I had one of those mornings during my Quiet Time where I had several random thoughts and ideas as I read and underlined. On my other blog, Living in the Shadow, I am going to share some of those thoughts on Friday morning. But today on this blog I want to share two random thoughts I had as I read.

The first is from 40 Days of Faith by Paul David Tripp.  It is a compilation of 40 devotional thoughts from his wildly popular New Morning Mercies which I cannot recommend highly enough. I used it several years ago for 2 or 3 years. I even had a daily blog of lessons from it. Anyway, on Day 38 of Faith he was writing about Abraham’s ordeal about sacrificing Isaac. He opened with this thought:

Faith is living in light of what God has said, resting in what he has done, and entrusting the future to his care.

I’m pretty sure most of my readers know the story of Abraham’s trek to Mount Moriah where he was to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.  At the last moment God intervened and provided a ram. He most certainly was testing Abraham’s willingness to trust Him. Tripp wrote these words: “We know that grace had visited and transformed the heart of this man, or he would not have been able to react as he did.”  A paragraph later he wrote this (and this is priceless):

Abraham wasn’t relying on what he could see or understand. No, he was at rest because he acted on the firm platform of God’s commands, as well as his presence, promises, faithfulness, and power.

Abraham’s faith in the God He came to know and trust; the God he saw do a phenomenal miracle with the birth of Isaac; the God who loved and sustained him through all his humanity, i.e. sin, is the faith that led him to totally trust God with this offering of Isaac. I like what Hebrews 11 says: “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.”  NOW THAT IS FAITH!

And one last word from my reading:

Christmas is a testament to God’s grace, not my deservedness.

Some editing of that last statement was made by me to make it more personal. It is from The Christmas We Didn’t Expect by David Mathis (p.70).

I hope these random thoughts help you in your daily walk today.