Emerging Conservative

This past Sunday we studied the story of Abraham and Isaac at church as part of our Sunday morning gathering and an interesting pattern emerged. I won’t go into the whole thing to save you time but I did want to share the jist. (If you want to hear the whole thing the online podcast should be up soon on the church web-site.) 

There appears (at least to me) to be a few different levels of following God that Abraham goes through. I believe each one are important in our spiritual walk but at the same time, grow into one another as we mature in our faith. The following are those levels….

Sacrifice – “forfeiting something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater claim.”

In the same way God called Abraham to sacrifice what was most important to him to make sure there was nothing between him and God, He calls us to have nothing between Him and us as well.

When you consider sacrifice to God, consider an important part of its definition. It is letting go of some highly valued. Dropping a five in the offering to make yourself feel better because you don’t have the faith to tithe is not a sacrifice. Finally going to help at the food pantry because you are bored and have nothing else to do when you blow it off when your friends want to go out is not sacrifice.

God gave what was most precious to Him when He gave His Son…. He asks for nothing more and nothing less of us.

Obedience – “dutifully complying with the commands, orders, or instructions of one in authority.”

According to the Scripture, Abraham got up the next day and went. He didn’t spend two weeks debating it, he didn’t hold off to see if God would change His mind, and he didn’t set up 15 meetings to see what the downsides were. Once God said “do this” and “now”, Abraham obeyed. In the Scripture, it says we show Him that we love Him by obeying His commands.

It is interesting that in I Samuel 15, we find that God removes His hand and calling from a king named Saul because of his disobedience. What did he do? When he fought and won a battle for God, he was supposed to wipe out everything including the livestock. In the end, he wiped out everything but the king and the best of the best of the livestock to offer it as a sacrifice to God.

That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? He did what God wanted overall, he just added in the sacrifice part. Sometimes we like God plan for us but we think we can do it better and wrap it in Christian talk to make it all good.

Didn’t work for Saul. Won’t work for us.

Samuel the prophet said to Saul, “To obey is better than to sacrifice.” I Samuel 15: 22

Submission – “to yield or surrender, to completely let go.”

Now we get to the rub of it all. I told our church family that I think most Christians do not get the fullness in their life because they don’t accept this level into their lives. However, if they did, I think their lives would be full of the freedom, passion, and adventure He desires for us.

You see, when we talk about sacrifice and obedience, we are generally talking about logical topics. “Yes, I need to sacrifice that thing.”, “I need to be more obedient in this area”, ect. However, when it comes to submission, it gets emotional for many real quick. Why? Because we have been hurt before. We are angry. We are afraid. We have given ourselves, our hearts, our will to others and have been abused. I will never do that again! And then steps in God.

Abraham acted in complete submission to God. “Abraham!” “Here I am” …. Whatever you call to me, I’m in……..

Submission is dying to ourselves so He has the room to live in us.

Why is this a big deal? It changes our entire attitude!

If I am called by God to work at that food pantry we talked about earlier…. I can either…

Sacrifice – “OK, I’ll go for a half an hour. I did my good dead for the day and technically followed God.”

Obedience – “OK, God, I’ll go but I’m not too happy about it.” I work off at the side, maybe tell someone how good I am with a “You know, if God didn’t make me, I wouldn’t be here but He said I had to so I did.” You wouldn’t be too much fun to be around.

Submission – “OK, God, this is outside my comfort zone but if you want me to do it, I know you have a reason why so I am going to go with expectation. I know you have a blessing in this for me or for someone else through me so use me!”

Recently, we had a women’s night and I felt God was putting it on my heart that the men should do the child care to serve the women in our church. Doing child care is outside my comfort zone. I know the men of our church and I know I am not alone in this feeling. None the less, I signed up for the next women’s night with another guy from the church.

A couple of hours before I prayed to God to break my heart for the kids, to adopt a servant’s heart, to have fun and patience, and to enjoy the night. I prayed for help for me to be in submission instead of trying to obedient and just surviving it. We had a blast! What a great night as God gave us more kids than expected, additional help we didn’t expect, and a lot of fun!

What has God asked of you that you need to submit to?  What do you need to stop dragging on and obey? What is between you and God that you need to sacrifice? Do it right now…… Just talk to Him….. You’ll be amazed at how different life is when you do!