Now, That's Faith

When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” [Genesis 22.9-12] 

God already knew Abraham was faithful. Why a further test?

Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called. “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.” [Genesis 22.1]

The answer is simple: because God-pleasing faith is never passive. The faith that pleases God is faith that is ever growing. What faith we have today is not really faith tomorrow because, by tomorrow, we have experience with it. If I wake up tomorrow, after having moved a mountain with my faith today, tomorrow's faith, great as it may seem, is potentially tainted with my human experience.

Every day, in the life a growing believer, new faith challenges should be expected. A genuinely dedicated believer should be prepared to glorify God in new and unprecedented faith-opportunities every day. This does not disqualify moving a mountain again today (if I moved one yesterday) as an act of faith, but the moment I consider myself a mountain-mover based on my experience of my own faith, I have made an idol of myself and am no longer trusting God.

The depth of the 1st Commandment is unfathomable:

“I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. “You must not have any other god but me. [Exodus 20.2-3]

The 1st Commandment is extrapolated in the demand that Jesus (God With Us) made:

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. [Matthew 16.24 (also, Mark 8.34 & Luke 9.23)]

In fact, part of "giving up our own way," is viewing every day as a new opportunity to have the witness of walking in uncharted faith territory with God. And yet, when Jesus came to earth, the idol-induced blindness of man was all too obvious:

But the disciples had forgotten to bring any food. They had only one loaf of bread with them in the boat. As they were crossing the lake, Jesus warned them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod.” At this they began to argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread. Jesus knew what they were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? ‘You have eyes—can’t you see? You have ears—can’t you hear?’ Don’t you remember anything at all? When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?” “Twelve,” they said. “And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?” “Seven,” they said. “Don’t you understand yet?” he asked them. [Mark 8.14-21]

The uncomfortable truth of Abraham's story is that it wasn't enough that Abraham believed God and received a son a few years earlier. Faith that pleases God is faith that enters every day and every situation with God's unprecedented creative power. Yes, yesterday's victories should inspire us, but we must not rest upon them! And, that is the reason behind God asking Abraham to offer his son. God wanted to know that Abraham's faith had not plateaued, but was ready and willing to demonstrate that God was indeed his only God and that nothing else would affect his obedience to God in that position. 

Regardless how many times we have heard and considered Abraham's story, we should always be willing to learn more from it. We should always be prepared to be challenged a step further in our faith. Genuine, growing faith will always require that we give up our own way. The goal is that our faith grows so much that, like Jesus, we might actually come to embrace our cross because it puts us closer to God. Now, that's faith.

Father, help us to see and hear and understand that the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod are in fact religion and government that encourage us into idolatry with the controllable 'ways of man's experience' (debt, insurance, medicine and technology?) not considering yesterday's known faith victories and certainly not looking for unprecedented faith victories today. Help us to see from Abraham's story that neither "religious reasoning" (the yeast of the Pharisees) nor "legal limitation" (the yeast of Herod) should have anything to do with our obedience to, and therefore, our faith in, You, our God. So be it.