When you say you trust God, how much do you mean it?

That’s what I’ve been forced to consider this month.

I struggle with anxiety so severely that sometimes eating or moving, even waking up, is enough to send me into a frozen panic. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen all the time. Instead, most of the time, I have a color wheel-style chart in my head, spinning through random stressors: the possibility of hearing loss, for example, or the fear of poverty. Currently we are on running out of food and having to spend money on more. It’s a lovely time.

Now, I recognize the irrationality of most of these thoughts, but at the same time they feel like the most rational things in the world. Yes, spending fifteen dollars at Walmart on some extra groceries is going to put me in the hole. That definitely makes sense. But that’s now fifteen dollars less in my bank account. I still have some food in the house, what was I doing getting more? And what if I need to spend more money later? I bet I’ll wish I’d saved those fifteen dollars.

Around and around it goes.

Do you get depressed reading about mental disorders? Me too! Fortunately, anxiety is not the focus here. Yahweh Yireh is.

Yahweh Yireh (or Jehovah Jireh) is a Hebrew Name for God, translating to ‘God will provide’. It comes from Genesis 22, where God tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. (If you see Messianic parallels here, you’re not wrong.) Abraham goes along with it, even saying, “God will provide the lamb,” (Genesis 22:8). And at the very last minute, as he raises the knife, God intervenes and sends a ram for a sacrifice instead. 

I want to focus on the provider God label right now, because that’s huge, especially in the context of this story. You know, it’s one thing to hear that the God Who feeds the birds and clothes the flowers will also feed and clothe me (Matthew 6:25-34). It’s quite another to see someone facing an end-of-their-world situation and stepping into it willingly with faith that Yahweh will provide.

I can barely wrap my head around that. Oh, sure, that one part of my brain processes it and files it away under rational, but that other part has spinning wheels and flashing lights and is shouting, How? How do you believe before you see? How on earth can I go buy groceries without focusing on the amount in my bank account? How do I live in that unknown? 

I don’t know. I truly don’t. I’m definitely not there yet.

Or am I? Because when I stop and look, really look, I just bought groceries and ate dinner, and the world did not collapse. There is food in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. My landlady will not kick me to the curb tomorrow. I can still pay my credit card, and I shouldn’t lose electricity anytime soon unless last week’s windstorm comes back. I am living, I am surviving–doing better than surviving, really. When I look back at this, I’ll wonder why I was so anxious.

But what does that mean for now?

It means I can pray, “Yahweh Yireh,” and He will provide.

But what does that mean for now?

It means that, quite possibly, the way He provided for me today was giving me an opportunity to go to Walmart.

But what does that mean for now?

It means if I need food, I don’t have to buy it for another two weeks at least.

I might say I trust God fully, and I might tell other people, “Relax, He’ll meet all your needs.” But if I’m not living and walking in that myself, does that make me a hypocrite? I don’t know, but I know I want to say these things and mean them. 

Yeshua says, “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.”

Help my unbelief, Lord. Help me to be still and know. More than that, help me to accept. And you, reading this, if any of this resonates with you, remember how our Lord moved on behalf of a man who prayed something similar (see Mark 9:23-25). You don’t have to believe you can move mountains yet, especially since you don’t move the mountains at all. He does. Sometimes that heartfelt cry is a sign we either possess or are moving toward more faith than we think is available. 

So, I’m going to eat stir-fry tomorrow, and if I run out of milk I’ll probably get more milk, and I’m going to keep praying that prayer. I will live in expectation of Yahweh Yireh until I believe Him mind, heart, and soul. There is still a color wheel-style chart in my head, but it seems to have diminished in size just by writing this. 

L’chaim.