The Dark Night of Trust
I want to talk to you about trust. This is an area where God has really been working in my life over the past couple of years, because ministry always requires trust. But it is always a battle. Because we want trust that feels safe. We want trust that lets us still feel in control. But then, of course, it isn’t really trust at all.
Trust in the daytime versus trust in the night. God says, here is where I am calling you, this is where I want you to go, what I’m asking of you—do you trust me?
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.”
We need to pause here. I’d reckon most of you are pretty familiar with this story, but don’t let that familiar dull the magnitude of what is happening here.
Even if this was just a father and just a son, it would be horrific. There should be a sense of dread building in your stomach. But it’s even more than that. Because who is Isaac? Abraham’s son, his only son, who he loves…Isaac is the child of the covenant—Abraham’s promise to God to love and serve and obey, and God’s promise to Abraham to bless and to be faithful. I will be your God and you will be my people—and Isaac was the promise of that covenant and now God is taking him away.
God wants nothing less than everything. And it doesn’t make sense. And so Abraham has a choice. This is the dark night of trust.
Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.
God says, “Do you trust me?” And Abraham goes.
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
Three days. Three days Abraham walks, the dread building. He doesn’t tell anyone else what they’re doing. He has to pretend that everything is all right, that everything is fine, as his heart is slowly breaking. Each step is another choice—to keep on moving forward, to keep on moving to the place of sacrifice. And the burden he’s carrying just gets heavier and heavier and heavier.
This is not just a journey, it is a continuous fight to trust. “Perhaps this step is far enough.” I want you to feel the sense of aloneness here. The dark night of trust. Where is God?
Have you ever been facing something that you’re just dreading? And you try to ignore it, to not think about it, but it just keeps coming closer and closer and closer?
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 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?”
This, right here, is where, I think, it becomes real. And I think in this moment you can hear Abraham’s heart break.
Maybe, up to this point, he’s been frantically thinking that God’s going to do something to stop this, that surely God will not let it go this far. But it does. And we need to recognize the monumental choice that Abraham faces here.
Because now he is faced with his son, who is asking him “where is the lamb.” What can he say? What can he possibly say?
I think this is where I would have ran. This is the breaking point, right here. The darkness is complete.
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
“God himself will provide the lamb.” How does Abraham say these words? What is he thinking and feeling as he says those words?
This is the moment of total commitment. This is Abraham saying, I don’t know what else to do. It seems like God has turned his back on me, but I have nowhere else to go. This is him echoing Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” This is the disciples saying, “Lord, to whom else shall we go? For you have the words of eternal life.”
This is the point of total surrender. This is Abraham submitting to the understanding that Isaac was never really his in the first place. This is Abraham in the blackest night, trusting God even though he cannot see, it doesn’t make sense, everything around him is dark.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Do You Trust Me?
God wants to bring you to the end of yourself. And so He asks, continually, “Do you trust me?”
It’s usually not as dramatic as the story of Abraham and Isaac, but it is a choice we face every single day.
Following Jesus is stepping into trust. It is always a choice to trust. Because it brings you to the end of yourself. We try to hold back, to control, to protect ourselves. But this is a battle you are going to continually be fighting. Are you going to try to control or choose to trust? Trust is scary. By its very nature it requires that there be doubt. The more power that doubt holds, the more powerful the trust becomes.
C. S. Lewis: “Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Corrie Ten Boom: “You cannot learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.”
Real trust feels risky. Step into the risk. Step into the doubt. Let yourself be vulnerable. Trust is scary, but it’s incredibly freeing as well, because you’re letting go of the need to control. You’re opening yourself up to the work of God that is already going on around you.
How Does the Story End?
God stops him. Abraham finds a ram. And he calls that place “The Lord will provide.”
This story is not just about trust—it’s foreshadowing what is to come. It’s pointing to Jesus.
And it’s knowing Jesus that gives us the ability to trust even when it’s dark. Because in him we have the ultimate reminder of faithfulness of God.
2 Corinthians 1:20: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.”
Amen.
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Written and shared by Kardia.