My community group read the book “Radical” by David Platt and one of the challenges in the book was to commit to read through the entire Bible in a year. It’s been awhile since I’ve done so, so I thought it would be good to accept the challenge and read the entire Bible again.

Reading the Bible this quickly is difficult for me as I always come across things I’d like to dig deeper into, but nonetheless must keep going. I’m way past this part in my reading but I cannot get Genesis 22 out of my head. I was always taught that God will never ask you to do anything that contradicts his Word in the Bible. If that is true, how do we reconcile that God told Abraham to kill his son? If I told anyone that I have heard directly from God that I was to harm my daughter, all of you would rush to tell me I had definitely not heard from God. Yet Abraham had heard from God. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going to do because everyone would have said he was delusional or crazy.

What an amazing example of “obedience”, “faith”, and “belief”. If Abraham had tried to kill Isaac simply because God told him to, that would only constitute obedience (this is what I see the church trying to accomplish and it doesn’t work). To have faith requires the possibility that you may be proven wrong. To believe something is to have an assurance that you are right. So if Abraham truly believed God would not have him kill Isaac - that would really not be a true test of his faith. Instead, he believes he must kill him (because God told him to) but at the same time have faith that Isaac will not die (or at least be brought back to life)!

This blows my mind – Abraham is the man.