Trials are adverse circumstances that God either introduces or allows in our lives to both identify where we are spiritually as well as to prepare us for where He wants us to go. If you are alive, there is no escaping life’s trials.
You are either in a trial now, you’ve just come out of a trial, or you are getting ready to go into a trial. Trials are unavoidable realities of life.
But even though we all experience them, we also should take comfort in knowing that trials must first pass through God’s hands before reaching us. Nothing comes our way without first having received His Divine approval. And in order to get His Divine approval, there must be a Divine reason for Him to approve it.
We learn about God’s name Jehovah-Jireh in the biblical story of Abraham offering up his son Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. The root word for the name Jireh literally means “to see.” Yet the compound name when put together means “to provide.” Abraham, knowing that what he saw in the spiritual realm affected his own actions in the physical realm, he recognized the power of sight in calling the place of sacrifice Jehovah Jireh. Somewhere in the combination of those two names, there is a relationship between God “seeing” and God “providing.” When we look at the form of the word “provide” that reads “provision,” we can recognize this link more clearly. Vision is in reference to seeing; while provision means that something was seen beforehand and thus provided for. The root “vision” ties the addressing of what is provided to what was seen.
God provided for Abraham based upon what He saw with regard to Abraham and that pre-vision led to God’s provision. God provided a ram when he saw Abraham going forth in obedience to sacrifice his son. He provided a way out of his trial.
So the question is: What must God see so that He might provide for you when you are caught in a trial of life? He needs to see the same things that He saw in Abraham which are found in these words from the passage: rose, saddled, took, split, arose, and went. Abraham did not delay his obedience. He did what God had asked him to do even though he didn’t know how God was going to work it out. Delayed obedience is disobedience. Partial obedience is complete disobedience. In other words, if Abraham had only gone half way on the trip, he wouldn’t have finished the journey. He never would have experienced and known Jehovah Jireh.
Excerpted from The Power of God’s Names, Dr. Tony Evans, Harvest House Publishers (2014)
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