Hold On in Faith and Trust God - Life is a Journey, part 4
Feeling helpless or hopeless? Hold on in faith and trust God! Like Abraham, don’t lose hope in the promises of God.
Has your faith grown over the years, or have you grown tired of waiting for God’s promises? We need a healthy fear, reverence, and belief that God can do anything; that He’ll fulfill His promises.
Let go and let God be God. Choose today whom you will love and serve. Allow your faith in God to flourish. Allow your trust in God to strengthen.
Through this series, you’ll learn how to live well & enjoy God's promises. You are loved by God; He knows your name. He has a plan for your life. Get helpful advice, encouragement, and hope for a life well lived in 2021 and beyond.
Are you walking in faith and victory? Set your eyes on the promises of God. You only have one life journey; say yes to Jesus. Like Abraham, learn to walk in faith and trust God with all your heart.
Let go and trust that God will fulfill His promises.
YOUR DECISIONS DETERMINE YOUR DESTINY.
We are continuing our series, “Life is a journey.” At times, we are not certain where life’s choices will take us. The decisions you make will determine your physical and spiritual destiny. The decisions we make along the way have consequences, some good, some not so good. But in both cases, we can learn from them and try to make better decisions the next time.
Abraham needed to learn to trust God. Maybe we all do.
We’ve been following Abraham’s journey, his good decisions and bad decisions; his faith and failures. By this time, Abraham has learned to trust God in his life journey. Oh, Abraham has made a few poor choices, and he will have to live with the consequences of his poor choices on life’s journey. We all will. But Abraham was learning to walk in faith and trust God even in difficult circumstances.
We should all remember the truth that is found in Lamentations:
‘I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. 20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” 25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; 26 it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord’ (Lam 3:19-26, NIV).
When you are feeling helpless, hopeless or down spiritually, hold on in faith and trust God.
As I have said, Abraham has made more than a few poor decisions along life’s journey:
Having Sarah lie and say that they were brother and sister, not just once but twice.
Attempting to help God out by having a child with Sarah’s handmaiden, Hagar, and thinking that Ishmael could be the child of promise.
Lies bring with them messy circumstances. Lies often cause bitterness and pain that will linger, and they can affect generations to come.
Abraham will soon learn to hold on in faith and to wait upon the Lord. The fact is, Abraham needed to learn to wait upon the Lord, rather than try to take things into his own hands. Abraham needed to hold on in faith and trust God. Now, even in a greater way.
God Keeps His promises, even When it Seems Impossible.
Friends, at times you may find the longer you walk with the Lord, the bigger and more challenging the tests. Each test, each decision, each choice to trust Christ is an opportunity to stretch your faith.
We make spiritual choices each day. Some choices are more important than others and yet each will build one upon the other.
Learning from both the good and the poor choices is important because when you do not learn from your poor choices, you are bound to repeat them until you do learn.
God can turn a poor spiritual choice into a faith-building experience if you can recognize the poor choice and then realize God’s hand in deliverance.
Learning from the good choices will reinforce and build your faith and confidence to trust God even more so you can easily make good spiritual choices the next time.
For Abraham, it had been 10 long years from the time God promised Abraham that he and Sarah would have a child. Sarah has a bright idea to have a child through Hagar and Abraham goes along with the idea. They decide to try and help God out and devise a scheme, a manmade shortcut. That manmade short-cut involved Abraham having a child with Sarah’s handmaiden Hagar, in the attempt to fulfill God’s promise of a child.
I have said this before: man’s shortcut to help God is never good. It always gets messy as both Abraham and Sarah will quickly learn.
Abraham and Sarah’s big idea, to help God out, now entangles Hagar. Hagar has a son named Ishmael and Abraham wanted Ishmael (Hagar’s son) to be the child of promise but no, God had told Abraham that Sarah will have a son and he would be the child of promise. Fourteen more years go by and still no child of promise. Twenty-four years have now passed from the time God called Abraham and promised that he would become a great nation, that his name would be great, and the promise of a child. Abraham believed his descendants would possess the land that God was to show him, and yet still no child of promise and still no descendants to possess the land.
It took 25 years of waiting for Abraham and Sarah to receive the promise of God. They have a child and name him Isaac. What joy and rejoicing that must have occurred. Isaac was born and Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac. The long-awaited child of promise is now here! The promise of Abraham’s descendants to possess the land was beginning to come true.
“Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him” (Genesis 21:1-5).
Remember by the time Isaac is born, Abraham is about 100 and Sarah is 90 years old. It had been a long time waiting, but it was worth it, Isaac is born. God is faithful regarding His promises. Things are good.
God Tested Abraham.
Some years have passed, and God is going to test Abraham.
‘Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied. 2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied. 12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:1-12).
Ishmael and his mother, Hagar, have been sent away long before Abraham experiences this spiritual test.
Isaac is now in his late boyhood years. He understands about worshiping God and building an altar to offer a sacrifice. Isaac would have been able to stop his father from tying him and placing him upon the wood and altar. But he did not. Isaac trusted his father and he trusted God. The journey to where God told Abraham to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice is some 45-50 miles away and will take about 3 days. Isaac does not know all the details about the sacrifice and up to this point Abraham only knows what God told him. Each step towards the region of Moriah must have been gut wrenching for Abraham. Each step Abraham took, he must have wondered how this was going to work, and yet Abraham believed and trusted God. By the end of the 3-day journey, Abraham was fully convinced in his heart that he and Isaac would return together from sacrificing to the Lord.
‘Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”’ (Genesis 22:3-5).
Abraham wasted no time in obeying once God told him what to do. The next day, they departed for the place God would show him. Abraham must have had absolute faith in God. Abraham displayed a reverence and dedication to God that must have grown over the years. Abraham had a healthy fear, reverence, and belief that God could do anything.
The faith he spoke out when he told his servants, “we will worship and then we will come back to you.”
The faith that Abraham spoke to his son when he told Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.”
Abraham believed God; he believed in the promises of God, even if he was unsure how the promise would be fulfilled. Abraham did not know all the details at the time; however, Abraham was walking, speaking, and acting in faith, yet in his heart there must have been pain. The pain of offering up his son as a sacrifice.
When God tests you, will you Trust Him for the Outcome?
Like Abraham, we do not always see all the details in life. But we can believe God knows what He is doing, and that God knows all the details.
Do you have faith in the promises of God? Do you trust God enough to step out in faith even if all the details are not filled in yet?
That is what Abraham did. Abraham was ready to trust God with his son. I believe Abraham believed with all his heart that he and Isaac, alive and well, would return to the place where his two servants were waiting. This test was a test of faith, but it very well could be said to be a test of Abraham’s love for God. Did Abraham love his son Isaac more than he reverenced, trusted and loved God?
The Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee once wrote that Isaac “represents many gifts of God’s grace. Before God gives them, our hands are empty. Afterwards they are full. Sometimes God reaches out his hand to take ours in fellowship. We need an empty hand to put into his. But when we have received his gifts and are nursing them to ourselves, our hands are full, and when God puts out his hand, we have no empty hand for him.” When that happens, we need to let go of the gift and take hold of God himself. Nee adds, “Isaac can be done without, but God is eternal.”
Abraham needed to be willing to let go and let God be God and in doing so to grab ahold of God’s hand in faith, and trust God for the outcome. It seems that Abraham believed God could raise his son from the dead, even if Abraham did not know how God would do it. Abraham believed in his heart that the descendants that God promised, who would one day number like the dust of the earth, would come from Isaac, but Isaac had no children yet.
Abraham believed the promise of God was true, which would mean Isaac would need to be alive.
God would need to raise Isaac from the dead, or
God Himself, would provide a sacrifice.
When God himself provided a substitute sacrifice, Abraham received his son back alive, as from the dead.
God Provides What We Need Most
Faith is more than words. Faith is seen in actions and is from the heart. Over time Abraham’s faith had grown to the point that he believed God could raise his son Isaac back to life. Abraham’s faith is seen in what he said to his servants:
The boy and I will go.
We will worship.
We will come back to you.
Abraham’s faith is seen in his actions:
Abraham journeyed 3 days to the place of sacrifice.
Abraham bound his son and placed him on the altar.
Abraham was ready to offer his son as a sacrifice, but God had him stop.
God provided a ram, a substitute sacrifice in place of Isaac.
It is here we learn one of God’s names: Jehovah-Jireh, meaning the Lord will provide. God provided a ram, a substitute sacrifice for Isaac.
God also provided a substitute for us on the cross. We were once dead in our sins, but by faith we are made alive in Christ Jesus. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Jesus is the sacrifice that God Himself provided.
Abraham held on to his faith in God and trusted God regarding his son Isaac and all the promises of God yet to come. The promise of God himself to provide the Lamb of God to sacrifice the substitution, for Isaac and for us.
Hold on in Faith and Trust God
Has your faith grown over the years? Do you have faith to trust God with the most precious person you love? God desires your heart, not your money, talents, or ability.
The pain that Abraham must have felt, with being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac is only a fraction of the pain that God the father must have experienced when Jesus was about to be tried and placed upon a cross and physically crucified.
God stepped in and stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac; however, God did not stop the sacrifice of His one and only Son, Jesus. For the believer in Christ, God Himself provided the sacrifice, Jesus—His one and only Son.
Jesus took our place. We were once dead in our sins, and because of Jesus we are made alive in Christ. All we need do is believe and place our faith in Christ. Jesus took our place and paid the debt of sin that we could never pay. Every believer, being spiritually dead in sin, is made alive in Christ by faith in Christ. Remember, Abrahams faith was credited to him as righteousness, and because of your faith in Christ, God will credit Christ’s righteousness upon you. You, like Isaac, will be spiritually raised to life.
Like Abraham, hold on to faith in Christ and trust him with all your heart. Let go of the lies and empty promises of the world and take the hand of God. Place your faith in Christ and confess your sins. He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
We, like Abraham, need to learn to wait upon the Lord, rather than try to take things into our own hands. We, like Abraham, need to learn to walk in faith and trust God with all our heart.
Like Isaac, Jesus trusted God his father. The anguish Jesus must have felt in the garden, where drops of blood fell. Yet, Jesus willingly went to the cross. The pain must have been great, knowing what was about to happen and yet God allowed Jesus to be crucified and die.
But, praise God, Jesus rose from the dead and is alive forever.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (John 3:16-18).
Choose today whom you will love and serve. Allow your faith in God to flourish. Allow your trust in God to strengthen. Hold on in faith and trust the Lord with all your heart, every day of Life’s journey.
Suggested Praise and Worship
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This and other sermons brought to you by Faith Chapel, an Assemblies of God church in Pleasanton, CA.
Genesis 37:2-4, 50:18-21: Learn how to live with integrity and see past your circumstances. God will use you if you let Him. Like a spiritual marathon runner, keep the faith and see the hand of God in your life.