River or Canal Faith?

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.  

Hebrews 11.17-19

A J Reimer in his book Trusting God - Why His Plan Is Better Than Ours, that we, as humans, go through seasons in our lives as God works, grows, and teaches us. This is a book which makes us understand the importance of trust and all that it entails.

A J Reimer speaks about river faith and canal faith. This is how he speaks about them, "Have you ever seen a straight river? Canals are straight, but all rivers seem to be crooked. We call it “meandering.” Why are rivers crooked? Because the natural tendency of a river is to take the easiest way around any obstacle. So rivers are always crooked, and they always run downhill. Some people are like rivers. They are too lazy and immature to put forth much effort into walking with God." The read portion speaks about having a Canal Faith according to A J Reimer.

It is clear here in the verse for our meditation that God is the one who did the testing. The point being that God is active in every circumstance of life. Abraham trusted in a sovereign God - a God that is in control of all things at all times, even testing, good or bad. What we learn from this is that a real believer can trust God’s purposes without knowing why by trusting in a sovereign God.

Throughout the history of his own life, Abraham had seen and experienced God’s faithfulness towards him. But when Abraham was summoned by God to slay his son, to offer him as a sacrifice, he was asked to surrender his future as well! It’s relatively easy for us to trust the God of history because we can survey his track record and make a judgement as to his reliability. But when we’re asked to place the unknown future into the hands of God, that takes real faith. It’s hard to trust the God of the future.

Abraham was able to surrender his future to God because he knew there was no such thing as an accident. God doesn’t make mistakes. So even though Abraham didn’t understand ‘why’ God wanted him to slay his son, he knew that he could obey him without question. His faith told him that God would work out his purposes, even if he himself could not see how that could be done.

Abraham took God’s promises so seriously and trusted God with such a passion that he was able to place the life of his only son into the Lord’s hands. And he was able to do this without the slightest hint of doubt that God would stay true to his word and provide a way to keep his promise.

This was arguably Abraham’s greatest trial and we notice that at no point was Abraham’s faith ever passive. Here we see that when faced with a perplexing ‘why’ test that he could just not explain, Abraham didn’t just sit back and watch the world go by. He got down and calculated that God could raise the dead to life.

We’ve seen that from own his experience Abraham could say with confidence that God had brought life back to his own impotent body that in v. 12 is described as “as good as dead!” If God could bring new life through his own dead body then surely he could raise Isaac back from the dead? This is what he concluded.

All the while his relationship to God was anything but a lazy one. It was one of thoughtful planning and action. It was not passive.

Dear Friends, The more natural response for Abraham in this situation would’ve been to question God’s guidance in the offering of Isaac, rather than to believe and obey. That would be the easy way around this obstacle. But Abraham chose the direction that would be harder. The condition that we are in we can’t explain nor do we have an answer to this. This is a testing time for all of us. Only a deeper relationship with God will help us overcome all the tests that come in our way.

This Lenten Season When God is testing us by shaking us completely I believe he is doing so that we might learn to live by faith and not by sight. He wants to build our life on the permanence of the eternal, not on the instability of this temporal world. Let us welcome the challenge that God is giving us this Lenten season.

God Bless You.