"Yahweh-yireh" The Lord Will Provide

I think one of the biggest problems with finding contentment is asking God for something, receiving it in a way you didn't expect, and totally missing it.  Ya know?

I have been praying for a while for God to just show me that He is in control and that He is not absent from our lives.  And then, God showed up.  But it wasn't how I wanted Him to show up.  So, I wrote it off at first, and just kept praying.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Lord provided.  Sure, if it was me in charge, He would have provided in a completely different way.  But, really, how often does the Creator of the Universe move around my preferences?!  I know He cares for me and loves me more than I can imagine, but that does not mean He is ever going to do anything my way.

So, this all hit me with the phrase "the Lord will provide".  And I just knew that was a phrase from the Bible.  Now, if you don't know me, I'm big into languages.  Like, huge.  So, I was pretty sure it was a name of something in the Bible, and I was fairly confident that I could find it in the ancient Hebrew in one of my commentaries or concordances.  And I was right!

Genesis 22 tells the story of Abraham taking his son, Isaac, up a mountain to be sacrificed to the Lord.  The Lord told Abraham to sacrifice his only son whom he loved.  The Lord was testing Abraham to see if he would be obedient even to the point of his own heartache.  God wanted to know that Abraham trusted Him.  So, Abraham was obedient.  But, at the last moment before Abraham was to kill Isaac, the Lord stopped Him.  God didn't really want Isaac as a sacrifice, he wanted Abraham's devotion, trust, and obedience.  So, the Lord provided a ram not far off to be the sacrifice instead.  So Abraham named that place "The Lord Will Provide" or "Yahweh-yireh" in the Hebrew (Genesis 22:14).

So, even though God does not move in ways that I would always prefer, in my life today, I can say and remember "Yahweh-yireh"!