For people to receive everything God wants to give them, they need to learn to see themselves according to their new identity. For us to experience all the blessings of the Gospel, we need to see ourselves as new creations, adopted and fully loved and fully blessed by God in Christ.
Think about the story of Jacob, for Jacob to receive all God wanted to do for him—to fulfill those promises given back at Bethel, where Jacob had laid his head on a rock and dreamed—he had to see himself as someone other than a deceiver. He could no longer just be Jacob.
In that place of surrender, where Jacob was pinned to the ground by an angel of God, he got a new name. The place of surrender is always a place of change. You will find that to be true in your life again and again. And Jacob’s identity changed from deceiver to Israel—one who contends with God and prevails.
Now Jacob would be able to walk in his destiny without defaulting back to his old nature. His orphan heart had been adopted and given a new identity. He no longer needed to make a name for himself; a new name had already been given. When we come fully surrendered to the Father and let Him define us, that is when we are able to step into our true identity.
Something changed in that moment. Scripture doesn’t go into detail about why Esau was coming with four hundred men but not with a plan to attack. It doesn’t tell us exactly why Jacob arranged all the women and children the way he did. But his fear seems to have been gone. The Father’s perfect love casts out fear. (See First John 4:18.) It takes care of the root of fear. Jacob’s root fear for years had been Esau’s anger. What if his brother tracked him down and just showed up one day with vengeance on his mind? All that time Jacob spent in a distant land, working and marrying and fathering children, he still remembered the last image he had seen of his brother—a man who wanted to kill him. For all he knew, Esau was now marching toward him with four hundred men with that mission in mind. But Jacob couldn’t run away from his wrestling match with God, and he chose not to run away from Esau now. And the first thing we see from Jacob as Esau approached is genuine humility. He bowed down seven times.
No longer did he believe he had something to prove. He was Israel. He already had an A-plus on his report card. He could just be who he was—which was all new now. No more running because there was no more fear.
Jacob/Israel now began to see himself as God saw him. He was resting in a new identity. As always happens in a baptism of love, he started to love himself the way God loved him because he had received the Father’s love. And he was able to love Esau the way God loved him because his heart was no longer an orphan heart and could be filled with the Father’s love.
Because he had received love, he could give love.
Jacob’s bowing and offering were ways of saying, “Whatever I have is yours. I’m not holding on to anything.”And Esau just embraced him. His heart seems to have been healed, too. He did not need to be appeased with all of Jacob’s gifts.
But Jacob insisted and made a really remarkable statement: “I have seen your face as though I had seen the face of God, and you were pleased with me.”
When you realize you have been transformed by love, you start seeing people differently. You don’t define them by their history but by their destiny.
And because you are seeing them differently, they start to see you differently. Esau may have been coming with four hundred men because he was suspicious of his trickster brother or perhaps even with vengeance still on his mind. But the loving face that saw his own face with the Father’s love made all those issues irrelevant.
Jacob’s journey is a beautiful picture of how God wants to change our nature, give us a new name, and transform our vision and relationships. He gives us genuine humility from being surrendered, and out of that humility we love freely and completely, with no agenda or hook. Because the environment has changed in our hearts, we can change the environment around us. When our lives are fully surrendered to the Lord, we are able to understand the place of true strength. As it says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” When we go low in surrender, then He is able to take His place.
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