When God asks for more
The recipe called for ten piloncillos, busted up and ground back into their brown sugar like consistency. Looked easy enough, just take a fork or an ice pick and kind of break apart some sugar. Or so I thought. If you dont know, piloncillos are a Mexican brown sugar that is sold in a rock hard cone like form. The sugar becomes congealed together, and usually is about the consistency of concrete. But I didnt know that when I started trying to make the delicious looking pastry recipe I’d found on the internet. If you haven’t guessed; trying to turn concrete back into the consistency of sugar is not easy!! I started with a fork, upgraded to an ice pick, and upgraded again to a hammer. I tried throwing it on the floor and shaving it with a knife. But nothing it seemed would completely break up those stubborn piloncillos.
God uses all kinds of different ways to break us down and make us what He wants us to be. It can be a long, trying process, especially because our stubborn wills can be as hard to break up as those piloncillos were. But God always has our best interests in mind.
Today, I want to look at a man who gave God everything. I want to look at why we must surrender and how we can surrender.
Genesis 22:1-18 “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
Abraham. This was a man willing to give God His all. The great patriarch of the faith who followed God and was the father of a great nation as a result. But did he ever have any doubts? I wonder what kind of things went through His mind as God made this request.
Havent I given enough?
In this story let’s remember that this was not Abrahams first interaction with God. He had a long history of living by faith and also of sacrificing for the promises of God. We dont think about it because we know the end of the story, but think about the struggle that he might have gone through while choosing to leave the comfort and security of his home and family, for a life among strangers and having no certain home.
We know that abraham became very wealthy and he had the promises of God to lean on, but Im sure he was told dozens of times that he was crazy! And then he was faced with this new commandment. Sacrifice your son. I cant imagine. He could have said “Lord? Haven’t I given enough?”
Isnt that a question that we ask sometimes in our lives? “Lord I’ve given you sunday morning and some devotional time during the week” isnt that enough? Lord I’ve given you some of the things that were in my heart isnt that enough? Lord I’ve given my whole life to you, I’ve been a faithful Christian, isnt that enough? Why this? We have this idea that if we give God part of who we are we can limit who He is; limit His claim on us, and yet somehow still tale advantage of all of the blessing that He offers to His people. But that isnt how it works.
God has a way of trying us, down to the deepest most secret places of our hearts. And the truth is that God wants more than a sunday morning time slot, or even a mediocre relationship with his children. He wants to be our everything. He wants to be our Lord and our God in every sense of the word. He wants us to truly worship Him and trust Him in every way.
How about this instead?
Im sure that abraham would have prefered to give God half of his herd in sacrifice, or his biggest tent, or anything! Anything but his son! But abraham knew that God would accept no substitutions. There was a reason he was asking for His son. He knew he should give nothing less. I believe that there are times God asks something of us, and we say “no but how about this instead?” He asks us for more time and we give Him money. Or he asks for more dedication and we praise Him with our mouths and not our lives. But God wants us to surrender what He asks of us, not what we choose for ourselves.
Why is it so important to give Him everything?
- All or nothing
Cant we give something other than what God is asking? No. You see either God is Lord of all or He is Lord not at all. He is your Lord up to the point that you have surrendered to Him. but when we hold something back from God we are saying that He is not the most important thing in our lives. We are saying that His will is second place to our own. God is not My copilot, He isnt the “man upstairs” He is my everything. To the child of God, our will must always surrender to the will of God Almighty.
- To be made into Christs image
The second reason that we must surrender is that God didnt save us just to make us feel better. He saved us for the purpose of remaking us into the image of His Son. God wants to be able to show Himself to the world through poeple who have been saved and changed by His power. As a Christian begins to transform into the image of Christ, those around him can see what Jesus is like. But when we hold on to our old habits refuse to let God work in our lives that is impossible. The vision of Christ is polluted by sin allowed to stay in our lives.
- Because God is Trustworthy
The last reason we must surrender is because He has our best intrest in mind. God doesn’t take things away from us to make us suffer, He does it so that He can give us something better. God couldnt give abraham the promise land until he left his old land. Abraham left His family, but then He was promised a child. Everything that abraham had “lost” was repalced with abounantly more as God fulfilled His promises.
Abraham was able to obey God because he knew God. He knew that God had promised him a son and issac was the promised son. Therefore, God must have some sort of miracle in mind. He trusted the character of God and the faithfulness of God, even when he did not fully understand what God had told him to do. And that is exactly what we must do when we are faced with a difficult decision.
If God is asking for more from you than you think you are willing or able to do, take Abrahams example and beleive in God. trust who he is and take the leap of faith to do what God wants you to do. When we follow his lead, and do what he says it will always pay off , and bring blessing that we never would have imagined.
I dont want God to have to try as many things on me as I tried on those piloncillos trying to get them to break. I want to be pliable and surrendered to His will in my life. Because I know that He is making something wonderful. By the way, the pastries I made with those piloncillos were delicious! Almost totally worth all of the trouble we went through to make them! Almost.