"A Ram Away"
"And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God." The definition of friend is "somebody emotionally close." Abraham was, indeed, emotionally close to Almighty God; he was so close in fact, that he was willing to sacrifice his own son just because God asked him to. The Great God of creation considers those who are "obedient" to Him, to be His friends, and friends of the God of the universe are notably highly blessed ... but greatly tried ... Abraham's miracle was coming up the other side of the mountain; it was "A Ram Away."
"Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if
thou be able to number them. And he said unto
him, So shall thy seed be." (James 2:3-5)
Abraham was being told he would be the father of many nations, and this was before he and Sarah had Isaac when he was 100 years old and Sarah was 90. This is where "faith" takes a giant leap. How many things bypass us because of our unbelief? How many blessings are waiting on the other side of obedience? When the Lord Jesus Christ, the Great "I Am," says something, we must obey!
I feel the Lord telling me to "trust" Him very often, when I'm wandering through my own long hot desert of obedience. God doesn't often give us all the details, just as He didn't give Abraham the "rest of the story" about the ram coming up the other side of the mountain, even as Abraham raised his trembling knife-held hand to sacrifice Isaac. I can imagine the clenched jaw, the eyes closed, the flood of tears on the edge of already red eyelids, as the Angel grabbed Abraham's arm moments before the plunging of the knife. Sometimes we speak our own prophecy. Isaac asked his daddy, while they were coming up the mountain, "Father, where is the sacrifice?" Abraham answered prophetically, "God Himself will provide the sacrifice!" Oh, Abraham, thou saist!
What about "your" mountain? What is your pressuring climb of obedience? All through the Bible, our Lord God says "if you will ... then I will." (Read all about it in 2 Chronicles 7:14) God requires implicit obedience, and sometimes He asks us to do some very strange things; it's "strange" according to "our" own human reasoning. He will never ask us to do sin, or anything illicit, but remember when He asked Naaman to dip seven times in the muddy, filthy Jordan river to be healed of leprosy? Remember when Elijah, the Prophet, asked the woman to take the last of her food that she was going to prepare for herself, her son and then die, and bake a cake for him? (Always heed the Prophet; I Kings 17:17-24) Remember the words, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto thee, rise up and walk." It was in the "obedient" painful effort of rising on atrophied, twisted, stiff, lifeless legs, that the man was healed!
Obedience! Climbing the mountain of obedience is treacherous sometimes; it's dry, sweaty, and every step scrapes away a little arrogance, some hideous pride, a life of stubbornness, and that lingering often semi-hidden egotism, until our weary bodies tumble over the bushy acme, and we catch a whiff of that surrendered humble mountain air ... And OH! Everything's so clear up there; suddenly, as we observe how high we've climbed, we look down and realize we're on our knees bowing very very low. Obedience! The mountain before the answer! The hard climb, the submission, the final trudging steps of surrender, the obeisance, all lead to the treasure wrapped in a casing of spiny thorns ... the miracle; it's just "A Ram Away!"
By Sheryl Fowler
(Visit promiselandchurch.net and theexperience238.com.
PromiseLand Church, Austin, Texas, Pastor Kenneth Phillips)
No comments:
Post a Comment