Been thinking about the difficulties we encounter when trying to walk with God on our own power. We are supposed to, as The Apostle Paul says, “have the mind of Christ”, but frequently the track record of our decisions speak otherwise and in failing to engage the mind of God, we set ourselves up for failure and often confuse the world around us who are looking to us for the stability that is absent in the culture.
So I wondered, maybe, just maybe, seeking God’s mind frees us from the bondage of bad decisions. Jacob, that opportunist son of Isaac and Rebekah successfully wrestled away his brother’s birthright and now finds himself on the lamb while he waits for his brother’s anger to subside. As he arrives in Haran where mom has told him to go in search of a wife, he almost immediately discovers he is in the company of his uncle and an even better is the discovery of a beautiful daughter with whom he might later say, “it was love at first sight.” If we could grab one truth from the lives of the patriarchs it might be this: our life is carried out in process not as the product of some decision we may have made earlier in our lives. It was Matthew Henry who remarked that the feast that Jacob enjoyed at the table of God’s ladder to heaven in Genesis 28 should not be thought of as his daily bread. Jacob was in process preparing himself for the eternities of heaven. Puritan John Eliot preached that when we die, heaven will be no strange place to us, no, because the Christian has been there a thousand times.
The feast that Jacob enjoyed with God in Genesis 28 was not meant to become his daily bread–
So what are the temptations from Genesis 29 that lead nowhere good?
A temptation to exchange God’s will four ours. Nowhere I can see on the way to Haran does Jacob ever say, “is this woman that I now see the one you ( God) have prepared for me”? These are only some of the questions we must ask ourselves. What do we do with our time, our resources, and our calling? Do we really believe that He has no interest in these decisions? Jacob assumed he knew best!
Secondly I find it troublesome that he makes hi marriage pick based on physical beauty and bad eyes. Really? Is charisma and looks in any culture a reliable basis for marriage? If our beauty drugged culture is any indication of the state of affairs, than Jacob was merely ahead of his time..,Does it matter that Rachel still maintains an attachment to the family idols(Gen.31:24)?
I’ll leave you to ponder it all, but before I quit, these two questions remain.
- Who calls the shots in your life? Feel pretty good about that? How’s that all working out for you and those whom seek your best?
- For those of us who frequent a church? Is our commitment to Christ merely an attachment we deploy on Sunday, only to retract it for the real interests in our life the remainder of the week? Or…
The mind of Christ needs a heart after God
… when we die, heaven will be no strange place to us, no, because the Christian has been there a thousand times. Puritan John Eliot
MJC
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