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Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  Genesis 12:1

Jesus said that no one could follow him unless they were willing to leave father and mother, brother and sister.  Did He speak theoretically, or did He know, personally, the price of leaving kindred and the comforts of home?  He knew the cost.  Jesus knew that following His Father’s voice would prove to be stressful for family dynamics.   

Yahweh had divine rights to Jesus.  He shaped His identity.  He established parameters and boundaries.  He set future goals for Him, culminating in paying the price for sin on a cross.  He guided and encouraged Him all the way there, and then all the way home from the confines of a tomb. 

Obedience and honor were the responsibilities of this Son of God.  As Jesus modeled pilgrimage, there was stress. He set off on a course for which He had no roadmap.  He trusted God for the next step on His journey.  He never knew what the next day would bring.  It unfolded as He listened and followed directions.  He had to learn obedience.  It wasn’t hard-wired.  He knew intimately the stresses of following His Father’s voice. 

The call of Abram to leave his parents and family to establish a new allegiance was extended to Jesus and is still extended to every son and daughter of God.  When I was born into God’s family, I left the authority of my earthly father for my heavenly Father.  God’s commands took precedence over all other influences.  I submitted to His Fatherhood as He shaped me, established parameters, set goals, and corrected and encouraged me.  Obedience and honor are my responsibility, just as they were for Jesus.

The call of God will be burdensome when family loyalties are threatened and when Christian friends think my steps are too radical. That’s because the only one who hears the call is the very one to whom God speaks.  Jesus knew the disdain of His parents and siblings.  When at its worst, his family thought He was mad.  On one occasion, Jesus was told that His mother and brothers were waiting to see Him outside a ministry venue. He made it clear to those delivering the message that even mothers and brothers had no personal advantage because they were related to Him.  They, too, had to hear the call and set out on their own pilgrimage.

When my obedience is tested with famine, breathe over me Your encouragement.  As you did for Jesus, feed me with the manna of heaven.  Amen

The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [Messiah] comes.  Genesis 49:10

If I look for a biblical hero to emulate, Joseph is always a good choice.  His fidelity to God amidst great suffering has inspired believers like me down through the ages.  Of all of Jacob’s sons, Joseph gets the most attention.  Yet, it is not from the line of Joseph that Jesus was born.  The highly flawed sons of Jacob didn’t mess things up so severely that God disqualified them from His covenant of blessing.  The promises of God prevailed over sin. 

What was the purpose of Joseph’s life?  It was to save Judah and His descendants.  If Joseph had not assumed a place of power in Egypt, he could not have brought his father and brothers there to live.  Jacob and all his descendants would have perished in a great famine.  It’s hard for me to grasp that Joseph was used by God to save a scoundrel brother who had sold him into slavery.  That seems twisted.

But God is wild and wonderful. He exalts the likes of Judah.  He blesses adulterers like King David.  He forgives betrayers like Peter.  He saves persecutors and murderers like Paul.  Judah, at the end of his life, offered to give his own for the life of another brother.  He finally chose righteousness. The common thread in all of these stories was a heart of repentance.  God’s forgiveness was so radical that an entire past was put under His atoning blood.

No family is perfect. Some haven’t seen their children and grandchildren in years. They grieve. They feel embarrassed.  They fear they are entirely to blame.  They dread being asked about family when they’re out with friends.  Is the Gospel of Jesus Christ relevant to them? Is it relevant to us in the very places we long to see the righteousness of God revealed in the lives of our family members?   Yes.

This Christmas, as we hear the Christmas story and are tempted to zone out at the reading of the lineage of Jesus, let’s wake up and sit on the edge of our seats.  When Judah’s name is mentioned, let’s worship the God who works in family messes.  Let’s marvel, even if by faith, that no one is out of His reach.  Let’s put that faith into action by praying for a renegade’s forthcoming repentance.  God’s redemptive storyline spreads to the darkest corners of our lives.

For every family ‘Joseph’, there are tears of joy.  For every family ‘Judah’, there are tears of faith.  You are God over every family drama that is brought to your feet in prayer.  Amen

So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore. Genesis 37:23

Joseph was stripped of his royal kind of robe. Jesus was stripped of his robe, too. The momentary humiliation didn’t change the destiny or the spiritual identity of either. Jesus stayed in touch with his belovedness but I suspect that Joseph did not. History would prove that the brother’s destruction of the robe of many colors, and the brother’s criminal treatment of Joseph, would do nothing to stop his ascension to a royal position in Egypt. Their sin against him only set it in motion.

Jesus was God’s Son whether anyone acknowledged Him or not. If the accusation flew that he was only the illegitimate son of Mary, Jesus was still God. When the crowd publicly humiliated him by accusing him of demonic possession, Jesus was still God. When His family eventually turned on Him and believed Him to be mentally unstable, Jesus was still God. When He hung on a Roman cross and died the most degrading death in existence, His spiritual status did not change. Jesus was still God.

If ever there were a world in which I needed to settle my spiritual identity, it’s this one. It is growing more and more unfriendly to the name of Jesus Christ, and anyone associated with Him will experience discrimination. If a barb from a parent can lay me low for four decades, how will I survive a community that ostracizes me? Suppose unfair criticism from a local spiritual leader sends me into hiding. How will I sustain the intentional diatribe of non-Christians who are looking for things they can misrepresent?

No ill-treatment in this world can change my status in heaven. God’s kingdom is what counts; it is eternal. Things on earth should be discounted; they will pass away. Though I am hated here, not one ill feeling comes from the Father above who calls me His. While earth bestows the basest kind of shame, God bestows the heavenliest kind of honor.

The only way to stay in touch with these beautiful realities is to read a Word that is eternal, not temporary. Whatever it says is true forever and ever. Today, I may be Joseph in a pit. Tomorrow, I will be reigning with Christ.

Every time Jesus was crushed, He looked up until He felt Your favor. I lock my eyes on You. Amen

Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits. Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.” But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. Genesis 37:20-22

There is a father who will take out his anger on his children today. He will cut them to shreds with a sharp rebuke and they will shrink and go into hiding. He’s done it before. He even saw the damage in their eyes but that did not deter him.

There is a middle-aged woman who will see dreaded circumstances repeat themselves. She will say, “Oh no, not again!” but she will make the same disastrous choice she made the last time. She does not see that God often gives another chance to do something different.

Reuben, for all his faults, did make a different choice. (Although not one that was drastic enough.) He had sinned against his father many times throughout his youth and had experienced the stab in his own heart as he saw his father’s pain. The last offense he committed was sleeping with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. With this fresh in his memory, he will not agree to take the life of Joseph, his father’s favored son. He cannot bear the thought of Jacob’s grief yet again.

Do I really learn from my mistakes? The magical answer is ‘yes’. Who is going to repeatedly put their hand over an open flame?  But that is naïve. When bad behavior is generational, thoughts of stopping happen long after the deed is done. By default, we live as our fathers did.

Jesus told Nicodemus two critical things. 1.) ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh.’We are like whom we came from. I am a product of a mother and father and will possess not only their physical characteristics but their holy and sinful bents as well. I will not deviate without spiritual transformation. And, 2.) ‘That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.’ I am to be like by new Father because I was born of His Word and His Spirit. So here’s the question that replays in my mind? Am I more like my new Father than my earthly parents? I should be if the new birth and the things of the Spirit are nurtured.

How does this relate to learning from my mistakes? When I repeat the foolishness of my youth, the Spirit of God calls to me. “Why are you doing that? You’re now my own daughter and I’m calling you out to be like me, not them.” Past mistakes are a mirror. I see the reflection of my former self against the reflection of my brother, Jesus, standing next to me. With just a glance, I walk away and have no appetite for the former things.

Forget my last name today, Lord. I am Christine – of God’s heart. Amen

Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” Genesis 37:9-10

Joseph shared his first dream with his brothers and it didn’t go well. They despised him for it.  So why would he tell the second dream to the same unreceptive audience?   Perhaps he hoped that, with a second hearing, they would believe the message. 

When I’m excited about something, the need to tell someone is strong. I want others to share the wonder with me. But I can share things indiscriminately and experience the same kind of reaction Joseph got from his brothers. My need for approval can be so strong that discretion goes out the door.

Becoming a person of self-awareness is critical if I’m going to be successful in relationships. Do others receive my words and stories eagerly? Is my point of view welcomed? What is the track record with the people who are most resistant to me? If Joseph had really stopped to think about what happened when he related his first dream, perhaps he would have stopped himself before sharing the second.  I can be so much like Joseph. If I know something, I just have to say it.

There are some things I believe passionately, and I’m tempted to keep talking about them to the same group of people. Truth be told, they may be rolling their eyes when I open the topic for the umpteenth time. They are already closed and it would be wise for me to acknowledge that. God needs to heal any rejection my soul suffers and also needs to show me if my words are framed by a need to be right. That alone repels people. What I speak may be true, but no one will hear it if it comes with disrespect.

No mission is more important than being God’s spokesman but getting the message right is only half the challenge though. Getting the timing and attitude right will cause the words to roll off my tongue the way Jesus would speak.  So, what do I do with my need to be liked, respected, validated and accepted? Prior to any speeches, I take my needs to the One who makes me whole in His presence.

Give me holy pause until it’s time for me to speak. Amen

He said to them, “Hear this dream that I have dreamed: Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us?”   Genesis 37:6-8

Consider the brothers’ outrage when they questioned Joseph. Time answered them with more than a touch of irony. Later on in Israel’s history, the Philistines laughed and posed their own rhetorical questions to Saul about the absurdity of a small boy, unarmed, taking on Goliath.  And many centuries later, chief priests, Pharisees, and Pilate himself posed similar questions to Jesus about His claim to be a King.

All the questions follow a similar theme and are answered by a God who reminds us that He is not predictable and nothing is impossible when He has called and equipped the person of His choosing. He uses the foolish, the uneducated, the weak, the stuttering, the outnumbered, the shamed, the forgotten, the underdog, and the smallest, to glorify His name.

Who is laughing at you? Perhaps you’ve sustained a rhetorical question already today. “Who do you think you are!” When God’s child knows that he is called, loved, blessed, and empowered by the Spirit of God, such confidence offends many. It can even rub against the grain of a few who love Jesus but no one should be threatened.

Each of us is called, loved, empowered, and invited into holy confidence if we are willing to do the hard spiritual work that precedes it.  The challenge is this ~ few love God enough to seek Him on that level. Spiritual laziness characterizes their lives. They desire, and perhaps feel entitled to, the blessing without having to engage in the spiritual disciplines to get it. 

For each who is being taunted today, know you are in good company. Do not let any man steal your confidence. Time will write your story and silence the voice of every accuser. Walk humbly with your God, and that doesn’t mean being apologetic about your call.  Love well, serve humbly, but stand tall.

Do not let accusers undo me. Amen

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. Genesis 37:2-3

Favoritism can be complicated. Jacob didn’t make Joseph his favorite to the exclusion of other righteous sons. The others proved themselves to be troublemakers, bound up in foolishness. They spurned their father’s ways and left a trail of disappointment and hurt. But in all of this, Jacob acted unwisely by setting the stage for the other sons to have permanent issues with Joseph.

The heart is a complicated thing. It can be difficult to have the same affection for each of your children. If one is bent toward evil, disrespects authority, and has no regard for family, isn’t it difficult to love that one as much as another whose heart clearly belongs to God? It can be hard to disguise the pleasure you feel over the one that is righteous. It’s equally hard to hide the pain the other one inflicts when they act out against members of your family.

This is where each mother and father needs Jesus desperately. Only He can daily heal the hurts caused by a wayward child. Only He can give the spiritual fuel necessary to love the one who is unloving. Only He can show parents how to bestow unconditional love to two kinds of children. How will the child who loves rebellion not see the delight in his parent’s eyes over the sibling who honors with love and respect? God is the only one who can write the relational roadmap for these dynamics.

In the long run, Jacob should have learned from his own troubled childhood. Favoritism didn’t work out well between he and Esau. Now, he repeats it again by failing to disguise his deep affection for Joseph. He will give him a coat, the kind of coat only a royal child would wear. This will fuel the other’s hatred for their brother. Despite Jacob’s mistakes, God’s purpose for Joseph and the future of Israel will not be thwarted. Again, that is comforting, isn’t it?

You are the God of grace and redemption. Bind our families together in righteousness so that we still stand in the last day. Amen

And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him. Genesis 35:27-29

I’ve been doing some Old Testament math. It’s easy for there to be half a century between chapters. And, you and I know how long and how momentous just one year can be!  It’s important to comprehend how much time has gone by since Jacob has seen his father, Isaac. He left just after stealing his brother’s birthright and that would make the absence between them many decades long. I wonder if Jacob ever thought he’d see his father again. Perhaps he knew that this was the bitter consequence of his sin.

God, in His mercy, allowed Isaac to live until Jacob returned to his homeland. Esau was there too. Both brothers, long estranged, were there to say goodbye to their father and, together, bury him.

God is merciful. God is redemptive. But there are losses because of sin. They become a permanent ‘thorn in the flesh’ as, like Jacob, it takes a long time to find my way home. There is a lot of wrestling with God along the way, striving to be blessed again. How do I handle the loss of years? How do I not ‘grieve without hope’ for the things I suffer today that were done out of sinful intent and/or blind ignorance?  Or even worse, years seemingly lost through the wrongdoings of others?

Grace. My need for God to carry me through seasons of regret will bind me to Him like nothing else. In giving grace, He establishes His identity as ‘the Gracious One.’   My pain is transformed from bitter to bittersweet because experiencing God is such a powerful experience. It brings joy amid my losses. Given enough time, I might even experience moments of gratitude for the shipwreck because it brought me to my Safe Harbor.

The word ‘gracious’ is one of my favorite words because You have given it wings in my life. Thank you! Amen

While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine. And Israel heard of it. Genesis 35:22

Bilhah is a woman without rights. She was Rachel’s maid all the way back to Rachel’s youth. She learned to obey orders very young. She never knew freedom. When Rachel couldn’t conceive, she gave Bilhah to Jacob as a secondary wife. She was used as a surrogate mother to conceive babies. Once they were born, Rachel took them from her and adopted them as her own. Once again, Bilhah had no choice.

Years later, she was victimized again as Jacob’s oldest son, Reuben, took her honor. He snuck in her tent and in the darkness, lay with her. Bilhah could write books on what it means to be victimized.  Did she know God?  I want to believe so. She was immersed in all the teaching, the worship, the building of altars at pinnacle moments of the family’s faith. She saw it all and probably clung to God for the strength to endure hardship.

What can be said for the Bilhahs of this world? Perhaps you are one. Your life seems like a set up as choices were made for you. How do you come to believe in a God that appears to bless some and curse others? Those with heartbreaking stories have posed the question to me on many occasions. Can He be trusted?

God’s feelings toward Bilhah are not revealed, nor are her feelings for God recorded. But lest God become someone over whom I stumble, the whole context of scripture is at my fingertips. A generation earlier, Hagar was in similar circumstances. Used. Spurned. Banished. But in the aftermath of man’s sin and the tragedy that had been thrust upon this young mother, God’s character shone through when He remembered her and met her personally in an unforgiving desert. He revealed Himself as the ‘God who sees her.’ El-Roi

If I measure God’s goodness by my own story, He can look guilty. I must widen my view and live in the scriptures. I must rest in God’s overarching redemptive plan that includes the provision of a Savior who redeems tragic stories. I must look ahead to Paradise where faithfulness will be rewarded and where sin will be judged. There, the first will be last and the last will be first. Hagars and Bilhahs will lead the way in heaven.

The extent to which God allows one to be crushed, alternatively, that person is given an unequaled capacity to know Him intimately. Treasures of the darkness are promised to the one who seeks God by faith when all evidence against him seems ironclad.

For the one who is Bilhah, disclose Yourself to her today as El-Roi. Amen

Rachel went into labor, and she had hard labor. And when her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Do not fear, for you have another son.” And as her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin. Genesis 35:16-18

Too many changes all at once puts me in a challenging place emotionally. Everything seems too much to process. If I initiated the changes, it was a bit easier but most change is what happened to me and I had little control over it. Even good changes were challenging enough but bad changes brought the onset of grief.

Jacob’s life, a life much longer than mine, had drastic twists and turns. He left home, by his own doing, and never saw his parents again. His dreams smashed repeatedly when Rachel’s father tricked him into working past a decade. He lost the relationship with his brother. God changed his name to Israel and that identity change was a huge adjustment. His perception of his sons took a downward and tragic turn. Rachel, the love of his life, died during childbirth. This last tragedy happened on the very arrival to Bethel, the place of blessing where they would have settled to live out the remainder of their days.

Now there is a certain kind of personality that thrives on change, but I contend that it’s change they control. No one likes an unexpected knock on the door in the middle of the night. Ron and I experienced that when our son died.

Why is it that difficult times never seem to last just a year? Instead, five years, twelve years, even twenty-two years go by. There are seasons of life where one thing after another overwhelms us and we learn that we must draw close to Jesus and follow His lead to develop spiritual strategies.  What did Jesus do when he felt the pressures of life?  He withdrew to get alone with His Father. He reviewed the scriptures and God’s history. He communed with Him through a prayer life that’s hard to imagine. 

These are the prescriptions for any of us who knows that the only stability available to us is childlike trust and unshakeable faith in in our God.

“It is well for us that, amidst all the variableness of life, there is One whom change cannot affect; One whose heart can never alter, and on whose brow mutability can make no furrows.”  Charles Spurgeon