Don't Settle for Breadcrumbs...learning from Esau

I AM Esau...

I spent the majority of last week helping chaperone the students at our church to Student Life Camp at Samford University.  It was like a homecoming.  I spent four of the best years of my life there.  To say that I am a proud alum would be a significant understatement.  It was where I met my wife, where I found lifetime friends, where I learned how to study the bible in its original languages, and it was where I started growing into the man God wanted me to be.  Camp was a great time of refreshing and renewal.  The camp pastor for the week was Dave Rhodes, who is a phenomenal speaker.  Upon returning home, I decided to see if Dave had any podcasts.  As I was listening to one of his podcasts the other day, I felt like God hit me with a sledgehammer.  Dave was speaking on the story of Esau selling Jacob his birthright for a bowl of soup.  It was then and there that I realized…I AM Esau.

I know that we've all been through circumstances that seem overwhelming.  I have been going through some of those since the beginning of the year.  Every one of the circumstances I am in are things that happened that were beyond my control.  If I were a cynic, I would dare say that I would have blamed God for the things that happened to me and my family.  However, as I began to evaluate what might have brought these things on, I began to think about a prayer I prayed four years ago when I was in South Africa.  My wife and I had just spent the day in the town/village of Sweetwater, which is one of the worst areas in South Africa that has been ravaged by AIDS.  We spent the day walking from one house to another doing hospice care with one of the most amazing women, Zanele.  Zanele would get up every day, go to the care center to pick up supplies (a month worth of food, medicine, etc.) for the people she was going to visit that day (usually more than 10 people).  She would proceed to carry said supplies (all of them at one time) as she walked from house to house to minister to the community.  Each house she would visit, she would administer medicine, cook a meal, or do whatever was needed.  At the end of the visit, she would pray for the patient and the family.  After my wife and I spent a day with her in the community, I came back to the place we were staying and realized that I didn't think that God was big enough to meet the needs of those I had seen that day. 

Things changed for me that day.  I began asking God to broaden my horizons.  I prayed that God would help me understand Him on a much deeper level.  Upon returning home, I wanted to experience God as intimately as I did in South Africa, but I knew that would be more challenging.  With all the distractions of day to day life, it is hard to maintain that level of focus and intimacy.  So, I began to pray that God would give me dependency on Him like I had never had before.  All I can say is be careful what you pray for, especially when it comes to prayers that you know God will answer affirmatively.  When I ask God for something like that and mean it, it would be against His nature not to give me that request, because it lines up with Scripture and His desires.  Little did I know what kind of journey that would set off. 

For God to take me to the place of closeness and intimacy I was longing for, there were a lot of things that had to change in my life.  As I embarked on this journey of obedience and intimacy, the first few things that had to die were hard, but they weren't life shattering or knee buckling.  As the years passed on, the challenges increased exponentially it seemed.  This year has been the most difficult of the whole process.  Starting at the beginning of the year there have been a chain of events that have rocked me to my core.  I have begun to realize that there are things that have been buried deep down in my heart that need to be uprooted.  It is those things that have been buried for years and years, decades even, that are the most difficult to remove.  I am beginning to realize that the process of being refined is not for the faint of heart, which brings me back to my original point…I AM Esau.

As Dave Rhodes said in the sermon I was listening to, "Esau traded his birthright for breadcrumbs."  He traded his identity and future for the instant craving of what was before him.  We do the same thing don’t we?  It's hard to rely on God and wait on His timing.  We want what we want, and we want it now.  Dave said it best, "I would rather satisfy my cravings than wait on God's best for me."  This has been the challenge for me since returning from South Africa.  I continue to settle for the breadcrumbs that the world offers instead of waiting for the feast that God has been preparing for me.  You'd think that I would learn.  In that last few days, I have really been convicted of waiting for however long it takes.  In the song, "The Lord Our God" by Kristian Stanfill, the bridge of the song says, "We won't move without You."  This has been my prayer as of late.  I don't want to make any move or make any decision without God being in it.  My prayers have actually changed.  Now, I am asking God to keep me attentive every moment of every day, because I don’t want to miss something that He is trying to do.  In doing so, God is also reshaping my idea of what I think the outcome should be.  This is yet another thing that we must all die to…the idea that my definition of "good" and God's definition of "good" are not the same.  God's definition of good is an intimate relationship with Him in which I am totally dependent on Him for the next decision I make, the next step I take, and the next breath I breathe.  God wants me in a place where it is just Him and myself and no one else, no other distractions, no other noise.  When I am in that place, I am free. THAT is what I am longing for…now it's a question of if I have the guts to take the steps necessary to get there!

I think that it's time we all stop settling for breadcrumbs like Esau.  Let's wait patiently until God's calls us to His dinner table to feast!

Be God's