Hello My Friend/Guest,

Today is Friday January 08, 2010 and we are reading through the Bible in a year. Today's message comes from the reading of the book of Genesis chapters 22-24. If you would like to read the chapters along with us here online you can Click Here to read them or copy & paste this URL onto your browser: http://www.readytofollow.com/bible-january-8

There is no greater blessing on earth than to be able to communicate with God, out of all the people in the world, God has chosen you to be able to talk with Him, confide in Him, and prove to the world that He does exist and is not the horrible picture of what they want to see Him as. There is only way to even be able to communicate with God and that is through Jesus Christ, if we do not know Jesus, we do not know God. It's that simple and it is forever. Praise God!

So, you have accepted Christ as your Savior and are now born into Gods family, becoming a child of God, just like a child, you grow and mature into a faithful Christian. All of a sudden God asks you to do something that completely throws you off guard. What do you do? Do you trust Him and do what He asks or do you doubt Him and turn away? This is what Abraham faced shortly after his son, Isaac was born. It had taken twenty-five years for God to bless Abraham and Sarah with a son as He promised, now, God has asked him to offer his only son as a sacrifice. “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.” - Genesis 22:1-3. God was not tempting Abraham like the devil would, He was testing his faith. Can you imagine what Abraham might have been thinking? I am sure he had felt a little bit sad as he was about to offer his one and only child as a sacrifice, but He had faith in God and did as He asked, maybe he took his time as to spend as much time as he could with him before reaching their destination. I can not even imagine what it must feel like to lose a child, so many questions, and so much grief. It takes a strong will and God to overcome such pain.

Abraham knew that Isaac must live since God had said he would establish His covenant with him, so he continued by faith, “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.” - Genesis 22:9-13. Abraham's offering of Isaac foreshadowed God the Father offering His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross on that same mount about 2,000 years later. God did not want to harm the child, He wanted to see just how much Abraham trusted Him.

God does not want to see any of us going through pain, but the truth is, without pain we can not learn or grow in our Christian life or in any area of life. I know people that keep their children in a bubble, fearing they will get hurt. While we want to keep our children safe, we also need to let them grow, for instance when a child learns to ride a bike he will fall a few times before he gets it. He might get hurt, but he gets up and gets right back on that bike, with faith, knowing that he may get hurt again, but will ride that bike. We as Christian's need to have the same faith, at times, God will allow turmoil in our lives, but we need to get back up and keep going and as long as we do that we will see things change. Before I came back to God, He allowed me to bring a man into my life that introduced me to some things that I never even heard of, yet I fell in love with him and followed him, no matter how crazy his suggestions were, because I loved him. This man, cheated on me, married another woman, and ended up in prison and what did I do? I was right there whenever he called, even though he was still married to this woman. Well, of course as time went on I turned into someone that I did not even know, I was depressed and looking for comfort from anyone who would pay attention to me. Boy, did I suffer, but guess what, it was during the worst time of my suffering that God came to me. I overdosed on diet pills and almost died, I was laying in my bed in so much pain, not knowing if I was going to make it through the day. It was then that God spoke to me and told me to get up and that He did not bring me into this world for me to live or die that way. All of a sudden I perked up, got out of my bed and began reading the Bible, God lead me to read the book of Job, showing me that He will allow turmoil to test our faith, and that our faith will prevail. Jesus Said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” - Matthew 17:20. Nothing is too impossible for God, He will turn anyone's situation around, but first they must have faith in Him.

Enjoy the rest of your day/night and weekend. TGIF!
God Bless You, I am praying for you,
Christina

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