Where’s the best place to invest your money? Some say the stock market. For instance if you invested $1000 in Microsoft’s IPO, it would be worth $300,000 today multiplying your original investment 300 times over. Betting on an IPO can be risky, but If you invested that same $1,000 into Apple stock in 2002, when it was a stable company, you could have sold it in 2012 for around $47,000 yielding a return on investment of 47 times your money. Sometimes your high risk investments yield great gains, but sometimes they cause you to lose your shirt.
The wealthy patriarch Abraham made some apparently poor risky investments. He abruptly uprooted his family and Trump-Tower headquarters from Haran to another country believing God told him so, only to discover a deserted region. He believed God to provide a promised son only to be left with an 90-year-old-maid and an illegitimate son. When he finally received the promised son, Abraham offered him as a sacrificial lamb, believing God instructed him so.
On the surface these looked like bad investments of his life. However that forsaken land we call today the fertile crescent or the nation Israel. Also, the sacrifice ended good because as Abraham raised the dagger to take his son’s life, God sent an angel to intercept him. A.W. Tozer wrote, “He never intended for Abraham to slay the child, but only to remove him from the temple of his heart.” The story finishes well, as God rewards Abraham’s trust and obedience by promising to multiply his offspring many times over.
He enters the biblical hall of fame as Father Abraham and the father of the nation Israel. The walk from Haran to Moriah spread across many years and miles, and offered many challenges with mountains, valleys, doubts, and failures. Despite these temporary setbacks, Abraham never let go of God. He continued to go where God wanted him to go, and to surrender any worldly possession, even his prized possession Isaac. His fame continues into the New Testament becoming Christianity’s symbol of faith according to the epistles of Hebrews and Romans.
We can see Abraham in Jesus’ eyes when He told the parable of the mustard seed about how just a mustard seed spec of faith expands into a mustard tree of blessing. For just one tiny spec of Abraham’s faith, and one flickering light of Abraham’s trust, God promised Abraham a return on investment of gazillion grains of sand on the seashore and gazillion stars in the sky.
God asks the world of us like he did of Abraham since He asks us to take up our cross daily. He wants us to be willing to relinquish any possession, habit, or attitude that may be reigning in the temple of our hearts, but in return He blesses us a gazillion times over and exceedingly abundantly more than this world ever could.
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