Discover His Heart: Our loving Father patiently prepares us to receive His blessings
We all know people who have had a rough start in life, plagued with poor choices and wrong turns. Jacob was certainly in that group. Jacob’s struggles began even before he was born, “Rebekah became pregnant with twins. But the two children struggled with each other in her womb. So she went to ask the Lord about it. ‘Why is this happening to me?’ she asked. And the Lord told her, ‘The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other; and your older son will serve your younger son.’” (25:21-23)
In Chapter 27 we read how Rebekah manipulated Isaac into granting his generational blessing to her favored son, Jacob, rather than the elder Esau. Even though Jacob questioned his mother’s decision to deceive his father, it appears that it was only because he didn’t want to get caught. Regardless of Rebekah’s motivation for doing this, her actions produced a lifetime enemy for the nation of Israel and she never saw her beloved son again. What a trade-off! Anytime I try to help God through compromising means, I can expect the same negative results. Lesson learned.
@ Genesis 29
The love story of Jacob and Rachel is as compelling as any good novel, but unfortunately the saying “What goes around comes around” was true for Jacob the deceiver. He fell in love with Rachel, the daughter of Laban, a man who understood deception only too well. Jacob had met his match! Laban tried to cheat Jacob out of marrying the woman he loved, robbed him of sheep and goats and changed his wages 10 times over the 14 plus years, yet Jacob persevered.
Jacob persisted because of one night long before, on the way to his future, he had a dream and a promise from God to bless him. “Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway. At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants. Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth!’” (Genesis 28:11-14) God used the next several years to make Jacob worthy of this blessing and of the blessing he had stolen so many years before from his brother.
God longs to bless each of us and often places promises deep within our hearts. It’s easy to give up when the Labans in life or our circumstances postpone our dreams, but from Jacob’s life, we understand that He is often perfecting us and preparing us for His blessing. Jacob eventually returned home a very wealthy man with a small, but growing nation in his caravan.
Moving Forward: I will hold on to the promises that God has placed deep within my heart as He prepares me for all that He has for me, never manipulating or compromising to bring it to pass.
Tomorrow@Judges 12-16
Phyllis Benigas 