but it also doesn’t say he grieved over Lot’s death. Perhaps he realized that it was because of his own act of selfishness in bringing Lot against the instructions of God that Lot was now dead. He didn’t even fall on his face and laugh nervously like he did because of Ishmael. Abraham was learning what can happen to those who seek their own will over God’s.

The scripture says that God spared Lot “for the compassion of the Lord was upon him.” We cannot mistake God’s mercy or compassion for His perfect will though. Without going into details of the events, Lot’s daughters ended up giving birth to sons who become the Moabites and Ammonites, perennial enemies of Israel. I know there is someone reading this who might say, “But, God established Ruth, a Moabite, as part of the ancestry of Jesus.” Yes, that is true, but God did that to show that He is a redeemer of our selfish ambitions and mistakes. God can and will use anything and anyone if it brings Him glory. He redeems all of Abraham’s mistakes because He had a covenant with him. In the same way, Jesus redeems all our mistakes to bring the Father glory. Does God have a better plan for us than merely redeeming our mistakes? Yes! Absolutely! He will place His works in us if we allow Him, and those works are perfect in us because the Spirit of God lives in us. Those works are the manifested fruits of the Holy Spirit. Again, Abraham did not have the Holy Spirit available to him as we do today. His road of faith and obedience was much more difficult than ours because he did not have the Spirit of Christ living in him. He did not have the ability for the Father to perform His works in him as believers in Christ do today.

Because he did not have the ability to hear from God continuously as we do, it was more difficult for him to learn his lesson. Yes, he heard the audible voice of God, but as we saw before, God did not speak to him in that manner very often. The scripture does not say if Abraham found out that Lot had survived, and if we read the scripture exactly as it was written, we could assume that he never knew. If you read about how Lot’s daughters became pregnant, it would not be too difficult to believe that Lot was so full of shame that he might have never reached out to Abraham again.

What we do know is that Abraham once again journeyed from the land God had promised him and travelled towards the land of the Negev. Again, we see Abraham’s fear of man overwhelm him, and he lies again about Sarah being his wife. Keep in mind that Sarah is now over one hundred years old, but the fear that Abraham had about someone killing him to take his wife was overwhelming. King Abimelech sees her and takes her without any resistance on Abraham’s part, but God intervenes again and warns the king to return her to Abraham or suffer the consequences. The king gave Sarah back to Abraham along with livestock and servants, and this time, Abraham interceded on the king’s behalf so he and his household might live. God heard Abraham and healed them.

Finally, God took note of Sarah “at the appointed time” as He had said He would, and He did as He had promised. Abraham and Sarah conceived and gave birth to a son, Isaac. Sarah became agitated with Hagar because Hagar was mocking her. Sarah once again asked Abraham to take care of the situation which caused Abraham much distress because Ishmael and Isaac were both his sons. Sarah even said to Abraham, “Drive out this maid and her son, for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.” That was Sarah’s will but not God’s. It was God’s will for Isaac to be born to Abraham and Sarah as an heir to Abraham and his promise, but as we saw before, God redeemed Abraham’s decision to have Ishmael, allowing Ishmael and his descendants to be coheirs with the descendants of Isaac with one stipulation. They must belong to the Spirit of Christ, so they can belong to the family of God. This is the same stipulation we must all agree to if we want to become sons and daughters of God.

Galatians 3:29 says, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” This means anyone, including Ishmael’s descendants, who belongs to Christ are redeemable and may become a part of Abraham and heirs to the promise. Romans 8:14-17 says, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons and daughters of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

I know you are thinking, “But, you said Ishmael’s descendants are Arabs and enemies of Israel.” I did, and that is correct. Romans 5:10 says, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Anyone who chooses to live in lawlessness is an enemy of God, but everyone who believes in the Spirit of Christ can become heirs with Him. Sarah’s self-will did not surpass God’s will even if they could not see the Truth at that time. God told Abraham to send the maid and his son away, but He said He would watch out for them and bless them.

Abraham saw the Lord intervene in his life many times even when he was not walking in the perfect will of God. He saw how God protected him and how He directed his steps to keep Abraham from straying too far from His will. God wanted to make sure that Abraham trusted in Him completely and feared God more than he feared man, so God ordained a meeting with someone from whom Abraham might learn this lesson.

King Abimelech, along with the commander of his army, came to visit Abraham. This is the king whom Abraham feared enough that he lied to him about his wife Sarah. The king came to Abraham and said, “God is with you in all that you do; now therefore, swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my offspring.” He wanted to make a covenant with Abraham, so Abraham would not harm him or his people. God moved on the heart of Abimelech to approach Abraham, so Abraham might understand better the fear of God. It is impossible for man to not fear God when coming face to face with His awesome power, authority, and might. No man can stand before the awesomeness and power of the Almighty God and not quake in his boots. When Abraham lied to Abimelech about Sarah being his sister, he gave the excuse for it by saying, “Because I thought, surely there is no fear of God in this place.” God revealed more of Himself to Abraham to encourage his faith and displace his fear of man. God is getting ready to reveal Himself to us in this same way again today. The world will experience the fear of God, and it will become omnipresent in the Church. We will again see the manifested hand of God as they did during the times of Abraham and Moses.

Abraham finally saw the fulfillment of God’s promise in his son, Isaac, and even in his son, Ishmael, although, he did not realize it at that time. He finally did not fear man because he learned to trust in God’s will and plan. He knew that God would never ask of him anything that would prevent His promises from being fulfilled. He knew he must trust God regardless of what God told him to do. He finally came to the point in his relationship with God where his Ishmael had been circumcised and his fear of man had been destroyed. God had one last thing He wanted to see before He would swear to Himself that Abraham would indeed possess the promises of God.

Genesis 22:1-2 says, “Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” This was Abraham’s time to show in his actions that he was willing to do anything that God asked of him. The scripture says that God “tested” him. God knows everything already. He is all knowing, and He does not need to test us to increase His knowledge of us. He tests us for our own sake. He wants us to become aware and understand something about ourselves that we do not already know. This was a test for Abraham to show himself that he feared God and trusted fully in Him. It was also an opportunity for Isaac to witness his father’s faith in God.

This is our challenge. I cannot say that I have been faithfully waiting on God’s promises for my entire life, but I have been waiting none the less. Many of you have been faithfully waiting for a promise from God to come to fruition in your life, and some of you might have lost patience and attempted to “pull” into today God’s promise that is waiting in the future at His “appointed time.” Some might even have tried to do God’s will by following their own plans and strategies. Our Ishmael’s do not need to be offered to God because they are not worthy of being offered to Him. They need to be cut away, and if God wants to redeem them then He will do so on His own and in His own time. If we try to hold onto those Ishmaels, God might allow it for a time or season because He wants us to learn from our mistakes, but He will not allow us to destroy the promise He has given us if we belong to Christ because He is merciful and gracious. He will have His perfect will accomplished in us at His appointed time if we stay steadfast and trust in Him. I know there are some people out there who might feel like they have already waited so long and given so many of their failed efforts to God that they might feel like they have already been tried and “tested” by Him, but what if God still has a bigger test ahead for us all? What would happen if God finally answered our prayers and gave us our “promised son” only to ask us to give “him” back once we have had a taste of the fulfillment of His promise?

Abraham was not going to live long enough for him to see his descendants numbering like the stars in the sky, so his fulfillment to the promise God gave him was his son, Isaac. He might have had an opportunity to possess the land God wanted to give to him, but as we saw earlier, the land ended up being promised only to his descendants. Since Isaac was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, his decision to obey God in this matter revealed to Abraham his own heart for God.

We don’t know for certain how old Isaac was when God asked Abraham to offer up his son. The scripture says that Abraham called him a “lad” and that he was old enough to carry the wood for the offering, so it would be safe to assume that he was neither a small child nor a man. Since God gave Abraham thirteen year with Ishmael before He told Abraham that Ishmael was not the promise, it would not be hard to believe that God would have given Abraham the same amount of time with Isaac before He asked him to give him back. Abraham might have had to convince himself to believe that Ishmael was God’s promise, but he knew with certainty at the birth of Isaac that Isaac was the fulfillment of God’s promise to him. He probably had thirteen years to watch Isaac grow up into the promise that Abraham must have imagined God promise to look like.

Abraham’s walk with God had led him up to this point. All his mistakes and all his accomplishments were being called upon at this moment. What lessons had he learned through them all? Had he grown in his relationship with God enough to be able to trust in Him to keep His promises no matter what happened? When God told Abraham to possess the land He promised to him, Abraham asked, “How may I know that I will possess it?” As we saw earlier, God withdrew that offer from him because he questioned from a heart of doubt rather than thankfulness. He learned his lesson, and we can see evidence of it because he doesn’t question God at all about His command to offer up Isaac. In fact, the scripture says, “he rose early in the morning…and went to the place of which God had told him.”

Abraham made the mistake of going to places God did not instruct him to go to in the past, but not this time. He did not go anywhere except exactly where God told him to go. It was important that he obey God precisely in this instruction because it would become the same land upon which Solomon built the First Temple to God. God did not tell Abraham this information because Abraham did not need to know. He only needed to obey precisely as God commanded in the moment. We might like to have all the information possible when God shares some revelation with us, but we rarely need to know everything. God will take care of the fabric of time and space. All He wants us to do is make sure our single thread is aligned with His perfect will, so the fabric will come together precisely as He sees it.

Abraham also learned to walk with God in thankfulness. He did not try to convince God to save Isaac from being offered. He did not intercede on Isaac’s behalf because he had learned that God’s will was perfect, and God would keep His covenant with him no matter what happened. In fact, there is no mention of Abraham questioning God at all in this matter. He even tells the two young men who accompanied them that he and his son were going to go worship God together and return to them. This sounds like Abraham was going in a heart of thankfulness and worship towards God and not begrudgingly or trying to change God’s mind on the matter. When Abraham said they would return, it proved evidence that Abraham was placing complete trust in God to protect his promise to him. His son, Isaac, was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, so Abraham knew God would protect that promise as He had many times before, no matter what might happen.

When it came time to physically offer Isaac up to the Lord, the angel of the Lord stopped him. The scripture says, “Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” He was fully committed at this point. The angel of the Lord told him, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now, I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” God gave him an alternative offering to give in the form of a ram that was caught in the thicket. Abraham offered up the ram in his son’s place, and called the name of the place, “The Lord will provide.” There is a lot to unpack at this moment of time, but for now, we will focus on the substitution of the ram for Isaac. Jesus was also sent from the Father to die in our place. When God asks us to give Him anything, even our lives, we can be sure He has something better in store for us. He wants us to trust Him and obey Him perfectly, so we might walk in the fullness of His promise.

Abraham had failed many times to trust in the Lord to provide for him since leaving Haran with his family. He had sojourned down into Egypt because he did not trust the Lord to provide food for his household in the land that God had shown him. He slept with Hagar because he did not trust the Lord to provide the perfect way, according to God’s will, for his son to be born. He failed twice to trust the Lord to provide a way of escape for his nephew, Lot. One time, he went to get Lot back himself, and the other time, he stealthily interceded for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because he did not trust the Lord enough to specifically ask Him to spare Lot. He lied about being married to his wife a couple of times because he did not trust God to provide protection for him and his family. Ultimately, Abraham did not trust God because he did not know God. As he grew in the fear of the Lord, he learned to trust God in everything, even to the point of offering up the fulfillment of God’s promise to him.

God told Abraham that He now knew that Abraham feared God, but He was not saying that Abraham became afraid of Him. He was saying that Abraham had learned to trust Him for everything. He learned how to wait on God patiently. He trusted Him in every area of life where he had not trusted Him before. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” While on his journey with God, Abraham had gained wisdom through his mistakes because he learned to trust in God and fear Him alone. God revealed Himself to Abraham along the way simply by being Himself. Because his knowledge of God increased so did his understanding of God. Abraham came to know God through his weaknesses and mistakes, and he learned what it meant to do His perfect will as evidenced by the precision of action in offering up his promised son, Isaac.

God put a stamp of approval on Abraham when God said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. And in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” Hebrews 6:13 says that God swore on Himself for there was none greater to swear by. It is remarkable to me that God would do that for anyone, especially someone who had shown such a lack of trust in God throughout most of his life, but God showed in this scripture His ability to redeem those who believe in Him, who He has a covenant with. This should inspire and encourage us all to greater depths and heights in knowing God.

This is not the end of the story for Abraham or for us who believe in Christ. Abraham did not go on to live a perfect life after his experience with Isaac. The scripture says that Sarah eventually died and was buried. Isaac was married and began having sons of his own. Abraham could have rested in God’s promise to him and stopped with Isaac while letting God take it from there. The promise to multiply his descendants was well under way, but Abraham decided to get remarried and continue to help God populate the earth. I pondered this as I asked God what might have happened. Why did Abraham feel like he needed to remarry and have more children if he now truly trusted God to fulfill His promise through Isaac?

Perhaps, it was simply that he was a man with the desire that God had placed in all men to procreate. Maybe, he still hadn’t perfected the ability to trust in God fully, and he wanted to know that his descendants had a good head start. Possibly, the enemy of God, Satan, wanted to cause as much trouble as possible for Isaac and his descendants, so Abraham was tempted to have more children. Having more descendants outside of Isaac’s lineage might be a way for Satan to add to the struggles Ishmael’s descendants would already bring to the children of Israel.

Satan knew about God’s plan to redeem the earth from the beginning, so he might have wanted to have as many enemies around Israel as possible to prevent or delay the birth of the Messiah. The children of Abraham mentioned in Genesis 25:1-6 became the Arab nations that ended up surrounding and becoming enemies of the children of Israel and later the nation of Israel. In Genesis 25:5-6, it says, “Now Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac; but to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the east.“ Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, and gave only gifts to his other children while sending them away as he did Ishamel. This obviously caused hatred from the surrounding nations towards Isaac’s descendants.

God is getting ready to move powerfully in the earth by the Holy Spirit, and we are going to see many signs and wonders in the earth. This moment in time was prophesied long ago, and “at the appointed time” the promises of God will come into fruition simply because He is God and He keeps His promises. The promises that so many have longed to see will be seen by everyone who is alive during this moment of time, both the saved and unsaved alike.

Many believers in Christ have been waiting for personal prophesies to be fulfilled in their own lives, some more patiently than others, and God is going to release His glory onto those whose heart and will belongs to the Lord, who do not fear man, and who have cut away the flesh of their idolatry and past life. When He delivers our promise to us, we must be ready for Him to ask for it back. Hopefully, He will not, but if He does, what might that look like?

If I am waiting for an anointing to heal people because it was prophesied over me many years ago, and God releases me into that anointing, the experience will be out of this world, I am sure. What if He allows me for a season to operate at high levels of healing to “test” me to see what that anointing might do to me and my relationship with Him. Remember, the “test” is not for Him to gain insight, but rather, for me to be able to examine myself. If He finds me not having been consecrated or prepared well enough or if He finds me lacking in some other way like allowing pride to enter into my life, He might “test” me further by asking me to stop using the anointing for a season, so I might be able see if my heart still trusts and lives in obedience to His perfect will like He did Abraham.

Will I be thankful for all that He has given me and obey, or will I begrudgingly do what I am told? Will I pray and cry out asking God not to withhold His anointing from me, or will I possibly try to continue “believing” that God would surely not ask me to stop doing something that furthers His kingdom? What do you think would have happened if Abraham had not obeyed God and had not offered up his son Isaac? God will release His anointing, His glory, and the fulfillment of His promises to us based on our willingness to submit our will to His. Seek Him now to know Him more before His “appointed time” arrives because when that time comes, it will be too late to get ready. Now is the time to prepare and consecrate ourselves and circumcise our selfish flesh, so our lives will be aligned with His perfect will. Hopefully, He will find us in that place where He found Abraham, and He will swear by His own name again saying, “Surely, I will bless you and multiply My own good works in you!”

You can read more about this and other truths by obtaining a copy of “Prodigal to Prince” by Beau Walsh at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com.