Streams in the Desert July 16 Daily Devotional

Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son.... I will multiply thy seed as the stars or the
heaven; ... because thou hast obeyed my voice (Gen. 22:16-18).
And from that day to this, men have been learning that when, at
God's voice, they surrender up to Him the one thing above all else that was dearest to them by Him a thousand times over. Abraham
gives up his one and only son, at God's call, and with this
disappear all his hopes for the boy's fife and manhood, and for a noble family bearing his name. But the boy is restored, the family becomes as the stars and sands in number, and out of it in the
funness of time, appears Jesus Christ
That is just the way God meets every real sacrifice of every child
of His. We surrender all and accept poverty; and He sends wealth. We renounce a rich field of service; He sends us a richer one than we had dared to dream of. We give up all our cherished hopes, and die unto self-, He sends us the fife more abundant and tingling
joy. And the crown of it all is our Jesus Christ For we can never know the fullness of the sacrifice. The earthly founder of the
family of Christ must commence by losing himself and his only son,
just as the Heavenly Founder of that family did. We cannot be members of that family with the full privileges and joys of
membership upon any other basis. --C. G. Trumbull.

We sometimes seem to forget that what God takes He takes In fire; and that the only way to the resurrection life and the ascension
mount is the way of the garden, the cross, and the grave.
Think not O soul of man, that Abraham's was a unique and solitary experience. It is simply a specimen and pattern of God's dealings with all souls who are prepared to obey Him at whatever cost After thou hast patiently endured, thou shalt receive the promise. The
moment of supreme sacrifice shall be the moment of supreme and rapturous blessing. God's river, which is full of water, shall
burst its banks, and pour upon thee a tide of wealth and grace.
There is nothing, indeed, which God will not do for a man who dares to step out upon what seems to be the mist, though as he puts down his foot he finds a rock beneath him. --F. B. Meyer.