When I Lay My Isaac Down

Carol Kent's book, When I Lay My Isaac Down, is a must read for everyone who has adult children. She tells her own story with the hope of helping others. I have quoted a lot from her book below in hopes you will read the entire book.

When we fully understand that we are in a spiritual battle, that the world is not our home, just a “stopping off” place, we can begin to get excited about having a short time to engage in the battle raging around us. The Enemy wants us to waste our time generating anger toward others, ruminating over personal betrayals and over injustices due to sickness, accidents, and evil. He wants to destroy our ability to function productively and to disengage us from inspiring others to be Christ-follo9wers. He wants us to give up and die or to control everything around us in such a tight-fisted manner that we’re tied up in a ridiculous knots. p. 27

We can hug our hurts and make a shrine out of our sorrows or we can offer them to God as a sacrifice of praise. The choice is ours. Richard Exley p. 33

Our broken lives are not lost or useless. God’s love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out his wonderful plan of love. Eric Liddell p.93

The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in. Philip Yancey p. 113

I’ve discovered and astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him. Jim Cymbala p. 162

So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (The Message) p. 162

Without purpose, a person begins to die a slow death. Our confusion about finding purpose in life comes when we perceive that meaning is only experienced when we reach a predetermined goal or a sought-after resolution to a challenging problem. But Oswald Chambers reframes the concept of purpose this way:

What is my vision of God’s purpose for me? Whatever it may be, His purpose is for me to depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay calm, faithful, and unconfused while in the middle of the turmoil of life, the goal of the purpose of God is being accomplished in me. God is not working toward a particular finish—His purpose is the process itself….It is the process, not the outcome, that is glorifying to God. Oswald Chambers P. 163

(God) loves us when we don’t want Him to love us. He loves when we don’t act like Christians. He loves us when our lives are a mess. His love is sticky: resistant to rejection, aggressive, and persistent. The challenge is on, so go ahead, resist his love, run from it, hide from it. Go ahead and try. Michael Yaconelli P. 186

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