Trusting God When the Promise Feels Broken
If you have ever read the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, you know it is a hard and tension-filled passage. It is the kind of story that makes you uncomfortable and challenges your understanding of God. Throughout the Old Testament, God explicitly calls out and condemns child sacrifice. He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah to say that burning sons and daughters in the fire was something He never commanded and that never even entered His mind. Yet, in this specific chapter, He seems to ask Abraham to do exactly that.
When you come across something ambiguous or uncomfortable in Scripture, your natural response is likely fight or flight. You might want to fight by trying to defend God and sugarcoat the story to make it feel more palatable. On the other hand, you might want to flee by simply ignoring the passage entirely because you do not want to serve a God who would ask for such a thing. But what if you chose not to fight or flee? What if you chose to sit in the tension and allow God to speak to you within it?
The Cycle of Failure and Faithfulness
To understand this walk up the mountain, you have to look back ten chapters earlier when God made a covenant promise to Abraham. God promised to make Abraham a great nation, to bless him, and to make his people God’s own people. For the next ten chapters, Abraham experienced a constant cycle of personal failure and God’s unwavering faithfulness. Abraham lied, hid, and made decisions with severe consequences. He even took matters into his own hands by having a child with his slave because his wife could not conceive.
Through all of those failures, God remained faithful to His promises. He spoke with clarity and not confusion, explicitly telling Abraham that the promise would come through his son Isaac. Then, Genesis 22 happens. It feels like everything falls apart. What felt so clear suddenly becomes incredibly muddy.
When Clarity Becomes Confusion
You might find this experience incredibly relatable in your own life. When Zak was eighteen, he was driving home from hockey practice and had an amazing moment with God where he felt called to be a pastor through the words of Jeremiah 23. It was a core memory where God’s voice felt close and his direction felt completely clear. However, just three years later, he found himself in college, visiting a counseling center to sign a paper every day confirming he had not harmed himself. It was a rock-bottom season. What felt so clear a few years prior now felt distant and broken.
Perhaps you have walked through something similar. Maybe you made a commitment on your wedding day that felt pure and good, but now your marriage feels fractured and distant. You might be looking at a strained relationship with your child and wondering what happened to the exciting promise of becoming a parent. When the promise feels broken, you naturally ask yourself if you can still trust God.
Trusting an Unknown Future to a Known God
Corrie Ten Boom was a woman who willingly put herself in harm’s way to help usher people out of Nazi Germany. She was eventually caught and placed in a concentration camp. While in that horrific place, she would tell people to never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. These words carry incredible power because her own future in that camp was completely uncertain. She was facing unimaginable circumstances, yet she found peace because she intimately knew the character of the God holding her tomorrow.
To walk with God is to know him, and to know him is to trust him. You often think you have to trust God blindly first in order to eventually know him, but that is entirely backwards. Trust is built by getting to know who he really is. In John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father and declared that eternal life is simply knowing the only true God and knowing Jesus Christ.
Jesus in the Story
When you look closely at Genesis 22, you begin to see that this story was always pointing to Jesus. There are intentional parallels between the walk of Abraham and Isaac and the redemptive walk of Jesus to the cross. Isaac is described as the “only son” whom Abraham loves. The journey to the mountain takes three days. Isaac carries the wood for the burnt offering up the hill, just as Jesus carried His cross. They even travel to the region of Moriah, which is believed to be the same location where Jerusalem was built and where Jesus was later crucified.
The profound truth of this story is that Jesus is not Isaac in this parallel. You are Isaac. You are the one on the altar in need of rescue. Jesus is the lamb caught in the bush. This story was never intended to end with Isaac being sacrificed. It was meant to pull you into God’s heart and His redemptive work. God stepped in and essentially said that He would not require Abraham’s son, because He was going to send His own. The plan for Jesus to come and save you from sin was always part of the promise.
Real Life in the Middle of the Mess
It is not safe to follow God, but He is good. He can be trusted. The same God who can be trusted in the promise can also be trusted in the process. Because the gospel is for you every day, here is how you can take one simple step this week to process your disappointment.
To Experience Freedom When God feels distant, you do not have to hide your frustration. In Psalm 22, David cried out, asking why God had abandoned him. David used a helpful literary tool: he stated how he felt, and then he stated what he knew to be true. Try writing down your own “I feel, I know” statements. You can be honest that you feel abandoned while still declaring that you know God is close because of who He is.
To Find Meaning Stop trying to defend God or sugarcoat your doubts to try and get through life. An unhealthy relationship dynamic is built on only talking to God when you need something or when you have done something wrong. God wants so much more for you. He simply wants you to know Him. Spend time this week sitting honestly in your uncomfortable places and inviting God into them.
Your Next Step at Mosaic
Finding your place in God’s story happens best alongside other people. If you want to move beyond simply knowing about Jesus to experiencing Him personally, you are invited to join the GROW Together journey. This is an ongoing initiative designed to help you understand how God can transform even the ordinary moments of your life with purpose and significance. Through classes like “The Way,” you can learn what it means to follow Jesus in practical decisions and relationships. You can learn more and sign up for the next session by visiting the events page at welcometomosaic.com.
You are also invited to join a Sunday gathering. You do not need to clean up your life or pretend to have it all figured out before walking through the doors. Come exactly as you are this Sunday at 10:00 AM. Grab a cup of coffee, meet some genuine people, and discover a God who can be trusted in your process.
