January 2012 Newsletter

Encounters with Father

Over Christmas we had the opportunity of visiting Bethel Church, Redding, CA and went to the Christmas day service. If you would like to read a bit more about that then you can do so on the blog (www.afathertoyou.com/blog).

Being at Bethel prompted me to read the story of Jacob and his encounters with God, firstly at Bethel and then maybe twenty years later at Peniel. This month I want to look briefly at these two powerful encounters where Jacob met with God and was changed.

Bethel
Jacob is on the run (Genesis 28). He has stolen his brother's birthright, tricked his father and generally upset everyone. Now that his father, Isaac, has died Jacob fears that his brother will take revenge and kill him in order to get his inheritance back. So one night, aided and abetted by his mother, he takes off to go and live with his uncle until the trouble has passed. He is frightened, has nothing and is unsure of what the future may hold.

On his first night away from home he has a dream of a ladder going from earth to heaven with angels going up and down it. But the dream is not about the angels or the ladder; it is an encounter with God. God comes to this deceitful young man, not to tell him off and send him back home to meet justice but to affirm their relationship. God reminds Jacob that he is the God of his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham and then goes on to tell him that he is also his God as well. God is going to be to Jacob everything he was to Abraham and Isaac. In this encounter Jacob meets God for himself, not as someone who is distant and angry but as someone who will be with him, who will look after him, will keep him safe and most importantly will bless him and his family. Jacob did not inherit a secondhand faith. He came into his own relationship with God as he walked into the love and presence of a loving Father. It was such a powerful encounter that he named the place 'Bethel' which means the house of God.

Even as he runs, he meets a God of love. He found what John talks about in John 14:23 where we read that, because of his love God longs to make his home in our hearts. At the time of his greatest need, Jacob experienced the Father's love.

Peniel
Jacob needed his encounter at Bethel, given what was to follow. For more than twenty years he plays a cat and mouse game trying to outwit his uncle. Several long years pass before Jacob decides to run again, this time away from Laban and back home.... to Esau!

On the way, he has another nighttime encounter with God (Genesis 32) which was not as comfortable as the first. He meets a man and they fight all night. Here he is fighting with God who almost allows him to win. Just as Jacob thinks he is winning God reaches out his hand and cripples him by putting his hip out of joint. Even disabled, Jacob refuses to let go until God has blessed him. He has a face to face encounter with God where the blessing is as a result of a struggle.

Our Bethel and Peniel encounters
What about us?

There are times in our lives when God meets us and we encounter his love; we discover he is our Father and that, no matter what, he is loving us. Each of us needs to know God is our Father, that he is with us, that he will keep us safe and that we can live in the centre of his blessing. We may be running away. Like Jacob, we may feel that our lives are a mess but we can still walk into the manifest presence of God and experience his unconditional love. He lavishes his love on us simply because he is our Father and we are his children.

However, there are times, as we go deeper in his love, that we find ourselves in our 'Peniel' encounter. These are the times when we have to wrestle with God and pursue him for his blessings. These are the seasons when we recognise that a transformation is needed in our lives and that we are going to have to fight for it. It is the process Paul talks about in Ephesians 3 when he says that, for us to be rooted and established in love, we need to be strengthened in order that we may contain the love he has for us. The 'Peniel' encounters will strengthen us and deepen our relationship with the Father in a way that our 'Bethel' encounters won't.

Jacob had to have Bethel before he could face Peniel later on. He needed to know the unconditional love of the Father before it was tested in the struggle. We, too, need to experience the unconditional love of the Father and allow that to become our unshakeable foundation. As we face challenging times we can either run from them or we can embrace them as an opportunity to go deeper in his love. The reality is Peniel will happen to us just as it happened to Jacob. If we are living in Father's love then those situations can become opportunities for us to grow more deeply in his love.