God calls Abram outside his tent and tells him mind-blowing things about his future. He tells him that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky. He takes it further and tells him that if he can count the stars in the sky, then that’s how his descendants will be. Let’s have a talk about battles within.
Here is a man who only needed one son, and God is raising his hopes up by telling him about the descendants he was to have. It is like borrowing a friend a ten shillings coin and he asks you if you have one thousand shilling change. Wouldn’t this piss you off?
God finally fulfills His promise and gives him Isaac. Even after Abraham had tried to “help” God thinking He had forgotten about His promise and bore Ishmael with Haggar, the son of the promise still came through.
Fast forward, God comes again and tells Abraham to offer his only son to Him as a sacrifice. What a joke!! I imagine Abraham walking to and fro, thinking about how to tell Sarah, his wife, God wants Him to Kill their only son. I can’t even start to explain what I would have told Abraham if I was Sarah.
We all at one time have that defining test where God wants us to prove our loyalty to Him, if I may say. That test puts us out to be counted as friends of God or not. We all have that time in our journey where we battle with the Lord himself and finally have to surrender to what He wants us to be or do, ask Jacob and Jonah. Where He breaks us, we get to see who we are and who He really is, where He gets to change our names.
There comes a point in our lives when we have to fight the battle ourselves, no matter how many people are backing us up in prayers or how many are holding our hands and supporting us. Like a King with so many advisors, there comes the point where you get to decide for yourself.
There comes the point where our loyalty is tested, and our answer to “Did God really say” could define our entire future. The bad thing is that we are never told whether or not it is a test because, if Eve knew she was being tested, she would have revised. If Saul knew that he was being tested, trust me, he would have done better. He would never have offered that sacrifice.
What will you do when He takes everything He has given you, like Naomi? What will you do when He delays giving you a child like Hannah? What happens when He tells you that your term is over? Or that your sacrifice to Him is unacceptable?
What will you do when He asks you to give Him back what He has given you? The very thing that He banked His promises on? Will you be open-minded and flexible enough to give him what He has given you?
The guarantee of you passing these tests will depend on how much you know Him. Intimately. If you don’t know Him as one who fulfills His promises, you will tighten your grip when He asks you to let go of the things He has given you firsthand. If you don’t know Him as a giver, you’ll never give back to Him cheerfully.
Feed your fears, doubts, anxieties, and unbelief with the word of God. Most battles are first lost within before the external manifestation happens. If He did it yesterday, what makes you think He won’t do it again today.
Habakkuk 2:2-3 says, ‘Then the LORD answered me and said: ” Write the vision And make [it] plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it. For the vision [is] yet for an appointed time; But at the end, it will speak and not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; Because it will surely come, It will not tarry.”
It is only the word of God that will choke those things that make you doubt Him.
Hebrews 11:17-19 says, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten [son,] of whom it was said, [ “In Isaac, your seed shall be called,”] concluding that God [was] able to raise [him] up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.”
The battles within are fought using the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God and the shield of faith. So hold on to what He said and fight off every counterfeit. Buckle up because this means war.
