# The Sacrifice of a Living Son
Language: en
Author: by Gerald Nolt
Original issue: The Heartbeat of The Remnant, July/August 2001, Number 4
Source pages: 7, 8, 18
Read article:
Original PDF: 2001\-07\-remnant\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of The Remnant, July/August 2001]()
![An angel restrains Abraham above Isaac on an altar\.]()
February 8, 1977, was a very cold day in Ephrata, PA when God blessed my wife and me with our first child, a son\. We were very happy\. He was a healthy child and my wife, Joan, was doing fine\. I felt like a very blessed man to have a son of my own\. I was thanking God for him every day and asking God for wisdom to raise him in the fear of the Lord\. I was thinking of all the good times we would spend together, wondering whether God would give him a family of his own, and how great it would be when he brought his family home\. After all, God would want our family to be close and live close together just like the ideal family\. Why should ours be any different?
When our son was about 6 months old, he got very sick after his immunization shots at the doctor\. His fever was very high, and as a father, my heart pitied him and wanted to take the pain for him\. That night as I was rocking him and trying to comfort him, he fell asleep\. As I gazed upon him, God started asking me questions about my dreams for his life\. What would I do if He took my son home to heaven as a young child? Would I be able to accept it as God’s will? If God wanted to send him to a foreign field to be a missionary, would I let him go? I thought, “God, you ask hard questions\. Yes, of course, I would let him go if you keep him safe\.” But God would not let me go with that thought\. He kept pressing the question deeper\. Would I let him go knowing that I may never see him again? I soon realized God was truly asking me to let go of my dreams in place of His will for my son’s life\. I sat for hours pondering what God was asking, and slowly my dreams gave way to His will\. I bowed my head and said, “God, I see now that He is yours and You have given him to us to raise for Your service, and, yes, may Your will be done in his life\.
A few months ago, a brother gave a children’s lesson at church\. He told a story about a family taking a very dangerous trip to visit a mission orphanage high in the mountains\. The family was very excited about the trip, and they were looking forward to being a blessing to the mission staff and children\. It had rained the night before so the road was very slippery\. They soon realized the road was hardly fit to travel\. Then they came to a place very narrow and steep with a cliff on one side and a steep drop off on the other\. They felt they could not make it\. The father led his family in prayer and asked for God’s protection and that His will would be done\. After the prayer, the driver slowly started moving ahead when they felt the vehicle slipping\. This is the end of the story\. We do not have a conclusion\. Did they get to the orphanage safe or did they plunge to their deaths? In our minds we need to know\. But his point in the lesson was that God’s will was done\. That was their prayer\.
As I listened to this lesson, my mind was drawn to the time in the rocking chair with a sick child, pondering the faith that Abraham had when God asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac\. And God said, *“Abraham, take now thy son thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee to the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of\. And Abraham rose up early in the morning” Gen\. 22:2\-3\.* We have read this account many times and yet, do we consider the heart cry that must have been in Abraham’s heart? After God gave him His command, we have no words of Abraham trying to deal with God\. It was just a simple obedience because it reads he rose up early to obey God\. And when his son said, “Father, we have the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for the offering?”, Abraham said,” My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering\.” I do not know if Abraham thought God would bring Isaac back to life or provide another offering before He took Isaac’s life\. We will never know\. Abraham believed that the most important thing was that God’s will was done\. Jesus taught us to pray that God’s will would be done in earth as it is done in heaven\. I believe God’s will is always done in heaven and His desire is to have His will done at all times on earth\. As I laid the sleeping child upon his bed, I fell on my knees and said, “God give me the faith like Abraham had\. I do not give only this child, but all the children You bless us with, for Your service to use any way You desire\. Little did I know what all this would mean and include\.
By the time our oldest son Daryl was ten, God had burdened his heart to be a missionary in Africa\. Every elective he took in school had to meet the test whether it could be used on the mission field\. As a father, I wondered how God was going to work all this out because we knew of no mission organization that we could give our blessing to, that would send him\. So you can imagine our joy when after attending Charity Christian Fellowship for a few months, we learned they were starting a mission in Ghana, West Africa\. Was this God’s answer to our long unanswered question? During this time, we felt like a Hannah preparing a son for the Lord’s work\.
In January 1998, our son Daryl and his wife Rebekah left for Ghana, West Africa\. They left a few weeks after their wedding to do the work that God had called them to do\. We have had many people ask us hard questions about their future\. “How can you do this knowing that it is not safe over in those countries?” “What if something happened to them, wouldn’t you carry the blame forever?” Brothers, sisters, I share all this to make a point\. No, it is not easy to see your son and his wife leave, not knowing if you will ever see each other again\. No, it is not easy, knowing that you will not see your grandchildren for years at a time\. When you get a report that one of the family is very sick and you wish you could run to their aid but cannot, it gives you a helpless feeling\. It is then I remember my rocking chair experience with my sick son and fall on my face, and once again make the trip to Mount Moriah and lay my son and his family upon the altar of sacrifice to God\. It is then that I do as Abraham did and agree with God that His will should be done on earth as it is in heaven, not knowing the end\. God has taught me that I do not need to know the end to be at peace\.
I believe God’s desire is for us to give our children back to Him with no strings attached and not to question God if He takes our children to be with Him, or if He permits them to suffer for His sake\. We need to teach our children very early in life that we are not our own but that we belong to God, and He can do with us as He pleases\. I believe many more would be willing to go to the mission field, but we as parents hold them back by not giving our fullest blessing\. We say things like, “Oh, you may go, but we were hoping you would stay close to home”, or “We were hoping you would take over the family business so Dad can retire”, or “Who is going to take care of us when we get old?” We tell them, “God can find someone else to go\.” Each generation keeps the next from doing God’s work\. Let’s break the cycle and each one of us parents teach our children to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness rather than the American dream\.
It breaks my heart when I see many people wanting the “good life”\. I pray each day that God would help me never to lose sight of His work and will and never to take back what we have given Him, the children He gave to us\. I have heard my parents say a few times when they see other families getting together to enjoy each other: “It makes us miss our children and grandchildren who are in different states, and countries\.” However, they would never challenge the will of God for our lives\. How we thank God for their attitude, because it gives us the opportunity to follow God’s call to do His work with their blessing\. When Samuel’s mother, Hannah, prayed her prayer for a son, she asked for a son so he could be used to work in the temple\. She could have just asked for a child to grace their home, but her prayer was for God to bless her and her husband so they in turn could bless God by giving the child back to Him\. This should be our prayer as parents\. “God, as you bless us with children, we give them to You for Your work in any way You desire\.” Just think of the joy that kind of a prayer would bring God\.
Let us run with joy the race that God has set before us, and let our children run the race that God has set before them\. Proverbs 3:1\-6 expresses my heart toward all of my children\. *“My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments\. For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee\. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart: so shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man\. Trust in the lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding\. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths\.”* This is my prayer for my children\.