This morning, while reading Genesis 22, one sentence stayed with me:
“Because you have obeyed Me and have not withheld even your son, your only son.”
That verse leads me to a hard but honest question: What would I withhold from God? Would it be my health, my family, my security, my reputation, or the things I love most? Whatever I am unwilling to place in God’s hands often reveals what I fear losing the most.
God already knows what I want to hold back. The test is not for Him—it is for me. Fear is usually the reason I withhold something. Job understood this when he said, “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” Fear tightens my grip and convinces me that surrender will lead to loss. But Scripture shows the opposite. God does not ask for surrender to take from us, but to be first in our lives.
When I place what I love on the altar and release my grip, I am not losing it—I am trusting God with it. And what God receives, He is faithful to provide for in ways I could never imagine. As Jim Elliot famously said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Genesis 22 reminds me that obedience comes before provision, and Job reminds me that fear only robs me of peace. The answer to both is trust. And the promise that remains true, even when obedience feels costly, is this:
God will provide.