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.
No comments:
Post a Comment