January 11
Gen 24:52-26:16 | PS 10:1-15 | Prov 3:7-8 | Matt 8:18-34
On social media, everyone posts those great pictures of everyone arm in arm, loving one another, joking with one another, etc. These are those great photos that make it onto the Christmas cards year after year. But everyone knows this is not what our families often really look like. Life is messy. Relationships are difficult at best. We must realize that when it comes to family relationships, we only really make two choices: to enter into a relationship with God, and the choice of our spouse. We don't choose our children, nor do they choose us. We don't choose our parents or our siblings, not to mention our more distant relatives. God has placed everyone in our lives for a reason, but this doesn't mean that we all live happily ever after. We can select our children's friends, their schools, their activities, but this doesn't mean things will go according to plans. Even if we live godly lives, do we deem ourselves better than Abraham, the father of faith? I mention this so that we all stop beating ourselves up, when it seems like "everyone else's family seems to get along so well, but ours have such problems", a statement that I must hear 10x a day from my patients.
After Sarah passed away, Abraham had other children through his next wife, Keturah. We read what Abraham did in Genesis 25:5-6, "Abraham gave everything he owned to his son Isaac. But before he died, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them off to a land in the east, away from Isaac." It's not that Abraham did not love his other children, but he knew the blessing was to go through the lineage of Isaac, and he already knew that conflicts would arise between the family. We read a few verses later in the lineage of Ishmael, Abraham's son through Hagar (Sarah's Egyptian servant), in 25:18, "Ishmael’s descendants occupied the region from Havilah to Shur, which is east of Egypt in the direction of Asshur. There they lived in open hostility toward all their relatives." The Lord also clearly foretells to Rebekah, what will transpire between her twins she was carrying (Jacob and Esau), in 25:23, "And the Lord told her, “The sons in your womb will become two nations. From the very beginning, the two nations will be rivals. One nation will be stronger than the other; and your older son will serve your younger son.” This is only the beginning of many family conflicts as we will soon read of Jacob’s children, not to mention the murder and rape among David’s children roughly one thousand years later.
We must avoid the "Why me" questions. There is a reason for everything in our lives. Sometimes we are reaping the consequences of our own poor choices, but other times God is moving in and through our families in ways that we would not have chosen for ourselves. If we maintain a fixed construct of how things are supposed to be according to the way we see things, then life can be long, frustrating, and miserable. If we are thankful for those times that God has given us, even if they don't last; if we seek God in our decisions and choices and things still don't seem to make sense, then we would do well to accept. Sorry to be so blunt, but those Facebook moments are often very far from reality and seeking them to become your reality will often leave one despondent. God is so good and so loving. When we pray, and we should frequently, we need to remind ourselves that our purpose is not to get our will done, but to align our will to our Father's will. When His will differs from our will, then submit to His will, and experience the peace in the midst of difficulty that He alone offers.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: