Start Over Where You Began.

Hey everyone and welcome to Refinery Life Church.

We are in a continual process of being changed into the image of Jesus Christ.

Jacob, originally a crook, had a life changing experience with God.

Lessons from a changed man is this months theme.

Today’s message is titled Start Over Where You Began.

To Jacob, Bethel was more than a geographic location.

It was the place where he had first come to know the Lord in a personal way.

All of us have our Bethels.

For some of us, it is where we accepted Jesus Christ as personal Saviour.

We may also have smaller Bethels in our lives, those times when we awakened to a more relationship with God.

Whatever Jacob may have known about God before his Bethel experience, we do not know.

We can be certain, however, that this was the dearest place on earth to Jacob, because there he entered into a relationship with the Lord that, though clouded over at times by sin, remained his moment of inspiration that sent him forth with a song in his heart.

Now God wanted Jacob to follow the Jabbok experience with a time of fresh dedication.

He called on him to go back to the place of spiritual origin.

The text does not tell us that God commanded him to do it, but Jacob took his household with him and told them to put away the strange gods they had become attached to during the days in Haran, to purify themselves, and to put on fresh clothes as a symbol of a new spiritual beginning.

How Jacob’s heart must have beat faster when they handed him the various pieces of jewellery that represented dedication to foreign gods and practices.

He hid them and most likely never went back to recover them.

We can find some great teachings in this account.

Until next time

Stay in the Blessings