God Provides--the Basis of Faith - Genesis 22:14

"Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means 'the Lord will provide')." God told Abraham to take his son Isaac to a mountain in the land of Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (vs. 3). (Incidentally, this mountain was later the location of the Temple in Jerusalem.) As Abraham and Isaac walked up the mountain, Isaac asked his father where was the sheep for the burnt offering. Abraham answered Isaac: "God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son" (vs. 8). Just as Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, an angel of the Lord called out for Abraham not to kill the boy. When Abraham looked around, he saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns and Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it. As was common with the patriarchs, the commemorative naming of the location recalled the nature of the encounter with God. Abraham named the place "the Lord will provide." God tested Abraham's faith and Abraham memorialized the test of his faith not as "I passed the test" but as "the Lord will provide." Abraham's faith in God was not based on how much or how hard he could believe but on the stedfast confidence of what God had promised him and was able to do:" Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again" (Hebrews 11:19). The Hebrews writer says that faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen and gives us an assurance about things we cannot see (Hebrews 11:1). Faith allows us to look into the unseen world where God abides and apply what we see and hear to this physical world in which we live. Listen to what God is promising you and risk everything to apply it to your life!