I’ve been really resonating with the story of Abraham lately.

Abraham is known as the “Father of Faith.”
Throughout his lifetime, God calls him to things that are risky, scary, and don’t make sense. He makes him promise after promise, all seemingly impossible. He tests his faith.
I think Abraham endures more in a moment than a lot of us do in a lifetime. His whole existence is not easy by a long shot. His circumstances are challenging. But his faith remains bold and strong.

The first major call we see God making on Abraham’s life is to leave his country, people, and household and go to a place God will soon show him.
He doesn’t have any context as to why, just that he can either stay where he is, lean on his own understanding, and be disobedient, or he can choose to trust God, have faith, and obey.

When he gets to the land God shows him, God makes him one of the first significant promises we hear. He tells him that the land he is seeing, land that belongs to other people, will one day belong to his descendants.
First of all, this land belongs to what we will later learn is 7 big and strong nations, and I don’t think they have any plans of leaving.
Second, the Bible tells us Abraham is around 75 years old at this time. He has no children, and his wife Sarah is far beyond child-bearing age.
At this point, God doesn’t say anything about children, but I think it’s safe to say Abraham is probably wondering what descendants God is talking about because he doesn’t even have a child, let alone a son.

A little while later, we hear another conversation between Abraham and God. This time, Abraham is asking God how He plans to do what He has said when he doesn’t even have any children. To this, God replies and tells Abraham that his offspring will be as many as the stars in the sky, meaning he will have a loooootttt of descendants, also meaning he will one day have a son.
Something really cool happens after God tells him this.
The Bible says, “Abraham believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”

This is crazy!
God tells Abraham He is going to do something literally next to impossible. It is something completely beyond what he is able to achieve on his own, and completely impossible apart from God.
And Abraham believes Him.
Talk about bold and strong faith.

After around probably 25 years, definitely not free of slip ups, moments of doubt, and a lot of waiting, God finally fulfills the promise He makes to Abraham, and Sarah gives birth to a son.
God does something that to man looks utterly impossible, but for Him is as easy as snapping His fingers. He makes a promise and He keeps it.

But it doesn’t end there.

A few years after this, God asks Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him.
Like, what? God just promised him a son, and after He finally gives him one, He asks him to kill him? Are you kidding me?
But Abraham, being the faithful man he is, obeys God. He prepares the alter, has his son on it, and gets the knife ready.
And just at the last second, when Abraham is about to drive the knife into his child, he hears a voice. God stops him, and instead, provides a ram for him to sacrifice instead of his son.

Talk about something that doesn’t make any sense, at least not to man.
But God knows what He’s doing all along.
After Abraham sacrifices the ram, God lets him in on the reason for testing his faith. He tells Abraham He wanted to make sure he would not withhold anything from Him, not even his own son.

Man, what a moment.

There are so many things we can learn from the story of Abraham.
One thing is we can’t lean on our own understanding because we don’t know the whole story. However, on the contrary, God does. This is why we must choose to trust Him. Sometimes He doesn’t let us in on the details because He wants to teach us to cling to Him rather than to an expected outcome. We can always trust God’s intention and heart even when we can’t see the details, outcome, or reason.

Something else we can learn is that we never have any reason not to have faith in what God says. If He makes a promise, He keeps it. If He says He is going to do something, even when it literally seems impossible, we can have full confidence that He will do it. There is nothing too big for God. He is sovereign, in control, and everything is in His hands.

On top of this, sometimes God gives us promises or glimpses into His plan, but doesn’t do what He said He will right away. Sometimes we have to wait, because if we don’t, we won’t be ready for it when it comes. However, the waiting never disqualifies what God says.

Something else I love about the story of Abraham is that God teaches him to hold the things He has with open hands. It would have been really easy for Abraham to take his son, something God promised him, something that was really good and God-ordained, and hold onto it for himself with closed hands. God wanted to make sure Abraham was still willing to surrender even his son to Him, because He wants to be first in our hearts. He wants us to be willing to give up anything if He asks us to. Most of all, even the things God gives us belong to Him, and He wants us to be holding on to them freely enough that He is still able to use them in His way for His glory.

There are so many incredible things we can learn from Abraham and his story, even more than I touched on. However, I think there is something that is incredibly important, something we must understand, yet is really easy to miss.

The one thing I have noticed, the one constant, is that God is with Abraham.
He is with him in the process – in the mess, the chaos, the confusion, the trying times, the times when He tests his faith, the times when what He promises and calls him to seems impossible, the times when life doesn’t look like what he had expected, the times when the giants are bigger and stronger than the people can face on their own, and every detail in between.

I read a post someone made on Instagram recently about walking in the process.
In it she wrote, “The fact that you have Jesus right there with you in the process is enough.”
Woah.
That hit me really hard.

How many times do we think we need all of these things from God to make it through the process? Understanding, strength, to know the outcome, a little more faith.
But in reality, all we really need is to know He is with us.
Isn’t that enough? It is, a million times over with a resounding yes.

We so often underestimate the Truth that God is with us. We look for more, we flail, we call out to Him, we cry in frustration because the process is hard and messy and confusing and painful. But all along, He has been with us, and He is with us, and that truly is enough.
Jesus is what we need. His unending and faithful presence. His companionship. His walking the path with us.
He is enough.
The fact that He is with us, is enough. It is more than enough.
It always will be.

Abraham’s life wasn’t easy. He had many moments of struggle, many moments that tested his faith.
But in every one of those, God showed up. God came through.
God was with him, and that’s what made it possible for him to keep going, for him to have faith, for him to be obedient.

There will be times when the waiting is painful and you feel as if you want to throw in the towel because it seems like it’ll never happen.
There will be times when the things God calls you to don’t make a lick of sense and you can’t see how it will ever work out.
There will be moments when the testing of your faith is more painful than anything you’ve ever experienced.
There will be seasons of sowing and seasons of reaping the harvest.
There will be times of confusion, chaos, mess, and down right pain.

But the constant through every single one of those times is that God is with you.
God is with you, smack dab in the middle.
On the floor as you’re crying, in the car when you’re contemplating running away, in your room as you’re laying in bed at 2am wondering how to keep going.
God’s presence is a promise, and it is a constant. He will never leave.

He is with you in the process.
And that is enough.