King of the Hill: The Next Step

Have you ever had to give something up that was very important to you for the sake of progress?

A job, a routine, an important possession?

Sometimes, on our journey up the hills in our lives, we face tough decisions about things that must be given up.

Sometimes these things can weigh us down, and we find that we have to lighten our load if we are going to make it to the top.

Sometimes we may even find that the thing we love so much is keeping us from moving upward.

Paul said, in Hebrews 12:1 that we should "lay aside every weight, and sin" that stops us from completing our race, or in this case, our climb.

Notice he said "every weight, and sin". If the weights in our lives were only bad things, he would not have needed to add, "AND sin". So it must be possible that the things that keep us from climbing to the top of our hill can also be "good" things.

This is what we find in the life of this week's "King of the Hill"...Abraham.

God had promised Abraham that he would be the "Father of many nations", but Abraham had no son.

God blessed Abraham and Sarah with a son named Isaac, even though they were very old, and Sarah was barren.

After Isaac had grown to a certain age, God came to Abraham and told him to take Isaac to the region of Moriah, a mountainess region, and sacrifice him to God.

That is hard for us to wrap our minds around in our world today. Even in Abraham's time when animal sacrifices to God were common, the idea of sacrificing a child probably seemed extreme.

But when we read the story, what we hear Abraham saying are words of faith that would lead us to think that he believed all along that God would spare his son Isaac.

Abraham took Isaac to Moriah and was following God's command and was about to offer Isaac as a sacrifice when God again spoke to Abraham and told him to stop! Do not lay a hand on the boy, God said.

And the Lord provided a ram for the sacrifice in place of Isaac. In fact, Abraham named that spot Jehovajireh, The Lord Provides.

When we trust God with our most precious possessions, our dreams and our plans, He will always give us something greater in return.

It was because of the obedience of Abraham that God made a covenant with man, the same covenant we live in today, only now it's better.

Like Abraham and Isaac, God gave his only son Jesus to be a sacrifice for us, and it is through the life of Jesus that we enjoy an even better covenant today.

On the way up your hill, you will encounter a time of personal sacrifice, a time when something precious will be required of you if you are going to make it to the top.

Let me encourage you, as hard as it may be, as impossible as it may sound, when that time comes, be willing to let go of whatever it is you are asked to release and trust that God will give you something greater in return.

We all have to give up to go up, and when we do, we can become King of the Hill.