Articles
I couldn’t believe it. My heart began to sink as the realization hit me. How was I going to get home?!? I was on the island of Java in Indonesia thousands of miles away from the security of home. I was expected to leave Indonesia within the month because the visa that gave me legal entrance in the country would soon expire. The plane ticket that I thought would take me back to the United States was, in fact, expired. I was informed by the travel agent that the ticket had been expired for months. When I purchased the ticket, I thought it was usable any time. I was mistaken. Upon perusal of my resources, there appeared to be sufficient lack to merit the overwhelming helplessness rising within me. What does one do in such a situation?
My heart lifted in covenantal prayer to Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord my Provider. He also happens to be Abba. I had every confidence to turn to Him in my hour of need, because the need did not arise as a result of a way that I had chosen for myself. I was in Indonesia because the Lord had sent me there to preach and teach His word, so my need was encountered in the way of obedience. Some years earlier I had embraced Him as, not only my Savior, but my Lord. I joined ranks with the true worshipers whose submission to Him gives its greatest expression of love through obedience. In response to a lifestyle of obedience, God will continually reveal Himself as Jehovah-Jireh. Whenever we obey God, we will face the necessity of a walk in faith because there will be challenges greater than we can handle. Needs will arise to glare at us and demand their worship, but our worship belongs to Him alone who is Jehovah-Jireh. He is the Lord who provides for His own.
That day as I was faced with the need to leave Indonesia, without any money to purchase another ticket, I was assured in my heart. As I prayed, I knew that He would indeed provide because I am His own. I had no idea how He was going to get the money to me; all I needed to do was trust in Him with all my heart and wait expectantly for His answer. It came within a few days.
I received a telegram from a hotel in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia. A few days prior, I had returned to Jakarta from having preached on another island for a month. The telegram was from a woman I met in a restaurant five months earlier in a city in western Australia. On that particular day, I was led by the Lord to go to this restaurant. I had never been there before, nor had I planned that day to go. While sitting and reading the menu, I overheard a conversation from another table. Three women were talking about the Lord. Wanting to meet them, I turned around and introduced myself. We chatted for a while and I was invited for an evening meal to the home of one of the women, who happened to be the one from whom I received the telegram five months later in Jakarta.
As I read the telegram asking me to contact her at the hotel, I wondered why she was in Indonesia. We had had no communication since I left Australia. I contacted her, and she soon arrived at my door to see me. During the course of our conversation, she explained that God had sent her to Indonesia to locate me. She had never been in Indonesia, so her obedience took her to places unknown. The Lord had spoken to her to give me some money. As she told me, my eyes began to well with tears. This precious sister in the Lord had no idea that just days earlier I had been crying to the Lord for a miracle. I needed money to get a ticket to leave Indonesia before my visa expired within days of that time. Overwhelmed by what she was saying to me, the reality struck as she placed $4,000 in my hand. Jehovah-Jireh had once again shown Himself a faithful Father who takes care of His own. I wept for joy and relief.
I recalled the day five months earlier in Australia when the Lord lead me into that restaurant. Unknown to me, it would be the beginnings of a wonderful miracle of provision. At that time, I had no idea of the problem I had with my ticket, but He knew and He was already working out the solution. Because I was walking in covenantal relationship with Him, He led me to the appointed place where I would become a recipient of His provision.
The promises of a loving God are myriad in the Bible with regard to meeting the needs of those who are the apple of His eye. He has created and He will sustain. Because of the integrity of His own Being, He will not leave to fend for themselves those whom He has brought into existence. The very act of creation presupposes that He has the power to sustain that which He created. There is no question as to His ability to provide for mankind; neither can there be a question with regard to His desire. His ability to provide speaks of His power; His desire to provide speaks of His heart.
To anyone who has not come into personal relationship with Him, He can be known through the power He demonstrates in His creation in the complex cycles of life as the earth produces of itself in praise to its Creator. In Psalm 145:16 it reads, "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing." How merciful is our God to cause the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust. His eternal power is seen through the witness of His creation, but thanklessly, multitudes worship the creation rather than the Creator. The result is the heavy burden of responsibility for sustaining and continuing their own lives. Fear is rampant. Security slips through the fingers of an individual who tries to hold on to that which rightfully belongs in the Hands of God.
In Genesis 22:1-18 we have the first mention of Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who provides. We see God’s provision based on covenant relationship as experienced in the life of Abraham. The context of this revelation is in the testing of Abraham’s heart through worship and obedience.
When God tested Abraham, it was not an inducement for him to fail, but rather was a working out by experience of that which was already in his heart. He worshiped his covenant God. God knew what was in his heart and He was going to prove the faithfulness of His servant Abraham.
Testing is always a matter of the heart in its first stages, because it is in the heart that man communes with God. There He sees what man will do. It is in the "doing" that the test encompasses the whole man.
When God tests the human heart, there is a revelation of the Almighty as He comes to man and breathes upon him His Word. This Word in the light of man’s frailty will cause him to tremble, while at the same time lift him to the lofty heights of faith in the One who thus speaks to him. The working out of the test of man’s heart is the very act of worship that glorifies God through the experience of man.
Abraham is asked to take his son, his only son, and go to the region of Moriah to offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord. Through this test, God touches the very emotional depths of Abraham’s being. His seed, his hopes for the continuation of himself through Isaac, is now required.
He was told to go into the land of Moriah. The test required another location. It would have been much easier for him to go out on his own property somewhere, build an altar and "get it over with" so he wouldn’t have to battle within himself at the staggering proportions of the test. It would now have to be a determined obedience, not the result of an emotional response on the wings of a visitation from the Most High in which one can more easily give heed. He faced a three day journey. He would hear from the Lord again because he, as yet, did not know which one of the mountains would be the site of his worship. This trust on the part of Abraham kept him in the sphere of faith where worship was constant rather than momentary.
As Abraham and Isaac reached the mountain, Abraham lays the wood upon Isaac. In a test of God there will be the "laying upon us" of the "wood." There will be very practical issues to be worked out in the demand of our time, efforts, and patience. Our God is a God of detail and He asks us not to despise the day of small things. We are to be faithful with the little details that are steps to the working out of the grand design. His provision is both in the small and the great. The test is spiritual, but will always require the dimensions of the natural to encompass the proving of the whole man.
When Isaac asks his father where the sacrifice is, Abraham states that God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering. This is the bold answer of the covenant faithful – a statement of future fact in the present absence that summons the eternal reality.
In determined worship, Abraham went about every detail in his obedience. There was no hesitation. He had already worked this out in his heart; it was now a matter of the "hands." He built an altar, arranged the wood, bound his son and laid him on the altar. He then took the knife, lifting it in a strange rendering of the lifting of the hands as the evening sacrifice.
Heaven is satisfied and the command comes to withdraw from killing Isaac. The fear of God as demonstrated in Abraham took the "breath away" from the angelic hosts who viewed a man in whom was God’s delight – one who would not withhold his only son, the son that he loved. The faithfulness of Abraham would now place a demand upon the covenant God to provide a Lamb - His only Son, the Son of His love.
Abraham then lifted his eyes and beheld a ram in the thicket. He called that place Jehovah-Jireh – in the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. God’s provision comes to us as a direct result of our covenantal worship of obedience. "On the mount" – Abraham was there because of obedience to God’s directives. As we are walking with Him day by day, we are in the direct path of His provision. The testing of our heart is the proving of our faithfulness to Him to lay down everything so that we might gain Him as our reward. All provision is in Him.