WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: As you come now to God’s Word, ask that he will speak to you and make his ways known. Without his illumination, these words are without power and meaning but he comes to open the eyes of our heart.

Man on the run
Jacob is becoming an increasingly solitary person. Surrounded by wives, servants, children and animals, he nevertheless cuts a lonely figure. He’s a man on the run: from his brother and now his father-in-law. There’s no strength for him in numbers.

The Rescuer
But God speaks in a dream and everything changes: Laban must not harm Jacob and to his credit Laban does as he’s told. Just as God changed the course of Jacob’s life through a dream, he now protects him by speaking to someone else in the same manner.

God will have his way in this family. He will have a people who will bear his name and out of whom will come the Rescuer of mankind. The picture is always big for God. But he is known personally, as experienced by Laban. It’s all grace for Jacob.

Respond: Join Paul the apostle in this prayer: ‘Yes, God's riches are very great, and his wisdom and knowledge have no end! No one can explain the things God decides or understand his ways. As the Scripture says, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been able to give him advice? No one has ever given God anything that he must pay back. Yes, God made all things, and everything continues through him and for him. To him be the glory for ever! Amen”’ (Romans 11:33–36).

http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-07-21