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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Max Lucado
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April 27 - April 27, 2024
Sound familiar? You’ve wrestled with God about your past, your future, your pain and problems. You, like Jacob, have walked away with a gimp in your spiritual gait. Some people mount up with wings like eagles, a few run and never grow weary, others walk and never faint.2 You? Me? Jacob? We limp.
Abraham sent a servant back to the land of his birth to “get a wife for my son” (Gen. 24:4 NIV).
“Two nations are in your body, and two groups of people will be taken from you. One group will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” (GEN. 25:23 NCV)
But most significant was this: the firstborn of Isaac would be the next bearer of the covenant that God had made with Abraham, namely that God would bless the world through the descendant of Abraham—Jesus Christ (see Gen. 12:3; Acts 3:24–26).9
When God wanted to identify himself to his people, he declared himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.10 Not just of Abraham and Isaac. He’s also the God of Jacob.
God used Jacob in spite of Jacob. Period. The word for such devotion? Grace. Grace came after Jacob. Grace found him in the desert. Grace protected him when he lived in exile. Grace wrestled him to the
ground in Jabbok and blessed him. Grace led him...
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God’s grace isn’t only as good as you are. God’s grace is as good as he is.
God’s grace did not happen one time, long ago. God’s grace happens now, today . . . to anyone who’ll so much as give God a prayer.
That’s the kind of God he is—he’s the “God of Jacob.” Our God is the God of those who struggle and scrape, sometimes barely making it, hanging on for dear life.
Years later Jacob would be called Israel, and Israel eventually became the father of the twelve tribes. One of his sons, Judah, fathered a lineage that gave birth to the Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ.
The truth is, Isaac was nowhere near death. At 135 years old, he would live another 45 years (Gen. 35:28).
A blessing had a built-in binding element. It was irreversible and irrevocable.
Grace. The “yet-Godness” of God. We break promises, yet God forgives. We forget commitments, yet God appears. We turn away from him, yet God turns toward us.
his family was splintered, he was without a home, he had to run for his life, his twin wanted to kill him, he had betrayed his father’s trust,
and he, as far as we know, never saw his mother again.
God’s timing is always right. His plan is always best. His will never includes deception or manipulation. His strategy never destroys people or requires compromise. He never badgers, battles, belittles, or bruises people. If you are doing so, then you are not in God’s will. You may think he is slow to act, but he is not. Trust him . . . and wait.
Do not begrudge the barren stretches, for in the barrenness we encounter God.
He set out from Beersheba to go to Mesopotamia (modern-day Turkey): 550 miles.1
What we are told is this: “He took one of the stones of that place and put it at
his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep” (Gen. 28:11).
“All the angels are spirits who serve God and are sent to help those who will receive salvation” (Heb. 1:14 NCV).
“He has put his angels in charge of you to watch over you wherever you go” (Ps. 91:11 NCV).
“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you” (Gen. 28:15 NIV).
God did not turn away from one who had turned away from him. He was faithful. He still is. “If we are faithless, he remains faithful” (2 Tim. 2:13 NIV).
“God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Rom. 2:4 ESV).
Grace does this. It pursues. Persists. Shows up and speaks up. In our dreams. In our despair. In our guilt. Grace is God on the move saying, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen. 28:15 NIV).
“Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surel...
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this place, and I did not know it’” ...
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“Truly, truly, I say to you, you
will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51 ESV). Your ladder into heaven is not a vision. Yours is a person. Jesus is our stairway.
“There is one God and one mediator so that human beings can reach God. That way is through Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5 NCV).
Jacob responded admirably. “He took the stone he had used for his pillow and stood it up as a memorial pillar and poured oil over it. He christened the place Bethel (God’s House)” (Gen. 28:18–19 THE MESSAGE).
Jacob turned his pillow into a pillar and renamed the place of his pain. The stone pillow, a symbol of all he lacked, became a holy pillar, a memorial to all he found. The land was a windswept badland no longer. It was a place of God.
The promise of Jacob and Bethel is this: the Lord is in the wilderness, in the despair, in the misery, mess, and mayhem, and in broken hearts. God will meet you in this unwanted and unwelcome waypoint. With his help your pillow will become a pillar; your barren land will become a place of worship. God will speak, angels will come, and you will soon declare: “The LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”
Gravity does not pull him. Pain does not plague him. The economy does not faze him. The weather does not disturb him. Elections do not define him. Diseases do not infect him. Death cannot claim him. He is above all this! He is “the Most High over all the earth” (Ps. 83:18 ESV). The earth is his footstool (see Isa. 66:1). Our world fits in his pocket. Our universe could sit in his palm. He is holy. He fills heaven and earth as the ocean fills the bucket that is submerged in it. God is not contained. He contains.
“He is not interchangeable with any creature in heaven or on earth, or with the likeness of any product of human imagination. He is sovereign, and His name is holy above every other name, and not to be named with any other in the same breath.”3
God does not exist for us. We exist for God! God does not exist to make a big deal out of Max. Max exists to make a big deal out of God.
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. (Ps. 103:8–14 NIV)
Prayer is not asking God to do what you want; it is trusting God to do what is best.
Our failures are great, but God’s grace is greater. He uses flawed folks. He doesn’t cast us out when we deserve it. He does, however, let us reap what we sow.
“With the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matt. 7:2 NIV).
While he was still talking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she was a shepherd. When Jacob saw Rachel daughter of his uncle Laban, and Laban’s sheep, he went over and rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered his uncle’s sheep. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and began to weep aloud. (Gen. 29:9–11 NIV)
“So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her” (Gen. 29:20).
You determine the quality of tomorrow by the seeds you sow today.
But when we “sow the wind, [we] reap the whirlwind” (Hos. 8:7).
She gave birth to a son named Judah. Among her descendants were a shepherd boy of Bethlehem named David and a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus. Yes, Leah, unchosen by Jacob, was chosen by God to be a mother in the bloodline of the King of kings. Oh how the portraits of grace continue.
But he seeded a family tree whose branches extend into eternity. Those who know little about the Bible have heard about the twelve tribes of Israel. Those who know a lot about the Bible are aware that the names of the tribes will be inscribed on the gates of the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:12).
Where is God in the midst of this chaos?
have seen all that Laban has been doing to you.” I have not turned away. I have not forgotten your plight. I have not dismissed your need. I . . . have . . . seen!
