And yet, and yet…

As I’ve started reading through the Bible this year with our staff, I ran across a perplexing statement in the book of Genesis, particularly 27:20 in an exchange between Isaac and Jacob:

But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so quickly my son?” Jacob answered, “Because the LORD your God granted me success.”

Now, granted this whole exchange between the two is already strange because Jacob is actively stealing his brother’s blessing, but what I found interesting was how Jacob chose to describe God. Not as “my” God, but as “your” God.

Here was a young man whose grandfather was Abraham, who would be accounted as the father of many nations, who covenanted directly with the eternal God. Jacob’s father was a man miraculously born to a man and woman pushing 100 years old. He was a product of miracles in his genealogy and a benefactor of the blessings of the Lord.

Just because his father’s and grandfather’s generation had an experience with God did not assume that he would have a relationship with God. And in fact, because of the blindness of post-prosperity greed, Jacob worshiped quite the opposite: himself. Jacob did not believe in God.

Even more perplexing to me is that Jacob would go on to father the People of God, Israel. Where was the connection? Certainly not in the layer upon layer upon layer of deception that Jacob built in his life.

No, what happens is that Jacob has multiple experiences for himself with God, one culminating in wrestling with God in chapter 32. The man whose family would bear the title “the People of God” would trace their lineage from a person whose defining trait was resistance.

So what are we to do with this?

Sometimes people tend to look at faith as a generational thing. Granddads that were pastors, grandmas who had an old marked up Bible. There comes an expectation that if a person is a part of a “church-going family” that faith will be assured.

And then comes the shock when the child rebels, when the child presses against, when somehow the child does not share that same faith. Or worse, faith is assumed upon them and they fake it while lacking genuine personal belief. Because of assumptions like this, is it any wonder the level of hypocrisy we see in our culture?

No, God did not choose to use a pliant, people-pleasing person to carry his name. Instead he chose a sneak, a rebel, a thief, a deceiver, a coward. He gave his People’s name as those that would contend with God.

But why? Because it requires a personal experience of God to embrace faith. It isn’t inherited, it isn’t shrugged into. It is a full surrender to the glory and majesty of God, taking our strength and fire and rebellion and laying them at his feet. We become more than conquerors in him as we take those things that would have us push against the living God and put them to work for him. Instead of sneaking, we use our cleverness to serve. Instead of rebelling, we fight on behalf of the weak. Instead of stealing, we build up the communities around ourselves to his glory. Instead of deceiving, we bring thoughtful truth. Instead of being cowards, we cast ourselves into the fires of the world because another walks with us.

One parting thought: in the past few months in talking with both of my grandmothers, they both shared independently of one another that they were saved as adults when they heard the gospel shared by Billy Graham in the crusades of the 60s. I marveled at that, because both of my grandmothers were seemingly raised in church. But they both recognized that just taking the name of a Christian wasn’t enough; a person must have a personal experience with the Living God. When I think of movement today, while the format may not be the same as Billy Graham at a mass crusade, it is nonetheless still shaking people from their sinful assumption to wrestle with God. The same God that ignites the fire in my heart today awakened the faith in my grandparents decades ago.

Today, don’t mourn that a generation wasted the faith that came before. Pray and love and share with expectation that Christ’s gospel can set lives alight and grow those to hold his name that we’d never expect. Grace isn’t safe, it’s amazing.

Last of all, as one untimely born, he appeared also to me [Paul]. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am and what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:8-10a