The ISAAC PRINCIPLE revisited: Several years ago I read Carol Kent’s book, “When I Lay My Isaac Down.” From that and other things God was using in my life at the moment, I discovered what I have come to call The Isaac Principle: It is in the surrendering of something that we love (even cherish and desire and hold fast in our hearts as a promise from God) entirely to God that we discover the true condition of our hearts…..If we cannot surrender it entirely to Him, it may, in fact, …be an idolatrous obstacle between God and us. I have realized, too, as Abraham did, that just because God calls us to surrender our grasp on a beloved promise to Him does not mean that He will necessarily remove it from us….(after all, His promise IS His promise!) ….it does mean, however, that God requires us to look at our hearts, determine what’s more important to us….the Giver of the Promise or the Promise itself. In whom or what do we trust….the Promise Giver or the Promise? This time of year it might translate into this: What’s more valuable to us…..the Giver or the Gift? I think I understand Abraham better and why he is held up in Hebrews as a hero of faith….His faith was rightly placed in the Giver, not in the Gift, in the Giver of the Promise, not the Promise. He KNEW God’s faithfulness and He was assured in His heart that God is faithful and would keep His promise….He may not have had all the details of how God would do it, but He trusted God’s faithfulness, which enabled him to be faithful, as well. I have heard some interpret this story as an indictment against a cruel and mean, demanding God. But it is not. It is a story of God’s faithfulness and how we, too, can trust God’s faithfulness and be faithful in response, even when we don’t understand what He is calling us to do.
