I read a story about a little boy who, on his first day in the first grade, desperately wanted to impress his parents. So on his first day in the first grade, he had one of the upperclassmen teach him part of the multiplication tables. After supper that night, the little boy stood up and said, "Two times two equals four." And his mother and father were so amazed and surprised-here was their little darling on his first day in the first grade, and he was already multiplying. What they had always suspected was now made true-their little darling was a budding genius. While they were standing there, beaming with pride, thinking they have a genius on their hands, the little boy looked up at them and said, "What's a two?"

Have you ever been in that situation? I have. I've found out that you can sound like you know a lot more than you really do. I think that's true especially in the church, especially for those of us who have spent a lot of time in the church. We hear phrases and words and become familiar with them, and we naturally use them. However, we're not always certain what those words and phrases mean.

One of those words, I think, is the word faith. I don't know of any other thing in the Christian life that has such an air of mystery about it as does this concept of faith.

I've learned those words and phrases just like you did. I knew I was "saved by faith," and I knew I was supposed to "live by faith." We say, "You just need to trust God"-so we trust God. And people say, "You're just going to have to believe God for this"-and so we believe God for that. But the truth of the matter is, many times I want to say, "What does it mean to believe God? What does it mean to trust God? I know the word and the phrase. I know that I'm supposed to do it, but when you get right down to it, what is involved?"

What does it mean to walk with God? What does it mean to live by faith? What does it mean to step out and trust God in a situation? I think many of us, like that little boy, would like to know what faith is. What do you do when you're trusting God-do you dress differently, wear sackcloth and ashes, fast, pray?

When I was in school, I was never good at math, and I'm still not. I find math, algebra, fractions, geometry and all that to be a foreign language. I really had a hard time because it's always been hard for me to follow abstract directions. I'm a concrete person, an image person, and I don't do well looking at abstract directions. When it came to math, I had a hard time understanding. But if the teacher would turn to the blackboard and work out a problem step-by-step so I could see it, then I could begin to understand it. When she took the abstract and put it in a concrete form, then I began to understand it better.

I know that you have people in your life that you learn from, who take the abstract and put it into concrete form. The Lord understands that, and He gave us a person in the Bible that demonstrates to us step-by-step what it really means to trust God and to walk by faith. I'm talking about Abraham.

In Romans chapter four, Paul was talking about Abraham and that experience with Isaac and how Abraham believed God. When he came to the end of that chapter, Paul summed it up by saying,

"Now this wonderful truth--that God declared him to be righteous--wasn't just for Abraham's benefit. It was for us, too, assuring us that God will also declare us to be righteous if we believe in God, who brought Jesus our Lord back from the dead."

Paul was saying that God has recorded all the acts of Abraham in this manner of walking with Him, not just as a matter of historical record, but so you and I could look at it and observe it and believe as Abraham believed. If you and I believe as Abraham believed, then you and I will receive as Abraham received.

I want us to look at three crises in the life of Abraham, when God dealt with him in a decisive manner to bring him to the place where God wanted to him to be.

We'll begin with Genesis 12:1-3. This is the first time where the name Abraham occurs in the Bible, (except for a genealogy in the eleventh chapter.) and this is the first time God ever spoke to Abraham; this is where the whole business started.

Then the LORD told Abram,

"Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. I will cause you to become the father of a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and I will make you a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you."

CRISIS #1-Let Go of the Land

Notice the words of separation ("leave.") and the words of direction ("go to the land.") in verse one. The first words God spoke to Abraham were "Get out. Leave. Go somewhere else. Turn your back on what you now have. Separate yourself."

I believe that the real essence of faith is simply letting go of one thing so the Lord may give us something else. In this matter of growing in grace and walking with God, there is always the element of letting go of one thing so you may take hold of something else.

God came to Abraham and said,

"I want you to leave your country, your relatives and your father's house." In other words God was saying, "Abraham, I want you to let go of everything in your life that means security and identity to you. I want you to let go of all that you have so that I can give you a special country."

God had a land He wanted to give Abraham, but He could not give him the Promise Land until Abraham let go of the land he had.

I'm convinced that the thing that keeps God from giving us all He wants us to have is the fact that our hand is tightly clenched around something we're not willing to let go of. In growth, the matter of letting go is always involved. The only way to grow up is by giving up. That's true, not only physically, but also spiritually. All the days of your life, you've grown by giving up certain things-you have to give up the bottle, the diapers, and the toys eventually.

You have to give up in order to grow, and it's not always easy. In fact, sometimes it's painfully hard. Jesus said that "for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and be joined unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." You have to give up a home in order to make a home. Unless we give up now, we can never grow up into what God wants us to be.

When God came to Abraham, it must have startled him because God had not laid any real foundation with him. All of a sudden, it seems, out of the clear blue sky, God spoke to Abraham, and the word He said was so difficult-get up and go. Now what was God doing here? Basically, I think God was doing two things in the life of Abraham. I think He does the same two things in your life and in my life.

First of all, God seeks to meet us one on one.

God wanted to make a new race out of Abraham. He wanted to fashion Abraham according to His own image, but He could not do that where Abraham was. God needed to draw him out and isolate him so that He alone could be the shaping influence in Abraham's life.

I'm not saying that you and I should become isolationists or withdraw from the world and live in the mountains somewhere. But there is a very real sense that God is wanting to draw us out of the world so He can be the shaping influence in our lives.

You and I are constantly under pressure to be squeezed into the mold of this world. There is tremendous pressure on us all the time to conform to this world's standards, and to live by it's ideals. But you can never do that if you're going to walk with God. You have to leave where you are and come to where God is.

The other thing is this; God wants us to walk in the unknown-meaning by faith.

What impresses me most about this is that God didn't tell Abraham where he was going. I often wonder how he broke the news to Sarah. He came to Sarah one day, and he said, "Sarah, pack; we're leaving." "Where are we going," she asks. "I don't know." "How long will it take us to get there?" "I don't have any idea. A voice from heaven spoke to me today and told me to leave all of this-this country, my father's house, our family-and go out in the country and become nomads and live in tents." Now what would you do ladies if your husband walked in and made that announcement to you? Well, that's exactly what Abraham did.

God is saying,

"I want you to go into a country that I will show you. I want you to walk with Me in the midst of mystery. I want you to trust Me even when you don't know what's going on. I want you to trust Me even when you don't know what's happening in your life. I want you to trust Me even when you don't have the slightest idea where I'm taking you. I want you to be willing to walk with Me, even in the unknown."

I believe that you cannot miss this aspect of faith and understand what it means to walk with God.

If God had told Abraham where he was going, then Abraham would have kept his eye on the destination. However, if God is the only one who knows where you are going, then you're going to have to keep your eye on God. If you are following someone, and he's the only one who knows where you're going, you'd better work to keep him in sight. I'm convinced that God did that with Abraham so he'd have to keep God in sight. I believe that's why God doesn't always lay out everything for us. God doesn't always tell us in advance what He's doing in our lives, so that we have no choice but to keep our eyes on Him.

Remember when Moses made a request of the Lord. He said, "Lord, show me Your face; show me Your glory." What Moses was saying was, "Lord, I need to have a face to face; I need to know You upfront. If I'm going to lead this people, it would help if I knew where we were going and what You were all about. I want to know from the front what's going on and where we're headed. And God said to Moses, "You can't do that. No man can see my face and live. But I'll tell you what, I'll put you in the cleft of the rock and put my hand over your face. As I pass by, I'll remove my hand, and you'll see me from the back." And that's what God did.

And that's the only way you and I ever see God in this life-from the back. We only see him in retrospect. We only really see God when we look back over the path from which we have come. I don't even have the slightest idea where I'm headed tomorrow, and you don't either. There have been a million times when I thought I had certainly missed God somewhere. I've said, "I don't understand, Lord, how all this can be in Your will because this path I'm on is so crooked and hilly. It has so many traps and snares on it. Lord, it's so dark, and half the time I'm stumbling around like I've lost my way. I must have missed You somewhere."

But every once in a while, I look back over my shoulder at the path behind me. It's as straight as it can be; there are no traps or hedges or thorns. It's well-lit and I think to myself, "Is that the path I just came over? It sure didn't look like it then." When I look back over past experiences, I can see the path clearly, and God is everywhere. I see God in retrospect. I'm convinced that's the way you and I live this life. Most of the time, we don't see God clearly out in front of us. We don't always know where He's leading us, but we can turn around and look back and say, "Yes, of course; the Lord led me every step of the way." And so the issue of faith is whether or not I'm willing to travel under sealed orders and let God keep my destination to Himself.

CRISIS #2 - Let Go of Ishmael

In Genesis 17 God made a covenant with Abraham. He told Abraham that He would give him and Sarah a son through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That covenant was the basis for everything God did in Abraham's life. So they walked away with this promise in their heart: Sarah would bear Abraham's son, and through that seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. There was only one thing wrong. Sarah couldn't have children; she was barren.

Years went by, and they didn't hear anything from God. So, Sarah came up with the "solution" that Abraham would have a child by her handmaid, Hagar. Moses did that, and Ishmael was born. When Ishmael was born, Abraham and Sarah were satisfied that the promise of God had been fulfilled. All of a sudden, when Ishmael was about fourteen years old, God spoke to Abraham again. He picked up right where He had left off, as if no time had passed, and continued to talk about Sarah bearing a son.

"Then God added, "Regarding Sarai, your wife--her name will no longer be Sarai; from now on you will call her Sarah. And I will bless her and give you a son from her! Yes, I will bless her richly, and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings will be among her descendants!" Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. "How could I become a father at the age of one hundred?" he wondered. "Besides, Sarah is ninety; how could she have a baby?"

All of a sudden God spoke and Abraham did exactly what you ought to do when that happens-he threw himself on the ground and worshiped the Lord. So there he was, doing the right thing. He fell on his face and worshiped God. But while he was down there worshiping God, he did something else-he got the giggles. He laughed in his heart.

It's just like when you were a child in church, and you got tickled about something. You knew that you weren't supposed to laugh out loud because if you did, your dad would get you by the ear and haul you out, (at least mine did) so you tried so hard to hold it in. That's what happened to Abraham. He didn't want to laugh, but God had just said the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard in his life. God had said that Sarah would be the mother of many nations, and Abraham just couldn't believe it. So he said in the next verse, "Yes, may Ishmael enjoy your special blessing!"

What's happening here? Abraham was telling God that Ishmael was the answer and the son of the promise. What you and I have to remember is that as far as Abraham was concerned, the promise of God had been fulfilled for fourteen solid years. Every day as he watched Ishmael grow up, Abraham knew in his heart, "This is it." He loved that boy with all of his heart, and God spoke for the first time in twenty years as if Ishmael didn't even exist. Basically, Abraham was saying, "God, just do it my way."

What is Ishmael? Ishmael is where your vision collides with God's vision. Ishmael is your version of the will of God-your dreams, your plans, your ideas. The Lord was saying, "Abraham, if you are to have a child of promise, you must let go of this child. Just as you had to let go of the land to get the Promised Land, so you're going to have to open your hand again and let go of Ishmael if you're going to have Isaac. I cannot do my work in you as long as you are grasping and hanging on to Ishmael. As long as you insist on doing it through Ishmael, I can never have my way with you. Let go, and grow up by giving up."

Faith is a matter of leaving and losing and letting go so that God may give us what He has for us. It is never easy to give up Ishmael. It's easier to leave the land than it is to give up Ishmael. All of us have our plans, our visions, our dreams. We picture a certain kind of home and family and job. One day God comes along, and He goes against the grain of that and says, "No, that's not my will. Ishmael is not mine. Ishmael is the work of the flesh-your idea of how to do God's will. Ishmael is your contribution to the work of God, not mine. You have to let go of Ishmael-of your dream, your vision, your plan."

The older I get, I'm realizing that I don't like change. I am an incurable old-fashioned type of person. I don't like to say goodbye to one era of my life and walk into another. I don't like to close chapters or give up dreams. I don't like to shut my eyes to the visions I've had. I don't like to let go. I want to cling to the past and the visions and dreams of my youth. I want life to turn out like I planned years ago. When God comes to me and tells me to let go of a portion of my life or a dream or a possession, I find myself crying out, "O God, let Ishmael enjoy your blessing! Can't we do it this way? Do I have to give up my own dream or vision. Lord, do it my way."

Listen; you have to let go of Ishmael. All of us have our plans, but they don't always match the will of God. God can't bring me what He wants me to have as long as I am clinging to my way. God has something else far greater than I can ever imagine, but I'll never know it if I'm grasping that one thing.

Abraham tried to get God to see reason. He delicately tried to steer God in a more sensible direction. He wanted to go with the plan that made more sense and seemed to be a sure thing. It's easier for us to trust God when we have a guarantee that we can see and touch.

As a Christian and as a church, we are in trouble when you start banking on the sure things. God doesn't always come to you that way.

The first time we are introduced to the name Isaac is in this passage. We find that it wasn't Abraham or Sarah who named the boy, but it was God. Isaac means laughter. Abraham was on his face, laughing at the news, and God said, "Let's name him Isaac, so that every day you look at him, you'll remember that you laughed at me.

And CRISIS #3 - is to Let Go of Yourself.
Genesis 22 :1,2 says:

Later on God tested Abraham's faith and obedience. "Abraham!" God called. "Yes," he replied. "Here I am." "Take your son, your only son--yes, Isaac, whom you love so much--and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you."

Letting go of yourself is the last great crisis. This is where Abraham's faith grows up. Isaac was probably seventeen or eighteen years old and had become the apple of his father's eye, the treasure of his heart.

Abraham was over one hundred years old, and you'd think he had passed all the tests. But there he was in his old age, and God wasn't finished yet. I think that's true in our lives.

I do not think there is any time in life when we've done it all and said it all as far as God is concerned. The truth is, the older we get, the tougher the tests and the greater the sacrifices and the bigger the stakes. But God didn't start out with that test. He waited until Abraham was old enough, mature enough and strong enough. I do not believe that God will ever test you in any way that you are unable to bear and pass. God takes us step-by-step, stage-by-stage, and doesn't give us more than we can handle.

To understand this stage in Abraham's life is to understand the highest level of spiritual maturity that a person can ever experience.

It's one thing to leave the world behind, but it is another thing to separate ourselves from possessions and rights, and to entrust our lives in the hands of God.

The greatest test for Abraham was not letting go of the land or getting rid of Ishmael, it was letting go of Isaac. Isaac stood for all that was right and sure. Yet God was saying to Abraham, "I don't have all of you there is to have until I have Isaac."

We all should want to be used by God in the body of Christ. It seems that a young, up and coming scholarly man came to the rabbi one day and said, "Rabbi, I have surrendered myself to God. I've given everything up to God, and I'm willing now for God to use me." The rabbi said, "Are you willing for God not to use you? Are you willing to be just for God alone while everyone else gets the accolades and the recognition? Young man, here is a scrub brush, a mop and a bucket. Put these to use for God in the synagogue for a year, and come see me then."

God doesn't have all of us until He has Isaac-the thing in my life that is most perfect and right and of God, the thing that is essentially good and blessed. But it can become for me an idol and a possession.

Possession isn't ownership. Abraham possessed Isaac, but he didn't own him. There is nothing that you and I can say we own; it is all given to us as a stewardship. We possess it, but we do not own it. The danger comes when we start thinking as if we own it. Hold all things loosely. If you get to thinking you own them, you're in trouble.

Every time God had asked Abraham to do something up until now, He had attached a promise to it. If you leave that land, I'll give you another land. If you give up Ishmael, I'll give you Isaac. But in this last test, there was no promise attached .

I believe that the ultimate in walking with God and trusting Him comes when you don't need the promise of reward to obey Him ; you obey Him because He's worth obeying and love Him because He's worth loving.

When Abraham left his land, God gave him a new land. When he let go of Ishmael, God gave him Isaac. And when he offered up Isaac to God, there was no promise given to Abraham. But, many years later, Jesus Christ stood and said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day and was glad." I wonder on that day on Mount Moriah , if God pulled aside the curtains of eternity and let Abraham see the real Isaac that would come one day.

We all know that Isaac didn't die on the mount, and it was never intended that Isaac should die then. But somebody did die on that mountain-it was Abraham. He died to Isaac, and that's what you and I must do.

Do you have a 'holy must'? A call to 'go' or 'leave'? A mission, a task, a 'calling'?

Are you holding on to an Ishmael ? Something in your life that is hindering your journey. A page, a chapter, an era in your life that you are still living in? God is bringing a new season, a new time for you if you will just let go.

How are you spending your life? Here is the mark of spiritual maturity- are you willing to lose your life so you may find it ?