Across the Scriptures, the heroes of Israel respond to the God of Israel with the cry ‫הנני‬ “Hineni – Here I am” in critical  moments of their lives. Abraham at the ‫עקידת‬ Akedah (the binding of Isaac), Samuel in the Tabernacle in service to Eli, and  Isaiah in response to seeing the Lord Himself high and lifted up. And we see this phrase in the mouth of Ananias of Damascus in Acts 9:10. In fact, if you do a search of the English NKJV text, you can find this phrase nearly 30 times throughout Scripture.

This phrase is often the reply in the midst of a challenging request from the Lord. In Genesis 22, the Lord asked Abraham  to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice to test Abraham’s commitment to Him. Though Abraham did not yet know the test that was  about to be set before him, his first heart response to the Lord was “Here I am,” He was telling the Lord that independent of the task, he is available and willing to do the Lord’s bidding.

Read the full article here: July ’23 Issue 23