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.
But the real kicker for Jacob is the next statement here. It says – And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before. The key person in the story for Jacob, the reason he’s at this job, this work is because Laban had hired him on. When Laban hired him on, he said, “What can I do? How much can I pay you to stay here? What do you need?” So he was very excited to have Jacob stay on. But now the culture is changing. Just imagine that taking place in your own life. You’re at a job and the culture is changing. It’s just not working for you. You don’t feel like you fit here anymore. It’s just not working for you.
As I was reading this story in the Bible this week, I remembered the story of Greg Noom that he told to us and he’s grown. I’m going to tell you his story. I’ve asked his permission to do so and he granted me that permission. But Greg is over here sitting over at the tech table. About a year ago when COVID started, Greg called the church office and he said, “I’m looking for a church. I don’t want to meet online. I want to meet in person. Are you guys meeting in person?” This is like the second week we started meeting in the Barn.
I said, “Yes, we’re meeting in person.”
He said, “What time do you start?”
I said, “We start at 8:00 in the morning. You can help us set up. We need some help.” So for the very first time that Greg came, he came and set up with us at 8:00. He’s been doing that continually with us every week now. We get together at 9:10 and anybody is invited to come to that. We get together and have a prayer time where we’re sharing needs and learning about things in our lives. So it’s a great team effort and then a sharing in prayer time.
But God worked in Greg’s life then. So God’s starting to work. He made a commitment to the Lord and then he wants to find a church where he can fellowship. And then later, as you know, we got to the summer and he wanted to be baptized. So we baptized him in the Snee pool in the summertime.
Just a few months ago he was becoming uncomfortable with his job situation. In fact one Sunday he comes in here and he says, “I quit my job.” We go, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Tell us the story about this.” It was much like the situation here with Jacob. Because he says this. He says, “Well I’m uncomfortable with the anger, the coarse joking, and the foul language that takes place where I’m working. It’s just weighing on me and I don’t want to do that anymore. So I went into my boss and I told him I’m going to quit. And here’s why I’m going to quit. Because of the hostility around here, because of the coarse joking, and because of the foul language. It's just not good for my well-being. I’m out of here. I’ll stay and help you do what you need to do to get someone else, but I’m going to leave.” So he talked to his wife, obviously, before then and they decided together yes, go ahead and leave. Great.
I thought, wow, that’s a lot of confidence that he’s able to make that decision based on something that God is doing something in his life. God is working in Greg’s life and as He continues to do that we get to watch that and see what’s going on, as we all do as we share our faith and our lives together.
Well that’s what’s taking place in Jacob’s life. The culture is changing. Sometimes the culture is changing within us and we say, “You know what? I don’t fit here anymore.” When that takes place, we have this kind of uncomfortable feeling that says maybe it’s time to move on. And maybe it is. But maybe not. Because sometimes we have to embrace the idea that Jesus told us. He says you’re not going to fit into the world anywhere. This is not your home. You’re just passing through. That we’re pilgrims, we’re sojourners in this land. So sometimes we just stay where we are even though it’s uncomfortable and we develop a contentment in that situation and we allow God to work deeper in our lives. It’s the bloom where you’re planted mentality. That we’re allowing God to do a deeper in work in our lives in the midst of a hard situation and that’s okay. We don’t have to move just because things feel difficult and challenging. That’s, I would say, a godly contentment that God sometimes allows us to have that says yes, this is what I need to do. But then there’s that I’m going to call it a godly discontent where God is giving you that itch to go and do something else. Going to say okay, you need to move on. You need to leave this job and go do something else. That godly discontent starts to work itself.
What do we do with that? How do we know whether… This is the great question. I think we all struggle with it. How do we know whether it’s the godly discontent or the godly contentment that we need to be working on in a given situation? Now we’re talking about a really big experience here. We’re talking about moving jobs. That’s a pretty big thing that Jacob is going to do here. But whenever we experience change or the opportunity to change, we face the same challenges. It could be do I get a new car or do I be content with this car? I mean there are some people who are not content at all so every time there’s a new cell phone coming out, they’ve got to get the latest version. I’m not saying that’s bad. All I’m saying is sometimes God would say to us I think let’s be content with what you have and not always have to get the latest upgrade and the latest version of what’s going on. So what do you know? How do you know what to do? Jacob is wrestling with that whole idea.
Now I think there’s a part that God does in our lives, there's a part that we do. How do you know which part is it…what do you do? Some people just feel uncomfortable with their job. They don’t even consider God. They just go on and do whatever. But there’s this interaction I think that God has with us in the midst of those challenges that’s real and important for us to kind of wrestle with that and to kind of understand what is God’s part, what is my part, what is partnership look like as I’m moving forward with the Lord.
In order to illustrate this a little bit better, I’ve asked Lorraine to share with you. Lorraine Brosious is an author. She’s a professional counselor (biblical counselor). She’s had a lot of life experience. In the midst of that life experience she’s faced this ability to walk with the Lord. So we’re privileged to have her as part of our fellowship and I asked her to come and share. Lorraine, why don’t you come and share with us for a few minutes about this question about how do we partner together with the Lord in order to do what we do. Okay?
[Lorraine] I really had to laugh a few minutes ago when Pastor was talking about oppositional defiance disorder. That’s what I have when people ask me to speak publicly. I do not like it. My first thing in my mind is no. I’ve learned to say, “Alright, I’ll speak with the Lord on it,” and of course then you know what happens. So I’m just going to give you fair warning. If you want to share some things with Pastor you might find yourself up here. So you want to be a little careful about that. I’m going to be.
Alright. So in Genesis 31 we’re talking about Jacob making a life changing decision. We were talking about as we said in our Wednesday night group what did Jacob do? He heard God. So he had already started a relationship with Him. But in this particular instance about where He should move, He heard God and then do you remember? He did a very wise thing. He spoke to his wife. So he didn’t always act very smart, but in this case he did.
So we are called upon in our lives to make life-changing decisions at various times. Some are unexpected, like a death or an accident or something like that. Some are ones that we know are coming up like you know in ten years I’m going to retire and what should I do then. That kind of thing. I can testify to the truth that in whatever it is, whether it’s planned or unplanned, God is with me. I have absolutely no doubt about that.
Jeremiah 29:11 – I know the plans I have for you. Plans not to (what?) harm you. But for my good. He sent people to walk with me. He led me into work that fit into taking care of four children. What did I do? I sat with Him every morning and I still do this. This is the first thing I do in the morning. Seek Him. Sit in His presence. Read His word. Listen to Him. Read and meditate. So my motto at that time quickly became, “Lord, between you and me we’re going to get done with whatever this is you have for me to do.” I couldn’t do His part and He wouldn’t do my part. So it was a cooperation like Pastor was talking about.
When it was time for my youngest child to finally reach school age, I began working on a master’s degree in English. I had been an English teacher and that’s all I knew. So I started working on a master’s degree. This is now like probably 35 years ago. I distinctly remember driving home from a class I was taking in Shakespeare and I said I don’t care what Shakespeare meant in line, whatever the sonnet. This doesn’t mean anything to me. But I didn’t know what else to do, so I kept going.
Then one day I took my son to Liberty to look at the school and look at the baseball program. I kind of accidentally stumbled onto some information about lifelong learning. You would call it online. Thank the Lord it wasn’t online then or I’d have been in trouble. But it was the ability to get a degree by mail and going down there a few times too. It was a master’s degree in counseling. I never planned for that. It wasn’t something that I said, “Oh I’m going to do this someday.” God gave it to me to do.
The program probably took me two years and then I was ready to start. I realized I cannot do secular counseling. What do I have to give to people? The Lord. You can’t do that in secular counseling very well. So the church gave me an office and I was ready to go. There was one problem. I didn’t have any clients. I distinctly, after several weeks or whatever, remembered going to the door of the church and looking out at the empty parking lot and saying, “Lord, I made a mistake. I must not have heard you. You can’t have this for me.” I have no income for my family, I have kids ready to go to college. So I really thought I’d made a mistake. Some of the men at church actually met with me and said, “You better go back into teaching. You got to have a paycheck coming in.” So that was about the lowest point I’d say of my time. But I still continued to sit with the Lord over it.
One day I got a client. And she went out and told another person. And she told another person. And churches began to send people. So this went on for twenty years after that. I don’t know how many clients I had. Hundreds, I guess. It was the Lord. I used to say when I would open that office door, “If you don’t go in there, Lord, I’m not going.” Because He was what I had to present to people.
He also led me… I never planned to write a book. He just said, “This is what I want you to do.” So I would get up at 4:30 every morning, which was a natural thing for me anyway, with a pen and paper at my kitchen counter and I would say, “Okay, now what?” He told me to start in Genesis and go through the whole Bible and write whatever I could find about pain and loss. I had no idea what I was doing. I just kept doing it every morning. I would do this probably for a few years. When I was done I had 370-some entries. Didn’t plan it that way. So it was an entry for every day of the year and a little extra. The ones that weren’t good I could throw away. I did not plan to do this. When people say, “Oh I read your book and this helped me,” I feel like shrinking away because I feel like I didn’t do it. God did it. All the counseling I did, the raising of my children. It was Him. This present is with us through every life-changing event.
My son-in-law’s death in 2001. I thought should I move? I wanted to move down here, but God did not release me. He did not tell me I could do that. So I spent every weekend driving down here 100 miles on the freeway, which I’m terrified of. I did that for years. And then I turned 70. Still happily counseling and had friends in my church of 40 years. Didn’t plan to retire at 70 or any other age. But He said, “You can go.” That’s kind of how it was. “You are free to go.” So five, six years ago now I moved down here and it was the time when two young grandchildren were being born. It was like a gift He gave me, but it was in His timing.
So then this past year you know I had a medical situation. Never had that before. I remember the night the infectious disease doctor came into my room and said you could lose your arm or you could die of this infection. This is a big deal. So I had never been in a hospital except to have children. And I kept saying (this went on for six months, this infection), “What do you have for me in this?” I wasn’t really getting anything until it finally dawned on me it’s to sit in my presence just as much as you have been doing that. I want you to know me better. I want to know you better. That’s what this is about and now you have time to do it, so do it.
He gave me verses. Psalm 32:8 – I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with My eye. And my life verse, Ephesians 3:20 – He is able to do more than you can ask or imagine. That’s my life verse. What He has done in my life is all about Him. In all the things that He brings into our lives, He has plans. Guess what? They are plans for our good and they are plans for His glory. These things that happened, He knew they were coming. I didn’t. But He met me in them. He was with me. He brought the good. My job was to just seek Him, to listen to Him, to know Him more deeply.
As we continue with Jacob we’re going to see he’s not perfect. We could use some adjectives like conniving and trickster he was called. But the Lord used him to begin his own nation. A whole nation came down from Jacob. His people. The Lord spoke to him and told him what to do. He promised to be with him. That’s what He promises us. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t know. But He’s going to be with me in it and He’s going to be with you in it if you have invited Him into your life as your Savior. He can do immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine.
[Pastor Scott] Thank you. I just felt like you needed to hear that. Here’s a lady who’s walking with the Lord and it’s inspiring to see that. I hope that you’ll take that home and you’ll think about what is God doing in these situations. What is He doing and how is He working in my life in the midst of the challenges that I’m facing?
Well let’s go back and see what Jacob does. When he’s starting to feel uncomfortable, he’s saying I think I need to move forward. He’s got this idea. What does he do? Look at verse 3. He goes to the Lord and he talks to the Lord about it. And God affirms us. Notice God’s word. In verse 3 it says – Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and (then these five words) I will be with you.” I will be with you.
There's always an element of risk when you step out into the unknown. When change is in the air you’re going to step…there’s an element of risk that you need to understand. But you have to recognize that God says I will be with you. This is the God-confidence part that we all need in our lives. I will be with you. The words are used twenty-four times in the Bible.
When Moses passed off the scene and now Joshua was the leader, God says to Joshua, “I will be with you.” He needed that. He’s taking on this big job. Same thing with David and Solomon. When Solomon took over the kingship from his dad who was an excellent king, Solomon had a little bit of concern about would he be able to handle this. God says, “I will be with you.”
I just think we need that this week. We need this as God develops our path and things start to open up. See many of you when you start your prayers, as I do, we often say, “Lord, thank you for this day.” I think it would be best to say it this way: “Lord, thank you for this day. I have no idea what’s going to happen in it, but I know you and I know you’re going to be with me today. So would you guide me in the course of this day.”
The last words that Jesus said as He was ascending up into heaven He told all of the disciples to go and make disciples, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you. And it says – I will be with you always, even to the end of the earth. I will be with you. Those words are very comforting, encouraging. I just appreciate that.
That must have been an encouragement to Jacob to hear those words “I will be with you.” So when he gets this inkling of what to do, he goes and talks to the Lord about it. Now what should he do now that he talked to the Lord about it, he’s going to go talk to his wives about it. I just want to suggest, men, sometimes we have ideas. It’s always best to share our ideas with our wife in the idea stage. You know you’re packing up the moving van and the wife’s saying, “What are you doing?” You say, “We’re moving.” Okay. You want to share it in the idea stage. So that’s what he does.
Look at verse 4. So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was and said to them, “I see that your father does not regard me with favor as he did before.” So he kind of lays out the problem for them so they can see it. “But the God of my father has been with me.” He’s going to recount some of the spiritual history of his life. “You know that I have served your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times. But God did not permit him to harm me. If he said, ‘The spotted shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore spotted; and if he said, ‘The striped shall be your wages,’ then all the flock bore striped. Thus God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me. In the breeding season of the flock I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and mottled. (Mottled means their color was off, so they’re patched. Mottled – in other words a kind of patching in their color.)
Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’ (There it is. See that when God calls your name, you say, “Here I am.” I like that.) And he said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel.” You remember Bethel, right? Bethel is the place where Jacob found the Lord in a very personal way. He left home. He’s on his own. He’s kind of taking off on his own and he comes to this place, he puts his head on this rock for a pillow. He sees this staircase of angels descending and he said it was the way that he connected with the Lord. God connected with Jacob in that very special way and now God is referring back to Bethel. Remember Bethel, where you committed yourself to me. He says – “Where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.’” So he’s reporting all of this to Rachel and Leah. I give him an A+ for involving his wives in the process.
But let’s also give an A+ to Rachel and Leah. Notice what they do. Then Rachel and Leah answered and said to him, “Is there any portion or inheritance left to us in our father's house?” In other words what they’re saying is things have changed for us. It’s described on the next page. Look at that. It says – “Are we not regarded by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and he has indeed devoured our money. All the wealth that God has taken away from our father belongs to us and to our children. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do.”
Whoa. I love those words. Here are these wives coming alongside him and saying God is at work in your heart, go ahead and do it. Wow. You know I just want to encourage you wives, as you’re supporting a husband who’s leading (or encourage you husbands as wives are leading), that you come along and say, “Whatever God is saying to you, let’s do it.” There’s this support that’s here. I think they get an A+ too in the midst of this whole picture.
So here’s what he did. So Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels. He’s packing everything up. Getting ready to go. He drove away all his livestock, all his property that he had gained, the livestock in his possession that he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to the land of Canaan to his father Isaac.
I’m going to pause the story here. We’re going to pick up this story next week at this same place. But I want to draw a couple of applications that I think you can take with you as you try to apply this to your own life.
One, take note that God uses circumstances to guide us. Sometimes the circumstances are saying to move and go, but I think sometimes the circumstances are just saying to us go deeper. Sometimes you’re in a situation you say, “You know what, I don’t think it’s time for me to move on, but this is a difficult place,” and that’s an opportunity for us to go deeper in our walk with the Lord. Sometimes we bloom where we’re planted. If you’re thirteen years old and you believe “well it’s time for me to move out of this house because I’m not happy with what’s going on around here,” you might want to think about it. Maybe what God wants you to do is bloom where you’re planted. Because when we're in that midst of those challenging experiences, God does work in our hearts. I would suggest moving out at thirteen years old is probably not a good idea. Sometimes we need to just bloom where we’re planted in the midst of that. Allow God to take us deeper in the situation.
So that principle I think is important that circumstances are a part of determining God’s will. That’s not the whole thing. But sometimes they provide catalysts for us to ask the questions that we need to ask that are going to take us to some other place. You want to be asking the question, what are you doing around here? We have our eyes open spiritually to the circumstances going on around us.
The second application I want to take away is this one that has to do with I will be with you. I will be with you. God calls us often to do things that are out of our comfort zone. That we end up leaving what’s safe in order to take on faith in our lives. When Jesus said to His disciples, “Leave your nets and follow me,” He was calling them to something they didn’t really even know what was going on. They had no idea really what was going on, yet they took those steps and they left the safety of their nets in order to go somewhere with Jesus. I think God calls us to do that sometimes.
Safety is not our primary goal. When I see those signs on the truck that says “safety is my goal” I cringe because as a Christian that is not my goal. In fact I think it’s dangerous. I’ve told you before that when someone pursues pleasure (that’s a whole different subject) they’re making a huge mistake because the pursuit of pleasure leads to addiction. Pleasure isn’t bad. But it’s a byproduct of a mission-oriented view of life. That’s the purpose of pleasure. In the same way safety cannot be your goal. If you pursue pleasure you end up with addiction. If you pursue safety, you end up with anxiety. What happens in your world if you’re always saying what’s the safe thing. We live in a dangerous world. We live in a place where we have to take risks all the time. If safety becomes your goal then your life becomes more constrained and anxiety is the result.
When I say that safety is not my goal I would suggest that our goal is really a mission-oriented view of life, that we’re following the Lord. Sometimes that means we take the risk of apologizing to someone. It means that we take the risk of talking about something that might be difficult for us to talk about. Sometimes we take the risk of staying in a situation that is rather challenging for us, but God calls us to do that. So we stay there. Sometimes we take the risk of leaving that situation because it’s not the best for us. But in the midst of all of that, God says – I will be with you.
God has called us to do all kinds of big things. So the whole Bible is really full of people who are taking risks in order to serve the Lord. Whenever missionaries are going out to do whatever they’re going to do, they’re taking risks that put safety as a value. We do value safety. We value pleasure. Those are values. But they don’t direct our path. They don’t say, “Oh wow, that’s the most important thing in my life.” I’m going to go and do something that I’m going to serve the Lord. That means sometimes that we put pleasure or safety aside in order to accomplish what God is telling us to do.
Let me close by telling you two stories. One is as a grandpa I remember taking my grandchildren to the park, the three of them. We were at the park and they were playing on the monkey bars. There were some other kids there and there was a mom there working with her child. About twenty times in about two minutes she’s yelling out to her, “Be careful! Be careful! Be careful!” And I’m getting really irritated about this because that’s not my philosophy about life. I don’t want my kids to be careful. I’m not opposed to being careful. I want my kids to be out there and go for it! So I started yelling to my kids, “Take risks! Take risks! Take risks!” I have no idea what the lady was thinking, but I don’t want to live that life where safety becomes the most important thing. We’re always saying to kids, “Be careful. Be careful. Be careful.” Go ahead and take risks. Because I think it’s in those risks, especially those risks that God is calling us do something, that we find the blessings that God has for us. Take the risk.
Another story is a story that I took two of my nephews when they were teenagers to Tanzania, East Africa to visit my daughter who was there as a nurse working in East Africa. We went to a place that was so far away from [can I call it] civilization that there was nothing around there. When we got there she had a little Jiko stove where she would cook some food. But there's no refrigeration, there's no electricity. When it got dark at night you turn on the lamp and you’re talking. We were there for a few days.
About the second day one of the boys said in our conversation, “I would never want to live out here.” And that generated some dialogue. We started talking about all of this. I’ll never forget what my daughter said. At one point in the conversation she says to them, “Would you rather live a safe, boring life? Or would you rather have a life that’s risky, that’s exciting?” It was just hard for these guys to get their mind wrapped around this. Why don’t you want to live out here? “Well I don’t know. I wouldn’t be able to ride my skateboard.” And you wouldn’t be able to ride your skateboard out there because there is no pavement. All there is is dirt and bushes and rocks and all of these things. But I just appreciate that. It stuck in my mind ever since she said that. What kind of life do you want to live?
You see the Christian life is this life of adventure that we go forward and we enjoy the Lord in some ways. So that we say to the Lord, “Lord, thank you for this day. I have no idea what’s going to happen in this day, but I know that you do. So I want to follow you. I know that you’re going to be with me in this day. So please take me into this day. Lead me. I want to follow you.
Now I know that some of you experience this job situation every week. Every Friday you say, “I need to get out of this job,” and every Monday you come back. So you’re wrestling with this whole idea of “is this the best place for me,” where others of you need to set that part of the discussion aside. But it really has to do with any kind of change that you make. Getting a car, buying some shoes, whatever it might be that we ask ourselves the question, “Should I move forward and be content where I am? Or is this kind of a godly discontent that’s pushing me forward that I need to take some risks here and move forward?” Change is hard. Change is hard for any of us. And maybe God has some change in the wind for you somewhere. I trust that God will use this message in your life to say it’s okay. Trust in the Lord. I will be with you.
Now we’re going to pick up this same story next week because it goes a little bit downhill from here. Jacob doesn’t do the right thing. He gets failing grades next week when we talk and there's this big argument, this big fight in the family. I mean they’re yelling at each other. I mean bad things are happening. It’s like your next door neighbor. We’re going to see that happening right here in the passage and we’re going to talk about that some more next week. So come back and enjoy some more Bible study as we look at God’s word, Genesis 31. Read ahead and see the story for yourself. It's a great story and we’ll learn some practical things from it.
Heavenly Father, we come before you now and thank you for your love. We know that you have this day for us and we don’t know what’s going to happen in this day, so we’re trusting you. We’re asking you to do a deeper work in our hearts. Lord, lead us and guide us. We want to follow you. We want to say yes to you. We want to trust you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
