As You Dedicate Yourselves Today Through Fasting - Where Is Your Sacrifice?

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Hebrews says….Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead!!

So they were BOTH coming back!

Some people believe that buying our own proper church building does not make any sense!!...Tell you what, half the Bible does not make sense. Tell you what…if you are standing on God’s Word…He will make it happen

Isaac… ”Daddy, where is the sacrifice?”

Abraham ….“The Lord Himself will provide…”

Then he puts Isaac on the altar….because until you put it on the altar, it does not belong to God!

Before he got to the altar, Isaac was Abraham’s son…but when he put him on the altar, God adopted Isaac as His son! He belonged to Jehovah!

Your marriage, money, etc. is yours until it’s on the altar.

You can pray all you like for your marriage …. until you let God own you and your husband/wife demons will keep raging around your marriage.

You are not His as long you still have NOT surrendered yourself fully to God – faith is total surrender to Him – when you have surrendered, then you totally depend on Him! [Story of house buyer & seller – NAIL]

NB: The LORD HIMSELF

- More later

NB: He didn’t tell Sarah…you don’t tell everyone

- They may mean well…may be well-intentioned …but they will discourage you

- Some testimonies are not for sharing (Jesus told others to shut up)

So Abraham raises the knife….into the heavens..He has made up his mind

He cried before, he questioned before but now the cry is over. He is totally committed to plunging the dagger into the naked chest of the young boy! It hurts and it breaks his heart but now he trusts God more than his senses….so his hand is raised up in the air…until he hears a voice – “Abraham, Abraham, don’t you dare touch the boy…because now I know Abraham, that you love me more than you love Isaac!”

I wonder if I have some people here who are saying this afternoon “God, I love you more than anything!!”

God stopped him because Abraham did NOT need to sacrifice Isaac becoz he had already sacrificed….he had sacrificed “self”…he had killed “the self in himself”

- 3 Hebrew boys did not burn because they had already burnt their own will (so the fire had nothing to burn) –can’t burn something twice

- So Abraham , had already died of self….no more need to kill again

So God says, I have a blessing for you! Can you not hear the bleating of the ram caught in a thicket…..I have a blessing for you, a better one in the bush!!!

- Some of you are robbing yourself of better things/blessing because you are holding on to your stuff

- WHY do we always pray against anything that makes our flesh uncomfortable? – when there is peace, joy, financial happiness in the bush …but we still hold on to our Isaacs …yet there is psychological preservation, promotion, love, etc. in the bush

The LORD HIMSELF

- When you offer your Isaac on the altar….God comes and replaces your Isaac with HIMSELF….and He becomes the sacrifice HIMSELF so that the sacrifice becomes acceptable before God and you also become acceptable as you become like HIM!

- So when you give the BEST for God’ building…doesn’t matter how much it as long it is the BEST….God will become the building fund HIMSELF and He will achieve many times more than you would have achieved as human beings!

- Mountain goat/ram research

Cannot survive above a certain altitude!

Mt Moriah is very high, so there shouldn’t have been a ram at that height!

Do you know that God can break His own rules to bless you! He will bless you in ways that don’t make sense!

I can’t speculate on how you will get job you have been seeking, the marriage partner, the promotion, the school, etc. and even the building for worship…but it will not make sense!

God couldn’t tell Abraham about the blessing in the bush until he put it on the altar…because if He had told him before, he would have put it on the altar for the blessing!!

But because Abraham didn’t know there was a blessing in the bush, he put Isaac on the altar! And God accepted his sacrifice because he didn’t do it in order to be blessed!!! Hello somebody!

- You are NOT going to put the money in the offering plate because you want to get blessed [Even if…. let it be known that I still love Him]

Allow my imagination to be audible. Hear the preacher now…..

Every step Abraham took towards the altar…I think the ram was on the other side of the mountain…he couldn’t see it

So every step he took towards the altar, God told the ram to take another step

Every step he took sacrificing what he thought was best for him…the ram took a step closer

Every step he took sacrificing what God asked him to give up…the ram took a step closer

Then when Abraham, raised the knife…God told the ram..”Okay, it’s your time now…It’s your show..take over now!!”

- For every time you obey…you get closer to your blessing!

Why you are blessed?

V14-18 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.”

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the