Today Our Daily Bread Genesis 28

Genesis 28: 1 - 22
1 So Isaac called for Jacob, blessed him, and said, "Do not marry any of these Canaanite women. 2 Instead, go at once to Paddan-aram, to the house of your grandfather Bethuel, and marry one of your uncle Laban's daughters. 3 May God Almighty bless you and give you many children. And may your descendants become a great assembly of nations! 4 May God pass on to you and your descendants the blessings he promised to Abraham. May you own this land where we now are foreigners, for God gave it to Abraham." 5 So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram to stay with his uncle Laban, his mother's brother, the son of Bethuel the Aramean.
6 Esau heard that his father had blessed Jacob and sent him to Paddan-aram to find a wife, and that he had warned Jacob not to marry a Canaanite woman. 7 He also knew that Jacob had obeyed his parents and gone to Paddan-aram. 8 It was now very clear to Esau that his father despised the local Canaanite women. 9 So he visited his uncle Ishmael's family and married one of Ishmael's daughters, in addition to the wives he already had. His new wife's name was Mahalath. She was the sister of Nebaioth and the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son.
10 Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. 11 At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone for a pillow and lay down to sleep. 12 As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down on it. 13 At the top of the stairway stood the LORD, and he said, "I am the LORD, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I will give it to you and your descendants. 14 Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will cover the land from east to west and from north to south. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants. 15 What's more, I will be with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. I will someday bring you safely back to this land. I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised."
16 Then Jacob woke up and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I wasn't even aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God – the gateway to heaven!" 18 The next morning he got up very early. He took the stone he had used as a pillow and set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it. 19 He named the place Bethel – "house of God" – though the name of the nearby village was Luz. 20 Then Jacob made this vow: "If God will be with me and protect me on this journey and give me food and clothing, 21 and if he will bring me back safely to my father, then I will make the LORD my God. 22 This memorial pillar will become a place for worshiping God, and I will give God a tenth of everything he gives me."
~Lena’s Journalin’~
Wow all over! Isaac- meaning JOY expressed (Jesus Then Others Then YOU) in laughter, calls a man who is not acting like God at all, he is acting like the world’s images have taught him to "act" or "be". God takes and calls this man to go somewhere in life, to come to know who he really is, to come to know whom he came from, to come to find real true joy and satisfaction (which by the way every human being is searching for). He tells him the way to find this is to go somewhere and make a covenant relationship, one that is lifelong, one of commitment, the no turning back kind. He tells him where to go- Padanaram, which literally means – "The Field", JOY says, this is the same place your grandfather went to (old ways) and it’s the place he found true love (only God our father, can show us true love). His grandfather’s name means "man of God". Go the ways that the older men of God have gone, into the filed of harvest. When you go there, that’s where the blessing of God will lie, the treasure of God will be there for you to have and live in and with. The blessing of God, wisdom of God, fruit of God is there, if you don’t go there, you’ll not find what you will be searching for everywhere else in life.
Esau let rebellion rule him. He intertwined himself in lifelong covenants with those who were not of or as God. His wife’s name was "a stringed instrument", and she came from the descendant of "God will hear", her sister was "heights". He thought himself at first to be a seeker of god a seeker of "truth", yet disobedience and rebellion led him to seek what was real from the wrong sourse, from the wrong "root" or "tree". He even sought to bring praise, but it was turned towards those who practiced using tools of God to exalt themselves. Ever think of one who has had that attitude, one who was with God, one who was light, one who was praise, already exalted, who became perverted, rebellious and fell? Man called a place or a field one name, while God calls it another. Man calls man one name while God calls him another (Jacob- Israel, Luz- Bethel). Luz was a "good" name, meaning almond tree, it was a tree that looked good to the eyes….it even bore fruit…..sound familiar? Genesis 1,2,3….But if it is not being lived strictly for and given over to God, it is and can only be good. Jacob not only re-named the city or the place, he also put a spiritual mark on it where it counted, in the pocketbook, in the place that signifies what I do and who I am. The world identifies us by what job we have in our "fields". God identifies us by who He is and puts us in a "field" to win souls, no matter what we do it is not who we are. Jacob was deliberate to show this by giving his tithe to God. In giving this tithe he was saying the world cannot name me, the world cannot tell me who I am, the world cannot have me to work for them! All I have and all I do and all I am, I give to God! Tithe is only 10 %, but it signifies that if I give 10, I’m saying I give all, I’m saying the rest is God’s too, and even though it appears I work for others. I’m really and truly God’s property and my life and all of my assets are given by and given to Him. Jacob was making the place where he dwelt God’s house, when it could have been any other place naturally speaking. It’s like saying, I live in CypressHead, but I’ve set up a place here where God is welcomed and can use me as he desires and call me what he pleases. He has set up house here, where someone else could have owned and named this land one thing, but God is gonna have rule and I will allow Him to have His way here in the part I’ve "earned" and kept. When I tithe I say, I’ve kept it for God’s use. Here Lord, here’s a piece of Your originally owned land back, the enemy tried to take God’s land and rule in it, but I’ve now bought a piece and I’m giving it back to God. (remember people= land!)