Making Amends and Offering Forgiveness

Last week we read alot!! We covered alot! There are a few things that I wanted to point out as we leave Genesis and head into Job.
Last week  we read about God telling Jacob to take his family and leave Laban's house and go to the land He promised Abraham. Jacob obeyed but, on the way home, he knew he was going to have to face Esau and he was terrified! After planning and scheming (positioning bribes AND his wives and children between him and Esau) he prayed to God and reminded God of His promises. That night, alone at camp, Jacob wrestles with God.  He doesn't give up his struggle until God blesses him and gives him a new name. Israel. When we come face to face with God, when we struggle and wrestle with Him over something, HANG ON UNTIL THE BLESSING COMES!!! It WILL come!! And after, we will be given a new name; we will never be the same. In this wrestling, God touched Jacob's hip and he walked with a limp afterward. Metaphorically speaking, sometimes God wounds us so that we will walk differently with Him.  Sometimes we need to have something re-broken so God can heal us properly. God's wounding is always for our healing. Tough teaching but true.
After his encounter with God, Jacob is given the courage to face Esau. He makes amends with him. Before we can enter our personal Promised Land, we need to face God and make amends with our brothers and sisters.  (Research for this segment from Beth Moore's Patriarchs Bible study)

As for Joseph, this segment of Scripture taught us alot about how God uses broken and messed up people to accomplish His purpose. God never condones sin, but uses sinful people to accomplish His will. We also see a progression of spiritual maturity in Judah as he is the ones that suggests selling Joseph, then runs away from home to marry a Canaanite woman and raises 3 godless sons (2 of which God puts to death for their evilness), then Judah's sin with Tamar and finally a return home and eventually stepping in as the leader who offers himself in lieu of Benjamin on behalf of their father. Judah is the tribe from which Christ the Messiah will come and is a picture of God using sinful people to accomplish His purpose.
With the trials that Joseph goes through, we see him living a life of integrity in the face of adversity and coming to a place where he offers forgiveness to those who hurt him most. He even came to the place where he realized that God ordained his journey. He tells his brothers in Gen. 50:20, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good..."

Oh, that we could see the hurts that others deliver as a way that God can use us to bless others.  joseph had a choice. Stay bitter or be a blessing. Trials, hurts and hardships WILL come. We can choose to allow good to come from them or allow anger and bitterness to destroy us. Let's choose to allow God to use it for good...