Genesis 22:2 “He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you."

One of the bible stories that every child knows from Sunday school is about Abraham sacrificing Isaac, his promised son. We hear the story and we think about it as God’s blessing, as God’s provision. When have we thought about Abraham? What did he go through that day? What was it that God asked of Abraham?

God called Abraham to give up that gift which God had promised Decades earlier, and then again a year prior. This is God asking Abraham to give up what Abraham had spent his entire married life looking forward to. God called Abraham to give up that which was most precious and dear to Abraham. God tested Abraham’s faith in God. Would God again provide a child, would Isaac be saved would Isaac die? What would happen?

God wanted Abraham to offer up as a sacrifice the most precious and most dearly held object/person in Abraham’s life, and God asks us to do the same. God calls us to offer up as a sacrifice that which we hold precious or dear. We too must do the same. God asks us if we trust Him.

Why does God want us to offer that which we hold most precious? Maybe it is because we might be making an idol of it? Could that be it? We are taking what is near and dear to our heart and placing it on a pedestal that comes close to rivalling God, even though we may not mean it to or think we are turning it into an idol. Maybe it is merely because God desires to test us and our faith? C. H. Spurgeon once said, "God is satisfied with Himself, and sufficient to His own happiness. Therefore, surely, there is enough in Him to fill the creature. That which fills an ocean will fill a bucket; that which will fill a gallon will fill a pint; those revenues which will defray an emperor's expenses are enough for a beggar or poor man." Do we have the faith to accept these gifts?. Maybe we are asked to sacrifice our near and dear object because God knows that this thing we hold dear is bad or wrong for us. God’s alter is a purifying fire. God's purifying fire is a gift as well to us and Paul said of God's gifts and blessings, "My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus" (Phi_4:19)? God sees fit to bestow these gifts on us, yet He also tests us with these gifts. We are smelted in the furnace to cleanse us of our impurities. Thus God tests us to and works us to remove our faults, to make us closer to Him. We sacrifice our precious items to Gain something extra, something better, something more resembling God’s holiness.

A happily married woman with two children lost both of them to the same illness. God had called them home. They were both buried in the same grave. This young woman went into a deep emotional collapse. For several years she was as weak and helpless as one of the many little children that ran around her neighborhood. She had to be fed by the other members of her family who too this time to ministered to her. One day her aunt, a joyful Christian, took her turn at feeding her, and this young woman who was unusually downhearted on that morning cried, "Oh, Auntie, you say that God loves us. You say it and you keep saying it over and over. I used to think that way, too, but if He loves us, why did He make me as I am?" The aunt, after kissing her gently, said with the wisdom of years, "He hasn't made you yet, child. He's making you now!"

Through this sacrifice that God asks of us, He furthers His glory and purifies us at the same time.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie

My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.