Weekly Pursuit – Week 3 of August
Verse:
Gen. 32:28 “And He said, Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
Rom. 12:2 “And do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and well pleasing and perfect.”
Excerpts:
Jacob’s history must also become our biography. We must believe that everything in our daily life is under God’s sovereign hand. Everything that happened to Jacob was for his transformation and maturity. In order to be transformed, Jacob had to be pressed into situations that gave him no choice except to undergo a change. Like Jacob, after we have been changed, God will sovereignly use persons, things, and events to empty us of everything that has filled us and to take away every preoccupation so that we may have an increased capacity to be filled with God.
From chapter twenty-five to chapter thirty-two we see no change in Jacob’s life. According to the record of chapter twenty-five, Jacob began supplanting even before he was born. Jacob’s transformation began from the time God touched him. This took place in chapter thirty-two. Although in chapters twenty-five to thirty-two there is no transformation, no change in life, these chapters are full of dealings. Remember, Jacob spent twenty years under the hand of Laban. During those years he suffered one dealing after another. After those twenty years of dealings, one night, at Peniel, the Lord came and touched Jacob’s strongest part, his thigh, and Jacob became lame. That marked the beginning of Jacob’s transformation, and the process of transformation continued from chapter thirty-two to chapter thirty-seven. In these chapters we see a picture of how Jacob was being transformed. (Life-study of Genesis, msgs. 93~94)
The process of transformation is both organic and metabolic. It is organic because it is related to life, and it is metabolic because it is related to a process in which old elements are discharged and new elements are added. To change someone’s complexion by makeup is neither organic nor metabolic. But a change in complexion that comes through eating nourishing food is both organic and metabolic. Such a change may be considered a physical transformation.
If we would be transformed, we must constantly look to the Lord, pray, read the Word, and call on the name of the Lord. In this way we eat, drink, and breathe the rich supply of Christ into us. This supply will produce a metabolic change in which the old, negative elements are discharged and replaced by new, positive elements. This metabolic change is transformation. (Life-study of Romans, msg. 65)
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
