The Ram

It’s been a while since I wrote anything for this blog as I’ve been undergoing a season of transition for the last couple of months, coming to the difficult decision to resign my pastorate in Estevan Saskatchewan to pursue what Joanna and I have felt God calling us into at a new congregation in Winnipeg Manitoba. When I last wrote about this decision what I emphasized was the unmistakable sense that we were in the middle of a God moment – an invasion of Kairos time – into the world of the ordinary. We felt as though every step of our journey was guided and directed by the one sovereign King who was working out some much larger plan through our insignificant lives and it was a very humbling and overwhelming experience.

And that’s where I left things. (If you want to review the whole story in detail you can check out my post from April 28 here)

But as frequently happens, God’s leading was not to simply make a decision as to where to minister, but rather he had bigger plans for us personally to learn how to trust him in the midst of difficult situations. There is an old saying that says “God is rarely early, but he is never late.” It’s a trite little statement that is usually offered with the best of intentions, but really is of little help in the midst of a storm – but for Jo and I over these last few months it has become a truism of almost comical proportions.

First there was the sale of our home. We had taken the risk of putting in a conditional offer on what would become our new home in Winnipeg when we were in the city candidating – we were advised that it would be a long shot in the brisk moving Winnipeg market but we took the chance anyways and made a full-price offer on the condition of the sale of our home. To our surprise and delight it was accepted! And so the clock started ticking for us to sell our house in Estevan which initially in the hot and inflated Estevan market seemed like a sure thing, but as the days went by, the showing s slowed down and nobody was making any legitimate offers to buy our property. The deadline for our condition was rapidly approaching and we were getting really nervous – but all along the way God was saying to us, “trust me, I’ve got this.”

It’s a lot easier to believe God when he says things like that when you can see exactly how he’s going to take care of the situation. When money is tight but you know that there is a cheque in the mail, or when you’ve got nowhere to stay but Mom and Dad’s basement is available rent-free. But when you’ve stepped out in faith in a big way; when the safety net has been removed and all you can see around you is how far you have to fall – it’s pretty hard to believe those words.

In Genesis 22 we get one of the most famous stories in the Bible – the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. I don’t call it a near-sacrifice, or an attempted sacrifice, because the narrator’s presentation of Abraham’s heart leads us to the inescapable conclusion that he would have gone through with it had God not intervened. No this is the story of Abraham sacrificing his son, whom he loved, to the will and sovereignty of God.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 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.”Genesis 22:1-2

Now Abraham’s actions tell us that he was willing to sacrifice, but Abraham’s words tell us that he trusted in the Lord and was holding onto the belief that God’s promise to make a great nation through Isaac was secure. We know this because he told Isaac as much. When his son asked what was going on, Abraham essentially said, “trust me, God’s got this.”

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?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.Genesis 22:7-8

And so with no rescue in sight, clinging only to the knowledge of the character of God Abraham and Isaac continued to climb the mountain knowing that at it’s summit an altar would be built and someone was going to be sacrificed on it.

Our story, while certainly not life and death, played out in a similar way. The Friday before the Monday when our conditional offer was set to expire came and we had no offers or prospective offers in the pipeline for our house. We were feeling that perhaps we had not heard God’s voice properly, or that we had been too greedy in what we were looking for in a house or that we had messed up and were supposed to have accepted a low-ball offer on our house that came within hours of listing it. Our minds and hearts were full of what ifs as we prepared to lose the house we had fallen in love with when something unexpected happened – the sellers contacted our realtor and offered to extend the conditions by another two weeks! We had two more weeks to sell our house and another chance to make this all work out. God had provided our ram caught in the thorns and we rejoiced at his goodness to us.

But that was not the end. Abraham had to learn this lesson once but we needed to learn it again and again. Because shortly after receiving that extension (two days actually) we received not one, but two offers on our house and we accepted one at asking price (there was our ram) but there were conditions that needed to be met on their sale within a week – and I’m sure you can see where this is going, when the deadline came an went we had not received word of the conditions being removed. We felt like Abraham (or perhaps like Isaac) as we were being strapped to the altar. Our sale was going to fall through and we were going to lose our house – but then the day after the offer expired we heard through our realtor that the conditions were met, they just neglected to tell us before the deadline!!! Another ram in the thicket, and you would think by now we would have learned our lesson. But then the mortgage happened.

We had been very proactive in talking to our lender many times along the way from pre-approval, to

specific purchase approval once we had made the conditional offer, to sale approval (ensuring that we knew what was the lowest sale price we could accept on our home and still have enough to make the new mortgage viable). Every box had been checked, every “i” had been dotted and every “t” had been crossed and then a couple weeks after the sale our loans officer called and told us that the mortgage wasn’t going to work. Someone in the central loans office had declined our mortgage and everything was about to fall apart. Not only were we going to lose our new home in Winnipeg, but we had already cleared the conditions on our Estevan home and were set to be homeless in a matter of weeks. And now, if we had felt like Isaac being bound on the altar before, we felt now like Abraham with the dagger hanging over his son like the Sword of Damocles – ready to end everything. But once again God provided a ram in the thicket.

Our loans officer and the branch manager recognizing that this was the bank’s error (not sure who’s in the bank, but certainly not ours) furiously started calling people higher and higher up the ladder on our behalf, and on a Sunday morning (of all times) having been unable to sleep most of the weekend with worry for what might happen to us, the loans officer went into work and checked the status of our mortgage – Approved! We got out of church to find four or five messages on Joanna’s cell phone asking us to call.

Even right up to the hour (and past the hour) of possession these potentially catastrophic events kept happening to us, but every time they did God came through exactly when he needed to keep us going. He was rarely early, but never, NEVER, late. And we have begun to understand just a little of the lesson I believe that the Lord was teaching Abraham.

You see I think that Abraham needed to learn what the real promise was. He thought that the promise was a great line of descendants, so when years passed and God had not allowed Sarah to conceive he took matters into his own hands with Hagar and Ishmael was born. But God didn’t want his promise fulfilled by human intervention. When God finally allowed Sarah to conceive and she gave birth to Isaac, Abraham was I’m sure tempted to put all his hope now in this boy. Isaac, whom he loved, would be the embodiment of the promise – but God was dissatisfied with that arrangement too. God wanted Abraham to love him more. God wanted Abraham to put his hope in him, not in Isaac. God wanted Abraham to trust in HIS power, not in his own ability to rear and protect his heir – so he took them up the mountain and asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

And he did.

God may have intervened and provided the ram at the last possible moment, sparing Isaac’s life, but Abraham never looked at Isaac the same way. Before that day it was “Isaac, whom I love” but after that day is was just “Isaac.” Abraham had sacrificed on that mountain his dependence on his own ability to bring God’s promises into reality. He had sacrificed his own way of doing things on the Altar that day so that he could experience the full measure and scope of God’s amazing plan. And that’s what we’re learning too.

I won’t say that we’ve fully made the break that it seems Abraham did on that mountain. We’re still learning that lesson time and time again, but as we walk down this path of transition that God has so clearly called us to we are seeing again and again that we can’t affect the changes that need to happen in our own power. We can’t manufacture our circumstances in any way that matters, but rather God keeps taking us to the mountain summit to demonstrate to us that when the time is right and all of our attempts at control have failed, he will provide the ram. And along this journey he always has. And I’m starting to learn that if I’m walking in accordance to his will – he always will.

Blessings,

Chris