November 18

It’s Personal Now

If God will be with me . . . so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the LORD to be my God (Genesis 28:20, 21, KJV).

Scripture: Genesis 28:10-22

Song: “Pass Me Not”

Edward McKendree Bounds, minister, Civil War chaplain and fervent author and speaker on prayer, went home to Heaven in 1913. Sixty-three years later, a minister traveled to Washington, Georgia, to visit the grave of E. M. Bounds, whose life he greatly admired. There, he met Osborne Bounds, Sr., a living son of E. M. Bounds, and a treasury of memories of his father. It soon became apparent, however, that while he held his father in high esteem and respected his father’s God, he had never made Him his God, and had no assurance of Heaven. God graciously allowed the younger man the privilege of leading 84 year old Osborne Bounds to accept the Lord Jesus as his own Savior!

As a son and grandson of the patriarchs, Jacob respected the Lord, but knew Him only as “the God of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac.” It was never personal with Jacob. But Jacob made a covenant with God, promising that if God would be with him, provide for his needs, and bring him home again, the Lord would be his God. God did that and more, and in Genesis 33:20, Jacob erected an altar to the Lord, calling it El-elo’he-Israel, “The God of Israel.” There was not yet a nation called Israel, but only the man Jacob whom God had renamed “Israel,” whose fathers’ God was, finally—his God.

Thank You, Father, for Your Specific love for me and for the great price Your Son paid at Calvary for my salvation. In His name, amen.