Everyone Has A Place

(If you want to read more on this subject - check out this post too!)

Proverbs 27:8 “Like a bird that wanders from its nest Is a man who wanders from his place.”

Everyone has a place. It’s the place you’re designed to be - the place God calls you to be. It’s where you’ll find you’re greatest fulfillment. It’s where God expects you to be when He wants to use you. It’s the spot where you can be the greatest blessing to Heaven and humanity. It’s the place you belong.

Jacob found that place in Genesis 28:11 - it was first called the “certain place.” Later, Jacob realized that place was where God was. “Surely Yahweh is in this place and I didn’t know it!...How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God! This is the gate of Heaven!” Jacob found out that his place was Bethel - the house of God!

Later in life, Jacob was aimless and without direction. He just experienced a family tragedy. His only daughter was raped and his sons massacred the whole town where her rapist lived. Now Jacob feared for his life! He was feeling down, depressed, probably doubting the promise God had made to him. What was God’s answer for him? Genesis 35:1 “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there...” God’s response was to send him back to the place he started; that certain place, the awesome place, the house of God!

About 450 years later, after God had brought Jacob’s descendants out of Egypt, He gave them almost the same command. In Deuteronomy 12:2 God describes how the nations in Canaan were worshipping on every hill and under every tree - wherever they felt like. In verses 5-7 He says, “But you shall seek the place where the Lord your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go. There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.  And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the Lord your God has blessed you.”

God declared that there was one place where He called His people to worship Him - and that’s where they would receive His blessing.

David understood this. When he was running from Jerusalem, from his son Absalom, The priests were going to carry the Ark of the Covenant with him. David stopped them and said, “Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me back and show me both it and His dwelling place.” David knew that it was his responsibility to go to that set place - he couldn’t move it around with him!

When David’s son Solomon built the first temple, that was where God set His place. That was the place God picked to meet with His people. After the dedication, God met with Solomon and said, “I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer made in this place. For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.”

Can you see that it has always been God’s plan to emphasize certain places? For Jacob, it was Bethel. For Israel, it was the tabernacle and then the temple. But this place is always called “the house of God.”

Fast forward to the New Testament. Now we have believers who claim that they don’t have the responsibility to go anywhere. But we see in Hebrews 10:25 that we’re still called to assemble together. 1 Timothy 3:15 tells us where we’re supposed to do this - “in the house of God, which is the church of the living God.” God still has a place where He calls His people to come to Him - the church!

There is a place for you. You were never called to be a loner or a spiritual floater. You were called to be rooted in God’s house! You need to send those roots deep. You need to decide right now that nothing (no offense, no lure of the world, and no trap of the enemy) can ever pull you out of your place! Here’s why: Psalm 133 says that God commands His blessing to a certain place - where brothers dwell together in unity!

Have you found your place yet?

For All Of Us Who Were Raised In Church...

First of all, I want to make it clear that I am very grateful for the parents I have. I think we can all agree that all of the values and ethics that we have came from the way we were raised. All of us have had sort of a “head start” by learning right and wrong early in our life. However, what I want to relate to you now is the hidden danger that comes from being raised by godly parents and from spending your childhood years in church.

    The danger here is the lack of personalization – when you never internalize the faith of your parents. This condition can manifest itself in one of two ways. The best example of this is Isaac’s family. His two boys, Jacob and Esau, illustrate both sides of what I like to call “the second generation syndrome.” These two boys had an incredible family. Their grandpa was the Abraham. Their dad was the Isaac; the miracle baby of Abraham and Sarah. They were miracle kids themselves! So if anyone should’ve had a head start in their relationship with God, it was these guys. But this advantage didn’t mean anything to them, did it? Why is that?

    They both had problems. Neither of them  adopted their father’s faith as their own. Jacob sums it up in Genesis 27:20 where he told his dad that God was “the Lord your God.” That says it all...not my God, but your God. He and his brother were second generation. They were raised by righteous parents, even adopted it as their culture, but never personally knew God!

Still, these guys were as different as night and day. They show us the two sides of the second generation. Another story about the second generation is the story of the prodigal son and his older brother. This story almost parallels Jacob and Esau’s. Who knows - maybe Jesus was thinking about Jacob and Esau when He told it! Jacob and the older brother were on the same path, Esau and the prodigal were on the other.

Jacob was a homebody. He preferred to stay at home with his parents. He usually did what his parents told him (I know he tricked his dad, but he did it because his mom told him to), and worked hard to make them happy.  Esau was always gone. He was a rebellious guy who loved the party lifestyle.  Jacob was smart and a little tricky, Esau was more of a brute and very gullible. Jacob didn’t really hang out with girls very much, Esau was definitely a womanizer! This sounds a lot like the prodigal and the older brother, doesn’t it?

    The problem was, they were both stuck in the same trap! Neither of them knew the God of their parents. Both sides of this second generation need to realize something - being raised in by godly parents doesn’t make them godly! They needed their own encounter with God! It wasn’t until Jacob was on the run, with nothing except the clothes on his back, that he came to realize that something was wrong. He had an encounter with God at Bethel, (since you were raised in church, you remember the story about Jacob’s ladder) and right there made a promise that God was going to be his God.

    Sadly, Esau never had this encounter. But in the story of the prodigal son, it was the older brother that never got it. The prodigal realized that he didn’t really know his father like he should. The older brother didn’t really know his dad either, but he never realized that! Both of these boys only saw their father as someone to be obeyed; all they saw was rules! The prodigal rebelled, the older brother stayed and submitted - but neither of them had a relationship with their dad.

    There are thousands of young men and women who are in the same situation today. They were raised by Christian parents, raised in church, taught all the Bible stories; but they’ve never known God except as Someone to be obeyed. All they see is a list of dos and don’ts. The second generation in church still follows one of two paths

Some of them are like Esau – running, rebellious, turning their back on the way they were raised. Some of them are like Jacob – staying home, seemingly doing everything right, but never bridging the gap between their parents’ faith and their faith. What they both need to realize is, everyone “must be born again” - even if they’re raised in church! God has zero grandkids! The way to get out of the second generation is to know God for yourself!

Prodigal/Esau - is this is where you’re at? Are you running away from what you were raised in? Are you tired of all the rules, so you’re turning your back on everything you were taught? have you found yourself in a pigpen? Then it’s time for you to realize Who you’re running from. Your Father loves you and He wants you to come home!

Older brother/Jacob - are you still trying to earn God’s love? Are you doing all the right things and still wondering why something feels wrong? Do you go to church every week, maybe even volunteer there, but still feel alienated from your Father? You’re on the more dangerous path, my friend! You need to wake up now! You need to realize that going to church your whole life, working hard, and being a good person doesn’t make you a Christian!

We can’t do this anymore! We need to find our Bethel! We must come to the place where we encounter God for ourselves! I know you remember hearing how much the “unchurched” need a revival. What I’m proposing to you is that there needs to be a revival in us first – the ones who were born here, who were raised here, who know all the right things.

    This is where we’re at. Are you going to keep sitting in church, working hard, volunteering there - only because it’s how you were raised? Or are you like Esau? Are you going to keep doing your own thing, pretending like you have all the time in the world? Listen to this verse and hear what it is saying to you:

1 Chronicles 28:9 “And Solomon, my son, learn to know the God of your ancestors intimately. Worship and serve him with your whole heart and a willing mind. For the Lord sees every heart and knows every plan and thought. If you seek him, you will find him. But if you forsake him, he will reject you forever.”

Isn’t time you found your Bethel?

God Doesn't Like Mixed Marriages

Genesis 28:6-9 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan Aram to take himself a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” 7 and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Padan Aram. 8 Also Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan did not please his father Isaac. 9 So Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.

Now that I got your attention, let me reassure you. I'm not talking about white, black, jewish, hispanic, oriental, or any other so-called “race” of people. We're all one physical race; all descended from Adam through Noah. God isn't opposed to people of different ethnic groups marrying each other. After all, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

God doesn't see in terms of race. He is Savior to the Chinese as well as the African Pygmies. Jesus laid down His life for the Russians as well as the Polynesians. Every person on this earth was made in God's image. So what was the problem with Esau's foreign wives? And why did God command the Israelites not to intermarry with the Canaanites? Simply put, was an issue of their hearts – not their bodies.

The Canaanites were a desperately wicked culture. Sexual immorality was everywhere. So was idolatry. The pagan Canaanites would regularly offer their own children on the altars of their demonic gods. When God warned His people not to intermarry with them, He wasn't vague about His reasons. “Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.”

And if the issue was racial (instead of an issue of the heart), why was Rahab, a Canaanite woman, listed in Jesus' geneaology? This Canaanite had a change of heart, and that was all it took in God's eyes. One generation later, a Moabite named Ruth had the same change of heart, allowing Boaz to marry her.

But that's just a side issue. There are too many racist people out there trying to use God's Word to justify their prejudice. But now, let's get back to Esau.

Esau saw that his dad didn't want his kids to marry these pagan women. He knew his dad sent Jacob back to where they came from (back to where they still served Yahweh) to find a godly wife. And Esau also knew that the two pagan wives that he had were a source of grief to his dad. So, to try to make his father happy, Esau married a third woman – this time, Abraham's granddaughter. Instead of repentance, Esau tried to add obedience to his disobedience.

That's the kind of mixed marriages God hates – when we marry obedience to God with our disobedient lifestyle. When we think that obeying most of what God says balances out disobedience in a few areas, something's wrong.

God forgives sin, but only after it's repented and turned away from. Continuing in sin while trying to cover it up with obedience doesn't work. You can't add Jesus to your own lifestyle and hope everything turns out ok! This is all or nothing, either you give God control over all of your life, or you've given Him nothing.

This is an enormous problem inside churches right now. We're adding God to our schedule, giving Him a few hours on Sunday, and then going back to our own life Sunday afternoon. We've been duped into thinking that as long as we obey the more important commandments, that will balance out the rest of our life. But, you can't mix your lifestyle with His Lordship.

It's a cliché we've heard over and over – but either Jesus is Lord of all, or He isn't Lord at all.

Loving God's House

Genesis 28:16-17 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”

There's a growing problem in the Church of God today. It's an issue that strikes at our very heart. It's a problem that, if not solved, will destroy individual believers as well as local churches. That problem? Apathy.

We've lost our passion for God's house. We've forgotten what coming to church is all about. In a very true sense of the word, we've been asleep. Just like Jacob, we've wandered into Bethel ("the house of God") without realizing Who's here with us! Why else is it surprising to us when there's a "great service"? During those moments, we wake up like Jacob and say "God is surely in this place!" But too often we fall right back asleep again. It shows on our faces...we're bored. In God's house, the very gate of Heaven...we pay no attention!

The answer isn't more exciting church programs. It isn't attendance drives or more "relevant" messages. It's God's word, people...if a preacher just got up and read three chapters and sat down, it would be relevant! The answer is for us to realize where we're at!

"How awesome is this place!" That was Jacob's realization, and it needs to be ours too. This isn't just a building. I know that we've been taught that over and over, but we've been misled. Sure, you and I are the church of God - that's part of the truth. But the rest of that truth is found in 1 Timothy 3:15 "I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" I know that we are the Church, but when you and I (the body of Christ) meet together - wherever we meet becomes the church of God - God's house on earth! Where we meet together with God is Bethel!

Now listen to what else Jacob says! "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven!" Are you wanting more from God in your life? do you want to see God do more in your life? Do you feel like Heaven is closed up to you? I would examine your attitude toward your local church! Where you come to meet with God is the gate of Heaven in your life! Everything God wants in your life has to come through the gate of Heaven - the house of God!

Now...concerning your attitude toward your church. Are you fussing with your brothers and sisters? Are you eating your pastor (God's gatekeeper, if you will) for dinner on Sunday afternoon? Are you always half-awake, half-hearted, and a half-hour late? How would your friends feel if you showed up to their house like that all the time? How would your boss feel? Why do we reserve that kind of indignity for the gate of Heaven?

The bottom line is this, if you want what Heaven has - you have to treat its gateway with a little more respect.