There Should Be Something You Would Not Do For Your Kids

   I've yet to meet the parent, myself included, that didn’t have a blind spot when it came to their little ones.  We think they are the most special perfect things that ever walked the planet.  Go to any little league game, kindergarten graduation or school recital and ask whose kid is the talented one is and everyone will raise their hands.  The only way the kid might make a catch is if the ball bounces off his head into his glove, but their parents will still see an all-star.  We love them too much for anything less.

   So then, parents tend to go overboard when it comes to their children. We decorate our walls with pictures of them, brag about them to anyone who will (and some who won't) listen and are willing to do anything for them.  Sacrifice time, money, self, and all reason for them.  That’s what good parent do.  To ask a loving good parent to give up their kids would ludicrous.

  But that's exactly what God does.

   Wait, a loving God wouldn't ask us to sacrifice children, would He? Then again, that is exactly what he did with Abraham.

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."

Genesis 22:2

  Now God wasn't interested in the sacrifice as much as he was in seeing if Abraham was willing to do it.  Could the man that believed God’s unlikely promises still believe when it appeared God was about to take those promises away?  Abraham was willing to do just that, give up his son for his God.

 Yeah, I know what you're thinking, that was Abraham, from the Old Testament, God today wants me to raise my kids right, bring them up in the Lord, show them love and care.  That's all true. He wants you to love your kids but he wants you to love him more!  Jesus said just as much in Matthew 10:37,  "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me”.  To be his disciple means that our families can’t be the most important thing in our lives, it has to be God (Luke 14:26)

  It might be hard for us to conceive the how or why it might happen, but that doesn't

negate that we must be willing to give up even the most precious person to us for God.  That kind of sacrifice is unbelievable. How could God ask us to do that?

  Well, it was exactly what He was willing to do for us.