Godly Discontent - Genesis 31:1-18 Series

In our story today in Genesis 31 we see that Jacob is going to move on from one job to another. He’s leaving his place where he has a job now and he’s going to go to another job.

I want to prepare our hearts for this study today by imagining us being in the story. I think the best way to do that is to start with you imagining your own job situation. This isn’t going to be hard for some of you to imagine that maybe it’s time to move on. When you’re in a situation and imagine that maybe you’ve had a job for a few years and you’ve done well in that job, but now some things have changed, either in your heart or in the environment that you’re living in, and you realize that now it’s time for a change of some kind. You know when you’re faced with that idea that you know I think I need to move on from here, I think that this isn’t the best place for me. Then you start doing these things in your heart, these really important things in your heart where you’re wrestling with stuff.

I want to take us into that for just a moment because I think that’s where Jacob is in his own heart. He’s going to wrestle with some things inside. You know when you’re faced with a job situation that isn’t the best or you’re coming to that conclusion that this isn’t the best for me and I’m going to move on and do something else, then sometimes what you really need is the confidence to say, “Okay, I’m going to do it.” That confidence that we need is that key ingredient that we say, “Okay, I know this is the right thing. I’m going to go forward.” When I think about confidence, when I say the word ‘self-confidence’ I feel a little bit uncomfortable with the word ‘self-confidence’ because I think shouldn’t it be God-confidence?

I work with parents to help their children and some children have a hard time with their self-confidence. I realize that there is a part of this confidence… In fact I divide it into three parts. There’s a self-confidence where we recognize that we’re capable to handle the situations that we face in life. We just feel like “yes, I can face the challenges that I’m in.” That’s one kind of confidence. A second kind is the confidence that “well if I can’t handle it then I’ve got other people (parents, teachers, coaches, and so on) that will support me in this. So I have this confidence that I can trust in those people around me.” That’s one of the benefits of the church that if I’m facing a challenge I have the confidence that others will come around me and support me. And then there's that sense of faith, that confidence in the Lord that “there’s nothing I can’t handle, nothing that God might take me into.” You see when you’re in one job situation and you’ve got to move to another one, there’s always those unknowns. There's always those questions. There’s always that “I don’t know if I should stay where I am or I should go to the next place.” So wrestling with this idea of “how much of it is my part and how much of it is God going to do here” is a really important question that we need to ask.

Having said that now, I want to look at the passage of scripture in Genesis 31 and imagine Jacob as this is kind of coming together for him. What does it look like for him. Look in the passage to Genesis 31. It starts this way in verse 1: Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, “Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our father's he has gained all this wealth.”

See these sons of Laban whom he worked with, they were all on this big cattle ranch, sheep ranch, goat ranch, whatever you want to call these things. But that’s where he was with all these people. There was this attitude now coming up among these people. I’m sure you know that there are other people near you, maybe at work, maybe your neighbors, someone who disagrees. They just look at life completely differently than you do. You look at life this way. You see it and it makes sense. But other people look at it completely differently, going “I can’t believe that. I don’t even know what to do with that.” They seem like they have his whole idea that’s different.

We know the story about Jacob and what’s happened in his life. We know that God has blessed him. But these guys don’t see that. They’ve got this idea oh wow, Jacob has taken all the wealth from our dad. Well it is true Jacob has gotten wealthy, but it’s because he has worked hard and God has worked through the situation and blessed him. But there’s often those people in our lives that just see life completely differently than we do. That’s what’s taking place.