The Lord Will Provide

But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its thorns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said “On the mountaintop of the Lord it will be provided.”

Genesis 22:11-14

Can you hear God when He’s calling out to you? Do you spend time with Him daily allowing Him to speak to your heart? If He was calling out to you in the midst of a storm, would you even recognize His voice?

The story of Abraham and Isaac is that of a real man and his son. A man who had a tremendous amount of faith and trusted God no matter what He asked of him. We know this story and we know how it ends but what if we didn’t. What if this had been our own son or daughter that was the fulfillment of a promise that God made to us? Could we have made that three day journey to Mount Moriah knowing the whole way that we were going to have to sacrifice our child? Could we have taken that knife in our hand? As a parent, it is not hard to imagine the thoughts that were running through Abraham's mind. What a burden of emotions that poured out as he agonized the command that he knew he must obey.

God is a God of faithfulness and He will always provide what we need when we are seeking after Him. He is Yahweh Yireh, The Lord Will Provide. He is the One who will provide for our every spiritual, material and emotional need when we live in obedience to Him because He is God and He sees our past, our present and our future. He is able to anticipate, He sees before hand what we need and He provides accordingly.

We have a tendency to live our lives as though God’s grace is cheap. He sacrificed His only Son for us and allowed Him to take our place so that we would one day spend eternity with Him. Sometimes God asks us to sacrifice because He knows that there is no other way that we will learn that He in fact is God. When we are asked to sacrifice something that we love to Him, we have to acknowledge that He is God and that we are not. This in turn leads us to worship in a way that will allow us to experience His provisions for us.

We all will at one point or another be asked by God to sacrifice. As a parent, we won’t be asked to physically put our child upon an altar but it may be that we are asked to place our child in God’s hands, relinquishing our own tendency to be a little god to our child. If you don’t have children, it may be a relationship, a career or possibly a dream. When that day comes for you, will you be able to turn it over to Him? Is Your faith and trust solely found in Christ alone and His words of promise and faithfulness? Does the wisdom you seek come from Him and His word or from books that promise the answer to all your questions? We must always remember that only He has the answers and only He can provide the response that our life requires.. We must train our hearts to be in tune to the One who knows our every need and be ready with whatever it may be that He may ask us to turn over. We must be willing to surrender it all to the God who will provide all that we require because He is Yahweh Yireh.

"Father, giving up control can be so hard. Help me surrender to Your will so that I may lay down whatever it is that You require of me. Write upon my heart Your promises of faithfulness so that I may always remember that You and You alone are the provider of my every need."

Written by Nicole