~ Absolute Obedience ~

"And Abraham said, "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering."
- Gen 22:8

Abraham heard God's instructions to sacrifice his only son Isaac and he obeyed without hesitation. Early the next morning, he went up with Isaac to Mount Moriah and was ready to sacrifice his son. I've heard this preached before that God requires our 100% obedience.
99% obedience is not obedience. Delayed obedience is not obedience.

Can you imagine? God asking us to sacrifice something that's so precious to you? Your only son. God also had His only son. And He required it of Himself to sacrifice Him, so that we may live. Later on (I think in Hebrews), the reason given by Abraham for agreeing to sacrifice Isaac, was that he was sure that God will raise Isaac up again from the dead even if he did sacrifice Isaac. Wow. What a revelation of the future plan of God.

Abraham said to Isaac that God will provide the lamb, knowing that Isaac is going to be sacrificed, but also that God will raise Isaac up. Few thousand years later - God did provide His own lamb to be sacrificed and God did raise him up again.

But God did not require Abraham's sacrifice in the end. He only wanted to test Abraham's heart.
"But obedience is better than sacrifice" -

Abraham's obedience in this case was even greater than the sacrifice he had to make. God was aware of that. For God knows what's in a man's heart. Outward sacrifice or obedience is of no use if our hearts are not right. God desires our submission and obedience out of love and reverance for him.

My own experience is that many a time I forget the prompting of the Holy Spirit and end up disobeying God. But last night was different. (Our accounting group was scheduled to prepare for a rather major presentation to the lecturer today). Somehow, I kept feeling unease in my spirit that some questions were going to be asked about the portion of my slides. I had to get up and read through that portion again. Lo and behold... I found out that I had prepared part of the presentation wrongly. That was corrected. Holy Spirit again indicated to me that someone in the class would ask about the numbers and that I needed to prepare to answer on how I derived those numbers... I got down to the preparation. Lo and behold... the question was asked earlier toay in class. And I managed to pull through. Isn't God amazing - if we choose to obey.

The long and short is that we did pretty well for the presentation. Many of our classmates said that our presentation was the best one so far in the series of presentations done. Well... we worked hard - but God was sovereign in that he prepared everything for us - the timing of the presentation, finding the right movie and sound clips to play, arranging for us to know the professor's requirements etc. Most importantly, prompting me about that important question that would be asked in class.

We can try all we want. But if we are on God's side - He fights for us. All we have to do is to obey.

I have to continually ask myself the question - Am I listening to God today? Have I obeyed?

What about you?

Barn