Good morning again!  Today is another two chapter day.  In Genesis 33 we talk about the meeting of Esau and Isaac after twenty years and how that goes nothing like what Jacob had imagined.  It turns out that 20 years had mellowed Esau’s personality as well, and he was willing to forget his grudges.  It’s a sad thing to me that after their meeting, Jacob never went to see him.

In Genesis 34, we read a pretty weird story.  There’s rape and murder and deception going on, and it really shows that Jacob’s family wasn’t all a bunch of saints.  They weren’t blessed by God because they were such good people, but because God wanted to do something through them that would change the world.  He picked them because he had made a promise that Abraham’s descendants would become a nation, and He was going to follow through on that no matter what.  At the time, they all thought it was about the bloodline going back to Abraham and the promise, but later it was revealed that the promise to Abraham was all about faith, and that’s the foundation for salvation by faith that all Christians enjoy today.

So, by faith God saves people, even when they have been bad people.  By faith God calls them and then He changes them, and He makes something new out of them.  Does that sound like you?  Remember, your relationship with God is a matter of faith.  When we do things that are wrong, that hurts us and it hurts others, but God doesn’t cut us loose.  Instead He changes us into something we could never have hoped to become apart from Him.