Day 19: Genesis 31 - 32 - Go and don't look back

Jacob was into the 6th year of his 3rd seven year cycle. He had learnt much, but whenever he had so much as hinted at moving on, Laban had changed his wages to retain his service and to exploit the blessing of God that came with the package.

However, in his 20^th year, knowing that his employment contract would be up for renegotiation soon, Jacob sensed a new wind blowing. Besides, Laban’s household had started to envy the way Jacob had hit back to fairly enrich himself at Laban’s expense.

It was time to leave

The murmurings and his homesickness had the last say, but God also confirmed it. How valuable that is to anyone in a similar predicament. Don’t leave because it gets to you, wait until God leads you out, else you will just transfer your problems to another place.

God casts us all into melting pots of contradiction, so we can grow up. The call on our lives and the blessings that go with that, set up tensions that make us vulnerable to exploitation – as in the fact that we feel bound to honor, hard-work and no back-biting.

An important lesson here is that his anointing or blessing was conferred 20 years earlier. That gave him the impulse to drive through his pains, fully persuaded that he would yet come to a nobler outcome. David faced similar years after he was anointed as King.

Actually, so did Jesus. Thus He confirmed in Nazareth, “The Spirit of God is (now) on me, because He (one) anointed me”. The two events are always separate. The anointing instills a deep expectation and hope, so that we will go the distance and make it back.

Well, the time had come for him to go back, to Bethel, the house of God, the fulcrum and cornerstone of his life: his great touchstone.

He quickly packed all his belongings, herded his stock together and set his family on camels. They drove hard for the Euphrates and forded it in a life and death race for the safety of Canaan. However, Laban caught up with them anyway.

An argument ensued, but Jacob revealed a vital point in any struggle – once God says  go. Don’t look back. Jacob stood his ground and Laban had to yield, because God told him to let it be.

However, a threat hung over some

Rachel had taken the household gods and Jacob swore that whoever had them would pay with their life, but she shrewdly insisted to Laban that she could not get up from the camel bags on which she sat, claiming to be menstruating, whilst disguising the gods beneath her.

It really was beneath her and their collective calling to still be carrying false gods with them. Yet, there is a kind of back-pocket stash we all hold onto in our walks with God.

It certainly revealed again just how spiritually naive they still were for all the dignity God afforded them in the biblical chronicles.

They drew the line

Jacob set up a heap of stones with a double seal, expressed as Jegarsahadutha in Aramaic and Galeed in Hebrew, as a heap of witness. He then sacrificed to God to ensure His seal on a covenant never to cross that line again, in anger at least.

He then gave Galeed a second name, Mizpah, to confirm God’s seal and to invoke his watch over the covenant made. When you break with your past, draw lines and head into God’s purpose, He will also watch over your past to ensure it never catches up with you again.

However, you may also need to bury your spare tires and other insurance options, the way Jacob buried Laban’s gods in the desert sands. There would be no Plan B.

Another threat

Out of fear for Esau, who advanced with 400 men, Jacob prayed for deliverance and then sent peace offerings that reveal just how wealthy he had grown.

In a similar sense our heading into a place of purpose will come with a sense of unworthiness that we will try to compensate for. No need, if it is your time, you will not falter.

He sent his family on ahead and then at the Jabbok river wrestled with an angel, until dawn. The name means "poured out" or "surrendered", and indeed it was the place where Jacob found surrendered his whole life and future to God.

A man who could move a well-stone on his own was not to be trifled, with as the angel found. Yet in wrestling with him, God did what Jacob always hoped his father would do.

In so doing, He reached into his deepest need, to heal the roots of his pain. He knew that he cried for a father’s acceptance, but while he needed a father, he didn't need an Isaac.

God then asked "what is your name?", but got his label, as in "usurper". He then removed that reproach and exercised His fatherly prerogative, by renaming him - as Israel (a version upgrade).

He then ceased to be a usurper for what He had was from God. In so doing Jacob replaced his last-born stigma to make him the firstborn of Israel. He also blessed him, to formally subsume Isaac’s reluctant blessing.

It reminds me of a time when I felt God's imminent presence say, "I open doors, I close others, but your life is not in someone else's hand".

Thus, the initial blessing or anointing set up 20 years earlier, came to its fullness, to commission Jacob's life to that purpose and so bring closure to his years of struggle.

I trust this inspires you to trust God for closure on the long wait and years of despair through which your faith has pushed, to find that your pursuance of this Great God was not in vain.

Do not give up

A friend and his family rafted a long river, but the overnight huts just would not appear. In desperation and exhausted with effort they slept on the rocks that night.

However, in the morning they rounded the next bend to see the huts that they missed by such a small margin. Remember that, no matter how dark things get, you are closer than you think to the breakthrough you hope for.

Well the upshot of all of that was that the angel touched Jacob’s thigh and put it out of joint. I suspect he happily limped through the rest of his life, perpetually reminded of covenant that would never be reversed. I suspect you will gain your own war-wound.

I pray that this story gives you hope in whatever you are going through and that God will bring your years of waiting to a head, crown them with His loving-kindness and lead you into an open country, but as you do may His house be your perpetual touchstone.

(c) Peter Missing at Bethelstone.com