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THE SCHOOL OF OBEDIENCE, THE “PGM” DEGREE OF [POWER WITH GOD AND MAN]
A friend of ours is part owner and VP of a ten year old, three hundred million dollar company. Over the years we have known him he has struggled with things of the world and the ministry of heaven. Doing both.
In the midst of a blinding thunderstorm, driving down the interstate from the airport this summer, he told me what happened to him over the past two years. In brief, he surrendered to Christ every part of his life. It started when he was willing to write on a white sheet of paper, “I SURRENDER IT ALL!” That decision was the result of a challenge he was given, is everything in your life yielded to God? Great question. Can you answer yes?
HOW GOD MASTERS US
Thirty-eight centuries ago God met and mastered a man named Jacob. Born into a wealthy family, with everything going for him, Jacob was intent upon living a self-sufficient life. He was a man who would be mastered by no one:
• conniving his brother out of his inheritance,
• tricking his dad into blessing him,
• leaving home for Aram 600 miles northeast,
• finding the woman he wanted and taking 20 years to get all he could from her father.
But the road back to Canaan was a long one; every step drew him closer to his unsettled past. In Genesis 32:6 we see the climax of this life direction: the report that brother Esau is one the move in his direction with an army of 400 men! Jacob knew undoubtedly that his grandfather Abraham had wiped out a large army in Genesis 14 with only 318 men — and here were 400. Thus the stage is set.
In the height of his self-sufficient plan, Jacob was stopped in his tracks near a Middle Eastern brook called Jabbok. There they struggled in the darkness of night; he met God face to face. As the sun rose over the wilderness of Palestine the next morning, a lone figure could be seen slowly emerging from a thicket near a quiet stream. The match ended and he was crippled for life and crowned with power — power with God and Man (Genesis 32:28). To all who would ever meet him a clear message was visible — he was conquered. God took him through specific stages in that conquest. And all who wish to have His power ever upon them must follow that same path.
THE PRINCIPLE OF COMING
The path God uses is so clear in Genesis 32:22-32. There are four clear steps to Jacob’s transformed life. Let us look at them and ponder what God would have for us today. The first and probably most vital aspect of this encounter Jacob had with God was COMING TO THE PLACE OF GOD’S CHOOSING (v. 22). This is no new concept: for Joseph, it was the palace prison; for Moses a sun-baked wilderness watching his father-in-law’s herds; for David, it was hiding from a relentlessly pursuing Saul; for Daniel, it was captivity in a foreign land and for Jonah, it was being enmeshed in seaweed, entombed in the fish. God has always had to pull from the din of the world and from the busy ways of everyday life those whom He would meet and master.
• The rise of Joseph was built on the God whose Word tried him in prison (PS 105:19).
• The incredible leadership of Moses was fine-tuned far from the marble hallways of Egypt, as God spoke to him on the backside of the desert.
• The man after God’s own heart was David who never turned back from his pursuit of God though sought out as a common criminal.
• It was the indeflectable loyalty of a young Daniel, in a distant land, to an unseen God, that wrought the stalwart prophet of two empires.
• God wants to get Jacob alone in the place of His choosing.
For us it has involved giving up a quiet country home for one that echoes with the cries of a sad and twisted world. Giving up the brilliant glow of chrome and waxed paint on four wheels for a diesel belching city bus that winds among crowded third-world streets. It was even passing up an advancement in business that would bring 50 or even 60 thousand dollars to our bank account, for the awesome joy of pointing one single soul from the sin-darkened life of self to the “DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH” (Luke 1:78) and life unending.
THE PRINCIPLE OF BEING CRIPPLED