Possession- the state of having, owning, or controlling something.
We must remove our self from possessing anything in our life’s.
We think that when we possess something we own it, we are controlling it.
Well we are actually dead wrong.
The very things we are trying to hold onto, from dreams, a relationship, a job, items, money, they do not become our possession, they become in possession of us.
To control us, our every decision our every move.
That thing has become an idol of control over us.
It can even be a great or God thing that we are trying to hold onto trying to possess.
If I hold onto it and I try and accomplish it, it has possibly became possessive over my heart and has possibly removed God as the highest place in our hearts.
I’m not saying to stop pursuing dreams, or doing what you are doing, but ask your self honestly;
Do I have possession over ____ or have I truly surrendered it over to God?
Reading about Abraham and his son Isaac and a book “The pursuit of God” – A.W. Tozer is when this started shifting something in me.
(Genesis 21:1-5, 22:1-18)
God promised Abraham a son. God fulfilled His promise. Then God asks that He sacrifice that very promise on an alter of worship…
In my head that doesn’t click…
God you gave Him a promise, He even did it right waiting and being faithful in many areas of His life until that point.
Then He receives the promise, he walks with the promise for supposedly 13 years, and then you desire Him to sacrifice it?
Why??
He was testing if the promise, had become in possession of Him.
If it had control over Him, or if truly nothing possessed His heart other then his Lord God…
God is a jealous lover… He wants all of our heart. Not pieces.
He didn’t give pieces of His when He sent His son, so he doesn’t expect pieces from ours.
He will keep his promises for abundance of grace and many things in life, but He NEVER has wanted those promises to keep you.
If we have a dream, and that very dream could even be from God, and it starts to be accomplished only by Him, we have truly laid it over into His hands, but
then one day when accomplished and walking it out, if God asked you to sacrifice it, could you??
Could you wake up the next day as Abraham did, and start to step out in fullness of faith on a three day journey to sacrifice the very “promise” of God?
That’s an extremely tough question… But could you?
That is a question I’ve been asking myself…
This doesn’t mean you don’t be real with God, and become numb of what he has asked of you.
Show Him your heart, but move in Faith.
To be real and show that nothing is higher, and nothing possesses me, but You my King must be our pinnacle of goals.
Or does that dream or thing posses your heart more than He?
“25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there
is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the
strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Psalms 73:25-26
We must remove our possession, over our possessions.
From time, talents, money, clothes, and natural things.
When we do not possess anything, means nothing can be stolen or taken from you.
If we possess nothing, if God asks us to sacrifice it, it will not be a burden to do so.
If we possess nothing, when He asks for sacrifice of it, it never was “ours” in the first place.
When we do not demand “ownership” of those things and we lay them before God, He can do much greater things then we could of ever dreamed of.
The beautiful part of that story of Abraham and his son.
Is that God waited to appear and stop him until Abraham had completely surrendered that promise and tied it up and laid it onto the alter.
He was even to the point of having the knife raised high…
Right then, in that moment… God showed up…
- He didn’t show up when he started the 3 day journey.
- Didn’t show up when he and his son started up the mountain.
- Didn’t even show up when he started to tie his promise up.
He showed up right when He saw the genuine heart of Abraham.
“Not even this great promise you have given me, possesses me like you.”
God saw that the promise, the dream of that man’s heart, it did not possess, it had no ownership of him.
But that He(the Lord) had the pinnacle the highest place in his heart, and not even a great promise could remove it.
After God shows up, a ram is provided right over in a thicket of bushes…
Yet it never was shown until He showed God his heart of complete surrender of everything he possessed.
God will show up, but first we must truly have released our possession of our possessions.
We sometimes have to take a 3 day journey knowing what will happen at the end of it. Climb up a mountain, even be asked about what is happening by that promise.
Tie it up, and place it on the alter and completely ready to sacrifice it.
In that moment of testing, we will see if God is our highest possession, or if that dream was/is…
God will see our heart, whether being in genuine faith of sacrifice or doing it as a work.
His desire is that nothing to possess us, but He.
For our hearts to be ravished by His Love and consumed by Him, that He may be all that we desire to possess.
To possess His heart as badly as His desire for our heart.
He must be the highest, the pinnacle “thing” in our life’s.
“He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:30
If He isn’t the highest, we have an idol above Him. Soon enough that idol is going to be wiped out, whether by our own hands, or His.
If our hands are closed off to releasing everything we possess, soon enough we will possess nothing, because we will not be able to receive anything.
Joseph III
Desperately Dependent 