This incident is a picture of the blunder we make in thinking that the final thing God wants of us is the sacrifice of death.

What God wants is the sacrifice through death which enables us to do what Jesus did, viz., sacrifice our lives.

Not - I am willing to go to death with Thee, but - I am willing to be identified with Thy death so that I may sacrifice my life to God.

We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this blunder, and the same discipline goes on in our lives.

God nowhere tells us to give up things for the sake of giving them up.

He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having - viz., life with Himself.

It is a question of loosening the bands that hinder the life, and immediately those bands are loosened by identification with the death of Jesus, we enter into a relationship with God whereby we can sacrifice our lives to Him.

It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death.

He wants you to be a "living sacrifice," to let Him have all your powers that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus.

This is the thing that is acceptable to God.

Up, up the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine, Help me to climb, and dwell in pardon’s light.

I must be pure as Thou, or ever less Than Thy design of me—therefore incline My heart to take men’s wrongs as Thou tak’st mine.

Have you come to the place God told you of? Have you gone through the sacrifice of death? Are you willing to make the moral decision that the thing die out in you which never was in Jesus?

Up to that whiter than snow-shine; up to that place that is as strong and firm as the Throne of God. Do not say, “That pure, white, holy life is never for me!” Let God lift you; let Him take the shrouds away; let Him lift up; up to the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine. And when you get to the top what do you find? A great, strong tableland, where your feet are on a rock; your steps enlarged under you; your goings established. O SWALD CHAMBERS

Jesus offers you “life more abundantly.” Grasp the offer! Quit the boggy and dark low ground, and let Him lead you up higher! MOUNT AINT OPS WITH JESUS

`Take the supreme climb! Jesus lead me up the mountain, Where the whitest robes are seen, Where the saints can see the fountain, Where the pure are keeping clean.

Higher up, where light increases, Rich above all earthly good, Where the life of sinning ceases, Where the Spirit comes in floods.

Lead me higher, nothing dreading, In the race to never stop; In Thy footsteps keep me treading, Give me grace to reach the top.

Courage, my soul, and let us journey on!

Our hardest sacrifices are never so hard as we thought they were going to be, if we go on with them to the uttermost that God asks.

A sacrifice of self to God’s will made halfway, or even nine-tenths, is a grinding, cruel experience.

When it is made the whole way, with the altar built and self laid upon the altar, God always comes with an unexpected blessing that so overwhelms us with love and joy that the hardship of the sacrifice sinks out of sight.

“Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld” (v. 12). Can He say that to us today?

No one ever knows the full joy of hearing the word from God until the altar has been built and the knife is laid to the sacrifice.

MESSAGES FOR THE MORNING WATCH

Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?

Your heart, does the Spirit control?

You can only be blest and have peace and sweet rest

As you yield Him your body and soul.