We call it pursuing “The American Dream.”
If someone or something threatens our pursuit, we get mad,
fall apart,
feel victimized,
cry “Unfair!”
and feel cheated out of our rights.
God asks us, however, to hold them loosely, and for good reason—so that He can occupy first place in our lives.
Both the Old Testament and New Testament tell us:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
The Message puts it this way: “Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.”
Usually, we estimate that our love for God is enough and that our grip on loved ones, treasures, and dreams is loose enough.
But because God’s ways and thoughts are so different
and so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9),
sometimes He whispers, “Your grip is still too tight.”
God isn’t mean-spirited.
No, the point is this: He has something better for us, something that would leave us utterly amazed, things we wouldn’t believe even if we were told (Habakkuk 1:5).
But God lets us decide
whether we want His something better.
Sometimes, to help us decide, God puts us to the test, for both His sake and ours. Our decisions reveal to God—and to us, if we’re willing—the status of our faith in, and commitment to, Him.
God put many of our heroes and mentors to the test, including our dear Old Testament role model, Abraham.
God asked him to do the incomprehensible—unthinkable—unimaginable: He asked Abraham to place his beloved son, Isaac, on an altar and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:1-2).
Do you think Abraham staggered at the request? I do.
Abraham played a key role in my eventual willingness to leave my very-young adult children and move to Africa, but let me hasten to make this clear: Unlike God’s request of Abraham, God wasn’t asking me to put my children to death.
It took a while to figure out what God was asking of me and my kids, but here’s what I slowly began to understand:
God was asking me to let go of my kids
and place them in His hands,
and then asking me to die to
the dreams and plans I had
as mother to my kids
and grandmother to their kids.
And yes, I staggered at God’s request.
Back then, before I began to see more clearly what God was up to, He and I were in a monumental battle of the wills. He was pointing me toward Africa, but I was digging in my heels.
In most situations, I wouldn’t have put up such a fight, but when it came to what was best for my kids—well, that was a different story.
I felt no peace—none!—about leaving them. I just couldn’t shake the belief that they needed their parents to help them transition out of college and into adulthood.
Those were dark days: It felt like God was asking me to walk away from my kids before I had finished the job He had given me: to raise them—and raise them well.
Everything within me cried out that it wasn’t right!
At the same time, I was not at peace about stomping my foot and saying “No!” to God.
I needed to reorient my thinking, to recognize that God was offering me His something better.
In coming weeks we’ll ponder what God asked Abraham to do, and why, but for now, what about you?
Is God asking you to do something incomprehensible, unthinkable, unimaginable?
Are you staggering from the enormity of it all?
Could it be that He is asking you to give up to Him your best so He can give you His better? Something that will leave you utterly amazed, things you wouldn’t believe even if you were told? (Habakkuk 1:5)
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