Take Back Your Life | Week 4
Take Back Your life
Big Idea:
This series will help you recognize what’s holding you back and equip you to embrace it head on as you become the best version of yourself.
Big Idea: Whatever you are holding to is holding you back.
Opening
How can holding back hold us back?
What makes a risk, risky?
Discuss
In Genesis beginning in chapter 12, we see Abraham’s journey of faith.
There is a series of hits and misses as he is called by God to begin a new nation with a baron wife.
A journey of total obedience and total disobedience that finely leads God to ultimately test Abraham’s heart.
Read Genesis 21:1 Sometime later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
Abraham heard God because he was listening.
How does God speak to you? Are you listening?
Read Genesis 21:2-3 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.” 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.
According to what you heard in Sunday’s message what are the unusual events that take place in the passage?
Abraham getting up, loading the donkeys, and heading out showed Abraham had faith but was he completely faithful yet?
Why is partial obedience still disobedience?
Read Genesis 21:4-5 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
Sometimes God asks us to do things that don’t make sense to us, and we discard it.
How do these verses show Abraham is trusting God without clearly understanding what was going on?
Read Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
We all want to be people of faith but what about when we can’t see what God is up to?
Abraham didn’t know how this day would end but he was trusting God even in the risk.
Even though he continued the journey and made bold statements of faith was he completely faithful yet?
Read Genesis 21:9-11 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham! ” Here I am,” he replied.
At the moment Abraham “took out his hand and took the knife to slay his son” his faith was complete.
Partial obedience is disobedience.
It’s when we fully trust God and take the risk our faith is made complete.
Genesis 21:12-14 12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”13 Abraham looked up, and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
Too many have missed the blessing by partially doing what is asked.
Have you ever tried to bargain with God when his asked seemed too great?
Only when we lay our Isaac on the alter can we see God’s true provide and show and grow in our relationship with him.
Oh, and did I mention how important it is to listen to God?
What would have happened if he had stopped listening?
Discuss:
Abraham could have been too busy taking care of all that was going on in his life and missed God’s voice.
He could have ignored God’s request because it was outrageous.
He could have bargained with God and not picked up the knife.
Are you keeping communication open with God and listening for his voice?
Are you willing to take the risk and find the reward of a deeper relationship with God?