My last post included this idea: If Jesus is worth Anything, then He is worth Everything.
Today is a follow-up to that statement.
My last few posts have been about the need to let go of things in order to take hold of Jesus.
Jesus tells us that to do this we even have to let go of our families and our very lives.
But what does that look like in real life?
I want to share with you some words from A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God. He provides a great illustration of what it means to believe that God is worth EVERYthing. And he does this by using the story of Abraham. I imagine you will see yourself somewhere in the story:
In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life….
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From the moment he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms, he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father’s heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched Isaac grow from babyhood to young manhood, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in….
“Now take your son,” said God to Abraham, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
The writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the hillside when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination can gaze in wonder at this bent form of a man wrestling under the stars. Possibly not again until One greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul.
If only the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been a thousand times easier, for he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God. Besides, it would have been a last, sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.
How could he slay his son! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, “Through Isaac your descendants shall be named”? This was Abraham’s trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose “early in the morning” to carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God’s method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution lines up well with the New Testament Scripture, “Whosoever will lose for my sake shall find.”
God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbid him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, “It’s all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay your son. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
And though God always knew Abraham’s heart, now Abraham also knew where his chief allegiance lay.
Abraham had learned that “If God is worth anything, He is worth Everything.”
There is a bit more of Tozer’s illustration that I’ll share with you next time.
Until then… what do you need to remove from the temple of your heart so that God might reign unchallenged there?
(Public Domain Image Credit: the image was obtained from picturespublicdomain.com/fire-picture-public-domain/fire-public-domain, though as of 3/31/2015, this link is no longer valid.)