Bail-out point

What is your bail-out point? How long are you willing to trust God with something before you give up? Before you utter a little sigh? Before you say that maybe the Bible doesn't mean what you thought it meant, and maybe you had taken the promises of God out of context? Before you revert to a theology of low expectations? Before you go back to stumbling around in defeat? Before you go back to calling small faith normal and reasonable?

Abraham was told by God to go to a strange country and there he would become the father of nations. You and I think faith was easier for Abraham because he heard a voice. But 15 years of sitting in a tent in a desert are plenty long enough to start second-guessing a voice. It would take me about a week.

Abraham made up his mind to put the Word of God and his promise of a progeny above everything else---above the condition of his body, the age of his wife, the fleshly logic that said this waiting makes no sense. He faced the facts (Romans 4:19). And then, having faced the facts, he didn't go with the facts. Or rather, he considered the promise of God a greater "fact" than any other fact. Perhaps he envisioned an old-fashioned scale with balancing plates, on one side containing all the data of his eyes and senses and on the other side containing only the ethereal Word of God. And he went with the latter.

Then Abraham had a son. And a day came when the Lord told him to put his son on an altar and kill him. I am thinking that Abraham had to have earned a challenge that difficult. I do not think that God would spring a test like that on just any man, but only one who had worked up to it and proved worthy of it by a thousand prior obediences.

Abraham saddled his mule and took Isaac. God did nothing. Abraham tied up his son. God did nothing. Abraham found the firewood. God did nothing. Abraham listened to his son crying. God did nothing. Abraham unsheathed the knife. God did nothing. Abraham raised it high. God did nothing.

How long are you and I prepared to keep saying to the Lord, "I trust your Word completely" before we bail out?

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