He Knows Your Need -- Do you know His name?

After going through three years of infertility, a failed adoption, and months of heart ache, we were blessed with a baby girl. Her birth was a miracle, and her story is for her to tell, but we know without a shadow of a doubt that God had a plan for her life starting the week she was conceived. The week after we brought her home from the hospital my mom would do the night feedings, so I could sleep. After she left, I hardly slept at all. My greatest fear was that God was going to take Erin from me, so every time she turned in her bassinette, every time she sniffed in the night, and any time she stretched, my eyes would pop wide open. When Erin started sleeping six hours right off the bat, I was awake watching her breathe, listening for her to stir. When you have waited so long for something, for someone so precious, you hold onto it with all your might, but there was no amount of my strength that could keep my daughter here if God chose to take her home. My heart was full of anxiety until I confessed my fear and my sin to my mom. I brought it out into the light, and I had to give my daughter to God and trust He knew what was best.


Abraham knew EXACTLY what I was feeling, and he prayed to Yahweh Yireh. In Genesis 22 God told Abraham he had to sacrifice Isaac, the son God had promised Abraham from whom his descendants would be too numerous to count. After receiving this word from God, Abraham had to travel THREE days with this knowledge. If you knew your child had three days to live, how would you carry that around? If you have ever had a child in the hospital, if you have ever feared for the life of your child – how does it feel to fear the death of your child? I’ll tell you I was anxious-ridden, stressed, tearful, and heavy-hearted. Then Isaac asks his father where the sacrifice was…God will provide, he says. God will provide – Yahweh Yireh. If a loved-one has been delivered from certain death, if God has spared the life of someone you hold dear, you know the elation Abraham must have felt when God provided the ram in the thicket and told Abraham to use it.

God tested Abraham. God does not tempt because tempting means He’s using evil means to lure you to Satan and that isn’t God. God tests His children to see where their loyalties lie, to see how deep their faith and trust are in Him, to see if you believe He is God and bigger than any problem you might have. When God asked you to make a sacrifice, how did you respond? He doesn’t ask you to do any more than He has done for you.

When God tested you and your faith? How did you do?

Ann Spangler writes, “When you pray to Yahweh Yireh, you are praying to the God who sees the situation beforehand and is able to provide for your needs” (28). Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary says, “Faith had taught him not to argue, but to obey. He is sure that what God commands is good; that what he promises cannot be broken.” What has your faith taught you? Where do you stand in your faith? Are you arguing with God when He tells you to make the sacrifice? OR do you trust Him with it all? Some people see putting their all in the hands of one person as a gamble, but when you put them in the hands of Yahweh Yireh, it is a guarantee that He can and will handle it all without dropping one thing.

We can have confidence that whatever trial we are going through, whatever difficulty is in our way that Yahweh Yireh already knows what we are going to need before we need it, and He is ready to supply our needs. What do you need Yahweh Yireh for today? What are you relying on Him to provide that only He can provide?