The Breakthrough

Micah 2:13 NIV

One who breaks open the way will go up before them;

they will break through the gate and go out.

Their king will pass through before them,

the Lord at their head."

  

Are You Stuck In A Rut?

Years ago, not long after we moved to California, Mary Jo and I decided to take a trip back to see her family in New Orleans.   The road trip is forty hours of driving plus whatever stops you might take along the way.  We had two foster children with us and it felt like a great adventure for us all.  Our car was an old Chevy Malibu that the kids in the church called a “hooptie”.  The cloth lining to the roof was hanging down because the oldest boy had poked at it and stabbed it with a pencil.  Carved on the outside of the door he had put his name.  The Malibu had a rebuilt engine and new tires but the air conditioner was shot and it had nearly two hundred thousand miles on it.  We thought our hooptie could make it all the way and back but we weren’t sure and so with a bit of trepidation we took off down the highway.  I always drove whenever we went anywhere together; I guess I had learned that from my dad who never let my mom drive when the two of them went places together.  Our plan was to drive all night after the first day of driving and it had worked until it started raining buckets and we could barely see the road in front of us.  Not only that I got the flu and a fever began to rage through my body.  A few hours later my back went out and I could not stand when we stopped to get gas.  Mary Jo tried to take over the driving but it was clear she was too tired to go any further and so we gave up the fight and checked into a hotel.

There are times when life gets too big for us to handle.  We try our best to keep going but we have nothing left in the tank.  Maybe you have never hit that low spot when things seemed hopeless; when it felt like if you did not get some help you might fall apart.  The world is filled with people who have, who face trials and difficulties that are too big for them, too painful and too long lasting to manage on their own.  You certainly aren’t alone if what is before you is daunting, maybe even frightening.  Some have cancer and haven’t told anyone.  Others have a son who won’t try to find a job or who drinks too much.  You might know someone who has a mother with Alzheimer’s or a daughter battling depression a grandchild who is autistic or a husband who no longer can work.  The bright sunshine of the morning may cheer the hearts of many as they climb out of bed but not all of us.  You might be one who just wishes you could pull the covers over your face and stay in bed for the day…or the week…or the month.

The Bible has a number of case studies of those who came to the end of the rope.  One in particular brought most of his difficulties on himself.  Those of course are the worst kind, the ones that have years of guilt and regret attached to them.  Famous for his other name, Israel, Jacob might be described as a momma’s boy by some.  He had somehow got his twin brother Esau to trade his family right as the firstborn for a bowl of his brother’s lentil soup.  It must have been pretty good or Esau was unfathomably hungry to let go of such an important privilege but he did.  The problem with a birthright is that it doesn’t do much for you until your parents die.  It might mean you don’t have to do the dishes as often or clean out the latrine but it is a pretty inconsequential honor for the majority of your life.  Jacob had it but what was he to do with it?

His mother had an idea.  When her husband Isaac announced that he was going to bestow a special blessing on Esau which would be binding and supernaturally inspired.  Jacob tricked his blind father into thinking he was Esau and dad unwittingly gave the blessing to Jacob instead of his favorite son Esau.  Imagine what sort of fireworks this generated.  Isaac’s wife Rebekah had put Jacob up to the plan.  Isaac could not have been very pleased by that.  Esau became enraged and promised to kill his brother Jacob after his father died.  One can only guess how Isaac felt about Jacob.  The family became a boiling cauldron of fury, disgust, jealousy, distrust and fear.  Out of it jumped Jacob when he realized he had no future there.  His mom told him he needed to leave; he needed to get as far away from his brother and his steaming hatred as he could.  “Move north and move in with your uncle and see if there is someone in the family you can marry”, he was told.  He was after all forty years old.  It was time to stop being a momma’s boy and make a life for himself. 

Not all changes of course are depressing.  Some are exhilarating.  This one could not have been.  It was for Jacob the end of his world.  He had to hike over four hundred miles with the fear of his brother’s wrath nipping at his heels.  The safety of his home, the help of his servants, the doting of his mom…not to mention the wealth his family enjoyed now in his rear view mirror as he trudged along.  What a forlorn sight he must have been.  Perhaps there were tears trickling down his cheeks as he thought gloomily of the mistakes he had made, the fool he had become.  He had hiked somewhere around fifty miles when Jacob came to the outskirts of a village closed for the night.  It was out beneath the open sky housing the stars of the universe that Jacob’s life took a new turn.

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.  I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south.  All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:11-15 NIV)

If you come to grips with the fact that God is behind every event of your life and that nothing happens to you that He is not turning into your benefit, you can take great comfort in what happened to Jacob.  God let his life explode so that something completely new could be made out of him.  It is clear that was what He was doing with Jacob…blowing up everything that made Jacob who he was and remaking him.  There is such mercy and generosity in God’s words here.  “I am with you”.  “I will watch over you.”  “I will give you…”  “Your descendants will be…”  “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.”  God doesn’t blow up your life to wreck you.  He does it so that something lovely and good can come out of it that wasn’t possible before He did so.  When you are content and pleased with yourself and comfortable it is hard to do anything with you.  You become disengaged from God, you lose your urgency to hear from Him, lack motivation to give Him room to work His way through you and often are resistant to do what He commands.  That is what it is like to have the nature of Adam.  We all are like that.  You aren’t alone in this.

Would Jacob have been able to believe it was really God coming to him in his dream if he was living comfortably at home, pleased with himself in his successful plundering of his brother’s fortune and standing?  It is hard to say but we do know that he was this night, destitute, on the run, shattered.  He was eager to have God come to him and comfort him.  Finally, Jacob was ready for the Lord to truly be a part of His li…the most important part.  It is interesting, the choice of words used to describe how Jacob was the next day.  Certain that God was with him and that the Lord “had his back”, Jacob started off with a new way of seeing this adventure he was entering.  Then Jacob continued on his journey and came to the land of the eastern peoples. (Genesis 29:1 NIV)  Literally the Hebrew of the verse reads, “Then Jacob lifted up his feet…”  There is a joyfulness in this description.  We would use the expression, “He had a bounce to his step.”  For the first time in days, maybe even weeks or months or even years, Jacob was ready to trust God with his life and not make a mess of things.

God almost always blows up things for us before He takes hold of us and makes us new.  It was not going to be easy for Jacob.  He would work like a slave for fourteen years just to get his wife.  He would be cheated and humiliated by his father-in-law and have to bear the blazing sun and the miserable nights sleeping on the ground out in pasture lands just to keep his sheep safe but in it all, he became a man of God with great strength and faith.  It is so frequent that it is almost an axiom of life that before God can build His life in you and give you peace and joy and freedom from lust and worry, He must break you apart and take away every crutch you have propping up your life.   But then, slowly yet surely you will become the sort of person you hoped you would be when you realized you needed Christ to fulfill you.

The Bible is filled with case studies of those who first had to be wrecked before they could be bright stars in God’s universe:  Daniel, Moses, Job, Peter, James, Paul.  Jesus might not come to you in a dream or with a bright light or a great voice but He will come to you.  You will have to decide if you trust Him to remake you, to start over with you and take all the damage to your personality brought on by sin out of you and make you free to be loving and full of hope and peace.  It takes faith to believe that every experience you face has God in it and that each person who aggravates you is used by the Lord to make you good and holy but through Christ you can have that faith and be ready to be transformed by your Savior in every part of your day.  Take a deep breath and thank God He cares enough for you to save you from you sin and make you completely new.