“Abraham said, my son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” Genesis 22: 8 NKJV
It seems like the more I strive to follow Christ and encourage others through my own testimony, the more obstacles Satan throws in my path to keep my mouth shut. This morning, I was jolted out of a much-needed sleep by the urge to write this message of hope to someone who may need it. Perhaps, I am the only person who actually needs to hear this, but I’ve learned in my devotions that when I am lacking and seeking God for something, the best thing I can do is give away the very thing I am seeking to someone else. So I am praying that I can pour hope into someone’s desperate situation with this message.
The story from which the above passage was taken is the word that woke me this morning because it spoke to the tremendous faith Abraham displayed during a moment of enormous pressure. For those who may not know, Abraham had already displayed his great faith in God more than once. Many years ago, God came to him and told him to literally pick up everything he had and relocate from his native land to a place God would eventually show him. God gave him no other instruction, yet Abraham was willing to leave everything he knew and found comfort in because God simply asked him to. Then God told him in his old age that he would be the father of many nations through a son that he would eventually name Isaac. His wife was barren, yet Abraham believed God for that miracle. After many, many years of waiting for that promise to manifest, God did exactly what He said. However, even after all of that testing, God felt the need to test Abraham once again. He told Abraham to take his only son to a mountain and sacrifice him on the altar. Abraham’s response still blows my mind to this day, because I know that I would have taken so long to obey that command. My first thought if I were Abraham would have been, ‘I know I didn’t hear God clearly because He promised me a son. He told me that I would father many nations, so He couldn’t possibly mean that I have to kill my only son…I’m just going to sit here and wait for another word from God because He clearly made a mistake.’ In doing so, Abraham would have failed the test miserably and would have forfeited the many unknown blessings God had in store for him in exchange for what he knew and was already comfortable with.
This story is important because our faith is the key that opens the door to any promise we are believing God for. God has heard your prayers and He wants to give you everything He has for you, but it’s critical for us to trust the process. Sometimes, the process can be painful. It can make you want to give up. It can make you question whether you are really acting in God’s will. It can make you wonder if God is truly sovereign or if He’s even listening. But faith is key. It’s our faith that moves God to act, not our questions. It still boggles my mind because I am not totally there yet, but Abraham’s response to his son is the same response we need to have in the desperate times in our lives.
“God will provide…”
Whether we are battling loneliness, strife in our relationships, suicidal thoughts, unfair treatment in the workplace, a troubled marriage, abandonment, financial issues, etc, we have to get to a place where we believe with our whole being that God will provide. But it doesn’t stop there. Like Abraham, we must move forward with what God has instructed us to do even when it hurts and makes absolutely no sense at all. When Abraham showed God once again that He could be trusted with His promise, God interrupted Abraham just as he was about to sacrifice his son and provided him with the ram in the bush to sacrifice instead. God’s intention was never for Isaac to be killed, but he needed Abraham to demonstrate his sole devotion to God above the very thing he always wanted—a son.
When we get to a point where we trust God even when it contradicts everything He’s promised, that is when the real breakthrough will come. I am literally preaching this to myself. More than anything, I want things to go a certain way, but things don’t always happen the way I want them to. So, I have to trust God with my life and believe that where I am going is where He is leading me. The wonderful thing about God is that He always corrects us when we are open to His correction and will place us on the right path whenever we get off track. The best promise He has given us is that no matter how bad things may be, all things truly do work together for our good (Romans 8:28). So I don’t know if that was for just me or for someone else, but I wanted to put this out there as a reminder to myself years or months from now when I am going through another test and I find myself questioning God. I will look back on this time and remember how God did and will always provide.
Writing Under the Influence 