Watch as Ray David unpacks Genesis 22:1-19 and shows us the Gospel in the life of Abraham.
No-Win Situations
When you come to a no-win situation in your life, it is actually God’s mercy to you, because when there’s no good apparent option, God can strip you of the fallacy that there is a worldly solution that you can bring.
God often puts us into situations where He can relieve us of the idea that we can solve it all on our own. Test and trials in your life serve a greater purpose; they bring you to a place where you can longer just trust in yourself, but trust only in the Lord.
Don’t trust in the Lord just for a particular outcome; just trust in Him and His character – trust that He is good, strong, loving, and able.
You can rationally think your way through some of the journey of faith, but there will come a point for all of us where we will need to leap off the cliff into nothingness and trust that God is good, no matter the outcome. We throw ourselves with reckless abandon on His character and nature.
Letting go of your Isaac
Sometimes when you come to an impossible situation God calls you to give up your Isaac – to take your very best and leave it on the altar.
Trusting is knowing now what you couldn’t possibly know until it’s resolved. We don’t know the outcome, but we know the Lord.
The God Who Gives
All other gods demand your very best. The gods of today say that if you give me all of your attention, money, time, emotion, then they will make you happy. But they’re false gods who oversell and under-deliver. All they do is take your one and only son.
The Lord God doesn’t take your one and only son, whom you love – He gives you His Son. He’s not the God who takes; He’s the God who gives. Other gods rob, steal, and destroy. The Lord God doesn’t take from you; He gives – can you feel the unmerited love and favor of God in that?
You longer have to serve the false gods of this age. You can rest in the promises of the God who provides.
The Lord God gives His best for you and for me on the cross in Jesus. Jesus died for you and in your place. God is the one who doesn’t take your own and only son; He gives His one and only Son.
God Doesn’t Deal in Transactions
If you look at the way you deal with God and it is still transactional, then you haven’t got the Gospel. God doesn’t deal in transactions – He gives you his best, not because you deserve it, but because that is His character.
God’s unwavering commitment to love us is not a reward for us changing and getting it right; but instead it is the power to set us free to be wrong.
Free to be Wrong
God’s love for you is not the prize at the end of you cleaning up and getting it right; His love is on the front end. He loves you so much that you are free to get it wrong. Being willing to be wrong is essential to repentance and course-correction in your life.
He’s the God whose love and mercy eclipses even our weak and faltering faith. He’s the God whose hold on us is always stronger than our hold on Him.
