July 1st, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image from visualBiblealive.com

Do you want to do big things for God? Have you ever prayed, “Lord use me?” Ever asked Him to grow your influence and show Himself big in your life?

That’s what I want. I think that’s what many of us want. But the road to greatness in the Kingdom is never an easy path.

The book of Genesis closes out with the story of a boy named Joseph. A boy destined for greatness since He was young, handpicked for a purpose, even shown glimpses of his future. But in order to end up where God wanted him, Joseph’s path was far from easy.

• He knew God had called him to do something great – and his brothers hated him for it. (Genesis 37:3-10)
• They hated him to the point of wanting him to die, of plotting ways to kill him. Eventually they decided to sell him into slavery in order to make a profit off of getting rid of him. (Genesis 37:19-27)
• Joseph was taken off to Egypt as a slave, while his brothers covered the tracks of their sin and left their father thinking he was dead. But the Lord was with him. (Genesis 39:2)
• He was a faithful and trusted servant in the household of Potiphar, Pharoah’s captain of the guard. Joseph was blameless and trustworthy – and then he caught the eye of Potiphar’s wife. She attempted to seduce him, and when he maintained his integrity, she accused him of attacking her. (Genesis 39:4-7)
• Joseph was thrown into prison. But the Lord was with him. (Genesis 39:28-32)
• He interpreted dreams, gave glory to God, and was forgotten for years. But the Lord was with him. (Genesis 40:8, 40:23-41:1)

And then eventually… Joseph was called from the dungeon, cleaned up, dressed, and brought to Pharaoh. And just like that – he was second in command under Pharaoh. (Genesis 41:14, 41:39-40) The Lord was with him.

God did have big plans for little Joe – but the journey from teenager tending sheep to a thirty year old ruler in Egypt who would save God’s people from starvation was not an easy one. It was an excruciating, humbling, heart-breaking journey of betrayal, slavery, false accusations, anonymity, and isolation. But through it all, the Lord was with him. The text seems to reverberate with the phrase: the Lord was with Joseph.

Do you want God to use you greatly? You may be wounded deeply along the way. In order to be great, we must become least. In order to serve the Almighty with humility and reverence, our pride must be vanquished or we will try to keep His glory as our own. You may be hated, betrayed, belittled, falsely accused, forgotten.

But through it all… the Lord will be with you.

Feel like you’re stuck in the dungeon of waiting, waiting for God’s greater plan to unfold, waiting for His timing? He has never forgotten you. He is molding you, shaping you, humbling you, teaching you. It’s not easy, but it’s a journey worth taking. It’s a legacy worth having. He is a God worth serving.

The Lord is with you.

June 30th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Click… click… click… click…

Hear that? It’s the roller coaster nearing the top of the first hill. We’ve been slowly making our way through these opening chapters of Genesis; this foundational book is crucial for understanding the rest of the “pieces”… and now we’re going to PLUNGE through the rest of the story. Double check that buckle – fastened in tight? Good – here we go!!!!!!

So, a recap in a paragraph: God created this world perfectly, beautifully. He created Adam and Eve in His own image, walked in perfect communion with them, and commissioned them to rule over His creation as His stewards. Sin marred it all – it broke their relationship with one another, their relationship with God, even the harmony of the creation itself. Even in Eden, God promised them that one day a Redeemer would come – and for the rest of human history a choice would be made by every individual: to believe, or not believe. Abel believed, and obeyed. Enoch believed. Noah believed, Abram believed – and God began to reveal a bit more about the coming redeemer. God handpicked Abram and set him apart as His own. Abram, elderly and childless, would have a son in the twilight of his life. His family would become a great nation, placed in a land of their own, and through this nation the Redeemer would come. These people would be God’s chosen people – and much of this story will be about them as we go forward. God is the Creator in Genesis 1, the Redeemer promised in Genesis 3, the Judge in the flood, the only One worthy to be made famous in the Tower of Babel, the Promise Keeper in the life of Abraham.

It really is all about Him.

The rest of Genesis is focused in on the family of Abraham as the lineage and early history of God’s chosen people begins to unfold. God reiterates the promises to Isaac, and again to Isaac’s son Jacob. Eventually, Abraham’s lineage looks like this:

Jacob was a whole bundle of mess. He lived much of his life as a manipulating deceiver. His two wives (who were sisters, by the way), were constantly vying for his affection and attention by trying to out-birth one another. Between them and their servants who were also used as surrogates, Jacob ended up with twelve sons. Not surprisingly, this did not make for a good family dynamic. Four women. Twelve sons. Favoritism. Distrust. Manipulation. Hatred between siblings to the point where they plotted to kill one of their own brothers. {more on that tomorrow.}

It wasn’t until Jacob was well into his life that he seems to genuinely submit himself to God and genuinely place his faith in Him. His family was the evidence of his dysfunctional faith life.

For this reason, I am always struck by these words of Jacob near the end of his life as he blessed his grandsons, the sons of Joseph:

…the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day…

Genesis 48:15

God shepherded him all his life to that very day.

I have had so very many conversations with women in my Bible studies who are 20, 30, 40 or more years older than me. I have seen them weep in regret over the years when their children were young, years when they had not yet bowed their knees to Jesus Christ as Lord, years when they lived in rebellion, years that have marked their families and the lives of their children. They look at me with longing in their eyes and tell me how much they wish that they had walked with God in the early years of their children’s lives.

Our lack of faith, our sin has consequences – in our lives and in the lives of our families. Jacob’s story is a vivid example of that. However, he is also a testament to the fact that God is still able to restore, to work in the lives of our children, to redeem our family history. Jacob’s son Judah was responsible for selling his younger brother into slavery, and later he fathered a child through his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a prostitute. But God redeems Jacob’s life and brings him to faith. God also redeems Judah’s life – and eventually makes him an effective leader, and the one through whom Jesus Himself would one day come.

The sins of Jacob (who God later renames “Israel”) show up again and again in the nation that would come through him. But God is a God who redeems. He is faithful when they are faithless. He is constantly pursuing them, constantly wooing them. He is their shepherd – the Good Shepherd.

If you have a story like those I described above, your life is never too far gone for God to redeem it. No matter how destructive your choices were, no matter the scars your family may bear – God will forgive, God can restore, God is able.  He has called you back to Himself, and He can pursue your children just as He pursued you. He has been your shepherd all your life to this day – and nothing is out of His hands.

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here! Also, if you would like more lessons from the life of Jacob, I have been sharing a four-part series over at Scripture Dig this week! Join us today?

June 29th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image from visualBiblealive.com

This world is not our home.

If there is a passage of Scripture that poignantly makes this point to me, it is Genesis 23.

Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.”
Genesis 23:1-4

Abraham wasn’t just dealing with the loss of his wife he had been married to for nearly a century. He had followed God in faith for years, wandering without a place to call his own, believing in God’s promise that one day his descendents would be a great nation in a land God would give them. And now, he found himself without even a plot of land where he could bury his beloved wife.

An alien and a stranger indeed.

Hebrews 11:11-16 speaks to this very scene:

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

They did not receive the things promised.

They saw them only from a distance.

They weren’t longing for what they left behind in Ur… they were longing for their real Home.

You know the old saying, “home is where your heart is?” One question today: where’s your heart? Are you longing for heaven, or are you a dedicated citizen of this world?

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!

June 28th, 2011 by Kristi Stephens

Image via Wikipedia

We human beings have a chronic condition, a family trait common to the entire human race: faith amnesia. Even when we have believed God and trusted Him wholly in the past, once He provides what we needed, we have a tendency to transfer our faith from the giver to the gift.

I wonder about what Abraham’s relationship was like with Isaac – the source of their laughter. Abraham had waited 100 years to have this child with his beloved wife Sarah. They had waited 24 of those years after receiving a promise from God Himself that an heir would be born. Abraham had learned to believe God through years of wandering, not knowing where he was going – believing in a promised land that would not be his during his lifetime, believing that a nation would come through a son who was not yet born and whose birth seemed impossible, believing in a Promised One who was thousands of years removed from his own life.

I wonder if, holding baby Isaac in his arms, his faith was both strengthened and… misplaced. It would have been so easy to begin looking to Isaac as the one who would fulfill God’s promises – instead of looking to God as the One who would fulfill the promises. I don’t know if Abraham struggled with that – but I think I would have. And I think God’s unexpected and shocking command would have completely rocked my world.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Genesis 22:1-2

I just cannot fully fathom it. What was Abraham feeling? Did he tell Sarah where they were going? Did he sleep that night? We don’t know. All we know is this:

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

Genesis 22:3

As he had done more than thirty years before… Abraham left. He obeyed God without a clue how the events before him would unfold. We don’t know what all he was thinking and feeling, but the book of Hebrews tells us this:

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Hebrews 11:17-19

Isaac was the promised son. They had waited a quarter of a century for his birth, and this shriveled elderly couple had laughed and cried and rocked a miracle child in their arms. On that crushing day when God said, “Abraham, go sacrifice Isaac on the mountain,” Abraham is not being tested to reveal his loyalty or the depth of his love. His faith was being tested. His faith in God as the promise-keeper. The question he had to have been pondering on this long and painful journey up to the mountain with his son was this: If Isaac is killed, can God still fulfill the promises?

This passage in Hebrews 11 is incredible – notice that it says, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.” This is Genesis 22. Abraham had never heard of anyone being raised from the dead! His faith in God’s trustworthiness as the Promise Keeper had grown to the point that he believed in the core of his being that even if he had to kill Isaac and burn him to ashes on that altar, that God, in His mysterious and wonderful ways, would somehow make Isaac whole once again… and together they would walk back down that mountain.

One little word in Genesis 22 underlines this thought:

On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Genesis 22:4-5

WE will come back. Somehow, someway – God is going to keep His promises. It’s not about Isaac fulfilling the promises, it’s about God as the Promise Keeper.

Sometimes, God will take us to the mountain – He will allow us to struggle with this: do I really believe Him? Do I believe HE is good, or do I simply love His good gifts? Do I believe HE is my provider, or have I made His provision my idol? Is it really all about God after all? Do I believe He is who He says He is?

Have you struggled with faith amnesia? Has God called you to “go to the mountain” in faith?

Around the web with Kristi… I’m all over the place this week!

• Join me at Kristine McGuire’s blog, Kristine ReMixed – God loves you too much to leave you content in your self-sufficiency.
• Join me at Laura Krokos’ blog, Beholding Glory, as I consider what it means that God’s name is “Jealous.”
• Join me at Scripture Dig as we think about what we really want – do we want God, or just the good “stuff” He gives us?