Return

[0:00] A Pastor's Reflections Return Genesis 31.3 And the Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers and to thy kindred, and I will be with thee.

[0:13] Exodus 33.14-15 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he, Moses, said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.

[0:30] Luke 9.59-60 And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.

[0:48] Our walk with the Lord is not always linear, but it is always one-directional, with our hearts and faces set towards our Father. What may seem like a setback or an unlooked-for detour may very often be the path that is being pointed out for us by the Holy Spirit.

[1:06] No matter where our feet may walk, we must always continue in that one direction, towards home. For Jacob, God was calling him forward by telling him to return.

[1:19] Twenty years earlier, Jacob had left behind a mess of a situation. What had seemed like an impossible situation was, in fact, an impossible situation.

[1:31] Jacob could not stay at home, and Jacob had no capacity to fix what was wrong. He had to leave. He had to go forward and move on with his life.

[1:42] Now, twenty years later, time and the Holy Spirit had done their work. God had done the impossible, and was now calling Jacob to go back, to return.

[1:54] Exodus 34.6 You see, the Lord's timing is most definitely not ours, and it is most definitely not in a hurry.

[2:17] But that does not preclude God from working. Just because God's work is the work of a lifetime does not mean that he is not at work in the present. For Jacob, and for us, having impossible situations in our past does not mean that they are forgotten about by God, or that he is not still at work in them.

[2:38] However, it is for him to decide when those situations are ripe for revisiting. Our part is to follow and not look back. Only the Lord knows when returning is the appropriate path for moving forward.

[2:54] Luke 9.61-62 And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee, but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.

[3:06] And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. You and I have been made fit for the kingdom of heaven.

[3:20] In Christ, the past is covered, and the future is a blessing. To continually be looking back at what is behind us would be a lack of faith in God's ability to make all things new.

[3:31] Instead, we look forward with the hope and assurance that even the impossible things of our past will become part of God's redemptive plan of our future, but only in his timing and at his command.

[3:46] Father, thank you that in Jesus we always have a path forward. Thank you for covering my past and opening a way forward into blessing.

[3:58] Help me today to leave the impossibilities of the past in the hands of one much more capable than I. Thank you that not only do all things work together for my good, but in you all things will also work out.

[4:13] Amen.