WHEN SOMEONE PLAYS GOD

Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.  Genesis 27:38

         Rebekah played the part of God and how she and her sons, and their descendants, suffered.  She and Isaac played favorites between their two sons and encouraged unhealthy competition.  Usually these urges to draw closer to one child emerge from a defect in a marriage.  When emotional and spiritual needs go unmet between a husband and a wife, one or both turn to a child to find understanding, camaraderie, and even comfort.

         Rebekah devised the scheme where Jacob would dress up like his brother, go into the presence of Isaac, and extort the blessing reserved for the firstborn.  Maybe Rebekah believed that the outrage would be short-lived.  Esau would go hunting for a while and get over it.  Isaac would only grieve for a short time.  And Jacob?  He would rejoice and prosper.  She was wrong on all counts!  Esau, from that day on until God intervened, was bent on revenge.  Rebekah had to send Jacob away for his own safety and though she believed it would only be for a short time, she never saw him again before her own death.  As for Jacob, the one who got this wonderful blessing, he would suffer the effects of others deceptive schemes.

         Sin has deeper consequences than I ever bargain for.  When I am poised in that moment of decision, that very moment when I decide whether the sin is worth it or not, I make calculations based on my limited knowledge of people and of God.  My own spiritual blindness fails to see the gravity of a choice made against the glory of God.  What I believe to be some insignificant act really has the power to eat away at the spiritual health of my family for generations to come.  Whatever precipice I stand upon today, the one where action has not yet been taken, here are my choices.  1.) I can venture my best guess about the future.  Then I can move ahead to force things to work the way I believe they should.  Or, 2.) I can repent of my distrust toward God’s sovereignty and leave all possible interventions to a wise Father.

I’ve already seen it!  Sinful consequences cannot be measured.  They have always been worse than I predicted.  You are a Father who mercifully redeems my messes.  Amen

Journal Question:  What have you prayed about, seen no movement, and concluded that you must take matters into your own hands?  Have you made your move yet?  What if your calculations for fallout are entirely underestimated?  Can you step back, ask God to forgive you for sitting in His seat, and just pray about all things?

CAN I TRUST MY SENSES?

Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me.” Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.  The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”  He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.”  Genesis 27:18-27

         It’s hard, isn’t it?  There are times when I fail to listen to my gut talking and pay dearly for it.  But then, there are as just as many times when I follow my gut instinct and make disastrous choices.  The need to be led and ruled by spiritual understanding rather than my fallible sense of things is crucial.

         I’m reviewing this scene from Isaac’s life.  He’s old, nearly blind, and quite vulnerable.  He’s about to be deceived so that Jacob can get the firstborn’s blessing.  Isaac is the means to an end.  He does not know it though.  He assumes that family treats him honorably.  A bit naive.

         His first instinct was right.  He believed it to be Jacob’s voice and he was right but as soon as he felt his son’s hands, he was confused.  Knowing that blindness impairs judgment, he should have stopped and asked the Lord for insight.  Instead, he made a crucial decision by his senses.

         There are times I will swear something is true.  I have mounted my evidence, feel something strongly in my heart, and no one can tell me otherwise.  Time goes by and I discover that I was completely wrong.  I didn’t have all the facts.  My judgment, like Isaac, was impaired by something I didn’t acknowledge.  Humility, the kind that comes after failure, incurs much remorse.

         What important decision are you making today via your own instinct? You believe you are making a solid choice based on what you’ve seen and felt.  You argue that you have a good track record of sound judgment and that you’re feeling pretty confident.  Where is God in this?   None of us are infallible because of some innate giftedness.

         The only way to live is to be aware of my need for God.  I can’t trust myself on crucial matters.  I am not advocating becoming an insecure person who wrings their hands over all matters great and small.  Far from it.  Great strength and confidence can be mine but only as I depend on God for all things.  Minefields are exposed.  Disasters are averted.

Daily, I joyfully admit that I am only wise in You.  Amen

Journal Question:  Over what are you saying today, “I just know that this is the right thing to do.  I’ve thought about it for a long time.”  Would you be willing to stop and ask God about it, to cast all judgment upon Him for review?  Your future depends on it.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF ANOTHER’S WEAKNESS

Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, ‘Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die.’ Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you. Go to the flock and bring me two good young goats, so that I may prepare from them delicious food for your father, such as he loves. And you shall bring it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.”  Genesis 27:6-10

     You’ve heard the words.  Or, you may have spoken them.  “He won’t know the difference.  He’s out of it!”  This is the attitude with which Rebekah deals recklessly with her husband.  Isaac is nearly blind and it’s true that he won’t know the difference if Jacob dresses up to ‘feel’ like Esau.  The rest of the story is famous.

     Old age invites another’s reckless behavior.  Visit an elderly person who is unaware of time and it’s tempting to stay two minutes instead of twenty – just because I know they won’t remember or know the difference.  God’s Spirit would ask me, “Who, in my name, are you taking advantage of?”

    The feeble, frail and helpless, are the ones over whom God is most passionate.  Mistreat them, and His anger is kindled.  I can mistakenly believe that this only refers to the homeless or the orphans who are strangers to me.  But each one I am in relationship with has a place of frailty, a tender spot where they are vulnerable to another’s cruelty. In my flesh, I am selfish and can smell an opportunity, even a small one, where I can take care of myself at their expense.

    When I reach out to the feeble, to the ‘least of these, Jesus says that I am really serving Him.  I am looking into His face, bringing my gifts to His outstretched hands.

    I am no longer a thirty-something but am clearly in the last third of my life.  Because of this, I can see the beginnings of younger people treating me as ‘clueless.’  Total strangers assume I’m not as fast, as aware, as technologically saavy, etc.  And the truth is, I’m no match technologically for someone in their twenties, as hard as I work at staying current.  I don’t like how this bias feels but know that this is just the way it is.  What is humbling and unfortunate though is when I bring this same disrespect to people I love, those whom I believe might not know as much as me, or be as healthy as me, or are as young as me.

      The burning question I ask myself is this:  How would Jesus treat the elderly family member I’m caring for?  Would He take shortcuts because He wouldn’t face repercussions?  I doubt it.  Integrity and respect must be the hallmarks of my mindset toward others.   Whatever I do is for the glory or dishonor of Christ.

Help me see Your face in the faces of the feeble, beginning at home.  Amen

Journal Question:  Whose face comes to mind as you read today’s devotional?  Answer two questions as you journal.  1.) How do you see this person?  2.) How does Jesus see this person?

THE HIDDEN MEANING OF A BIRTH

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.”  Genesis 4:1

            Though Adam and Eve’s external world had radically changed (from the perfect Garden to a cursed world), their inner life was still somewhat alive to God.  My hunch is that they missed Him, longed for Him, dreamed of walking with Him again as they did in the Garden.  They remembered His holiness, His glory, and the kind of love with which He loved Him.  How could you not miss all of that and grieve the memory!

            Childbirth was so difficult, so painful, that I’m confident Eve looked to God for help and strength.  She recognized, as she looked into the face of her newborn son, that God had done a miracle.  Neither of them had ever seen a baby and to witness life coming from her womb, to hold that infant in her hands was to witness a miraculous act by God Himself.

            Probably hundreds of thousands of babies will be born as I’m writing this sentence.  Will each mother know that God was involved in the creation of her child?  Sadly no. Will each child grow up to know that he or she is a unique creation of Almighty God?  Probably not. And when we languish for lack of that knowledge, our self-worth is skewed.  The parents who spoke into our life at birth shaped our view of ourselves.

            If they failed to celebrate our birth and hold us in their arms with wonder, we will wonder at the meaning of our life.  There will be no evidence that we have a Creator who celebrated the day of our birth, not until He chooses to reveal Himself to us and open our spiritual ears to the sound of His heart beating fast for us.

            No one should have the right to define my worth except my Creator.  Not a parent.  Not a caregiver.  Not a child.   There is no such thing as an unwanted child in the kingdom.  Each birth is a miracle regardless of the circumstances.  Eve knew it.  Cain was the first son in a cursed world yet she could see past the darkness of her times to see the handiwork of God in the face of her son.

            When it’s time to sign a birthday card for a friend, I often jot a note that says, “I am praying God will show you how HE is celebrating your birthday today.”  Just a glimpse of that will right the wrongs of all those who may have missed the miracle of their birth.  God can heal the gaping wounds of those who feel invisible and insignificant.

I am Your plan, Your creation, and Your joy.  Always was.  Oh how You love me.  Amen

MAKING SOMETHING RIGHT THE WRONG WAY

He [Isaac} said, “Behold, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die.” Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, ‘Bring me game and prepare for me delicious food, that I may eat it and bless you before the Lord before I die.’ Now therefore, my son, obey my voice as I command you.  Genesis 27:2-8

  Is your spiritual rudder straight?  Do you see evil winning and do you live frustrated?  What if it were in your power to make righteousness win, would you do it?  Would this be wrong?

  Rebekah didn’t think so.  As a mother, she knew the hearts of both of her sons.  Esau was bent toward unrighteousness; Jacob toward God.  Esau, by birthright, was normally the one to whom the blessing would fall.  (She forgets that God had already worked this out when the babies were in her womb. Gen.25:23)  When an opportunity presents itself to make things right, for her nearly blind husband to pass the blessing onto their younger son, she quickly conceives a plan.  She believes that the future of her family rests on her shoulders.

  Do I?  Do I ever play God in my family’s life?  Influencing them and controlling them are two different things.  And I can be controlling.  I’m a strong personality with definite opinions.  Given time, I can weave a convincing argument when I believe in something.  But here’s the question.  Am I trying to control someone where God is already at work?  His plan is perfect.  His timing is perfect.  He knows the hearts of the person who is involved.  Do I really think I know them better than Him?  If I believe that I need to compensate for God’s seeming inactivity, I am acting out of unbelief.  Faith is absent.

  There are times that God calls me to take a stand and wield spiritual power prayerfully.  That’s easier than the alternative; taking a stand and wielding power prematurely because I’m afraid God isn’t going to do anything.  Rebekah wanted something holy.  For this, I commend her.  Her methods, however, were deplorable.

Give me grace to ignore the ticking of my own clock and to wait on You. Amen

Journal Question:  Where are you crying out for change in your life?  In your family?  How long have you been waiting on God?  Are you willing to stop and learn from Rebekah’s mistake?  Write out your new commitment to move only as God prompts.  And when He is silent with a plan, to wait.

EXPONENTIAL BLESSING

[Abimelech] said, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you. So we said, let there be a sworn pact between us, between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm.  So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.  In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths. And Isaac sent them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug and said to him, “We have found water.”  He called it Beersheba.  Genesis 26:28-33

         Seeds of the kingdom are highly reproductive.  Plant something simple today, in worship, and God will multiply the effects of it.  I can believe that what I offer is meager but that’s not the way God looks at it.  God loves to bless.  God’s heart is to multiply the effects of His favor on someone He loves.  What happened at Beersheba is a prime example.  As you review the chain of historical events with me, bear down and focus on the implications for your own story.

• Abraham and King Abimelech made a covenant on this piece of land regarding water rights.  Grateful that he could settle there, Abraham named the place ‘Beersheba’, the place of seven wells.
• His son, Isaac, also made a covenant with King Abimelech at Beersheba over water rights.  The King admitted that he was in awe of God’s obvious favor on Isaac.  After the ceremony, Isaac re-confirmed the name of the place ‘Beersheba’.
• Jacob will have the most significant spiritual experience of his life at Beersheba.  It will be here that he wrestles with the Lord and settles his own calling to lead God’s people.
• Nehemiah will return with the exiles to Beersheba, a momentous event in the restoration of God’s people to their own land.
• Beersheba became the administrative center for the whole region, famous for its commerce and fortresses. Touched by God, indeed.

         People can be blessed.  Land can be blessed.  The Spirit will hover over what is consecrated to God.  When God’s finger touches the ordinary, it becomes extraordinary!  When I turn my face toward heaven and exclaim that my home, finances, children, calling, and even my pain….are offered to God as sacrificial acts of worship, heaven comes down.  The spiritual seeds that are planted at that moment will multiply exponentially and I can count on seeing the cataclysmic results.

I have never been able to forecast what You will do. Ah, but Lord, You’ve always done more than I dreamed.  Amen

Journal Question:  There’s something or someone in your hands.  You’re torn.  Do you give it to God?  If you do, you won’t be in control of it anymore!  Make today your day of offering.  Journal this momentous event and call this day ‘Beersheba’.  Listen for rushing water — the overflow of seven wells….it’s coming.

How do you handle the person who drains you to the core?  Perhaps they’re a whiner or maybe their needs are legitimate.  It’s probably occurred to you that what you offer others usually satisfies but this person always wants more of you than you can give.  You are suffering from the exhausting effects of those who are skilled at ‘feeding’ off of you instead of tapping into the resources of Christ. Christine will untangle this subject and teach you how to re-structure the relationship in this live interview with Melinda Schmidt from Midday Connection.  It was heard live on Moody Radio Network on 2/14.

STRIKING WHERE YOU’RE VULNERABLE

And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him.  The Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham.  Genesis 26:12-15

         Having grown up in a very small town in New York, I can personally attest to the power of generational feuding.  At extended family gatherings, stories were told around our dinner table about certain families; people who did things long before we were born that were still recounted with disgust.  Such tales only bred a bias in our young impressionable minds.

         This incident in Isaac’s life occurs long before King David is born.  The famous story of the Philistines warring against the people of Israel and taunting them to provide a warrior to battle Goliath, has its roots in Isaac’s generation.  The war began here.  Isaac prospered, so much so, that the Philistines were filled with envy.  Envy turns to anger and anger that simmers erupts in aggression.

         Wishing to strategically strike Isaac in a vulnerable place, they targeted his wells.  Without water, his livestock would die.  His wealth would diminish so they filled in all of Abraham’s wells with dirt.

         Hindsight shows me that this is not the end of the story.  The Philistines might have thought that they won on at that day.  No water.  No wealth.  But they didn’t know God.  Their aggression was pathetic against the covenant of God over His people.

         Who is against you today?  Perhaps you are trying to exist in a familial relationship where envy and aggression are acted out as a way of life.  Or maybe you exist in a workplace fraught with private wars. Others struck at your vulnerable place and a blessed existence seems out of reach.  God has not forgotten you.  His covenant love is in tact.  Walk in faithfulness and God will do His part.  He will sustain, make a way where you see none, and prosper you.  A war against God’s child is a personal war against God.  Who can fight God and win?  Look at history and consider Who it is that is on your side!

Someone can threaten to block my water supply, Lord.  But You make rivers in the desert.  You are not passive.  I stand on your Word in Isaiah 42:13  ‘You, the LORD, go out like a mighty man, like a man of war You stir up Your zeal; You cry out, You shout aloud, You show Yourself mighty against Your foes.’  Praise be to the Lord of hosts.  Amen

Journal Question:  Who is your enemy?  What vulnerable places have they attacked?  What has been taken from you?  God is the Restorer.  Find one scripture that speaks of God providing what was stolen from you.  Memorize it today; say it out loud as often as your sagging confidence needs it.

WHEN I AM MY OWN DISAPPOINTMENT

When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.  Jeremiah 8:18

         Disappointing others is crippling enough, but disappointing myself can be devastating.  I wonder if I’ll ever find the way out of sadness and self-hatred.  What seems to complicate it is when I believe my disappointment in myself matches God’s disappointment in me.  No one can convince me otherwise.  But you know how it is.  Feelings can be strong and they are based on truth and based on lies.  How do I tell the difference?  What is the way out of this maze that threatens to hold me captive for a lifetime? Continue reading “When I Am My Own Disappointment” →

WHEN SOMEONE’S SIN PUTS ME IN HARM’S WAY

So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘Lest I die because of her.’ ” Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”  Genesis 26:9-10

         Non-Christians sin and put God’s people in danger.  Consider the vast number of believers suffering across our world as you’re reading this.   But the opposite can also be true.  Christians sin and put non-Christians in harm’s way.  Disobedience to God’s law, no matter who commits it, affects everyone in the vicinity.

         Like father ~ like son ~ in this Genesis story.  Abraham was afraid of Abimelech, feared that this pagan king would take Sarah to his harem.  But, it was the pagan King who feared God and spared Sarah.  Isaac, years later, does the same thing.  Fearing for Rebekah, he lies to King Abimelech about her identity and once again, it is the pagan who makes the moral choice.  He knows that Isaac’s sin has put he and his people in a precarious position with God.  Abimelech trembles over the ramifications.

         I can suffer the effects of other’s choices too.  Anyone in authority over me can exert his free will and bring calamity my direction.  Whether the head of a household, the head of a company, or the head of a church, no sin stays isolated to the one who commits it.

         I consider the story of Jonah.  The ‘perfect storm’ came upon the ship that carried Jonah.  The sailors feared for their lives and it dawned on them that someone on the ship might be responsible for bringing their misfortune.  They confronted Jonah, he accepted the responsibility for their peril, and the rest is history.

           Under whose hand are you suffering today?  No wonder we are called to pray for those in authority.  In humility, we are called to speak up when prompted by the Spirit, to give the one in charge the opportunity to see his sin and repent.

         Or, it could be that I am the one who is sinning against God.  I can assume that this is private and only I am affected.  This is one of Satan’s greatest deceptions.  If God would allow me to see into the future, I would understand the extent to which my choices affect the lives of those around me.  It may appear that they are unaware, but even on a subconscious level, they may be forming a new behavioral default because of what I normalized.

Oh, let me learn from history.  It is begging to be my teacher.  Let righteousness be my legacy – even down to the small things.  Amen

Journal Question:  There are so many possible applications from today’s story.  Ask God to personalize this in a language just for you and for your story.  Wait in silence before Him until He reveals it.