Why am I still limping?

What do you do? What do you do when God brings you back to the place you ran from? But you're not the same person anymore. You've changed, things have changed. I mean you you ran from what you thought was the poison. What do you do when God brings you back to that very place? But you're not the same person anymore. What do you do when the fear is still there? The family pain is still there. The past is still there. The consequences still there. God says, keep walking. Because that's where Jacob is this week. He's not floating through some spiritual success story. He's limping through obedience. He's afraid of Esau. He's trapped between yesterday's deception and tomorrow's uncertainty. He's carrying wives, children, servants, flocks, memories, regrets, and promises. And before God fixes the family situation, before God settles the conflict, before God gives invisible peace, God meets Jacob in the dark and changes Jacob. Before. Before God gives him visible peace. God meets Jacob in that place. It's dark. Probably very unsettling. And God changes in that dark time. In that dark place, God changes Jacob. That's the wound this week. Sometimes we want God to change the circumstances first, but God is committed to forming the person who has to walk through it. But we don't love hearing that. Today we're stepping back from Genesis 32 through Genesis 36. This week took us through fear, surrender, reconciliation, violation, rage, obedience, burial worship, identity, death, genealogy, and the painful contrast between what looks successful and what is covenantal. And here's the hardcore truth. God doesn't waste the wilderness, the wound, the waiting, the limp, or the burial. He uses them to reorder his people under his covenant mercy. Okay, before we go any further, might as well ask a hard question. It's been a tough week for those of you who were with us the whole time. It's been a tough week. Hello to everybody. By the way, we're streaming live to eight different locations. We apparently had no problem streaming to all the places. So wherever you're listening from, uh, welcome. Thank you. And to everyone in live chat, thank you so much. It's so good to have you. Miss Sharon, it's so nice to have you. Good evening, right back to you. I'm excited to deliver the teaching. Hello, Lynette. Hello, Miss Colleen. Hello, all. So before we get into it, by the way, how's the sound? How's the music? Is music too loud? If it is, I can turn it right down. I don't know. I can't tell. I don't have my hearing aid's in. So I I have to ask this. I didn't want to, but I got to. You say, well, why don't you want to? Well, because. Because. Because it has to be asked. Where are you asking God to change everything around you while he's actually working to change something within you? Thank you, Miss Lynette. Thank you very much. Thank you, light of the world for Christ. Jesus loves you. Amen. Amen. So thank you very much. I'm trying a different thing to try to exert more control over the sound, the mic, and the effects. So we turned it down a good bit. Hopefully that's better. Let me know because I'm relying on y'all. Once I get it set and I know where the number is, I'm good to go. So, you know, here's the hard question. Where are you asking God to change everything around you while he's actually working to change? And I mean, it's this is real. Where are you asking God to change everything around you? You say, Lord, if you just change all these circumstances around me, I'll be happy about that. I just really need you to change all these circumstances around me. I need that. Because we always think it's the circumstances. We always do. We always think it's the circumstances. But really, what needs to change is us. Good thing to ask for yourself. How's the music now? Is it better? Thank you again for your input. I I need that. I need the help. Once I get this thing set, boom, it's set. Be no problem after that. Look, none of us really feel like we want to be changed. We really don't. We want to change, but we don't want to be changed, right? So comment, comment on that honestly. If you're if you're watching live or even if you're watching later, you don't you don't have to share details. Just say, hey, I'm in that place. Because a lot of people are. And you're not walking through it alone. It's easy to think you are. The enemy wants you to think you're all alone, but you're not. You are not all alone. Let's pray. Father, open our hearts to your word. Don't let us use the Bible as decoration. Don't let us hear these stories as religious information. Let us hear your voice. Show us where we're afraid. Show us where we're still grasping. Show us what needs to be buried. Show us where obedience has become delayed. Because fear sounds louder than faith. And bring us toward Shalom. Not sentimental calm, not denial, but life rightly ordered under your mercy, your reign, and your truth in the name of Yeshua, the risen Son of God. Amen. Well, I'm here to tell you it was tricky. This past week was hard, man. If you were with us during during all those uh Monday through, I'm telling you, it was hard. There was nothing easy about it. By the way, you'll have to uh pardon me too. New glasses, they're they're they're doing all these special things, and um it makes I'm get I'm getting accustomed to it. So I apologize if I get lost a little bit. It's just because they get fuzzy. They're not fuzzy, but my eyes are adjusting. Miss Colleen knows what I'm talking about. So if you wouldn't mind, just be patient with me. Sometimes I have to shake it out. I hope y'all are alright. I tell you what, I love I love being with you all and uh both on live and on playback. It's a privilege, and it's a blessing. So this week in one sentence, I mean, how do we sum it up, right? So you see this dear lady on the thumbnail, if you're watching, and says, Why am I still limping? Tears streaming down her face. Some of us have been there. Some of us have been there this week. Some of us have been there today, and some of us are there right now. Genesis. This is one sentence. This is the past week in one sentence. Genesis 32 through 36 shows us that covenant formation isn't clean. It's not quick, it's not sentimental. And it's often painful. It's often confusing. It can involve fear, right? And almost always almost always involves family conflict. That is just for whatever reason. It involves moral failure, grief, burial, identity change, and and unanswered questions. But through it all, through every bit of it, God remains faithful to his promise. That matters a lot because, you know, people think faith means your life should look cleaner by now. Hey, you know, you don't have your stuff together. By now, I would have thought that you would have. You've been you've been living under the blood of Christ in your life, you've turned your life over to Christ ten minutes ago, and they're like, the people around you are like, hey, I saw you slip up, I saw you let fly a you know, fancy word, I saw you wave it with your angry finger, I saw you get mad. Listen, the people around you trying to make you think that your life, if this was real, your life would just instantly I always I always say it. It's it's that's that's just simply not true. It's not scriptural, and it's not true. Oh, hello, uh John. Good to see ya. Good to see ya. Thank you so much. Thank you, good everybody. Holly, I enjoyed ya. I enjoy you all. I hope you enjoy this. I hope this is a blessing for ya. So look, I don't want to belabor this point, but you know how it is. People people will act like you somehow or another. If this thing was real, you in five minutes, you just have to you just have to have it all together. Everything that you struggled with, everything that you were just you were weighed down by, you were you were struggling so hard. They think, oh well, if it's real, it'd be easy. And there's people that will tell you, people in the church, amen. Yeshua died so we could live. Moldy biscuit number three. Amen. Amen, amen, amen. Thank God. I'd have no hope without that, no hope at all. So look, I'm gonna put this out there, and and you can do with it what you want. Um it's a moment of of really tough honesty for many. And for for many, it might very well be a moment of denial. And it may resonate with you, I don't know, but I'm gonna say this. You know, when when you came to faith, there were a lot of eyes on you. If you especially if you did it as an adult and you'd already messed up as a as a teenager, right? So somehow or another, just everything's jacked up, everything is you just think, ooh. Wow. Things get messed up, right? That's just what happens. Wish it didn't. Because people remember, and I hate to say this, a lot of times it's your family. If they're not believers, a lot of times it's your family. You know? I'll try to knock you down. Oh, Miss Sharon. We're praying for you every day on that glucose roller coaster at the Lowe's. Oh man, I can, ma'am, I can identify with that. They told me, you know what they told me? This has nothing to do with the broadcast, but you know what they told me when I turned up, uh, Miss Colleen can tell you the number, but I think it was somewhere around a thousand. I turned up at the emergency department with about a thousand um blood sugar, blood glucose. And they one thing I learned, I was in the hospital a week and they took great care of me, but um I learned that diabetes isn't high blood sugar, it's uncontrolled blood sugar. And they said, what'll kill you faster than high blood sugar, which will it will certainly kill you, it does long run, long-term dam, long-term damage, but the thing that'll really do you in is when your blood sugar plummets. And Miss Sharon, I can identify. Miss Colleen, you've you you've been there where I just looked at you funny. I didn't, I couldn't even, couldn't even put words together. And I have these alarms that you hope works to wake you up, and they will come off in the middle of the night, you know. And you gotta be chugging these little wafers, thank God for them, you know. So we're praying for you. We'll pray especially for that. So the people all around you, they they will try to lead you. And it's the enemy working, it's what the enemy does. By the way, thank you for this shirt, Miss Daniil. Thank you so much. Oh my lands, I love it. See Hag Marina in uh Steen Hatchie, Florida. I tell you, if you're a person that fishes or you just like to go out on the water and see amazing things and stay at this these really cool places, that's the place. That's the place. I'm not kidding you. See Hag Marina, Steen Hatchie, Florida. Dow you'll be so you will be so well taken care of. Anyway, this is one of their new shirts. And I appreciate it. So you know, I I I guess really the the thing that I that I want, what I what I really, really want, I I I I'm I'm more or less confessing that I have been in this place. I've been I've been in this place where I think, man, I came to faith. I've turned my life around. How come it's so hard? How come it's still so messy? How come my hurts, habits, and hangups didn't disappear? In many respects, they got harder to deal with. So you thought obedience would make everything simple. It's reasonable, right? It's what we think. We think obedience is going to make everything simple. You thought returning to God would immediately remove every fear. Well, it doesn't. You thought doing the right thing would automatically make people understand. They would understand you deeper, better, more accurately. Maybe they'd bless you, maybe they'd forgive you. Or maybe they'd leave you alone. Oh, thank you. Oh, we're so lucky to have Miss Danielle listen to everybody. Say hello to Miss Danielle. She's she is one of my most precious friends in the whole wide world. We have been friends a long time, and I'll tell you, she's a blessing. She's an amazing human being. I'll leave it there, or she'll get mad at me for going on about what she does in her community and stuff people don't even know. They don't even know. It's unreal. It's very humbling. God bless you. I'm so glad you had the best day-to-day. God has been shining down on you and consider today almost miraculous. Well, praise the Lord. I'm so happy to hear that. Look at that. Oh, by the way, look here. This is stupid. I know you're gonna think this is dumb. Miss Colleen's not here, so I have no ability to ask, does this match or doesn't it match? I have no concept of that anymore post-crash. She might say I didn't have any concept of look here. I'm not stripping. Hang on there. Y'all be all right. I thought this might match. And then I got a Sea Hag Marina t-shirt on underneath. I almost wore a hat too. I almost wore a hat. You know why I didn't wear a hat? Because I thought, oh man, I'm gonna hear it if that hat doesn't match. But a Sea Hag hat, I have a bunch of Sea Hag hats. And I was like, oh, I don't know which one to wear. So, you know. Anyway, we'll keep on going. Well, it's good to have you. God bless you. So look, you thought doing the right thing would automatically make people understand you and things would flow easier and things would bless you. You know, you'd be just blessings would just be dropping in all around you. And you think people would forgive you. Or just leave you alone. Okay, maybe maybe they don't forgive you. Maybe they just want them to leave you alone. But Jacob's story, Jacob's story won't let us believe that. Jacob obeys and he and he's still afraid. He is still afraid. I don't blame him. Jacob meets God and he still limbs. I mean, meets God, and yet he still limbs. Jacob reconciles with Esau, and the family still carries danger. You think, oh man, this is, I'm good. I'm good here. Jacob goes back to Bethel, and there are still burials, and Jacob receives covenant reaffirmation, and his beloved Rachel dies. She still dies. Jacob becomes Israel. But his household isn't, it still isn't whole. It's still limping. Why am I still limping? That's why I titled it this. But that's painfully honest. And that's why this section of Genesis speaks to real people, not to fake religious people. Real people. You've had enough of fake religious people, have you not? I'm talking about real people. People with hurts, habits, and hangups, people with temptations, people with struggles and sorrows, people who have suffered so much loss. Real people. That's you and me. People with a history. People with regret. People with family fractures. People with fear. People with unfinished obedience. People who love God but still feel the weight of what they've survived. Then we have Genesis 32. Ow. The fear you can't shake. The fear you can't shake. Genesis 32 opens up. Jacob's on the move. He has left Laban. Good riddance to bad rubbish. That dude, bad dude. Laban, not good guy. Can you imagine if you were Leah and Rachel? You've been pimped out. The one sister gets pimped out. The other sister gets tricked. It's awful. It's terrible. And he and he doesn't get any better. So Jacob left. He's heading back toward the land of promise. And that's a good thing. But the road home, woof, he's got to go. It's right straight through, straight toward anyway, Esau. And Esau isn't just a brother. Esau's the face of Jacob's past. I mean, Esau is the consequence Jacob can't control. Jacob is a pretty controlling dude. He's, you know, you talk about Hertz having the hang of this guy. Woof. He's a trickster. And he really messed Esau over. Not once, but multiple times. If I were Esau, I wouldn't trust him either. Esau is the wound Jacob just can't manage with his slick thinking and strategic, his strateger. Esau's the relationship Jacob broke years earlier through deception and grasping. Look, I don't know if you've ever had a fracture among your siblings if you have any siblings, but it's tough. It's hurtful. And you know, sometimes our siblings, sometimes it's us. We can't, we can't come at this like we never are the jacked up ones. Sometimes it is us. Sometimes we do the bad thing, and sometimes the bad thing is done to us. Esau is the relationship Jacob broke years earlier through deception and grasping. The text tells us Jacob is greatly afraid and distressed, and that matters. Because, and I always say this about the Bible, the Bible, you can believe the Bible, because the Bible doesn't pretend covenant people never feel fear. It tells the truth about them. Jacob has God's promise and he's afraid. He has God's promise. Oh, unmistakable, y'all. Unmistakable. And he's afraid. Jacob has seen God's protection and he's afraid. Jacob has heard from God and he's afraid. I don't know if you've gotten what I'm coming at you with. Good evening. Good evening, Miss Tammy. Good to see you. We treat each other kindly, uh, 067, and we're, you know, we're not picking out either one. Might benefit to listen and see if maybe you can get something out of this. So don't let anybody. Podcast puppy. He's staring me down. You're alright, buddy. You're right. He hears things outside. And they are outside. We've learned. Well, he hears better than we do. There he goes. He's a weapon to bed. He's a good old podcast puppy. You're a good boy. So Jacob has heard from God and and and he's afraid. All these things, he's all these things. He's still afraid. Listen, don't let anybody tell you fear automatically means you have no faith. That's so unfair. It's so unfair. Hello, everybody in live chat. Wherever there's three destinations that are live chatting, and we appreciate it. Wouldn't mind you hitting that like. And and uh if you're not a subscriber, if you click on that subscribe on True Word Faith for Life with Dr. Sean, the YouTube channel. Sean is sh a w n. Also, um true wordfaithforlife.com. I'd love for you to love for you to go there. We don't collect your information, we don't swipe it, we don't steal it, we don't, whatever the word is, we don't do that because we don't know how, and I wouldn't anyway. And then here's my book. You can get that from uh Trueword FaithforLife.com up in the store. You can get it anywhere else, but if you buy it from there, that helps our ministry the most because we profit the most with it. And I don't think it gets to you any quicker. Anyway, aside from that, so don't don't let anybody tell you because this is what'll happen. I started to say this earlier, and I said, I probably shouldn't, but I should say it. I should say. Um, do you remember the time when maybe maybe you're a person that you you have come to faith, and and you just, you know, you feel like you got it together now. And then there's people that are where you were, and they're they're messy and ragged. Sometimes it happens that we forget where we were, we forget all how that mud felt on us, we forget how all that shame felt on us. And we think we got it together. Humility. But listen, people pretend, lots of people pretend that fear, and they'll say this to you. Well, why are you afraid? You're supposed to be uh onward Christian soldiers, but uh how come? How come you're afraid? If you have a person of faith, you you shouldn't have any fear. If your God is so good, you shouldn't have any fear. No, it's untrue. So the deeper question is this, and this is really what it's about. What do you do with the fear? Do you let fear rule you? Do you let fear make you manipulate people again? If that was your thing? Do you let fear turn you back? Or do you bring fear into prayer and obedience? God, I'm afraid. Please, God, I'm afraid. Help me. Be ever near. And you know, Jacob does something just so deeply human. He plans, he divides the camp, he sends gifts ahead, but then he prays.

And his prayer isn't some polished religious theater, dear Lord, we beseech there for this journey that we are about to go on. We praise the Lord, and we beseech thee to go before us. You know, that kind of thing.

You ever pray that kind of prayer? Be real. I mean, it's okay. Sometimes people think you gotta pray like that in order for God to hear you. No. No. Jacob says, in essence, God, you told me to return. You promised to do good to me. I'm not worthy of all the mercy and faithfulness you've shown me. Please deliver me. That's not panic without faith. That's fear submitted to covenant truth. Some of you need to hear this. Some of you are right there right now. You're not afraid of Esau. You're afraid of the phone call that you might get. You're afraid of the diagnosis you might get. You're afraid of the conversation that you've been trying so hard to avoid. You're afraid of that bill coming in. You're afraid of what your child is becoming. You're afraid of the marriage tension you're experiencing. You're afraid of what happens if you obey and things don't immediately get easier or better. Well, here's the concrete action: name the fear before God. Don't spiritualize it, don't exaggerate it, don't deny it, name it. Then pray God's promise back to him. He loves it when you tell him what he's promised. You don't shake your fist in his, you know, and you told me you're there's people that bark at God, and I think to myself, there's a new movement. No, you tell the Lord, you tell the Lord what he said. You tell him you can't leave me because you then if you do this, then you'll be denying yourself. Come on now, stop doing that. Stop doing that. Approach him with respect and humility. Or am I a doctor, or do I just have a misleading name to make me look smarter? Look, if you think I look smarter, perjure, plurk, dash dreig, uh hey, that's a big win. I think it's the glasses, these are new. So thing you. But I am no smarter. I am no smarter. Trust me when I tell you. Anyway, so you pray God's promise back to him, not in some arrogant sort of way. You just you pray, you you remind him that, hey, I know what you promised me, and I'm I'm clinging to that. Then you take the next obedient step. Trust and obey. Trust and obey. The obedience comes. We just keep being obedient. Not some big dramatic next step, by the way. Some people think, well, there's got to be some big thing, some big show. And it's not the next controlling step, it's the next faithful step. Isn't that hard? Sometimes that's so hard. Faith doesn't always feel like confidence. Sometimes faith sounds like this, Father. I'm afraid, but I'm still walking. Come on, somebody. You're afraid, but you're still walking. You're still moving forward. You've lifted the problem up, and you've said, Lord, in your time. Sometimes it's so complex. What you're dealing with is so, there's so many, you know, you're you're a juggler and you've got eight cylindrical things or whatever, juggling chainsaws. You feel like you're chain, you're juggling chainsaws or angry cats. I don't know which. Don't juggle cats. That's not you'll make them angry. But I'm just saying, sometimes we're in a place and things are challenging, and we say, Oh, but I trust the Lord. Just keep trusting the Lord. Look, Genesis 32, it's it's it's night wrestling. And, you know, this is to me one of the most powerful and and in many respects mysterious, mysterious scenes in Genesis. God, wow, can you imagine how many times this is this is what he sees in Jacob. He's alone at night, and a man wrestles with him until daybreak. The man touches Jacob's hip, and Jacob is wounded. And Jacob refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. Remember when he grasped on the heel of Esau? He grabbed on his heel. Then Jacob receives a new name. His new name is Israel. The name is connected with striving, wrestling, persevering with God and with men. It's not some cute little motivational moment. This is a covenant crisis. Jacob the grasper is being confronted. Jacob the strategist is being broken. Jacob the man who tried to manage outcomes is being renamed by God, and he walks away limping. And that limp isn't a it's it's not failure. It's not failure. We see it as that, right? We see it as that. Too many times we see our own limp as failure. Listen, that went that that limp is a witness. That limp is witness. Jacob will never again walk as if he made himself what he is. Never again. In the ancient Near Eastern world, names carried weight. A name wasn't just a label. It spoke of identity, character, destiny, reputation. I uh, Mr. John, I believe it was the Lord, but it could very well have been an angel. Um, you know, in the entire Bible, you know, a lot of times people would depict angels as this beautiful, you know, handsome, all of that. But generally speaking, angels are terribly scary and uh it's always men. It's never, never, what you know, I'm not saying it's there never was or never will be or could be. I'm just saying in scripture that the dimensions of angels has never been a female, could never receive that. I'll ask about that when I get up to heaven. No, I won't. I won't care because uh everything will be pure and perfect. Worship and joy. So the the label, right? It spoke of identity. I mean, if we walked around wearing maybe what our names mean, I don't know. Your name may mean something specific, and you may you may be excited about that, and you tell people your name. I think your name is something cool, you should tell them. Somebody told me one time, told me their name, and uh I said, that's a fascinating name. I can't remember the name off the top of my head. And I said, What does it mean? And she said, Well, in Swahili it means child of great sorrow. Child of great sorrow.

Wow!

Imagine that. But names in the ancient Near East, uh they spoke of identity, character, destiny, reputation, and relational meaning. So when God changes Jacob's name, he's not giving him some sort of religious nickname, he is marking a transformed identity. But notice this Jacob's name is changed before all his problems are resolved. Oh my. Oh my. Jacob's name is changed before all of his problems are resolved, and that's important. God doesn't wait until the family is peaceful to rename him. God doesn't wait until Jacob feels brave. God doesn't wait until every consequence is cleaned up. God changes Jacob in the dark before Jacob walks into the morning. Some of us want the morning, but we don't want the wrestling. Some of us want the spiritual closeness with God, but we don't want to, we don't want to pick this up. We don't want to make time to read it, to study it, to really study it. By the way, this is one of my Moose Works Bibles. Melissa at Mooseworks has the three final Bibles that I'm gonna send her. Um, and uh her her work is in an argument. Look, it's I wish you could all see it. Oh, Miss Sharon, I forgot that I don't know if I showed you that Bible. I had that with me, and I don't remember if I showed you. The um I tell you all the time about Virginia Creek Ministries, uh, the Virginia Creek Campground in Surf City, North Carolina. What a lovely ministry, Pastor Russell and Miss Kathy and everybody there that's involved. Everybody's plugged in. It's just such a lovely bunch. And they just had a revival. Old school tent revival, and it was amazing. And um, they're they're amazing. I mean, the man's almost 80 and runs circles around me. Unreal. Precious people. I adore them. So some of us, look, we want the morning without the wrestling. We want the, we, we want to understand God without picking up his word to us and saying, okay, I need help to understand this. That's why I'm here. That's why I do what I do. Because I want to help you. Look, we want peace without the surrender. We don't want to surrender to, we don't want to surrender to God, but we want the peace. We want shalom without that. We want blessing without exposure. We want God to fix the circumstance while we keep the same patterns. But God loves us too much to just make our life more comfortable while our soul remains just utterly disordered. Look, you can take a concrete action. You can do this before you sleep tonight. You can pray, Father, what are you touching in me that I keep protecting? Is it pride? Is it control? Is it resentment? Is it sexual sin? Is it comparison? Is it fear? Is it self-pity? The need to always be right? Maybe it's that. Is it the refusal to apologize? Is it the habit of disappearing when life gets hard? Name it. Bring it into the light. Stop calling it. Well, that's just my personality. Look, if God is if God is calling it bondage, stop calling it your personality. It's bondage. Call it what it is. Stop defending what is deforming it. Look. Genesis 33. Man, this was tricky. This was tricky. Genesis 33. There was there was reconciliation without any naivete. Then Jacob meets Esau. This moment could have gone very differently. I mean, Esau could easily have killed him like he said he was going to do. Jacob expects danger, rightly so. But Esau runs to meet him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him, and they together weep. That language is so powerful, it's tender. And quite frankly, it's unexpected. And yet the story, it isn't, it isn't simplistic. Jacob and Esau reconcile in a real way, but they don't become one household. They don't go back to being one household. Jacob doesn't pretend the past never happened. He doesn't surrender discernment in the name of emotional relief. He receives mercy, but he still walks carefully. And that's important for we postmodern Western evangelical believers. That's important for you modern listeners who this is new to you. This is something new in different territory now. Look, we gotta accept this. Biblical reconciliation is not always instant closeness. Sometimes there's still a toxicity that some distance needs to be maintained. Forgiveness is real, mercy is real, peace is real, but wisdom also real. Wisdom is also real. Some relationships they can be reconciled without being fully restored to intimacy. Some situations require peace without pretending there was no damage. Some people can be blessed without being given the steering wheel of your life again. Maybe you've thought, if I forgive them, does that mean I have to trust them in the same way? Well, I do a I do an episode on uh toxic, toxic family, toxic friends. What do you what do you do with them? I it's on the it's on true wordfaithforlife.com and that's audio only. And then it's wherever you wherever you listen to podcasts, it's there. And then also um it is on True Word Faith for Life with Dr. Sean S-H-A-W-N. And there's a whole catalog there. Go under the live tab or the video tab or whatever, but live tab typically that that's gonna have the ones. So not for nothing. That's free. Everything there is free. And while you're there, click on subscribe and the little bell and all notifications, click on the thumbs up, wouldn't kill you. Helps us. You wouldn't, you'd be shocked to know how much it does. So maybe you thought, look, I I'll just forgive them. Because if I forgive them, I have to go back to trusting them, and they destroyed my life. No. No, it doesn't. Doesn't mean you have to trust them the same way.

No.

Forgiveness releases vengeance, it doesn't erase wisdom. Peace doesn't require pretending. Shalom is not denial. Shalom is ordered life under God. So if you want something concrete to do, bless the person you resent. Pray for them by name. Release revenge. But don't hand them access to God. Or don't hand them access that God hasn't told you to hand them. Tell them the truth. Tell them the truth. You bet. You bet, Mr. John. Absolutely agreed. He's talking about the lows with uh diabetes can lead to coma. You can die in your sleep. That's what they told me. They got my attention. Because I was just silencing the alarms. And you know, I'm all like, oh, I can't even, you know, there have been times where I've woken up and Miss Colleen has jumped out of bed and run around and gotten me the wafers and just start, come on, keep eating them, keep eating them, keep eating them. I'm like, no, no, no, no, then I'm speaking in tongues, you know. Anyway, look, don't hand people access that God hasn't told you to hand them. Tell the truth about it. Set the boundary. Walk in mercy without surrendering your discernment. Hello, Miss Nicole. So good to see you. Hey, you're worth waiting for. We're glad to have you. Look, walk in mercy without surrendering your discernment. Don't do it. Walk in mercy, but don't surrender your discernment. Genesis 34. This is when family pain becomes moral chaos. Genesis 34 brings us into one of the hardest chapters in this section. It's it's tough. You might read it, read her name as Dinah, um, but it's Dinah. Dinah. She's violated. That's the word I can use here. Um, I'm demonetized most of the time anyway. Uh, somebody said, You must be making so much money with 4,000 followers. First of all, 4,000 subscribers is is, I mean, I'm grateful for everyone, but the fact of the matter is, you don't make any money. Most of my videos are demonetized. So, yeah. And you have to have so many viewer hours or like 4,000 viewer hours or something in a rolling 365 day, and it's every day. You have to have that every day. So, yeah. Anyway, Dinah is violated. I said the R word the other day when we talked about this chapter.

Bing.

Yeah. Oh well. Her brothers respond with deception and slaughter. And look, I have sisters. I have sisters. Anybody ever heard any one of them? Good luck to you. And her brothers respond with deception and slaughter, and Jacob's household becomes a place of trauma. She's already dealing with this, and now she's got all this other stuff. Oh no, our whole family, our whole line is going to be ruined because of me. There's all this rage going on. There's moral confusion and dangerous retaliation. But see, this chapter isn't here to entertain us, it's there to expose what happens when covenant identity isn't, it's not yet ordering covenant behavior. I've been there. I've been there. I've been the problem. The family of promise isn't automatically mature. It's not magically and automatically mature. Being chosen doesn't mean being whole. That's why my people look, they say, Israel isn't God's chosen people. Look how, look how they do this wrong, they do that wrong. Nope. Apples and art of arcs. The family of promise isn't automatically mature. It doesn't automatically do the right thing at the right time, in the right way. Being chosen doesn't mean being whole. Being called doesn't mean every impulse is holy. This is where the Bible is. It's just amazing. It's brutally honest. It doesn't sanitize the family line. It doesn't hide the moral chaos. It doesn't pretend that covenant family always acts covenantally. They don't. We don't. This matters because many modern people are trying to process family pain, right? Violation, betrayal, rage, silence, overreaction, underreaction, shame. The people who shouldn't have protected. I'm sorry, the people who should have protected. Protected you, protected the family, protected the innocent one? Didn't. The people who responded, they made it worse. That problem you had, they made it worse. The people carrying the family name didn't carry the family character. Genesis 34 says the Bible sees that, but it also warns us. Pain doesn't give us permission to become lawless. Rage. Oh, it can feel righteous while it's actually becoming destructive. A real wound. It can become a doorway into real sin. But here's something concrete you can do. Don't let pain make you cruel. Don't let someone else's sin recruit you into your own. Tell the truth. Seek justice rightly. Protect the vulnerable. Get help. Make the call. Bring the wound into the light and don't baptize revenge and call it righteousness. Well then we get to Genesis 35. He goes back to Bethel. After all the chaos of Genesis 34, God speaks to Jacob, says, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. That's mercy. God calls Jacob back to the place where he first met him. Back to the altar. Back to the worship. Back to the covenant memory. Back to the place Jacob had named Bethel, the house of God. But before they go, Jacob tells his household, put away the foreign gods, purify themselves. He tells them to purify yourself. Tells them to change your garments. That's concrete stuff right there. That's not vague spirituality. That's not, well, we're gonna try to do better. We're just gonna try to do better. That's decisive covenant action. Remove the idols, purify yourselves, change your garments, and move toward worship. This is one of the strongest modern bridges in the entire last week. By the way, I'm excited about this coming week. Um, yeah, I'm super excited. Suffice, I'm really excited. Tomorrow morning, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, we have some that get up in the very early morning, some 4 a.m., 3 a.m. It's amazing with people that listen from all over the world. So we'd love to have you. It'll be on playback, but there's something cool about being there live. I don't know. It's just something special. So this is one of the strongest modern bridges in the entire week. Some people want Bethel while still carrying the idols, they want worship while keeping the hidden compromise. They want peace while protecting the very thing that keeps disordering the home. They want God's presence without repentance. But Jacob understands something. You don't go back to Bethel clutching the gods of the old life. Here's what I'd like for you to do. This is what God calls us to do. I'm just I'm I'm the reporter. I'm just the messenger, I'm delivering. Bury what God has told you not to carry. Delete the contact. You've got contacts in your phone, delete them. Somebody, somebody, they're gonna destroy you. Close the app. Maybe you have an app you shouldn't have on your phone. How about moving the device out of the room? Maybe you have something you shouldn't have. Throw away the object. And then end the secret conversation. Stop rehearsing the comparison. Comparison is the great thief of joy. Get the accountability. Tell the truth before the lie grows another root. That's not legalism, that's covenant sanity. You can't walk toward an ordered life under God while protecting the disorder that keeps dragging your soul backwards. Well, we're almost finished. Hang in there. Almost finished. Genesis 35, Elbathel. Elbatel. God of the house of God.

Wow.

Jacob builds an altar and calls it, he calls this place where he builds the altar, El Bethel. Elbatel. Well, God bless you, alien magi. I don't know why you would come to channels and just search. If you don't believe in God, at some point every every knee will bow. I pray that you find the truth. I pray that you accept the truth before it's too late. So Jacob builds this altar. He calls the place Elbathel, God of the house of God. That's not merely the place. The God who met him in the place. Earlier, Jacob was deeply moved by the location. Now, after years of exile, fear, deception, labor, family struggle, for sure, and divine mercy, Jacob knows the place matters because God was there. Some of us get attached to religious places, religious memories, religious aesthetics, religious language, religious routines, religious ritual. And those things can matter. Some of you know a great gift I was given, which I treasure and I touch it almost every day, is my rosary that was given to me by a dear, dear friend. And the story behind the rosary is beautiful. There's all kinds of things. Sometimes you walk into those places, you're like, ooh, I see why they did it now. There can be absolutely a place for those things, but they're not the center. God is the center. The point isn't the worship music sounds like the best band you've ever heard, sounds like you're in a concert. The point is, and I'm not against that either. I love good music. I'm a music nut. But you know, sometimes the most beautiful sound to God's ears is someone singing. Praises to Him that can't. Sister wasn't given no kind of blessing of having any kind of tone or you know, being on the note when the pitch was off.

So the point isn't the altar itself. The point is the God who receives worship there.

The point isn't the memory by itself. The point is the God who was faithful then and is faithful now. Look, you may be in the struggle of your life. You're under the massive stress. There's so many unanswered questions, there's so many unfilled boxes, unticked boxes. You're like, Lord, I don't know what to do next, but everything's up in the air, and some stuff has to fall in place. I get it. I've been in that place. It is hard. It's hard, it's so hard. Return to worship, but don't worship the memory of a season. Return to prayer. But don't worship your favorite version of the past. Return to obedience, but don't make nostalgia your God. Nostalgia is a great liar. Meet God now. Obey God now. Build that altar now. Oh, Genesis thirty-five.

Oh.

Chester, again, I have no idea why you would search YouTube channels just to say you don't believe in God and that we're all silly people. I don't know what you get out of that, but it's just childish and it's disrespectful. I pray you see, before it's too late. This chapter, Genesis 35, it rocks me every time I read it. Burial's on the road to promise. Genesis 35 is full of covenant reaffirmation, but it is also full of grief. Deborah dies, Rachel dies, Isaac dies. This chapter is a road of worship and burial. That's so honest. Sometimes obedience doesn't exempt you from grief. Sometimes you're walking in the right direction, and you're still burying what hurts. Rachel names her son, Ben Oni, Ben Oni, son of my sorrow. Remember, Rachel dies in childbirth, given birth. She names him Ben-Oni, son of my sorrow, but Jacob names him Benjamin or Benyame. Son of the right hand. Oh my. Oh my. Rachel's death isn't minimized. It isn't. Jacob's renaming doesn't erase sorrow. But it refuses to let sorrow have the final naming authority. Listen, some of you, some of you are trying to, you're, you're carrying grief, you're nurturing your grief. And that you've made that grief the name of your future. Law says this is all you are right now. I'm thinking of somebody who she lost her beloved son. And I pray for that, dear lady, almost every day. She's so crushed. So crushed. Who can blame her? Who can blame her? My goodness, it's crushing. It's awful. Law says, hey, here's your name. This. You're gonna live this way. There is nothing easy about it. Nothing. Regret says, this is your permanent identity. And failure says, this is the name you'll carry forever. The grief is real. This is what covenant faith says. Look, all of those other things are lies. It's not true. Covenant faith says the grief is real. But grief doesn't get the final authority over the promise of God. I want you to bring that grief into worship. Not around worship, not outside worship, into worship. Say the name. Cry the tears. They're real. Stop pretending it didn't hurt. But don't let sorrow be the only voice naming what comes next in your life. And there is a next in your life. So Genesis 36, when their life looks easier, this one was a hard one. I got so many compliments. It wasn't the most, not compliments, uh direct people sending me their messages. Just direct. They were too intense to put on the comments. And thank you all for who you do put your comments. I do appreciate that. Some of these were rough. Some of these were rough. Genesis 36. A lot of people skip this chapter. Or this, you know, yeah. They skip it. It's a genealogy of most people skip those, right? Matthew, they skip them. There's a reason you shouldn't skip it. The line of Esau. Chiefs, clans, kings, territory, settlement, visible structure. And look, if we if we rush through that too quickly, we miss the eight. Esau's line looks established. Jacob's line looks unfinished. Esau's descendants, they look organized. Jacob's family looks a mess. Esau appears settled in sear. Jacob is still walking through covenant formation. That's the wound. Why does their life look easier? Why? Why? Why does their life look so much easier? I don't get it. Why do they look ahead? Why do they seem settled? Well, I'm still being stretched out here and it doesn't feel good. Why do people who don't seem to be carrying the covenant weight appear to have quicker visible success? Look, that's not a small question. That's a modern wound. Comparison becomes it becomes spiritual poison. I've said it a million times. It's a great quote, not my own, but comparison is the thief of joy. Genesis 36, it very quietly confronts the lie that visible success equals covenant destiny. Oh, absolutely Esau's line matters historically. Oh, 100%. 100%. The Bible records it very seriously, so we know that it's important. But the covenant line is moving through Jacob. And Jacob's line looks slower, harder, messier, and less impressive at the moment. That speaks directly to our age, to our, we live in a world of visible metrics, right? We can be measured by views, by likes, by followers, by money, by image, by the house, by the body, by marriage, by platform, by your children, by speed, by appearance. And your soul starts asking that difficult question: why are they already there? Well, I'm still here. They're already up there, and I'm still down here. And it's it's stuff is a mess. If you're on social media, mute the account if you need to. If you're if you're if you've got an account, it's always dragging you down. Look, I I like X. I like how it's Wild West, but you know what? If that's dragging you down, put it away. Put it away. Maybe you belong to an email group or a text chain, and maybe you need to break that chain. Mute the account if you need to. Put the phone down. That's tough for us, right? It's our lifeline. I don't know where mine is. Yeah. It's our lifeline. We think. Put the phone down. This is hard. Bless the person you envy. Pray blessings upon them. Thank God for what he gave them. Thank God for what he gave them. Then return to your assignment. Your assignment. Your assignment isn't theirs, and theirs it's not you, it's not you. The blessings are for them, their blessings for them, your blessings for you. Your road, your travel, rocky as it may be, messy as it may be, that one's for you. I get it, you don't like it. I don't blame you. Listen, your obedience isn't measured by how impressive someone else's life looks. Visible settlement isn't the same thing as Covenant Destiny. And then there was very deep, very deep, very deep movement of the week this past week. Jacob. He faced fear.