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Getting Rid of Ishmael

by Jerry Ousley  
10/25/2014 / Christian Living

Have you ever had something you really wanted to get rid of but it just seemed to keep coming back? My very first computer was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A. It was the machine that got me hooked on computers. I'll never forget that little jewel because it was the inspiration for my livelihood today.

However, after a few years I outgrew it. As I began doing more and more on the computer my needs increased and even though I had spent a small fortune upgrading the Texas Instrument machine the day arrived when it just wasn't feasible to spend any more money on it and so I took the plunge and purchased a new one. The TI99/4A was put away. There came a time when my niece needed a computer. I thought she might be able to use the one I had put away so I pulled it out, took it to her home and set it up.

But she outgrew it faster than I did. Guess what; it came back. I gave it to someone else. To make a long story short it came back again. Finally it bit the dust after several years. It took it forever to die and I finally disposed of it.

My father once set an old microwave oven out by the road. It was what the inhabitants of our fair little town called "big trash week." Once or twice a year the town would allow people to set items out by the road for trash collection. These were things you couldn't normally throw away. It was comical because for a whole week you'd see others driving up and down the streets, stopping occasionally to look through what other people were getting rid of and they'd toss what they wanted up on the bed of their truck. Some had a full truck load!

Someone picked up the microwave that Dad had set out. It was no big deal because he was throwing it away. What was unusual was that I suppose whoever picked it up found out that it really didn't work (that's why he was disposing of it) and in a day or two it was back. Instead of putting it out by their own trash pile they had brought it back to where they had found it!

In effort to make God's promise come true, Abraham had taken Hagar, the servant of his wife, Sarah, as a concubine to have a substitute child for his wife. It was a common practice in their age. But it was not God's will. He had promised Abraham and Sarah a son but he would come in God's timing. When they finally did have a son (Isaac), on the day of his weaning celebration the Bible tells us that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, now a teenager, made fun of little Isaac. Sarah was so angered by this action that she insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be sent away from their household. Abraham didn't want to do it because over the years he had grown to love the boy, Ishmael. But God revealed to him that this was His will and so Abraham sent them away. You can read this story in Genesis 21.

Later, the Apostle Paul used this incident as an example of our own Christian experience. Ishmael represents the old life while Isaac represented God's promise of grace. Ishmael has to go from our lives. It is weeding out those things that hinder us from following Jesus.

We have been called to drop our old lives and follow Christ. Often there is baggage that seems to travel with us when we make a commitment to Him. This baggage is unnecessary and the load needs to be lightened. As we grow in the Lord He will progressively reveal things that we need to get rid of in our lives. When He does we need to chuck that bag over the side and keep on going.

Sometimes it seems like it's hard to rid ourselves of those things. We think it's gone but it just keeps coming back. But keep on until the day comes when it is finally gone.

Lightening our load is ridding our self of yet another aspect of Ishmael in our lives. As we lighten the load the journey actually gets a little easier because we have let loose of some extra weight. We may have thought that we couldn't do without that bag but now we ask our self, "Why did I carry that load all this time?" It's like getting rid of items that have taken up closet space for years. We thought we'd need them someday but they just kept taking up that valuable storage space. Now that it's gone we wonder why we kept it so long. It's getting rid of those unnecessary things in our lives and once Ishmael is gone, things seem to go a whole lot better and we follow Jesus a little bit closer because it isn't so hard to keep up with Him now.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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