God routinely asks His people to do the “impossible”: Love your enemies. Forgive those who have hurt you. Stop worrying. Don’t be selfish. Be joyful in trials. These sound like the right things to do. But is it really possible to live like this?
Yes, it is—but only if we come to know God as Abraham did. Remember his story? God barged into the great patriarch’s life and graciously gave him all sorts of staggering promises and blessings, chief of which was a son (Genesis 12–21).
But then, in a terrible test of faith (Genesis 22), God asked Abraham to do the unthinkable: sacrifice his beloved Isaac, the boy Abraham had waited for all his life.
It is impossible to fathom the mystery and agony of this moment. But Abraham trusted God. With equal parts terror, grief, faith, and confusion, he obeyed.
That’s when it happened. Just in the nick of time, right when it looked like all was lost, God intervened. He stopped Abraham and called his attention to a ram caught in a thicket—a substitute sacrifice.
As a result of this experience, Abraham learned that God doesn’t just call His people to action and then disappear. On the contrary—He shows up in the nick of time, and supplies precisely what we need. The very thing God demands, He also provides.
Abraham, overjoyed with wild, sweet relief, named the place of this miracle “The LORD Will Provide.” (It’s worth noting that the verb “provide” also contains the idea of seeing—in other words, God sees what we need, and then meets the need.)
What “impossible” thing is God asking you to do today? What do you need in order to live the life to which God has called you? Perhaps as you begin to make your list, you’d do well to write across the top of it: “Jehovah-Jireh: The Lord Will Provide.”
Then at the bottom, write out this great promise: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
God sees what we need and generously supplies it.
In what specific ways have you seen God provide for you over the last month?
