Following are notes on the Sabbath School lesson:

1. Heat is important because (one reason) it is essential to our comfort.
2. Strongest argument in favor of the truth is a loving Christian. But how you get this type of Christian? Only through trial.
3. Trials and obstacles are the way the Lord disciplines us to be successful Christians (Ellen White, Desire of Ages, pp. 470-471).
4. Men of power are that way because they have experienced obstacles and opposition.
5. Isaiah 53:10 “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put [him] to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see [his] seed, he shall prolong [his] days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”
6. This is speaking of Jesus, who was bruised by the Father. He didn’t deserve those bruises.
7. C.S. Lewis was worried what he would think about God when his wife was dying. How do we see God when trial and suffering put the heat on us?
8. Going through trials without God is much, much worse.
10. Many people ask “Why me?” when trials come instead of asking what the Lord wants them to get out of the experience.
11. Sometimes we don’t realize we are having trials.
12. Abraham knew God’s voice because he was in communication with Him every day, but he went to the place where he had met the angel several times before, hoping an angel would tell him something else than sacrificing his son.
13. He wondered if he had heard right because sacrificing children was an abomination to God.
14. He probably didn’t share God’s request with Sarah because she would probably have opposed him.
15. In Patriarchs and Prophets, it says the God reserved this last terrible trial for Abraham when Abraham was old and ready for rest.
16. We can take the position that a certain experience is coming to us because God wants us to learn something special, an unwrapped gift from the Lord.
17. Isaac heard with amazement and terror that he was going to be the sacrifice, but he went along with God’s request and even helped his father – an example of proper training.
18. But even back then, they had the confidence that God could raise people from the dead.