Focal Passage: Genesis 39:7-21 

All people face some kind of trauma in their life. Sometimes it happens because of their own actions. Sometimes it happens because of what others did. Sometimes there is no explanation.  

After trauma occurs, the question becomes “what now?” The default position becomes “I’ve been hurt. I’m a victim. Because of this trauma, my life has been forever changed!” The story of Joseph details another option — an option that is focused on the very presence of God (v. 21).

Act 1 of the life of Joseph, found in Genesis 37, told of boastfulness, parental pride, hatred, betrayal, and deception. From the coat of many colors to the hatred in the eyes of the brothers; from the overzealous pride of Jacob for Joseph to Joseph being thrown into a pit; from the boastfulness of Joseph telling his dreams to all who would hear to the Joseph being sold into slavery; the story of Joseph was one crisis heaped upon another.   [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 37:5-8; 18-28 

Giving gifts for the most part is just such fun and important. So important, that gift giving is actually one of the Love Languages. 

During our early years of marriage, I loved to buy my wife clothes. I knew her sizes. I would walk from one end of the mall to the other looking for just the right things. It was fun and joyful.

The real joy was watching her receive those gifts. Most of the time, it would be something she would never have picked out and maybe not even liked. But she would wear them happily tell anyone who listened where she got them. That was the real gift — the gift of her love.   [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 35:1-15 

Leaving is never easy. Leaving family after a wonderful holiday season is never easy but is tempered with the knowledge that there will be another time. Leaving a job and friends is never easy even for a new opportunity but again tempered with the knowledge that some friendships will survive time and distance. 

However, sometimes leaving means never returning. A bad job. A bad break-up. A bad mistake. Leaving means turning away from what was and starting new someplace else.  

Being forced to leave Shechum after some horrible events, Jacob returned to Bethel, a place he had been once before. God led them away. Jacob’s daughter had been raped. Two of Jacob’s sons found revenge. Now they left Shechum.   [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 32:22-32 

Jacob wrestled with God and lived! Yes, he walked with a limp because of his injury, but his life had been spared. He came face to face with God and lived. This was no dream and no accident.  Alone until daybreak, Jacob wrestled with God. His hip socket dislocated in the struggle did not stop Jacob from wrestling with all his strength and might. In the end he was given a new blessing, not one that came from deception, a new name, Israel, and a limp.

Jacob deceived his brother and father to receive the patriarchal blessing reserved for the eldest son. He wanted what was not his to receive. Now as he wrestled with God, he yearned and desired, for his own blessing from God. He could not and would not escape. He demanded to know the name of his opponent, but none came. 

He fought and fought. But no name came. Yet, by clinging to God, he received that blessing, long sought. As his father and grandfather before him had been blessed by God, now, also, Jacob received God’s blessing to continue to fulfill the Abraham covenant of being a great nation. [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 30:25-34, 41-43 

Patience is a virtue. But try as I might, I am not very patient. I do not like long lines. I do not like waiting almost anywhere. But I try. Even as I get older, I continue working on it. However, patience is a characteristic of value and worth. It means tolerance, persistence, fortitude, perseverance, and unflappability — those things we strive for yet may not achieve. 

Patience was something new for Jacob. In the beginning, he was not a patient man. As the deceiver, he had tricked his father and brother in a moment of opportunity and then ran for his life. He was in a hurry. He tricked Isaac and Esau out of Esau’s birthright as the eldest son. He had received his father’s blessing, which was meant for Esau. He wanted. He took. He ran — quickly.

Jacob arrived at his mother’s brother’s home and Laban received him. Then something very unexpected happened. He became a patient man. Over the next 20 years, as the deceiver was deceived when Jacob fell in love, God worked on his heart and changed him. Through learning patience, Jacob became a blessed man.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: John 20:1-17 

Surprises can be fun! When my youngest son was 16, my wife and I found a very large, tanklike, very old car for him for Christmas. He really had no idea it was coming. We purchased it. We had it worked on. Then we hid it for a few days until Christmas. His siblings hinted about it.  

Christmas morning came. He opened his gift — a beautiful model car replica of a Ford Mustang. We all whooped and hollered! It took a while, but he finally found a key underneath the model.  He looked at it for a long time. The look of wonder, shock, and surprise when he stepped into the garage that morning will stay with me always. 

That car served its purpose for him getting back and forth to high school and for a year or so of college and then it was gone. But on that Christmas morning, the surprise was priceless.   [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Luke 24:1-8, 38-43 

The resurrection of Jesus is where all the facts, truth and revelation come together completing the mission, ministry and identity of God’s plan for the salvation of mankind. It is where all the prophecies about His Messiah are fulfilled, verified, and validated.  It is where our hope becomes a reality.

Everything we believe, everything we preach, everything we hope for rests on the truth of the resurrection. The Apostle Paul makes that very clear in I Corinthians 15:12-19.  

We start this study looking at the events just after the crucifixion. Luke starts where all the other synoptic gospels and John begin, with several women going to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. It was the first day of the week, Sunday. Jesus had been crucified on the Friday before.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 28:10-22 

Memorials are everywhere. When you cross over a bridge, you often find a name attached to the bridge and you can’t help but wonder about the story of that person.

Perhaps when you pass a stadium and see a statue of a revered athlete, you remember a specific moment or championship. Or, when walking in a park you find a monument honoring a leader or war hero, you try to imagine what happened. Or, when you go to an awards event recognizing someone receiving a scholarship awarded in the name of someone else, you think what that person was like.   

The commonality is that we create memorials for events, or things or people and these memorials allow us to remember. Over 10 years ago, my wife Debbie died.  [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 27:18-30 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

These words of Isaiah have never been more true than when reading the account of Jacob, the heel-catcher, second-born, twin child of Isaac and Rebekah, who deceived his old and blind father, Isaac, with the help of his mother, and received the historic and binding blessing that moved him to the leader of the family and moved the firstborn son Esau to a footnote in history. 

Much like the moment when God received Abel’s offering and not his brother Cain’s, when Jacob (and his mother) deceived Isaac of that which rightly belongs to Esau, one is confronted with the question of “why?” [Read more…]

Focal Passage: Genesis 24:12-20, 24-27 

No one is exempt from having a moment of great uncertainty in life. Decisions need to be made that will impact the direction or even the trajectory of the future. 

Unsure of a direction, a person of faith turns to prayer for guidance and direction, usually with great emotion, urgency and even a little hope. Imagine that exact moment, but this time, another person steps in and takes the place of the one praying, knowing that the answer will not impact the one praying but the one whose place had been taken. 

Such was the case of Abraham’s unnamed servant, given the task of finding a wife for Isaac, the son of Abraham (Genesis 24:2-9). He was given his task, told where to go, left and arrived at his destination. As he began to fulfill his task, the magnitude of the moment made him stop and pray.  [Read more…]