Beliefs - Right or Wrong?

²Take now your son . . . and offer him . . . as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. . . ¹¹ But the angel of the LORD called out . . ., “Abraham! Abraham!” . . .  ¹² “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said.
— Genesis 22:2

How I react and respond to God's voice is a function of my knowledge of Him. My interpretation of His instruction can be colored by my own traditional beliefs. These beliefs can be wrong.

I am not alone with this short coming. Even Abraham had to go through the lesson.

Abraham interpreted God’s command to mean that he had to kill Isaac. That was his traditional belief. When God said, "offer Isaac as a burnt offering ...", He did not say "Kill Isaac". However, Abraham interpreted that with his traditional understanding. The Jews had practiced burnt offering only in one way, that is, by slaughtering the sacrifice.

But if Abraham were to consider God's character of love and also His promise to make him a father of all nations, he might have responded differently. He had to go through that tremendous ordeal so that God could purify his faith.

But the great lesson to be learned from Abraham’s faith in God is that he was prepared to do anything for God. He was not devoted to his own conviction. He was ever ready to obey God and as such, when the angel called him to stop, he did not reason that it might have been the voice of the devil. He simply obeyed.

I must always be willing to give up my own convictions and traditional beliefs and simply obey Him.

Join me in asking the Holy Spirit to help us just do that.

God bless.

Steven