Revelation Begets Trust

Global School of Ministry: Introducing Jehovah Jireh

Lesson 3

Those of us who are privileged to be adopted into the household of faith as sons must never forget that there is a particular foundation on which we rest. It is not the pomposity of Rome and its offsprings -- all the religious "isms" of this world. It is also not Judaism and the Mosaic law.

Our roots go deeper to a man in whom God found the single thing which was lost in Adam and Eve at the Garden: a revelation of who He is as Jehovah Jireh, the Great Provider and sustainer of His own. That revelation, when it is firm and sure in an individual, inspires absolute trust in God, the very basis of any meaningful walk with God.

It was essentially this childlike trust in God that Adam and Eve lost when the adversary came to tempt them in Eden. If careful thought is given to events of that dark day in the checkered history of humanity, we will not find it difficult to see that the core essence of the temptation at Eden was to cause mankind to mistrust God, believe Satan and trust in self! Read Genesis 3: 1-7 carefully and this hidden truth will immediately scream at you!


The consequence of losing sight of, or denying the Lord the honor of being a benevolent, caring provider of all the needs of His own, is the tendency to retreat into self to become the real god of the human life. In effect, what Satan achieved at Eden and still achieves today is to make saints of God to look away from Him as the Source and look to themselves or other things/institutions as the source of their sustenance here on Planet Earth.

This is the ugly face of Idolatry 101! Whenever self preservation rears its ugly head, know for sure that an idol is seated on the throne of the heart! And fleshly idols of religiosity are more difficult to detect that those in the Kalahari desert of Africa or the groves of Asia! Put it this way: whenever the saint of God loses sight of the All Sufficiency of the grace, provisions and care of Abba Father, the next step is to bow to an idol.

The First Idol: Self Consciousness

The first idol is thus self consciousness. Self consciousness is the driving force which makes a saint unable to let go and trust God to provide shelter, job, food, marriage partner, clothes, education. Self consciousness makes us want to help God because we deem Him as too slow or old fashioned! It is in the bid to make our way for ourselves that we, for instance, construct our own expectations. Clutching at these carnal ambitions, a saint begins to play God.

When a young man decides the body statistics, educational level, profession and family background of who he wants to be his marriage partner, he is manifesting this self-god. When a young lady determines that what will give her happiness is to marry a man with a particular height, dentition, color, age bracket, doing a certain kind of job and owning a certain kind of house and cars, she has simply told God that He is inadequate as a match maker!

Translate this into ministry pursuits and the scope of this idolatrous life style becomes truly mind boggling. Many there are who are good men and women, but who simply refuse to acknowledge Jesus as the owner of the work. When ministry is done according to humanistic whims – and yet boldly claim that the Holy Spirit is leading – Satan is working overtime!

The fact that saints will ascribe to the Holy Spirit such pernicious activities as running ministries based on worldly wisdom and fancies of men, far removed from express provisions of the Holy Writ, shows that arrogance comes to church regularly, dressed to kill!

The fact that ministers will focus on gathering crowds and expect Jesus to bless their efforts; the fact that the driving force and motivation in many ministries is money and power shows how poorly this last generation of saints know the Book.

Inability to trust God will cause a servant of God to preach to impress, and not change people. In so doing, the true purpose of ministry is lost -- that purpose which is to make disciples, and subsequently transform them into able ministers of the New Testament, fit for use as vessels of honor in the Master’s hand.

Arrogance manifests itself when we run this race as if there was no track record or frame of reference by which we will be evaluated. Arrogance ensures when saints of God catch the "bug" of relativity.

That is why God issued the dramatic call to those who are His in Isaiah 51:

Let us therefore consider the event and action through which the man Abraham secured the badge of honor as father of the faithful. Saints, the way God walked with Abraham and deemed him a friend to whom He could commit deep mysteries of life then and through the ages is the basic minimum He expects from those of us who are begotten by the Blood of the Lamb, even the Word of God that is Jesus.

1 Listen to me, all who hope for deliverance — all who seek the LORD! Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined.
2 Yes, think about Abraham, your ancestor, and Sarah, who gave birth to your nation. Abraham was only one man when I called him. But when I blessed him, he became a great nation.

We will see from this account in Genesis 22, verses 8 and14, the kind of revelation of God as Jehovah Jireh which should fill our consciousness. Where are you in the journey of life? What are the needs of your life? Can you look at the mountains of challenges and needs in the face and assert, with full confidence, that God will provide?

Genesis 22 (New Living Translation): Abraham’s Faith Tested 

1 Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.
“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”

2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”
6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.
9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the LORD will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
15 Then the angel of the LORD called again to Abraham from heaven.

16 “This is what the LORD says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that

17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies.

18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”

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We appreciate your continual intercession on behalf of the family and all saints involved. Pray especially that God will deliver us from wicked and unreasonable men as well as false brethren!