Here is my last 2 days of devotion journals. I pray you are allowing God to change you for His glory. – Bro. J

2/2/17 – Genesis 32:1-8

“Crippling Fear”

Fear can be crippling. Fear causes you to do things that normally you would not do. Fear causes you, at times, to make rash decisions. Fear makes us afraid of uncertainties. Fear causes great distress and anxiety.

If there ever was a person who knew God’s hand was on them, it was Jacob. All the conniving, deceitful, bribing things he did to his brother Esau, and yet God still chose to bless him. Everything Jacob touched prospered. He had no reason to fear because he knew God was with him. But yet, Jacob would be consumed with fear.

As Jacob leaves Laban (Genesis 31), fearful of the reports of Esau, he sees and is confronted by “Angels of The Lord”. He still Fears!

Fear can be a natural response to uncertainties. It’s in the uncertainties that we need to hold on to the promise, “Fear Not, For I AM With You.”

Let your heart and attention remain in Jesus today. Be controlled by a vertical relationship and not what horizontally awaits.

 

2/3/17 – Genesis 32:9-21

“Preparation For Fear”

Most, if not all, of us are Jacob’s. We start preparing before we start praying. Jacob’s preparation to fear began when he sent messengers to meet his brother Esau with a kind word. Only to hear back that he was coming with a small army. You know Jacob’s mind had to go into “mind craft” overload. Jacob had prepared to bribe fear.

You can not bribe, manipulate, deceive, or run away from fear. It does not take kindly to those responses.

Once Jacob knows that he has to face his fear, he does the thing he should have done in the first place, PRAY. In a moment of desperation Jacob cries out to God. When Jacob cries out, he begins to remember God’s promises to him.

It was there in the promises that Jacob started thinking a little clearer. So instead of hurrying to plan, he humbled and prayed. Instead of being conniving and deceitful to take, he gave. Instead of fleeing from fear, he faces His fears.

Before God was going to make Jacob into Israel, he had to free him from his past.

Sometimes the past is scary. It does not have to be. On the other side of fear Jacob becomes a new man.

Make us New!