The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing
A. W. Tozer
April 1, 1981
It's difficult to study the subject of money without being impressed by the power it represents-the power to bless and the power to curse. Many of the problems we discuss in this issue stem at heart from man's inability to use money and possessions as God intended. 1 Using the story of Abraham and Isaac, A. W. Tozer articulates powerfully man's struggle to reject the craving for things and replace it with the calm of total obedience to God.
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms, he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of his way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years, and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood, the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.
"Take now thy son," said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." The sacred writer spares us a closeup of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than ...
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