Dennis R. Wiles

First Baptist Arlington

January 18, 2026

2026: Flourishing Together:

Transformed on The Jesus Way

Romans 12:1-2 (Gospel Guide: John)

WINTER 2026: Designed to Flourish

January 1 – February 17, 2026

Psalm 92:12-15

Radical Obedience

Genesis 22:1-18

Theme for 2026: Flourishing Together: Transformed on The Jesus Way

Theme for Winter 2026: Designed to Flourish

TREK: Abraham’s life with God was a long journey characterized by calling, connection, and commitment.

TEST: The story of Abraham and Isaac begins with God’s plan to test Abraham’s faith.

The test, instead of breaking him, brings him to the summit of his lifelong walk with God.

-Derek Kidner, Genesis

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

-1 Peter 1:6-7

TRUST: Abraham learned to trust God completely.

Faith has to do with marrying Invisible and Visible. When we engage in an act of faith we give up control, we give up sensory (sight, hearing, etc.) confirmation of reality; we give up insisting on head-knowledge as our primary means of orientation in life. The positive way to say this is that when we engage in an act of faith we choose to deal with a living God whom we trust to know what he is doing, we choose a way of life in which bodily senses and physical matter are understood as inseparable and organic to vast interiorities (soul) and immense beyond (heaven), and we choose to no longer operate strictly on the basis of hard-earned knowledge, glorious as it is, but over a lifetime to embrace the mystery that must dazzle gradually/ Or every man go blind.

-Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

For we live by faith, not by sight.

-2 Corinthians 5:7

When our life is illogical, we must become theological.

-Skip Heitzig

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

-Hebrews 11:17-19

TRUTH: God demonstrated that He could be trusted, and He provided a sacrifice in the place of Isaac.

TRACE: In this story, we recognize that it points to a greater sacrifice in Jerusalem (Mt. Moriah) that culminates in the redemption of humanity!