I find it fascinating how casually the OT mentions people speaking with God. Rebekah was wondering what was going on within her womb so she asked God and He spoke to her.
God wants to speak to us! He wants us to come to Him with anything and everything - if we're angry, confused, sad, anxious, joyful, doubting, it's doesn't matter. He wants relationship with us - just like we do with our children. We want our kids to come to us with anything and everything. And though we enjoy meeting our children's needs and wants - we also want them to want more than that in relationship with us. True intimacy requires time, communication (about both trivial and deep issues), and love. Do we take time to be with God? Do we take time to develop a real relationship or do we treat Him like a genie in a bottle, or a sage old man doling out advice? Do we give Him our time or do we throw up 30 second prayers before dinner and call it a day?
We also see divine election in this passage. Before they were born, God chose Jacob over Esau - not because of any good or evil works they would do (indeed, Jacob would have many faults), but because of grace. Very interesting that our Romans passage deals with this exact issue as well!
Then we see Isaac lying about his wife, exactly like his father did before him (twice!). Though the lie was a sin, the deeper issue was the reason behind the lie - unbelief. They did not have enough confidence in God's sovereignty to believe that He could protect them in any situation. Once the problem of too little faith would be resolved, so too would the issue of lying.
In what areas of our lives do we disbelieve God and how does that cause us to sin? Yes, we can and should deal with the issue, but we really need to get to the root behind it and deal with our unbelief or lack of faith.
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Genesis 27-28, Romans 9:16-33
2 comments:
They say that seeing is believing. Sometimes I feel that if I lived in the OT times and was able to communicate to God the way they could, or to see miracles performed in person by Jesus, that my faith would be stronger. But after reading these last number of passages, maybe I would be no different than them. Maybe it's a character trait Abraham passed down to Isaac, but I found it interesting too that Isaac's response to his fear of being killed, was to lie about his beautiful wife. The same response that his father demonstrated. I would have thought that Abraham would have told Isaac the stories of how the Lord always protected him in his time of feeling fearful for his life, as an example to Isaac to trust God for everything.
Seeing is believing, but strengthening my faith through prayer, reading the Bible, and standing on the promises of our Lord are requirements in order to trust God solely and to rely on Him for everything!
Something that stood out for me in today's reading is that Isaac married Rebekah when he was 40 and he was comforted from the loss of his mother. If Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born and 140 when Sarah died...then between the age of 140 and 175 he still went on to have 6 sons. Not too shabby for an old guy who thought 100 was too old to have a son.
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