When you learn your purpose and how God wants you to prosper, what is the next step? Do you walk straight from learning your purpose into your prosperity? As amazing as that would be, that isn’t how God works. More often than not we are faced with certain decisions and tests that God puts us through to see what level of faith we have. Sadly, often times we fail many of those tests and don’t come into the full promise of prosperity that God has planned for our life.
Abraham had ten major tests in his life. You must remember he had already given up one son (Gen 21:8-21). Now, the Lord was about to require him to lay down his future. In Genesis 22:1-2 it says, “Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” Wow! Of all the tests that you could be put through, sacrificing a child that you had been promised, would have to be one of the most difficult things imaginable. What happened though? Abraham never faltered. His faith was so firmly planted in the Lord that he followed everything the Lord instructed Him, without hesitation. In the midst of this tremendous test, Abraham had to stay true to worshipping the One True God.
What happened next? God SAW the faith that Abraham exuded and stopped him from doing the unthinkable. Instead He provided another sacrifice in place of Abraham’s “only son that he loves” so that he can complete the purpose and promise that He originally established with God, through Isaac. Genesis 22:14 says, “And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide(Jehovah Jireh); as it is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’” The faith that Abraham displayed is unbelievable, but it displayed the amount of trust that he had in the Lord and how determined he was to get to his promise of prosperity.
Read Genesis 22. Ask Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide) to let you hear your supply stirring in the midst of your test. There is a substitute somewhere on your path, like the ram in the thicket, that will allow you to keep moving toward prosperity.