11 Oct 2010
Its no sacrifice
How faith matures
I am continuing to be challenged and inspired by Eugene Peterson’s “The Jesus Way”.
One section that particularly spoke to me was the way Peterson unpacked the story of Abraham.
He particularly focussed on the story of Abraham on Mount Moriah, the moment where God asks him to sacrifice his son and then intervenes at the last-minute.
In a couple of paragraphs Peterson captures the profound truth of maturity in faith. It doesn’t come from reading a book, going to a church or singing the right songs. It comes through sacrifice.
Peterson says (underlining mine):
A sacrificial life is the means and the only means, by which a life of faith matures. By increments a sacrificial life – an altar here, an altar there – comes to permeate every detail of life: parenthood, marriage, friendship, work, gardening, reading a book, climbing a mountain, receiving strangers, circumcising and getting circumcised. Abraham did not become our exemplar in faith by having it explained to him but by engaging in a lifetime of travel, life on the road, daily leaving something of himself behind (self sovereignty) and entering something new (God-sovereignty).
Sacrifice is to faith what eating is to nutrition; it is the action that we engage in that is transformed within ourselves invisibly and unobserved into a life lived in responsive obedience to the living God who gives himself to and for us, sacrifices himself for us. Faith, of which Abraham is our father, can never been understood by means of explanation or definition, only in the practise of sacrifice. Only in the act of obedience do we realise that sacrifice is not diminishment, not a stoical “This is the cross I bear” nonsense. It does not result in less joy, less satisfaction, less fulfilment, but in more – but rarely in the ways we expect. Who could have expected what would take place on Mount Moriah?
It’s not a popular message, but this is the truth of faith.