ENTRY FOUR – JANUARY 11, 2008

4 – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: The Patriarchs Genesis 24-38

This entry covers seven days worth of reading,and touches on such diverse topics as God’s funny ways of giving us OUR HEART’S DESIRE, the “LABAN PRINCIPLE”, TRUST, FEAR, RESENTMENT & more PARENTING ISSUES. Happy meditating…

Gen 24 Abe taught his servants to fear God and to pray specifically. God takes care of the details, if we let him. He loves to give us what I call “little jewels”. He even gave me my favourite music for my wedding! He gives me little "jewels" all the time! Here’s the story of the wedding music (bear with me if you have already heard this…hope you don’t mind reading it – I love telling it!) When I was dating John but not yet engaged, I was at the point in our relationship where I felt he was “it” and one afternoonin June ‘87, I allowed myself fifteen minutes to daydream about my hopeful future wedding. (I was trying to be “spiritual”, hence only 15 minutes!) I wasn’t thinking about dresses or gowns or flowers – I was thinking about music! I love all kinds of Christian music, and I am a classical music buff, so I began to think of beautiful hymns and selections for the ceremony. A favourite classical praise piece of mine is “Worthy Is the Lamb”, the closing music from Handel’s Messiah. I love it because the words are taken straight out of the book of Revelation, chapters 4 and 5, which are some of my favourite verses on God, Jesus and heaven. I also love the majestic nature of the piece. However, after I had the thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have that song in my wedding?”, I then thought, “Wow, you are so arrogant! As if you deserve to ask any choir to learn such a difficult song!” Then I put it out of my head and I never told a soul about that episode or that I liked that song. A month later, John proposed to me during a church conference on a Saturday afternoon. Later that night, when the magnificent London church choir performed for the conference participants, conducted by the highly talented Steve Allen, guess what they performed as their opening number? My hands are shaking even as I am typing this, and it was 20 years ago!! God is so good! And they did a great job singing it a few months later at my wedding! Handel never sounded so good, at least to me! All that to say that we when we are striving to live for God and think about matters his way, he also will grant us little jewels, little gifts that he doesn’t HAVE to give us but that he does just to give us a hug! Think about your life and all the little jewels that God has given you!

Gen 25 Issac had to rely on God for his wife to get pregnant. Sometimes God doesn’t let the things that come naturally to others come naturally to us. I don’t know why, but I do know that he knows what we need, so I (usually) trust him. Also, this chapter contains the story of Esau selling his birthright. The book of Hebrews likens this to us selling out our Christianity for pleasures of this world. What is our price? Do we have a price? Or are we “sold out”? No way that Satan can get us with worldly temptations…

Gen 26 Fear causes us to sin. That'swhy God says that perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18). How many times have I sinned because of fear? Lying, freaking out, withdrawing, escaping –these are all sinful responses. Help me, O God, to love you more than to give into my fear.

Gen 27 PARENTS: We all want and need to feel BLESSED, RESPECTED, ESTEEMED by our parents. Kids who don't feel this will spend the rest of their lives trying to prove themselves, or trying to please their parents (like Esau marrying a 3^rd wife just to please his parents) or looking for something or someone to love them.

Gen 28 Perhaps Jacob was able to nowbe more God-focused because he felt the BLESSING from his dad.

Gen 29 More egs of the pitfalls of polygamy!!! After knowing Christians from around the world, I have met several people from Africa who were brought up in polygamous families. They could probably write their own stories here, yet for most of them, it was a normal way to grow up in their culture. Interesting…

Gen 30 Years ago, Sam Laing taught a lesson about “the Laban Principle”. He reasoned that God put Laban, who was incredibly sneaky and deceitful and selfishly motivated, into Jacob’s life to teach Jacob to see his own sneakiness, deceitfulness and selfish motivation. Laban had Jacob’s bad qualities but only worse! Do you have a Laban in your life? Is God trying to teach you something? Don’t resent it – learn from it and repent!!

Gen 31 "There's enough sin to goaround" - Part II.

Gen 32 Jacob is finally humble, sober, grateful and sees his need for God (poor in spirit).

Gen 33 Forgiveness is sweet. If you are having trouble forgiving someone, or if there is someone having trouble forgiving you, read the Cloud and Townsend books on forgiveness and Gary Chapman’s follow-up to his Love Language books The Five Languages of Apology!

Gen 34 Deceit comes back to haunt, and the many sins that Jacob's sons got involved in testify to what happens when your kids aren't brought up in the fear of the Lord.

Gen 35 Sadness when Rachel dies. And I bet all of that competitiveness to have babies seemed so petty then.

Gen 36, 37 There are so many lessons from the story of Joseph, and it is almost everyone’s favourite story in Genesis. For PARENTS, a good lesson is that playing favourites with your children never helps anyone! For EVERYONE, we can certainly learn that discretion is helpful in relationships, since Joseph’s boasting, whether from naiveté or from arrogance, magnified his brothers’ resentment of his favoured status in the family. Another lesson – I read once that a person filled with resentment is like an iceberg – only 10% is above the surface, 90% is hidden.The difference between an iceberg and someone who is resentful is that an iceberg never attacked anyone!! Yet another lesson – Reuben had thought that he could keep quiet and fix everything later…when we think that we can keep quiet about sin and fix something later, we often learn the hard way that it is too late!

Gen 38 Judah and Tamar's story is a tale of gender double standards, and the woman gets the last laugh (and gets herself in the ancestral lineage of King David and Jesus)! Things for women will get worse before they get better, but praise God for the New Covenant, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ! (Next entry on 18^th Jan)

karenlouis@seachurches.org