God said to Abraham, ‘Because you…have not withheld…your only son…I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven.’ Isaac was the lifelong dream of a barren woman named Sarah and her husband Abraham. He was probably the biggest blessing they could ever have imagined. But God had an even bigger blessing in store. And that blessing only came through Abraham’s time of testing. Because He was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, even though he was what they’d been wanting for so long, God blessed him further. The Bible says, ‘because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me’ (Genesis 22:16-18 NIV). God’s always got more in store for us, and sometimes we can only get to that by walking through a time of testing. And that testing may be to show us where we’ve put things before God or let the blessing overtake our love for the One who blessed us in the first place. In Psalm 139 it says: ‘Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’ (vv.23-24 NIV). And we can ask God to do the same. We can ask for the testing and ask Him to show us where we’ve failed to keep Him as the priority in our lives. And then we can step into more of what God’s got for us.
