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At the beginning of the year, many of us look back at Christmas spending and set a budget for the year ahead. This year, the stakes for my family were much higher. We knew we were having a baby in the spring, and in the UK, when you're a full-time employee on statutory maternity leave, your income drops by about 75% across the year. So we knew it was going to be a very tight year.
Come January 1st, I got out the Excel spreadsheet. It was a thing of beauty — colour-coded, accounting for rising utility costs, inflation, the price of new nappies. All the Monzo pots and transfers were set up perfectly. On January 2nd, I presented it to my husband like a sacred scroll. We had very little margin, but the numbers were in the green. We were going to be okay, and I was feeling very pleased with myself.
Fast forward one week. In the span of seven days, the boiler died, the dishwasher stopped draining, the bathroom spotlights broke, and the car got a puncture as well as broken tyre pressure monitors. It's never just one thing, is it? It's always like the entire house breaks all at once. Our little safety pot, budgeted for the year, was completely eliminated fixing these issues.
I told myself we'd just be careful. But February had other plans — the washing machine broke, the oven stopped heating, and someone reversed into our car in a supermarket car park. Meanwhile, headlines were full of conflict in the Middle East and rising food, oil, and petrol prices. I wasn't standing in the kitchen full of faith. I was saying, "God, really? Have you not seen the spreadsheet? We're trying to be good stewards here. This is really rubbish timing."
Meanwhile, the world kept moving. Gift days were approaching, and every instinct in our bodies was just to clench and tighten up. When we hit a financial crisis, our hands naturally ball into fists — we tighten our grip on every penny and obsess over the numbers.
But what does obeying God in these moments actually look like? The deep fear for many of us isn't really about money — it's about control. We're all asking the same question: if I veer from my plan, if I let go of control, will God actually catch me, or will I crash?
As I prepared this series, I realised God wasn't just giving me theology — he was giving me first-hand experience, asking, "Heather, are you trusting the spreadsheet, or are you trusting me as your provider?"
To understand this tension, we look at a man who had far more at stake than a spreadsheet — Abraham. He was a very old man who had waited 25 years for his son Isaac. In that time, Abraham's brother had already fathered eight children and more through his concubines. For 25 years, Abraham watched everyone else's accounts grow while his remained empty.
Isaac wasn't just a child — he was the promise. He was Abraham's retirement plan, his legacy, his future security. If Isaac died, the promise of a great nation died with him.
Then the unthinkable happens. In Genesis 22 we read:
"Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you."
We are rightfully horrified reading this. Critics like Richard Dawkins point to this passage as exhibit A for a bloodthirsty God. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that's okay — I think you're supposed to feel uncomfortable.
To understand what's happening, we need to look at Abraham's neighbourhood. In the ancient Near East, gods like Molech demanded child sacrifice as a standard transaction — "Give me your firstborn and I'll give you rain." In that cultural climate, Abraham wouldn't have been shocked by the request; he would have been used to it.
But God differentiates himself from all these other gods. He stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac and provided a ram instead. He wasn't just saving a boy — he was interrupting a violent culture, saying, "I am not like the other gods. I am a God of life, not one who takes life."
The text says God tested Abraham — and frankly, he needed the practice. Ten chapters earlier he lied about his wife being his sister because he didn't trust God to protect him in Egypt. Six chapters earlier he slept with Hagar because he grew impatient waiting on God's promise. Abraham's track record was one of control — clenching his fists and trying to fix things himself.
God wasn't looking for a dead son; he was looking for a surrendered father. He was inviting Abraham into a new level of trust: are you ready to let go of control?
Moriah was a three-day walk away. Think of the weight of those days — 72 hours of silence, dust, and dread. When you're in survival mode, your world shrinks. You stop looking at the horizon and just start looking at your feet.
We see the same shrunken horizon today. A recent UK study surveying 10,000 adults found that one in four now have zero financial aspirations for the next decade — not dreaming of holidays or homes, simply trying to survive to the next paycheck.
Abraham's three-day journey mirrors our long nights of financial anxiety — that grueling, silent space between need and provision, whispering the same question over and over: is God actually going to show up this time?
Abraham's response is staggering. He doesn't argue or call a committee meeting — he acts immediately in obedience:
"Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey... On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance."
He tells his servants, "We will worship and then we will come back to you" — we, not just himself. He believed both he and Isaac would return. The writer of Hebrews explains why:
"Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death."
Abraham believed God would do the impossible because he remembered God's track record — Isaac himself was a living miracle, born from a womb God had made alive again. Abraham remembered Egypt, where God rescued him, and the promise written in the desert sky.
Before you look at the impossible bill on your table this week, look back at your own history — where has God provided for you before? For my family, through several seasons of maternity leave, the budget never quite balanced, but God was always faithful — through moving house at the right time, tax rebates, student loans, a friend paying rent. We never knew how God would provide, but he always did. Abraham didn't know how either, but he was confident that God would.
"Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, 'Father?' 'Yes, my son,' Abraham replied. 'The fire and wood are here,' Isaac said, 'but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' Abraham answered, 'God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.'"
Isaac asks the question everyone asks when the bills are due: where is the money? How is this going to work out? Abraham's answer is prophetic — he doesn't know the details, but he is confident God will pull through. Faith isn't knowing how everything will happen; it's knowing who the provider is.
"Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns... So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.'"
At the peak of the mountain, with the knife in his hand, the angel of the Lord stops Abraham. He names that place Jehovah Jireh. We often think this means "the God who gives me stuff," but in Hebrew, Jireh literally means to see. It means the God who sees to it.
God's provision is based entirely on his vision — his seeing. He sees the three-day walk. He sees your financial crisis, your income cut, your rising bills. This name declares that God has already seen to it. The ram didn't materialise from thin air — it had to be born, grow, wander up that specific mountain, get caught in that specific thicket at that specific hour. While Abraham was still down in the valley loading his donkey, the ram was already on its way. God was seeing to it.
So what happened with our own broken boiler, washing machine, and dented car?
As we look at our bank accounts and broken boilers, it's easy to think money is our biggest problem. But Mount Moriah points to a far greater truth — this story is a prophetic map pointing straight to the cross.
Genesis 22 is the first time the word "love" is used in the Bible — not for husband and wife, but for a father's love for his son. It echoes John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son."
The God who provided the Lamb for your eternity is the same God who provides the ram for your temporary crisis. He is the God who sees to it. He didn't just provide to save one life — he provided to save the world, and to save you.
I don't know what your Isaac is today — the part of your future that feels vulnerable. Maybe it's your month-to-month bills, the future of your business, your mortgage, your pension, or supporting your children. In a couple of weeks we celebrate that the ultimate sacrifice has already been made. If God secured your eternity by giving his own Son, we don't need to worry that he'll look away when we can't pay the electric bill.
Close your eyes and clench your fists for a moment. Feel the tension, the grip, the anxiety of trying to manage the future yourself — the fear of the mortgage, the pay cut, the pressure of securing what's ahead. Silently name your Isaac to God — the part of your future that makes you feel uncertain.
Now, as an act of faith — not because the bill is paid, but because we have a God who sees to it — slowly open your hands. Tell God: "You are Jehovah Jireh. You see to it. I stop striving. I trust that on the mountain of the Lord it has already been provided."
Lord, I pray for everyone now who is in the middle of a long, silent walk, not quite sure what the ram is going to look like. Give them strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I pray your Spirit will whisper back, "I've already seen to it. I am Jehovah Jireh." I pray for the stewards who have become strivers — help us balance wisdom and planning with trust in you as the source. And I pray for those who are really in crisis, that they would see the ram you have already positioned — whether through a community member, a forgotten warranty, or a sudden, unexplainable provision. I thank you that while we were still in the valley, you were already positioning the ram on the mountain. Amen.
