What do you say to these things [God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac], Abraham? What kind of thoughts are stirring in your heart? A word has been uttered by God that is such as to shatter and try your faith. What do you say to these things? What are you thinking? What are you reconsidering? Are you thinking, are you turning over in your heart that if the promise has been give to me in Isaac but I offer him for a burnt offering, it remains that the promise holds no hope? Or rather do you think of those well-known words and say that it is impossible for him who promised to lie; be that as it may, the promise shall remain?

—Origen, Homilies on Genesis 8.1

Yesterday I preached on how Scripture tells us to respond when bad things happen to us. Here, Origen summarizes it nicely. We will either trust God to do us right or we won’t. If we do not know the God who loves us and gave himself for us very well, it is likely we will not trust him and so it behooves us to make the effort to get to know him better through regular prayer, Bible study, worship, and Christian fellowship.

Here Origen identifies the beginning of how to trust God. We must fix in our mind that God is always faithful and never lies. Therefore we can believe that he will deliver us, or at least help us to weather the storm, when we are afflicted. Abraham learned that by obeying God’s command to him. This is the only way you can ever learn to trust God; you must give him the chance to demonstrate his trustworthiness to you.