I grew up going to church, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus until I was much older.

When the God of the Bible began to be real to me, I found myself filled with two emotions:

1. I was overjoyed and amazed. It was all real! God truly loved me. Life opened up in a whole new way.
2. I was afraid. I knew that God knew that I knew that He was and is 100% real. And I knew I owed Him anything He could ask. I was afraid of God.

The Bible has plenty of references to “fearing” the Lord. That Hebrew word yirah (יראה) does mean more than fear. It also connotes:

• reverence
• awe
• wonder

I liked those words better than fear. I wanted to have reverence and awe and wonder for the God of the universe. But I knew I was also afraid of what this God might ask of me.

And it didn’t always help when I read about how God interacted with His people in the Old Testament.

Abraham and Fearing the Lord

The account of Abraham and Isaac had long been one of my least favorite stories in the Bible.

I’ve begun to appreciate it in a new way more recently, but I had none of the appreciation back when I was first grappling with the overwhelming reality of God.

Let’s go straight to the source in Genesis 22.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “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 I will show you.” [Genesis 22: 1–2]

I imagined how Abraham felt when he heard from God.

How scared and horrified he must have been. The anguish and trauma he would have gone through as he resolved to obey, while not understanding. I imagine him wondering who this God really was.

Could God really be trusted?

He must have kept flashing back to the miraculous birth of his son, which had been promised by God.

Now, the same Lord who had promised — and delivered — a miracle, seemed to be taking back that gift of life.

And how about Isaac? What must it have been like for him?

How must he have felt as he embarked on the journey to the region of Moriah with his father. Confused at first when he didn’t see an animal sacrifice. Then, the cold terror gripping him as it slowly dawned on him that there was no other sacrifice than him.

7 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?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. [Genesis 22: 7–8, NIV]

It was gut wrenching. All the way up until Abraham lifts the knife to sacrifice his son. 

It’s not the kind of God that I wanted to think of. A God who would test to such an extreme. For me, the miraculous provision at the end of the story was always drowned out by the deep trauma that I imagine both father and son went through.

But I believe it happened. 

And so I needed to wrestle with it. To let it shape my picture of God. 

And as I’ve done so, I’ve discovered a God who wants His people to trust Him, and truly is trustworthy.

Trusting God

Abraham knew that God had made a covenant with him to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. And Abraham knew that God was calling him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.

Those two things seem impossible to hold together. They don’t make sense.

Yet the author of the book of Hebrews describes how Abraham reconciled the seeming contradiction: God must have been planning to raise Isaac from the dead.

17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death. [Hebrews 11: 17–19, NIV]

As we continue in our relationship with Him, God will continue to lead us onwards. And that can feel scary for some of us (like me) sometimes.

But it doesn’t mean we should be afraid of God.

If we trust that He is faithful, the journey can feel like a grand adventure instead of being something to fear.

This, I believe, is why the Bible says that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” He wants us to trust Him. He wants to continue to show us that He is trustworthy as we follow Jesus.

And it’s in Jesus that God proves once and for all that He is perfectly faithful and loving and trustworthy. 

In love, God kept Abraham from losing his son Isaac. And in love, God gave His Son to live and die that we might be raised to new life in Him. 

Praise God.