Trusting God
Bible Readings
Take a few minutes to read the Bible verses listed and ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in how this verse applies to you this week.
1 Some years later God decided to test Abraham, so he spoke to him. Abraham answered, “Here I am, .” 2 The said, “Go get Isaac, your only son, the one you dearly love! Take him to the land of Moriah, and I will show you a mountain where you must sacrifice him to me on the fires of an altar.” 3 So Abraham got up early the next morning and chopped wood for the fire. He put a saddle on his donkey and set out with Isaac and two servants for the place where God had told him to go. 4 Three days later Abraham looked off in the distance and saw the place. 5 He told his servants, “Stay here with the donkey, while my son and I go over there to worship. We will come back.” 6 Abraham put the wood on Isaac's shoulder, but he carried the hot coals and the knife. As the two of them walked along, 7 Isaac said, “Father, we have the coals and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” “My son,” Abraham answered, “God will provide the lamb.” The two of them walked on, and 8 9 when they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar and placed the wood on it. Next, he tied up his son and put him on the wood. 10 He then took the knife and got ready to kill his son. 11 But the 's angel shouted from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am!” he answered. 12 “Don't hurt the boy or harm him in any way!” the angel said. “Now I know that you truly obey God, because you were willing to offer him your only son.” 13 Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in the bushes. So he took the ram and sacrificed it instead of his son. 14 Abraham named that place “The Will Provide.” And even now people say, “On the mountain of the it will be provided.”
Genesis 22:1-14
Memory Verse
Proverbs 3:5-6
5 With all your heart you must trust the and not your own judgment. 6 Always let him lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow.
Today, Tyler rode a two-wheel bike without training wheels for the first time. He thought he might be ready, but as he started, he wasn’t so sure. It seemed harder than he thought it would be. “You can do it. I’m right here. Trust me!” said his dad, holding firmly to the back of his seat. Comforted a little by his dad’s words, Tyler still felt very scared. “Dad can ride a bike easily, but can I? Can I trust Dad not to let me fall?”
In Genesis 22:1-13, God tests Abraham in a very hard way to see how well he trusts God. God did not plan on hurting Abraham’s son, Isaac, but he wanted Abraham to understand what trusting God looked like. As he followed God’s command, Abraham might have asked many of the same questions you and I have about trust. What was God asking of him? Would God do things to harm him or his family? Could he trust God?
Abraham might have wondered what God was doing, but he trusted in who God was. He knew that to trust God meant that he believed in God’s love for him and his family.
Do you trust that God will hold on to you like Tyler’s dad held on to the back of Tyler’s bike seat? Can you trust God when he says, “You can do it! I’m here!”? Trusting God can be difficult because most times we don’t know exactly what he’s doing. But what we do know is that God is loving, kind, good, and does things that are the best for us.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for your love of me. Thank you for all that you do. Help me to listen and trust you more and more each day—even when it’s hard. Amen.Related Resources
Kelly VanderWoude
Kelly is the husband of Michelle and father of Lukkas and Taylor. He
enjoys making sawdust (and the occasional wood-product), smoking and
curing meats, and spending time with his family. He is the pastor of
Immanuel CRC in Fort Collins, CO and is the author of "The Honesty of
the Psalms: Wrestling with the Word of God in a broken world.