Who's Taking His Spot

First off, for those of you following regularly sorry for the long delay in posts.  It's been a long week of training. I apologize.

Anyways,  I've been reading "The Pursuit of God" by A.W. Tozer.  First of all, this is a fantastic book.  Second, one thing has really stuck out at me reading this book.

In the book he speaks about the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Now I know that most everyone is aware of this story, but reading this book shed new light on it for me.  I had never looked at it this way.

Tozer talks about how, yes Abraham was obedient, but that wasn't the cause for God asking him to sacrifice his own son.  Abraham had made Isaac his everything.  This was the son God had promised him he would have.  This was his legitimate offspring that would fulfill the promise of his offspring as the number of the stars (Genesis 15:5).

The thing with Isaac though is that Abraham had waited a long time on God to fulfill the promise.  When the promise was finally fulfilled, Isaac became Abraham's everything.

I mean think about it.  You have been asking God for something that you want desperately more than anything else and you wait so long for it that it becomes almost natural by human standards to cherish that which was given to you.  He exalted this child because it was the fulfillment of a promise from God.

The thing that happened is that Abraham started to let him become everything.  I love how Tozer kind of elaborates on the situation.  He says it like this paraphrasing Genesis 22:12 :

"It's alright, Abraham.  I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there.  I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love.  Now you may have the boy, sound and well.  Take him and go back to your tent.  Now I know that thou fear God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."


God fulfills his promises to us, just as He did with Abraham.  The problem is that the result of the promise becomes "God" to us.  We let the result take the place because it is something so dear to us.

What we have to do is make sure that we don't replace God with the blessing that He has given us.  We have to remember who is responsible and who deserves all the glory for those things.

So I challenge you, as I challenge myself, who or what is taking His spot in your life?