"So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided." Genesis 22:14

Have you ever felt helplessly lost in a situation to the point where you just wanted to give up? We live in a world where we are constantly faced with times of turmoil and desperation. But we can take great encouragement from Abraham who also went through a difficult predicament in his life. After wanting a son for many years, God finally bore Abraham a son whom he named Isaac. I'm sure he loved him with all his heart and can just imagine how happy he would have been to have the Lord finally answer his prayers. But then God turned around and commanded Abraham to give up that happiness and sacrifice his son on an altar. I see two ways of looking at this situation. 1) This is a parallel of what God had to go through--giving up His one and only son Jesus whom He loved dearly. 2) We have things in our lives of which we hold so dearly and to give that up is so incredibly hard. But despite his sorrows, Abraham trusted God and proceeded to obey him. I'm sure that as he was walking up the mountain with his son trailing behind him, he was dreading it so much and probably even hesitating at times. All the way until the very last moment, God tested Abraham's faith. And he obeyed. Then God stopped him from going through with the sacrifice. Although we may have times when we really don't know what's going on, and wonder why God is putting us through such difficult trials, we need to have faith like Abraham; because God will provide. We just need to trust in what He is doing with our lives even though it may not make sense to us at the moment.