Do you ever feel like God is testing you? Just when everything is going your way, the bottom drops out, and you are left in shock and dismay. Your health gets bad or you come down with a disease, you wonder, “Is God trying to tell me something?” Or you lose your job or get into financial difficulty through no
fault of your own, you wonder, “Is God trying to teach me something?” Life doesn’t unfold in the way you had planned or an event completely changes your life, you wonder, “Does God care about me?” A tragedy strikes and your life is radically changed never to be the same again, you wonder, “Is God punishing me?”

We are always unclear how God is involved in our lives at the present moment. We can always look back to days past and see how God has been at work in our lives, but today is at best uncertain and more like a mystery. As people of faith or people looking for faith, we want to know where and how God is
involved, why God allowed something bad to happen, if God is really a God of love and goodness.

In our scripture passage today, Abraham had it all. A loving wife, wealth, respect among his peers, a close and intimate relationship with his God, a glorious future, and a promised son in his old age. Everything a person could hope for in life he had attained, and while it had taken many years, God had fulfilled divine promises so that life was good for Abraham. If he had died today, his life had been filled to overflowing, and he had no complaints.

Then one night - in the dark, middle of the night - God called to Abraham. And when Abraham answered God, God’s words froze his blood, convulsing him into anguish. For God told Abraham to do the most horrible and ungodly thing God could ask a parent to do: to kill his own son as a sacrifice to God. The most
important thing that could happen to a Hebrew man was to receive a son to carry on the family name and heritage. For Abraham who had waited 100 years for a son he thought he would never receive, this command from God must have drained all life and meaning from his soul. After promising and giving him a son, why
would God take his son away from him? This just didn’t make sense.

And what also doesn’t make sense is Abraham’s response in our scripture. The very next verse after God told Abraham to sacrifice his son says that Abraham got up the next morning and proceeded to follow God’s command. Didn’t something else happen between the command and Abraham’s response? Didn’t
Abraham question God? Didn’t Abraham argue with God? Didn’t Abraham shake his fist at God and yell at God for such an insensitive and barbaric request? Surely Abraham didn’t go quietly into the night and calmly return to his interrupted sleep. Abraham had to have gone through an intense struggle in his soul as he tried to make sense of God’s words, tried to find purpose and meaning in this personal disaster.

Like us in our own situations, Abraham was faced with a mystery about God’s words and actions. I am sure that he desperately wanted an answer that made sense. Yet none came. As he and his son Isaac journeyed to the mountain that God specified, Abraham kept looking at the mountain with same longing, probably
praying the same words as Jesus uttered in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his death, “Lord, let this cup pass from me. Don’t make me do this.” Yet, the progression of the story also tells us that Abraham also submitted to the same words as Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but yours. I’ll faithfully do
whatever you ask of me.”

It’s heartbreaking for us to follow the story as Abraham prepares to kill his son for God, but like Abraham we are overjoyed when God intervenes and provides a substitute sacrifice. Isaac is saved, and Abraham has demonstrated his faith in and submission to God. He has passed God’s test. We the readers have known
from the beginning that this has been a test to see if Abraham really trusted God, but Abraham doesn’t fully understand until the end, until God intervenes and sets all things right.

Not all of our bad or tragic experiences have a happy ending in that our lives our restored to what they were before. It’s difficult and unnerving to go through some of the experiences that we do in life not knowing how and where God is involved. Is God testing us and if so, why? And if it is not a test, does not our response still call for trust in God?

In December of 2000, doctors put me through rigorous tests to determine if I had a problem with me heart. My Mother had died in her sleep in 1982, my middle brother had died in his sleep in 1994, and in October of 2000 my youngest brother died in his sleep. All of these deaths were related to heart conditions which we didn’t know they had, although later we realized that each heart problem was different and unique to the individual. When I went for my annual physical after my youngest brother’s death, the doctor discovered a skip
in my heart beat, which isn’t unusual in a lot of people, but given my family history, he wanted to check it out further. I hadn’t been experiencing any problems and as I went through EKG’s, echo-cardiograms, and stress tests, everything was coming back normal, nothing seemed amiss.

After all of these tests, the cardiologist sat down with me to tell me I passed everything. Then he dropped the bombshell: we think you have a blockage and we are scheduling you for catheterization tomorrow. At that point my world turned upside down. Because what the doctor was indicating was that they were
preparing me for by-pass surgery. I couldn’t understand why I had passed all the tests and yet there was something wrong.

I remember that night as I went through my prayers, I didn’t ask God, “Why me?” or get angry or depressed, or try to make a deal with God to make everything right. Through the years I had preached and taught a different response to situations like these. What I did say to God was, “You called me to a specific ministry that is going to take quite a few years to complete. If I have a heart condition, I won’t live long enough to complete your will for my life. I don’t know how you are going to do it, but I’m holding you to your call to me
that I will be able to finish the tasks you set before me.”

The next day during the catheterization I watched the monitor with the doctor as they injected the dye in my blood system. Everything was normal. The doctor said it was obvious that I had no blockages, in fact my arteries were smooth which meant that there was no plaque even beginning to build up. My
heart was healthy, normal and strong. No problems. I was overjoyed. Yet in the recovery room as I was feeling the elation of knowing everything was all right, the doctor came in and said, “I’ve ordered an ambulance and you’re going to Pittsburgh where we will do more tests on your heart.”

I laid there wondering, “What aren’t you telling me. I’m supposed to be okay.” I continued to pass all the tests with flying colors and it eventually became obvious to me that they were really investigating my family history to see if there was a pattern to all of the deaths in my family. It turned out there wasn’t, but out of it I got a clean bill of health.

What I want you to understand is that in that uncertain future, I had to trust God. I didn’t know what was happening or what the outcome would be or whether or not I would die young. All I knew was that Christ had called me to a particular ministry, and my only response was trust that God would help me to
accomplish what Christ had set before me. It had nothing to do with my health, with incapacity, with an early death. It was, “What is it you want me to do and how are we going to do it.” And I let it in God’s hands.

Now I have to tell you, I did have a slight apprehension about what each test would show, but I was primarily calm and upbeat. All because I trusted that God knew what God was doing. I wasn’t expecting good news, at least not at the beginning; I was only expecting that in spite of what condition I ended up in,
God would be faithful to my call. Nothing more. And at no time did I think that God was testing me. I only believed and knew that God was with me. This is what fearing God means in biblical terms. To fear God is to trust totally in God, even when we don’t know why. Whether or not God tests us or we
feel that God tests us, we need to trust God that God is with us. We may not receive the answer or the outcome that we want, but we can know that God is with us and that God will be faithful to us. God was faithful to Abraham in that God promised him and Sarah a son so that their descendants might become a
great nation of people devoted to God. That promise was never in doubt even though Abraham couldn’t understand how God was going to bring it about. And God would have still fulfilled the divine promise if Isaac had died.

You and I are called to fear or to trust in God in our faith. God hasn’t promised us good health, an easy life, or no tragedies within our life. All God has promised us is that in Christ, God will always be with us. And if we
allow Christ to be a part of our lives and to be faithful to God even in the most difficult of times, God will be able to do great things through our faith. God in Christ will be able to share love and grace through our lives so that other people may experience Christ’s salvation in their own lives.

That’s what you and I are about. We are Christ’s instruments or channels of salvation, disciples really, so that others may come to know and accept Christ as Lord and Savior. So fear the Lord, trust in him, especially when it’s hardest. It is only then that we will fully reveal the love and grace of our Lord.