Episode 15: Marking the Moments
God divinely directs us to stop and remember certain “life moments.” In Scripture, these moments are called monuments. Oftentimes we are divinely instructed to set up monuments after a time we know we’ve encountered God. These moments are so life-changing that many men and women in the Bible even named their monuments. In today’s episode, we look at two men as they mark their moments.
In Genesis we watch a pattern develop in Abraham’s life—he loved to stop and notice the way God was moving. Each time he did, he built an altar where the moment took place and named it (Genesis 12.) Yet, it wasn’t until Genesis 22 that we see a monument that changed the way Abraham viewed his faith and his God.
Abraham faced a time of internal pressure as he weighed his love for his son against his love for God. Abraham obeyed immediately when God offered him the chance for a faith-filled stare down. He was instructed to climb Mount Moriah and prepare an altar for a sacrifice. God abhors child sacrifice and speaks against it in scripture, but for a moment, Abraham considers it as he ponders loving nothing as much as he loves God. On the brink of disaster God stops Abraham’s move to offer his son, and provides a ram, caught by the horns in the bushes near the altar. An emotional Abraham rejoices as he calls that place “The Lord provides!” This new monument forever held the power of a single-minded love between a son and his father. This monument was also a foreshadow of Jesus as his son carried the wood of the sacrifice on his own back, and God offered the sacrificial prize, His Son, in place of man.
Year later, in the life of Jacob, Abraham’s great grandson, we see another monument play out. Jacob is on the run from his brother Esau when he laid his head to sleep on barren land. It’s in this unlikely setting that he had a dream. In the dream he saw angels ascending and descending from heaven—and felt God’s assurance of blessing. When he woke, he thought “Surely God is in this place and I didn’t know it.” He called that place Bethel (the house of God) and poured oil over the stone he set up as a monument.
Years later he was called back to Bethel. When God calls us back to a place we’ve been before he’s trying to:
Realign. There are times God calls us back to a place to reset our thinking. It’s easy to get off course if we don’t allow God to realign our hearts and minds on where He wants us to be.
Remind. Because we’re so prone to forget, God likes to remind us of who He is, who we are, and the ways He has designed for us to live. A reminder is not a punishment, but rather, a gentle chin-pull to look into His face.
Restore. God’s greatest joy is seeing His children live the lives we are meant to live. He restores our weakest and most damaged pain points, making them the strength of our faith.
Gutsy Faith Challenge: What monuments do you need to build or go back to?
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