I Heard My Father's Voice - New Evangelizers

Recently, I was teaching the story of Abraham to my students. The climactic story is the one where God calls him to sacrifice his son Isaac.

It is the most famous story about Abraham. Even people who have never picked up the Bible tend to be familiar with it. For many, it is a difficult story to reconcile in their heads and hearts. Often I hear many stumbling blocks to the story. The one I would like to address here is this: “If God knows everything, why does He need to test Abraham’s faith?”

We must begin with the question, “Is God all-knowing?” The answer for every Christian is “Yes.” So if God is all-knowing that would mean that He would already know how much faith Abraham has. So what would be the point in the testing.

To understand this, we must understand something about the lived-nature of faith. Very often we think of faith as a quality inside of our minds, our hearts. It is something that I feel inside. In some ways that is true, but in other ways it is not. It is true that faith lives inside of you. But if that is the only place it resides, then it is not real faith. The point is that faith is not real until it is exercised.

God already knew how much faith Abraham had. But that is not the point. The point is Abraham didn’t know. The reason he didn’t know is that his faith was never tested to such an extreme point. Once it had been, his faith becomes real.

In class, I ask my students by show of hands, “Does anyone here trust me?” If a student raises his or her hand, I invite them to the front of the classroom. I then instruct them to face away from me, put their feet together and their arms across their chest. I think instruct them to fall straight backwards, stiff as a board, and trust that I will catch them before they fall. At this point some choose to sit down. This helps illustrate my point: they may have thought they had faith in me. But when the time came to exercise that faith, they found out that they did not have it. Other students volunteer. But I tell the class that this person will not know if they actually believe me until they fall backwards. When the moment comes and they don’t fall, they will know that they have no faith in me. If they do fall, that faith will become real.

In the same way, Abraham put all of his faith in God. He could say until was blue in the face, “I believe in you, God.” And many of us offer up our devotions of faith to God in the same way. But what happens when that faith must be exercised? In Abraham’s case, he went all the way. He held nothing back. He picked up the knife to deliver his son as a sacrifice. Even Abraham would not know how much faith he had until he went to go all the way. After that point, Abraham’s faith was manifest in the testing.

Sometimes a student will say to me, “But that’s crazy. If a voice told me to kill my family, I wouldn’t do it.” The perspective being shared here is a common one, but it is also one that lacks the context of Abraham’s story. Abraham is not listening to a random voice. He is listening to God because he knows God. He has a relationship with Him.

The best illustration I can think of for this is a story I heard many years ago. I am sure there are many versions of the story out there, but this is the one that is familiar to me. There was an apartment that was on fire. Everyone got out except little Timmy, who was trapped on the balcony on the fourth floor. Because there were too many cars and people in the way, the firefighters could not get their ladders and nets near the building. As the crowd gathered near, the fire chief called up to Timmy with the bullhorn:

“Timmy, this is the fire chief. Climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you,” the fire chief said.

Timmy didn’t move.

Again, the fire chief called out:

“Timmy, this is the fire chief. Climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you,” the fire chief said.

Timmy didn’t move.

The fire chief did not know that Timmy was blind. He could not see how far he had to fall. All he knew is that the heat was getting closer and he was choking on the smoke. The crowd underneath looked up in horror as the flames grew closer to the motionless boy.

Suddenly, a man broke through the crowd and pushed the fire chief aside and cried out:

“Timmy, climb over the ledge, hang on by your fingers, let go and I’ll catch you!”

And to everyone’s amazement, without a word, Timmy climbed over the edge of the balcony, dangled by his fingers, then he let go and this man caught.

The crowd burst into applause. The first responders grabbed Timmy and took him to an ambulance to check his vitals and he was fine. Pushing through a reporter ran up to Timmy and asked, “Timmy, the fire chief kept tell you to jump and you didn’t. But then this man shouts up to you and you did it without a word. Why?” Timmy looked puzzled at the reporters question and he simply responded:

“That’s easy: I heard my father’s voice. I knew he would catch me.”

Abraham heard the voice of his Father. And he knew God would catch Him. Abraham knew that God was the Lord of life and that no matter what happened, God would make good on His promises. That is because Abraham had spent decades growing in his relationship with God so that he could hear his Father’s voice.

We are not called to some blind, random faith. We are called to take a leap into the arms of the Father we know.

Can you hear your Father’s voice?

And do you believe He will catch you?

Copyright 2025, WL Grayson

W.L. Grayson

I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.