A couple of lessons I learned along the way

A few things Learned through study, lec­ture and dis­cus­sion dur­ing the study of the last sev­eral chap­ters of Genesis:

A cou­ple of things I learned from Jacob:

1. Even if your past includes decep­tion, lies, and run­ning… if you belong to God you will come to the end of your­self and you will end your days lean­ing on a staff and wor­ship­ping. God’s sov­er­eign will is inescapable.

2. You may wres­tle with God con­cern­ing His will, but He will always win. Even if He touches your hip and causes a limp, it’s the faith­ful wound of a friend and it will be used for your good and for His glory. Remem­ber that God dis­ci­plines His chil­dren… it’s one of the ways we know we are His.

3. Even if your whole fam­ily is at times scat­tered and you are in a sea­son of upheaval, fac­tions, and estrange­ments, God can and will, in His time and in His way, bring you back together for His glory!

4. You should do for your kids what you wish had been done for you. I love how Jacob’s bless­ing of younger over the older of Joseph’s sons was delib­er­ate because he under­stood the will of God. He did not show favoritism and cause any­one to stumble.

5. Young Jacob is an easy man for us to judge. Some­times you want to do a face-palm as you won­der if he is ever going to get it when he’s younger. He does get it though. When you look at Jacob’s life at the end you for­get who he was and you love him for all that God made him into. I loved the end to his life too… doing the work of God until the sec­ond he breathed his last breath.

A cou­ple of thoughts on Joseph:

Last night was our final les­son, lec­ture and dis­cus­sion night for our study of Gen­e­sis. I know there are so many par­al­lels to be drawn between the life of Joseph and the life of Jesus, but one par­tic­u­lar par­al­lel stuck out to me in chap­ter 50.

After Jacob’s death, Joseph’s broth­ers begin to fret that maybe Joseph had not really for­given them, and he would now per­haps repay their evil since there father was no longer among them. When mes­sen­gers bring this mes­sage to Joseph, he responds by weep­ing. This past Sunday’s ser­mon made men­tion of Jesus weep­ing at the tomb of Lazarus. It was pointed out that the weep­ing had to do with the unbe­lief of those sur­round­ing the Lord. This begged me to ask myself “How does my unbe­lief grieve the Lord? How does it grieve those around me?”

It really was not what I was expect­ing to pick up on for this les­son, but it stuck. I have always seen any strug­gle with unbe­lief as an inward and per­sonal strug­gle… not an out­ward strug­gle that causes oth­ers to weep. I don’t mean unbe­lief as in not believ­ing in Jesus as my per­sonal Sav­ior, but I mean unbe­lief in not truly and con­sis­tently trust­ing God in ALL mat­ters, trust­ing in His promises, and rest­ing in ALL of His prov­i­dence (the prov­i­dence that is good and easy, and the prov­i­dence that is some­times very hard).

Joseph did trust God and all of His prov­i­dence. He knew beyond any doubt that God had taken the evil meant toward him and used it to save many. Bit­ter­ness, anger, resent­ment, enti­tle­ment, and fear — the fear like Joseph’s broth­ers had — are all rooted in unbe­lief. Makes my daily cry of “Lord I believe, help thou my unbe­lief!” more con­crete and more urgent.


The Morning Thought

When we are told in Eph­esians to pick up the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, we often have images in our mind of only fight­ing exter­nal ene­mies. We wave the Sword around fight­ing Satan… fight­ing evil. The ques­tion that begs to be asked is how often do we impale our­selves


Iron Sharpens Iron

This entry was writ­ten on Jan­u­ary 16, 2008… with much love and many tears. I am care­fully walk­ing a nar­row beam that will take a lot of wis­dom, patience, and love to nav­i­gate. It really is not so far off of the ground that an error would cause me to plum­met to dis­as­ter, but it feels that way.


Join with all nature in manifold witness…

Great is Thy Faith­ful­ness is one of my favorite hymns. When I think of the words while I am stand­ing in a place like Mount Mitchell it brings me to tears. Yes­ter­day my sweet, best-friend (who is also bless­edly my hus­band) loaded the car after Church for a quick lit­tle road trip. Those who know us know this is truly


Stay Tuned…

Rest assured that God isn’t fin­ished with me yet, and for that I am so grate­ful because I have so, so far to go. Try­ing to con­trast con­tent­ment and com­pla­cency. One is good. One is not good. They are easy to con­fuse. It’s an excit­ing time in my life. I have made a lot of big deci­sions based on a sea­son


Thrusted or Entrusted?

There was a time not so long ago in my life when I erro­neously believed that if my fam­ily could make it through a very har­row­ing deploy­ment we would all be just fine. I think in the depths of the pain and fear I told myself this as a shal­low and empty promise. It was some­thing eas­ily con­trived and eas­ily believed  –  really