Mount Moriah Moment

As a person grows in their relationship with God, they will encounter many forks in the road.  The number of forks which are encountered are directly related to how much of God you want in your life.  How much of God do you want revealed to you?  There is a poem written in 1970 by Wilbur Rees entitled, "$3 Worth of God." 

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,

But just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.

I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.

I want ecstasy, not transformation.

I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.

I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.

I'd like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

This is the tragic state of the Western Church.  We want God, but we want Him on our terms and at our comfort level.  We don't mind asking God for revival, but not very many people want to invest their personal time at the prayer meetings that are required for it.  We sing, "Show us your glory Lord!  Show us your power!" utterly failing to realize that God only reveals His glory through sacrifice and suffering, and He never works His power through anyone who has yet to prove that they are trustworthy to wield it.  I prayed for Christ to reveal Himself to me as He truly is, and what I found at the end of the path was a rejected cross.  I found suffering and personal torment.  I found the loss of my heart's desire.  I found that I must be broken from my own understanding of myself.  I found the true meaning of Paul's words at Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me."  True knowledge of self can only come from the One Who created you, all other perceptions must die.

When we look at the life of Abraham, we see a man whose heart's desire was to have offspring.  He longed for children and God finally gave him his heart's desire, then asked him to give it back.  Why?  Why would God do such a thing?  Because He cannot allow us to hold on to anything tighter than Him.  God asked Abraham to sacrifice the very thing that gave him hope and his identity-- his son Isaac-- because Abraham's hope and identity could only be found in God alone.  And God will do the very same thing with us to the degree we allow it.  And the more we surrender, the more we will grow in knowledge of Him and the more He will work through us to accomplish His purposes.

As we grow spiritually, God will strip things away from us in order to purify us.  He will examine our hearts over and over, sifting through them to find any impurities, anything that would be a stumbling block, temptation, or hindrance to us.  And one day, we will find ourselves on our own Mount Moriah, tightly gripping the very thing we love most and God will ask us for it.  He will give us the choice to hand it over and prove our loyalty and to example the purity of our heart towards Him.  And it will be excruciating.  And on that day you will die.  But in such a death to self, you will find new life.  You will know and trust God in a way that you would have otherwise never been able to do.  It takes an inordinate amount of faith to die to the thing you love most, to die to the person you think you are, to die to the things you think you deserve or are entitled to.  But without faith, it is not only impossible to please God (Heb 11:6), but it is also impossible to see Him as He truly is.

You see, for us to know Christ as He really is, for Christ to reveal Himself to us in all His glory, we must know suffering.  We must be intimately acquainted with loss and torment of soul, because that is what Christ experienced while here on this earth.  That is Who He truly is.  He is the God Who suffered, thus that is how we ultimately come to know Him.  When we ask for God to reveal Himself to us, we want to jump straight to the image of the glorified Christ, failing to remember that His suffering and torment came first, because that is what God used to bring Him to glory.  So the question remains for all of us, how much of God do we want in our life?  The more of God you have in your life, the more of Himself He reveals to you, the more you will know torment of soul and sacrifice.  There is no other way.  Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." (Matt 5:8)  Unfortunately, purity of heart only comes from passing it through the furnace. 

"Then God said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love--Isaac-- and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you." (Gen 22:2)

"But we see Jesus, Who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting for God, for Whom and through Whom all things exist, to make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering." (Heb 2:9.10)

"I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil 3:10,11)

"And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ-- if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him." (Rom 8:17)

"For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Cor 1:5)