Into His Hands
It was my turn to write a Bible study for our Bible group - Grace_Out ... This is what I wrote, and I would like to share it with you.
I had a thought today during PE. I was walking out to get a drink, and it shmucked me smack between the eyes.
"God empties our hands so He can hold them."
How often have you felt completely bereft and stripped of everything you have dear - your friends, your possessions, your self-worth ... your dreams. Dreams that you thought God gifted to you. Abraham had this happen to him.
God spoke to him:
Genesis 12: 1 - 4
"The Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your contry, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you inot a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and hwoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; ..." (emphasis mine)
At seventy-five, Abram uprooted his wife, his nephew, his household and LEFT to be ... basically homeless. Because God promised to bless him, and give him a family. Many years passed. And passed. Five ... ten ... and still no fulfillment of the promise!!!!
Ishmael is born - the human attempt at fulfilling God's promise. But God says that Ishmael will NOT be His chosen one! Instead, Abraham must continue to wait in the mess he's made of his family from his attempt to fulfill God's promise himself. Five more years pass ... ten ... fourteen ... At last, God's chosen child is born! He miraculously has Sarah bear Isaac at 90 years old, to a father who is 100!!!
God's timing cannot be rushed. Twenty-five years passed since God GAVE Abraham his promise of a child before He fulfilled it. And Abraham's attempt to make God's plan for himself only caused strife and turmoil that is still effecting us today. (The war in the middle east.)
How many times in those year did Abraham say "Okay ... God has OBVIOUSLY forgotten me! I'm supposed to be a great nation!!! And to be blessed! Instead, I'm childless, old, living with two bickering women, in a tent in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! I HAVE NOTHING!!!!" How many times did Sarah cry herself to sleep with her empty arms that she thought would *never* hold God's promised child?
But miracle of miracles, God is faithful!! Isaac was born!! Hallalujah and ha ha ha!
Then ... one day, the word of the Lord comes to Abraham again.
Gen 22:2
Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (emphasis mine)
What?!?!!??! You've got to be kidding me, right Lord? The promised child Abraham had waited 25 years for ... to be killed by Abraham's OWN hand!? Obviously, there must be some mistake. God can't be asking Abraham to give up HIS promise! But He does. And Abraham obeys. He travels to the mountains with Isaac to sacrifice him. (I doubt he told Sarah ...)
I can only imagine the horror of those three days for Abraham. Sickness in his stomach at the thought of killing his only child ... Fear and trembling hope that he had somehow misheard the word of God, mixed with the dread assurance that he had not. He must have felt that all those years of waiting and joy were slipping through his fingers, leaving his hands completely empty.
And then ...
Gen 22: 7-8
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abramah answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together."
Abraham laid his son on the alter, and raised the knife to strike ... When the voice of the Lord burst through, "STOP!"
Because Abraham had not withheld his son, his ONLY son, the Lord promised again to bless him, and bless all nations through him. Abraham's dream, gifted by God, was demanded back ... and he gave it. But God returned His dream, when Abraham's hands were empty.
God empties our hands so He can hold them.
"Behold! I, the Lord your God am a JELEOUS God!" The Lord wants our hearts so completely, that He will not even allow HIS plan to become an idol in our hearts. Instead, he demands the complete surrender of our everything.
Have you ever tried to hold hands while you're holding something else? It doesn't work. God cannot hold our hands when we clutch dreams, ambitions, hopes, and idols in them. So He empties them.
And the emptying is painful and dreadful. The calling of the Lord, "COME! Take your dream, your only dream, that you love. Sacrifice it as a burnt offereing!" Give it back! Make it no more! Empty hands!
But when our hands our empty, His scarred hands, pierced by the love that nailed Him to the tree, gently take our bereft and destitute hearts and hands and cradle them in His love, and His richness, gifting them with far more than we futilely grasped at.
He only empties our hands ... so that He can hold them.
Abraham was called to give his one and only son. But it was GOD who provided the lamb, as He provided HIS one and only son for us.
~Istra~
I had a thought today during PE. I was walking out to get a drink, and it shmucked me smack between the eyes.
"God empties our hands so He can hold them."
How often have you felt completely bereft and stripped of everything you have dear - your friends, your possessions, your self-worth ... your dreams. Dreams that you thought God gifted to you. Abraham had this happen to him.
God spoke to him:
Genesis 12: 1 - 4
"The Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your contry, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you inot a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and hwoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; ..." (emphasis mine)
At seventy-five, Abram uprooted his wife, his nephew, his household and LEFT to be ... basically homeless. Because God promised to bless him, and give him a family. Many years passed. And passed. Five ... ten ... and still no fulfillment of the promise!!!!
Ishmael is born - the human attempt at fulfilling God's promise. But God says that Ishmael will NOT be His chosen one! Instead, Abraham must continue to wait in the mess he's made of his family from his attempt to fulfill God's promise himself. Five more years pass ... ten ... fourteen ... At last, God's chosen child is born! He miraculously has Sarah bear Isaac at 90 years old, to a father who is 100!!!
God's timing cannot be rushed. Twenty-five years passed since God GAVE Abraham his promise of a child before He fulfilled it. And Abraham's attempt to make God's plan for himself only caused strife and turmoil that is still effecting us today. (The war in the middle east.)
How many times in those year did Abraham say "Okay ... God has OBVIOUSLY forgotten me! I'm supposed to be a great nation!!! And to be blessed! Instead, I'm childless, old, living with two bickering women, in a tent in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! I HAVE NOTHING!!!!" How many times did Sarah cry herself to sleep with her empty arms that she thought would *never* hold God's promised child?
But miracle of miracles, God is faithful!! Isaac was born!! Hallalujah and ha ha ha!
Then ... one day, the word of the Lord comes to Abraham again.
Gen 22:2
Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (emphasis mine)
What?!?!!??! You've got to be kidding me, right Lord? The promised child Abraham had waited 25 years for ... to be killed by Abraham's OWN hand!? Obviously, there must be some mistake. God can't be asking Abraham to give up HIS promise! But He does. And Abraham obeys. He travels to the mountains with Isaac to sacrifice him. (I doubt he told Sarah ...)
I can only imagine the horror of those three days for Abraham. Sickness in his stomach at the thought of killing his only child ... Fear and trembling hope that he had somehow misheard the word of God, mixed with the dread assurance that he had not. He must have felt that all those years of waiting and joy were slipping through his fingers, leaving his hands completely empty.
And then ...
Gen 22: 7-8
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abramah answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together."
Abraham laid his son on the alter, and raised the knife to strike ... When the voice of the Lord burst through, "STOP!"
Because Abraham had not withheld his son, his ONLY son, the Lord promised again to bless him, and bless all nations through him. Abraham's dream, gifted by God, was demanded back ... and he gave it. But God returned His dream, when Abraham's hands were empty.
God empties our hands so He can hold them.
"Behold! I, the Lord your God am a JELEOUS God!" The Lord wants our hearts so completely, that He will not even allow HIS plan to become an idol in our hearts. Instead, he demands the complete surrender of our everything.
Have you ever tried to hold hands while you're holding something else? It doesn't work. God cannot hold our hands when we clutch dreams, ambitions, hopes, and idols in them. So He empties them.
And the emptying is painful and dreadful. The calling of the Lord, "COME! Take your dream, your only dream, that you love. Sacrifice it as a burnt offereing!" Give it back! Make it no more! Empty hands!
But when our hands our empty, His scarred hands, pierced by the love that nailed Him to the tree, gently take our bereft and destitute hearts and hands and cradle them in His love, and His richness, gifting them with far more than we futilely grasped at.
He only empties our hands ... so that He can hold them.
Abraham was called to give his one and only son. But it was GOD who provided the lamb, as He provided HIS one and only son for us.
~Istra~