FORSAKE THE BASIC. PURSUE THE DEEP.

God gave me some instructions the other day that frustrated me. I wanted to cry. I felt like the thing He was asking me to do would set me back in so many ways, including prolonging the time it will take for me to reach a very important personal goal of mine.

Then yesterday, during my prayer time, He added to His request substantially. At first, I pretended not to hear Him, drowning out His voice before finally stopping to confront it. I wrestled with Him a bit but after saying what I had to say and hearing what He had to say, I decided to surrender.

When we choose disobedience, we could also be choosing to forfeit whatever it is that God has in mind for us. A few weeks ago I placed a rather large request before Him and since then, I have continuously told Him that although I don’t know how He’s going to do it, I just believe that He will. Because of the magnitude of my request, sometimes I have meant it and sometimes doubt has crept in, extinguished my faith and caused me to downsize my request. For this reason, the Lord is now requiring that I demonstrate my faith. He isn’t interested in hearing anything else I have to say about how much I believe and trust Him – He wants to see it. His exact words to me were: “According to the level of your faith and sacrifice, I will bless you.”

While I was wrestling, I thought about Abraham. As told in the book of Genesis, Abraham had to wait 25 years to behold the son God had promised him in his old age. And not many years after Isaac finally made his arrival, God instructed his father to sacrifice him. Abraham’s only begotten son and the seed that would make him “the father of many nations”. How would this ever come to pass if he killed the child that was given to him at 100 years old? Even while lacking answers, Abraham took Isaac up to a mountain to offer him up before the Lord. We all know what happened next: God spared Isaac’s life, provided a ram in the bush and, as a result of his obedience, Abraham’s faith was accounted to him as righteousness.

Is God instructing you to do something that runs counter to whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish? Something that has the potential to set you five steps back? If so, do you trust Him enough to know that He will once again prove Himself to be the faithful God that He has always shown Himself to be?

When you’re done contending with fear and doubt regarding a set of instructions God has given you, say “yes” and do not assume that you know exactly what comes next. Just know that the God we serve cannot and will not be outdone.