Remember...

Our ideas about God have been formed from scripture and our life experiences. But there is one problem with this…we tend to sanitize certain things in scripture and employ selective memory from our histories. It’s easier to hold to the comfortable memories, and flush the dicey ones. But somehow, we need to develop a iron-grip memory of how God showed up in our worst chapters…
“God spoke to Jacob, ‘go back to Bethel, stay there, and build an altar to the God who revealed himself to you when you were running for your life…God revealed himself once again to Jacob after he had come back from when he returned from Paddan Aram and blessed him.” ~Gen. 35:1,9
It had been some time since that famed mid-night wrestling match between Jacob and God on the river bank. And he was forgetting the ‘wrestle-in-the-dirt’ image of God that was revealed to him. But for some reason it was important to God that Jacob remember that robust, gritty side of the divine. There would be many moments ahead in Jacob’s life that he would need to anticipate that ‘wrestle in the dirt’ kind of God to show up. He dare not sanitize that memory and forget that rugged image. God had revealed that gritty side of Himself for a reason, so Jacob would trust Him with the rugged stuff and be less tempted to pull out his ‘grabber’ nature. Guess what? God want us to hold His ‘rugged’ image closely too. Do you need to REMEMBER the gritty God that showed up in your worst moments? ~verlon