We aren’t supposed to figure life out. Hebrews 11 also indicates that Abraham didn’t know that God would provide an animal for sacrifice. In other words, he didn’t obey because he knew the future. When God sends confusing trials into our lives or asks us to obey mystifying commands, he won’t always tell us why. I have counseled many Christians who complicate their suffering by trying to interpret what God has intentionally kept a divine secret.

On October 19, 2014, my life changed.

I was in acute renal failure and didn’t know it. If I had waited another week to see a doctor, I would have been dead.

During my ten-day hospital stay, I experienced the most horrible pain I had ever experienced. This was followed by six surgeries in two years, rendering me physically weaker than I had ever been in my life.

If my physical suffering wasn’t enough, I was equally as discouraged emotionally and spiritually. These two years of physical limitation coincided with the most ministry opportunity I had ever been given.

I kept asking the Lord, “Why would you give me a platform then leave me unable to use it? Why?”

Life made no sense at all. Have you ever been there?

Abraham has. He staked his entire existence on the promise that a son would come, but then in an unthinkable moment, God asked him to sacrifice Isaac.

What in the world was God doing? And how was Abraham able to respond in obedience?

There are three principles that guide us how to live by faith when life makes no sense at all.

1. We Are Being Strengthened

The author of Hebrews 11 says that Abraham was being tested, which is a word picture for metal being purified. God will send difficult, unexpected and unwanted trials into our lives to produce in us what could have never been produced otherwise. I refer to that as the theology of uncomfortable grace, and we need to preach it to ourselves and to others.

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