Genesis 31:3

God tells Jacob to Leave

A Daily Devotion by Carrie George

March 22, 2010

Finally….after all these years, God gives Jacob the okay to leave.   And, He specifies where he wants Jacob to go.   “Then the Lord said to Jacob, “Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with you.”

It goes on further and says that God reminds Jacob of all the ways He had blessed and provided for him.   You would think that after looking back with God, Jacob would have left well.   But he didn’t, and neither do we.

When God tells us to leave a place (whether a job, a position in the church, or a relationship), we are so excited about receiving permission to leave, we can forget about how well we leave.   We often take a misstep that does not represent His nature, and we fall back to our own ways of doing things.   Let me explain.

Jacob put his children and his wives on camel and all his livestock ahead of him, he was getting ready to leave town.  He was returning to his father Isaac with joy!   (31:17-18)  God had already given Jacob a dream and spoken to him saying: Gen. 28:15 “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Having received a dream and word of promise from God, you’d think that he would have left honorably. Here’s what Jacob did, and this is what we can find ourselves doing too:  Gen. 31:20  “Jacob deceived Laban by not telling him he was running away.”

Looking back and remembering a time when God spoke to me that it was time to move on, I wonder: did I leave well, Lord?  Here are some principles that I wrote in the side margin of my bible next to the text of Genesis 31.   May they bless you and encourage you as they have me.

• Do not leave secretly (verse 27)

• Do not deceive (v.27)

• Do not rationalize your behavior (v. 31)

• Do not fear (v.31)

God wants us to respond in faith WITH faith, not out of fear or cunning calculation on our part.   He wants us to take the steps in a way that honor His Name.  Sometimes, we tend to fight back with the tool used against us.   In this case, the tool that Laban used against Jacob all those years was: deception.  Fear caused Jacob to behave deceptively.  Jacob’s error was that he justified leaving deceitfully by recounting all his righteous acts of service in the past.

No matter what has been done to you or me, we cannot respond in kind.   We leave in a manner that honors God.  For His Name’s sake, we honor God’s nature when we respond with faith, integrity, wisdom and truth.  I have a lot more learning to do and more work lies ahead.    Thank you for allowing me to share what was spoken to me as I read His Word today.