Lena's Journalin' to Genesis 28 More of Him, Less of Jacob (me)

Caanan actually means “lowlands”. I’ve recently listened to a CD series by John Bevere called “Affabel”. (A must listen to audio series – Stems from the Book “Driven By Eternity”. The audio series is a Great gift idea!) In Affabel, the “lowlands” are the place where worldliness prevailed, and where judgment would come. Apply that concept as you read Gen 28 and you’ll read the context differently.
So a Christian parent may say to their child of promise, “Do not marry a worldly person”, meaning don’t join your life on earth with a person who’s main interests are about being in the world and of the world, a person who is materialistic, seeking after the temporary things that will bind them to a wrong eternal focus, a person who has allegiances with satan and not God, a person who may never change their ideas to conform to God’s and therefore may even pull you into their culture that is of the ungodly sort, which will lead you to an eternal doom.
God has a promise awaiting fulfillment in each one of us. The ability for the promise to be had by us was given us freely with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now it is our responsibility to take a hold of the promises God has set out for us and apply their benefits to our own lives by a series of right choices. Adam and Eve had a choice, and so do we, each and everyday!
The freewill of man is the free part of all of the gifts of God, we can choose right, if we want to. We are also free to choose what is wrong. How do we know what to choose? We study for it, as though it is a test for life. We go from one obedience in God, to another. If He says something like, honor your parent, we obey that. If our parent shows us a way of obedience and teaches it to us, then we should follow them. If they are wrong, they stand before God for leading us wrongly or mistakedly. God is great enough to help steer and correct them. If we obeyed, we are blessed, even if we went a wrong way. God is great enough to correct us, redeem us out of the consequences of mistaken pathways. We obeyed God in honoring our parents and we are not “in trouble” over it. If we disobey the basic word of God, that is when we’ll find we are held responsible.
Jacob obeyed his father, Esau did not. One would be blessed, the other cursed. We each have a Jacob and an Esau inside of us. The choices laid before us each day are ours. Blessing or cursing, obedience or rebellion. They are both our freewill choices. Today.
Obedience is blessed and multiplication from God comes to those who choose obedient actions.
Looking up the words and names in the context of scriptures brings out a whole world of understandings. Go here and click on some of the numbers by the words inside of the verses and see what happens! A whole new world of understanding will come to you as you become a student of God’s word each day. http://www.studylight.org/desk/?l=en&query=gen+28§ion=2&translation=str&oq=%2520hearing&new=1
Jacob’s father Isaac sent him into a field (think - off to pursue a career “field”). It was time for Jacob to grow from being a boy inside of his fatehr’s house to becoming a man of God. This journey would take Jacob to places of choices with the intent to slay Jacob. No, not to kill him, but yes, to change him, and grow him up.
Bethuel means, “God destroys” or “man’s end”! WHAT does THAT mean? More of Him, and less of me and my opinions about everything. His father sent him to a place where he’d have an opportunity to become a man of God, from a boy. He’d become a husband and a father. Notice how long it took for him.
How long it takes is all up to us, and is in direct proportion to the stubbornness or yielding tendency and discipline of the freewill. We can take the 11 day journey or the 40 year one, it is up to us. BUT know in this day, God needs us to obey now and we cannot afford 40 years of wanderings!
God has a dream for each and every one of us. He offers it to us in the form of a promise. Each promise is an offer to us from God. He shows us what could happen with us if we are willing to follow Him thus and so. When a parent follows God, they get a hold of that same dream and pass it along to their kids. It is the blessing of God for the child who is becoming a son or daughter to begin to see that dream also. That is generational blessing/vision passed on.
Jacob had a dream. His dream was a heavenly vision. God had a dream, Isaac had a dream, now Jacob was dreaming! That’s the will of God. (when I say “dream” I mean seeing a vision of what we are doing here that is both for and with God to further His kingdom on the earth).
The Lord wants to bring the ways of heaven to earth using our lives to do it. We are the living breathing stairway to bringing heaven on earth. That will take the willingness of a people who will obey Him, do His will and be who He is here, now. That does not just happen, people must make it happen.
This is usually where the journey of the elimination of self life comes about. We see God’s dream and we decide if we can see ourselves in it. Then we decide what part of it we can or cannot do. About that time, we take a fork in the road and begin to take the long way around, for in the dream God showed us what He can do. He wasn’t looking at our limitations. He was showing us His abilities and asking us if we believe He is able even to work in us His good pleasure. The question was, “Will YOU, allow Me to use you to do this thing? Will YOU want and do what I want to do? Will you trust and believe me to give You the ability to do My will? Will you?”
The question is, “Are you willing to change and be changed to fit into My dream?” says the Lord! “Are you willing to go My way and be as Me? Please, I beg of you, don’t turn back on the road of self sufficiency, even in serving Me. Take my highway, I’ll be with you there. Yeah there will be obstacles, but nothing at all is impossible with Me, I can remove any rock I so deem, or I’ll at least throw you a rope!”
The initial acceptance of and then the walking out of obedience’s to God’s words and visions and dreams takes courage, faith and obedience every step of the way. It is not enough to see it; one must do something very actively to bring heaven’s visions into manifest form in the earth.
Self-centeredness will never take us where we need to go. Humility will raise us up to see and be where we need to be. I yield my own ways to His ways.
When Jacob rose from seeing the vision of God, he was not yet changed. He wasn’t quite ready for the change yet, or not yet ready to make the changes yet. Maybe he wasn’t quite ready for the necessary change that’d have to be made to put him inside of the dream. Is that where we are at with God?
Jacob responded. Wow that was a nice Encounter with the Lord, ewwy gooey feely wow, but he kept his identity and began to declare what God would do for him! God was asking Jacob to become someone different for the kingdom. Jacob gave God a tithe, almost hoping that’d satisfy God a bit for now, until he decided he was ready to go all the way.
God knows when we are ready. We do not have the luxury to say yeah or nay. Our answers have to be yes Lord, all else, is sin for if we hesitate and reason we do not believe Him.
The tithe God wanted was 1-0 % 1 = ALL of God and 0 = none of Jacob. It was a tithe of His life, his self life laid down. The money can be a symbol of that, or it can be another religious exercise. It should be given and is required to be given, but what is given represents what is truly given, a life, all of it!
God said, “thank you Jacob for your money, but where are you going, what are you doing (about bringing My kingdom to earth) today?”
By the way, “Jacob” means “deceived”, in the book of James in the NT (“James” is the same name as “Jacob”) it says,
James 1:22But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; 24for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. 25But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
God wanted and wants to change “Jacob’s” name!