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And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

~ Genesis 26:24

On Thursday of this last week, Mindy and I had to take our daughter Nora to the pediatrician for her 15-month checkup. As we waited in the car in the minutes leading up, a quiet trepidation kept mine and Mindy’s interactions somewhat subdued because we knew what this appointment meant—Nora’s first blood draw. Our appointment time came, and the proceedings got off to an ominously rocky start. Our nurse would pull out a benign (even ‘fun’ under the right circumstances for our 15-month old) instrument and Nora would respond the way you and I might to a stranger revving a chainsaw in a dark alley. Tape measure? Nope. Stethoscope? Forget about it. And so it went, with each in escalating fashion until the moment came. I have held my daughter under a lot of different circumstances in her short little life, but this time I had to hold her perfectly still while she shrieked and wailed in pain in my arms. Now, this is by no means equal to parents who have endured incredible tragedy or a near-death experience with their children, but as we could practically hear in our daughter’s screams, “Why are you letting this happen to me?! Why are you a part of this?!”, we were heartbroken. Then, things went from bad to worse. Our doctor proceeded to inform us that upon the insertion of the needle, Nora had jerked just enough to pop the needle loose preventing them from acquiring a clean draw. The blood would clot too fast, making the sample untestable for at least one of the two required tests. The news sat heavy, and the message rang clear—sometime in the next several months, we would be coming back for round 2…

This week, Pastor Danny preached us through Genesis 26, which gives the reader an almost “training montage”-esque view of Isaac’s growth up into trusting the faithfulness of the Lord. You know the training montage—that collection of training shots in every single sports movie where “Eye of the Tiger” fades in and the protagonist(s) endures 9 months of training over the span of about 90 seconds. You know the one. What we should not apply from this passage is how to trust the Lord faithfully over the course of a 90-second training montage. What we can and should apply from this passage, as Pastor Danny drew out, is that through the difficulties of life, each one of us must consider the question, “Will I trust that the Lord is perfectly faithful to His promises to His people?” As the Apostle Paul wraps up his letter to the church in Philippi, he expresses a promise that in the midst of their great generosity, “God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” (Phil. 4:19).  Now, without inappropriately subbing ourselves in for the original audience, can we reasonably say that God has been and will continue to supply all of our needs? I believe so.

If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, God has taken care of your greatest need in setting you right with Himself through the gracious gift of faith. If you’re reading this, that means God has been and is continuing to put enough breath in your lungs, enough beats in your heart, and enough food in your belly to sustain you. He may not, many times, provide what we think we need, but He certainly will continue to provide what we actually need. Will we trust this? Will we believe God at His word? Do we merely give lip service to this and walk out a lack of trust when the difficulty comes? Will I trust that God will supply exactly what I need to endure my daughter’s next blood draw? May we take an honest inventory and properly evaluate our hearts before the Lord. May we lift one another up in prayer over this. And would you please pray for me as a daddy who does not want to bring his daughter within a country mile of the nearest needle?