Does your brain ever get stuck on something, or is that just me?

After reading Genesis 22, I’d like to just move on and stop thinking about God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, to surrender all, to hold nothing back.

But I keep thinking about it.

To be honest, I’d like for God to not ask hard things.

But He has in my life, and I’m guessing yours too, and He likely will do so again.

The thing is, hard days and pain, the hard things God asks us to face, to allow us to walk through, cause us to truly wrestle with what we believe about Him.

They just do, don’t they?

Oh we may say He is our “everything” and “He is enough”, but when we don’t get our earthly way, that’s when what we really believe shows.

We humans don’t like waiting. We don’t like disappointment. We don’t like it when our expectations are not met or our dreams don’t come true.

Even those who’ve walked with the Lord a while can get discouraged when the sick get sicker, when we don’t get to see the prodigal come home, or when good seems to be losing like it seems to be in this crazy world of ours.

And it is often in these times that we come to realize the Lord will even ask us to surrender our expectations to Him.

It seems God truly wants us to withhold NOTHING from Him because, well, He has withheld nothing from us.

NOTHING.

For God so loved the world, that He GAVE His only Son. (John 3:16)

He gave all.
He surrendered all.

And it is in the daily laying down of all, that we, who seek to follow Christ, will find an unexpected peace.

We’ve heard of this kind of peace that comes from complete surrender; but to experience it requires much more than a Sunday-only, religious nod.

To walk in real peace means to daily do things to help us draw in truth and strength and release control and worry.

Those things are prayer, reading the Bible, and worship and fellowship with other believers (church).

Those who have never experienced this power may call these things a “religious checklist” but what a POWERFUL keep-you-going HELP they truly are to all who daily rely on them.

This is how we walk through this often hard life with peace and joy that makes no earthly sense.

This is how disappointment doesn’t defeat us or cause us to grow bitter but actually helps us walk closer to Jesus and even help others to do the same.

God is so good. Always so very good.

readGenesis

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