I am Esau

Praying and reading scripture today caused me to reflect on the perfections of God.  As I was doing so, I heard a fight break out in a neighbor's house. Division and strife in a home compounded by sinful methods of fighting, all born of broken and wrong expectations and frustration.  There are lots of Esaus around.  I am one of them.

Yes, I am Esau.  I guess that was the point of the study.  While I certainly have some tendencies toward being a grabber, I find that the default pattern of my life is really Esau.  I have a few things I really like doing, like war gaming.  Its easy to give that a lot of my time, but is not a necessity for life.  Esau was in the same mode.  It was not necessary for life, because he was the son of an extremely wealthy man.  It was pure sport for him, with the added pleasure that his father also enjoyed wild game.  I guess eating the fatted calf, sheep and an occasional goat was a little boring after a while.

We have leisure to be procrastinators because we live in a culture that makes that vice a non-life threatening proposition.  Esau could be one, and focus on sport, rather than practical matters, because he had the leisure to do so.  I am now finding that this vice, which I have let go to seed, is costing me a good deal in my unemployment, and in my education.  

I have long subscribed to the truth that God is omnipotent and sovereign in all things. In this season of unemployment, I find that resting in that truth is a difficult proposition. “How do I find rest when I am supposed to be the hunter/gatherer for the family? How do I find rest when my wife is working, my kids pay rent, and I am not contributing financially at all?  How do I find rest when I am supposed to be finding a job?”  These questions, which perpetually come across my mind disturb rest in Christ.  And this season of unemployment God is using to help me to work through my identity in Christ.  

He is working in me to “remove the Esau” from me. I must be about what my Father in heaven has called me to do and to be.  The top of that list includes “Likeness to Christ.”  I am learning to set aside pleasure, procrastination and ease to make way for structure, self-starting and service.  

He is working in me to remove my identity as a money source.  I am not nor have I ever been the money source.  I am a father to my children.  I am a husband to my wife. But I am not their source. God is. I must learn to wait on my Father in heaven to be our source, with me as His willing and ready servant. But I am not a good or bad person because I no longer have an income. He loves me either way.

He is working in me to trust His plan. I may think “if it is to be, its up to me.”  But it really is up to God.  I can have the best resume, walk miles of sidewalks, knock on a hundred doors, and send out dozens of resumes.  But if God has determined that I am to be unemployed, unemployed I shall be. I must learn to rest in the fact God, as omniscient and good as He is, really is in control of my situation, and He will bring forth the best for me “my” family.  

Even in this time of doubt and darkness, while I wrestle with the choices of my past over against the goodness of God in the past, present and future, I was able to look up in wonder and worship at the beautiful blue September sky over my head, knowing that God is working to take “The Esau” out of my life. 

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.