Saints & Struggles: Jacob | Pastor Justin Miller

hey how's it going everybody welcome to our real life online experience we're so glad that you're joining us today we're confident that you are here for a reason and that god has something special in store for you if you've got friends or family who you know need to connect with god today don't forget to hit that share button and invite them to join in and of course be sure to hit subscribe and hit that thumbs up button if you're happy to be here today thanks again for joining us and let's get ready for what god has in store [Music] [Music] hey thanks for connecting today uh we're in a study that's called saints and struggles we can relate to this because what we're doing is looking at some of the greatest heroes of the bible and the struggles that not only they had but that god wants us to know that they had because those struggles are our struggles today we're looking at jacob now jacob is an amazing guy he's the one that god renamed israel so he becomes the father of the 12 tribes of israel and the reason we have a nation called israel today is because it all started with this one guy jacob and so he's one of the most notable saints in the bible but he wasn't actually a great guy in fact okay his name jacob means genesis 25. i want you to hear it from the bible genesis 25 we're going to start with verse 23 the lord said to her two nations are in your womb and two peoples from within you will be separated one will be stronger than the other and the older will serve the younger he's talking about these twins jacob and esau when the time came for her to give birth there were twin boys in her womb the first to come out was red and his whole body was like a hairy garment so they named him esau some of you have that esau anointing in your life don't be ashamed of it just claim it i'm just a hairy dude like esau after this his brother came out with his hand grasping esau's heel so he was named jacob by the way it says so he was named jacob because the name jacob means heel grabber it means swindler it means con man it means somebody who grabs you in order to pull himself ahead so this is like think about this this is our first introduction to jacob israel and we see that he's kind of a swindler he's a heel grabber is what the bible tells us this is the first thing the next scene in the bible is actually a story about jacob conning his brother esau into selling him his birthright so he can get the inheritance for jacob here's the thing he's one of these guys jacob's all about winning getting ahead coming out on top i i called jacob the first american you know i realized it was like 4 000 years ago but jacob is the first american in the bible he's the guy that looks out for number one he takes care of himself he's gonna do whatever it takes to win if you ain't first you're last ricky bobby let's go that's our culture definitely for sure our culture we're obsessed with winning whatever it takes we want to win we want to win personally we want our family to win we want our team to win some of you are rooting for a team this season and it gets weird this time of year because you only wear that clothing and you paint your body and you shave things into your esau chest hair it gets really weird how much we want our teams to win we want sometimes our company to win if we're working for a company we want our country to win we want our candidate to win and we'll fight to the death for it but at what cost you know i think i love this generation by the way what this generation i think is figuring out is that there's an incredible cost to winning and sometimes when you win you actually lose corporations can win yeah but at the cost of the environment and maybe the economy and small businesses and so is it worth the cost we can win a war but at the cost of lives and maybe even personal freedom we can win an argument but at the cost of relationship is it worth it when we're focused on winning we usually end up losing but when we're willing to lose god says that's when we're ready to win okay i have a story for you all right don't judge me i'm serious don't church people always judge i need to know that's not gonna happen today all right i bought lottery tickets i know i know i could some of you are already like i never played the lottery ever really i can't remember ever playing the lottery in my life now to be fair i found a lot of other ways to waste money over the years but lotto has never been my thing so i'm on a planning retreat with our two executive pastors at the church mike shelley mark milan great guys and we're driving up to georgia for our retreat and we've got a coach coming in to help us through a process and well mike is telling us this story we got a long drive you know and he says you know there was this guy and he was in prison and he he got out and and he played the lotto for five dollars on his lunch break and he won a million dollars and it was such an amazing story we're like there's no way and we happen to be at a gas station and so mike says you know what we should just put in a couple bucks and buy a couple tickets just for kicks and uh he says you know think about it we're all prayed up we're in the church van we're on a church retreat god is with us he is for us he is crazy about us come on somebody so you know like you start doing that well wow think of all the lives we could change with all that money so we bought a few tickets the three of us went in together and we did the classic lotto thing like you get them and you say a prayer before you scratch if you're christian i think even if you're not christian you're praying before you scratch god if we win if we win it all goes to you we make a pact then we start scratching and scratching but we literally have no idea how to play the lotto so mike's driving mark and i are trying to read the tiny print on all the cards mark milan is a very precise man he does not want to do things wrong and so he's trying to read the instructions for the lotto turns out there are no instructions you just scratch there's no strategy and so after we've scratched ourselves silly you know my thumbnails are all black but when all was said and done all we had won listen was one free ticket that's it a free ticket it was an opportunity to do yet more scratching live to scratch another day i guess that's a big deal and so we forgot about the ticket until the trip home last exit out of georgia and mike remembers we have a free ticket and we have to get it in georgia it's the only place and we're about to enter into florida and so we pull off to get gas and then we scratch and see you know or we turn the ticket in and turns out we have a winner right this free ticket we redeem for another ticket that ticket gives us another free ticket come on you didn't see that coming and that ticket that we then scratched is now worth more free tickets and i'm not kidding it kept going and we kept scratching all i wanted to do was get home to my wife and my kids but i'm standing in a backwoods convenience store with dirty thumbs scratching lotto tickets and i think we won 10 or 12 free tickets it kept going but the truth i found out again that night is sometimes when you win you actually lose now okay if we would have hit that million this would be a very different message probably with a different preacher because i'd be in aruba but you know we love to win it defines us as americans for most of us winning is everything coming out on top getting ahead but sometimes when you win you lose and and it's not really until you're willing to lose that you're ready to win the way jesus tells us in matthew chapter 16 he says for whoever wants to save their life will what they're going to lose it but whoever loses their life for me will find it you know when we scratch and claw our way to the top there's a cost even if we make it to the top there's a cost and usually that cost is our soul or at least some part of it jesus tells us what good would it be for a man he wins the whole world wins that lotto wins the million wins the mega millions and the powerball but you lose your soul you see like if i'm worried about winning i end up losing but when i'm willing to lose jesus says that's when i'm ready to win and i know this one takes a while to figure out in life it did for jacob actually jacob he wanted to win at all costs and so after he cons his brother to buy the birthright and get the inheritance he ends up actually tricking his own father into giving him the family blessing the blessing that was in old testament times it was reserved for the oldest son well jacob you know esau is hairy jacob actually was very smooth and so jacob to fool his father he puts goat skin on his body so his old blind dying dad who's about to pass on will actually believe that he's the hairy brother esau he tricks his own father into passing on the blessing to him that's pretty low so now you've got his brother his father and then even his uncle later on jacob goes to work as a shepherd for his uncle laban he tricks laban out of a whole bunch of healthy sheep and he gets rich off of him but there's this interesting turn in jacob's life god wants us to see it because i think it's a similar thing that happens at some point in almost all of our lives we might miss it but it's there it happens at some point we're being taught and we have to learn to let go we have to learn that winning isn't everything god is everything and and to really win we have to lose right like it's a hard lesson to learn but god brings jacob to this point and i think all of us he brings us to this point where we have to be confronted with our own sin our own selfishness our need to be right and to be first and to be heard and to get ahead and and then he has to teach us to trust him and that lesson almost always comes through losing you know our spirit and our faith and our character it gets shaped through loss through pain through betrayal through heartbreak and heartache hebrews chapter 12. it describes this process as discipline from a loving father and in verse 11 of hebrews chapter 12 he says no discipline seems pleasant at the time when you're going through it it's really hard it actually feels painful later on though it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it he says harvest it really comes through heartache that payoff that we all want really comes through pain the blessing that so many of us are chasing it comes through brokenness i'll tell you you can ask but i don't think you're gonna find a person in our church that has a testimony that says i found the lord because i just won so much i kept winning and winning and so i finally surrendered my life to jesus i became so satisfied by my own success i surrendered to jesus and just started being awesome that's not a real testimony it doesn't happen it's not human we have to lose in order to win god knows that and really we usually have to lose big in order to find god we have to lose in the physical something to find him in that eternal realm and god loves us enough that guess what he lets that happen at some point he says okay i'm going to allow this loss so you can truly win and he does that for jacob all right we're going to get into genesis chapter 32 but what happens in like chapter 29 and 30 is the con man actually gets conned the bible's such a good book like of course you'd expect a preacher to say that i know but genesis reads like a graphic novel it's a wild ride there's so many twists and turns because that's real life that's how people really are and god records it all for us the real the raw and what he shows us in jacob's life jacob ends up getting tricked by his uncle the one he tricked well his uncle tricked him into working longer and harder and for less money he actually swapped wives on them read that stuff it's wild the con man gets conned because what happens jesus actually tells us he says with the measure we use what happens is that that measure gets measured to us all that winning actually ended up having a cost and jacob has to flee from his own uncle he's on the run and as he's fleeing from his uncle he ends up coming to the territory of his brother esau now this is the guy that he swindled out of the blessing out of the birthright and so in genesis chapter 32 we pick up the story when the messengers returned to jacob they said we went to your brother esau and now he is coming to meet you and 400 men are with him whoa that can't be good right verse 7 in great fear and distress jacob divided the people who are with him in the two groups he's completely afraid and stressed out and so he comes up with this plan i'll divide everybody into two groups and the flocks and herds and camels as well he thought if esau comes and attacks one group the group that is left may escape then jacob prayed here's his prayer this is his first like real prayer in the bible jacob prayed o god of my father abraham god of my father isaac lord you who said to me go back to your country and your relatives and i will make you prosper i'm unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant i had only my staff when i crossed this jordan but now i've become two camps save me i pray from the hand of my brother esau for i'm afraid he will come and attack me and also the mothers with their children but you have said i will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea which cannot be counted it comes back on us doesn't it like if you've lived long enough you know that with the measure we use it gets measured to us when we just want to win we end up losing i'll say it this way because i think this is so true when when we're constantly fighting for ourselves we actually end up fighting against ourselves what god says is that he opposes the proud see when we're full of ourselves and we're certain of ourselves we're actually in opposition to god he gives grace to the humble but he fights against the proud when all we want to do is win it comes back on us and and so now esau is out to get him that's what jacob believes but but i really think this prayer is a turning point in jacob's life this prayer that we just read is the key to so much i mean the prayer it comes from great fear and great distress the bible says but it's the moment that it all changes because really we see that jacob has changed you can hear it in the prayer instead of looking out for number one and being that self-made i got this guy he acknowledges that it was all god that it was always god and only god and he's grateful and he's humble and he's asking for god's help you know that's that's the turn right there that's the pivot and the shift for jacob and and listen not just for jacob but for me and for you i'm talking to so many people right now you probably are too who are just struggling in a lot of different ways i'm doing a funeral this week for a friend my age died from kovitz so sad and the extended family is just very confused about a lot of things right now as you would expect i actually lost a friend a few weeks back lost another friend two weeks ago and and then it seems like everybody i'm just checking in on texting or calling that there's pain they're struggling right now and going through it but when we come to that place of pain like the bible says about jacob of fear and distress like you know that word stress in distress like when we have that we what happens is we finally come to the end of ourselves that's usually when we start looking up and that's when things change when we stop fighting and we surrender when we stop trying to come out on top and instead we come near to god that's when things change you know god he hears our prayers he answers our prayers he responds to our requests and jesus says you know all he wants for us to do is to ask to seek and to knock just to come to him now he already knows what we need before we even ask him but he wants us to ask him and when we do that's when the blessing comes god knows what we need but he's just waiting for us to know what we need and specifically that we need him and to come to him and to come near to him and with the stuff you're facing right now have you prayed i would say this are you praying you know maybe you can relate to jacob and you know what it's like to feel the fear you may be afraid of what's gonna happen in the world or in your world you might be afraid of being broke afraid of losing your marriage some of you are afraid you'll never get married you're never gonna find that right person we live in fear our world is filled with fear the news sells fear and we're all buying but what are you doing with that fear where are you going with those fears god tells us fear not i'm with you he says that his perfect love casts out all fear it also says jacob was filled with distress that feeling of worry anxiety going over all the scenarios and trying to figure out the angles and the details you know that feeling maybe you're in a season of distress and anxiety over what you're facing in your future you know but where are you going with that distress first peter 5 7 it says cast all your anxiety on me because i care for you that's what god invites us to do you know when we finally turn to god that's when things finally change and i believe that's god's plan that really the design of life is to bring us to a point of surrender i think life is set up in a way that is supposed to get us to a place where we stop looking to ourselves and we start looking to god the blessing we're all chasing i mean you know jacob was chasing that blessing do whatever it takes to get ahead and to win the blessing that we're all chasing it comes from being broken that's a theme of the bible it's a theme in our lives blessing it comes from brokenness i know that's been true in my life you know that retreat that we went on it wasn't just about lotto tickets okay we went on the retreat and our coach had us do something really powerful and i i'm not really a drawing type guy and i tend to not want to be a feeling type guy although i think i probably am more than i'd like to admit but our coach he had to sit down and draw a storyboard of the six scenes that shaped us the most as a leader six moments are seasons in my life that have shaped me most as a leader i'm like wow that's tough we sat there we had plenty of time and we all broke up in into private places to do this maybe you're even thinking right now about your life what has had the most impact on me what shaped my character what's brought me the closest to god what's maybe made you the person that you are today you know as you're thinking about that for you i imagine some of you are coming up with some of the same things that i did and i didn't even realize it as i was drawing my scenes but then i finished i looked at the six little stories that i drew in five of the six were painful seasons of like memorable and intense pain brokenness yes but all that brokenness led to blessing there was i looked over the scenes even before this betrayal fear loss loneliness heartache like man that's my story it doesn't feel like that's my story that's my that's the back story for my leadership and from my development that's what's allowed me to become the person that god is using to change lives and so as i looked at that paper i just started crying because it was so clear all that pain was for a purpose god's blessing it came through my brokenness my greatest victories came through defeat and in god's grace and in his great wisdom and plan he let me lose so that i could truly win i'm sharing that with you now because i know some of you are in pain maybe it's just a hard season and this may be on your storyboard one of those scenes in your life that you're you're gonna always remember because it was just that hard but when you're in the struggle you have to remember that god is with you and he's working for you romans 8 28 says we know that in all things god works for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose whatever you're going through right now listen god is working for your good he's working for the greater good there will be blessing out of your brokenness romans 8 18 it tells us that our present sufferings they're not really worth even comparing to the glory that's going to be revealed in us whatever chapter you're in just keep going just keep flipping page the story isn't over yet there's glory in your story and if you're not in the glory part yet then that means it's still to come hang in there for jacob probably his greatest moment comes just after this prayer it's it's almost perfect but in fear for his life and for his family and his future he's praying he reaches out to god and then he ends up wrestling with a man who is god in human form somehow we don't totally know what that means don't let anybody tell you they do it's a wild story but jacob wrestles with god god touches his hip so jacob is broken he's walking with a limp after this but his blessing comes through his brokenness and i want you to hear in genesis 32 what god says to jacob after after their encounter then the man said your name will no longer be jacob but israel because you have struggled with god and with humans and have overcome but jacob said please tell me your name but he replied why do you ask my name and then he blessed him there so jacob called the place peniel saying it is because i saw god face to face and yet my life was spared so jacob the heel grabber right the deceiver the con man the heel grabber becomes israel which means struggler it's a very interesting name god says you're the one who has struggled with god and with man and has overcome you're a struggler like the name israel literally means struggling with god so listen if anybody's hearing this message and thinking man i'm just struggling i'm just in the struggle i don't know much about being a saint but i definitely identify with struggling you're in good company jacob is the father of israel but listen he's the father of the struggle it's in the name it was in that struggle though that he comes face to face with god i believe that's still true today it's when we're face down that we ultimately come face to face with god life has a way of bringing us face down but god uses that to bring us face to face with him and some of you are in that season you're in the struggle but you may be the closest to breakthrough that you've ever been you may be closer to blessing than you've ever been blessing comes through brokenness and while it's taken a lot to get you to this place all it takes is god to get you out of that place but it's not until we're face down that we end up face to face with god that's when everything changes you know today whatever your struggle surrender that to jesus come to god with the pain with the hurt with the need let him know god i'm done doing it my way i'm here to do it your way i'm done fighting for myself because i can look back and i can see i've really been fighting against myself and ultimately against you you oppose the proud and so today i surrender i'm done trying to win i'm ready to lose so that i can truly win you know your blessing your blessing is coming through your brokenness don't let the brokenness break you but give that brokenness to god and let him bless you let me pray for us father thank you today that in your goodness and your grace you have plans for us you have plans to not only take the pain but to use the pain for our good and your glory lord as i look back on the storyboard of my life and i just realized that so much blessing has come through so much brokenness i thank you not just for the blessing but lord i thank you for the brokenness it had to happen and lord the way it happened and why it happened and what you did when it happened lord i just thank you and i'm praying for someone today that's in that season they're in that little block that part of the story that feels so dark lord speak hope into them speak life into them and let them know that this is this isn't the end of the story this is just a chapter we're about to turn a page and there's going to be glory in that story thank you god that our present sufferings don't really even compare to the glory that's coming we thank you for your encouragement and we thank you that we can actually thousands of years later just read a story look at a life a real person who struggled and who overcame lord your patience with him your grace and we know how the story ends and we thank you lord what we don't know on this side of our pain is how our story ends and so we trust and we surrender and we come to you now i thank you lord that you allow us to lose so that we can truly win we come today empty-handed and we thank you in jesus name amen hey we hope this video had an impact on you if it did be sure to subscribe and click the bell icon so you always know when we drop new content you can also find links to our website and other resources in the description below hey we love you guys and are so grateful you joined us as you go today it's our prayer that you would leave knowing that god is absolutely crazy about you see you next time you

Channel: Real Life Christian Church

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Keywords: Real Life Christian Church, Real Life Church, Real Life Church Clermont, real life christian church clermont, real life clermont, real life christian church florida, real life christian church saints & struggles jacob, saints and struggles jacob, jacob, israel, jacob wrestling with God, jacob struggles, pastor justin miller, jacob in the bible, jacob bible, dealing with pride, surrendering to God, jacob surrendering to God, broken before God Jacob, jacob broken surrender to God

Id: Z2EYcLGI-0I

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021