Heart Tracks - The Trickster Within

     Recently, I've heard from several sources, good teachings on the life of Jacob.  One point made, and not very comfortably, was that all of us have an "inner Jacob."  Jacob, if you know his story, was a trickster.  He used trickery, manipulation and dishonesty to get what he wanted, and tragically, what he wanted was what God had already promised.  He just couldn't trust Him and wait for HIm to bring it about.  Jacob's life was one of tricking others, and of others tricking him.  Beth Moore says that all of us have a trickster in us and that we have to become more honest versions of ourselves, that we cannot walk in the fullness of our inheritance as part frauds.  How do we view that statement?  How do you?  How do I?

    In Exodus 33:11, we read, "Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend."  Does this come anywhere close to the way you and I talk to God?  We may talk a great deal at Him, but how much do we really talk to Him?  The mark of true friendship is total honesty.  Does this mark us in our interactions with Him, or, are we with Him, as we are with most others, tricksters at heart?  Does that inner fraud lurking within seek to "get over" on God, just as we seek to get over on everyone else?  Do we try to present ourselves as something we're not, knowing all the while who we really are?  So many can pray lofty, impressive sounding prayers, yet live shallow, unimpressive lives, at least from the viewpoint of the Kingdom.  Do we, can we, really come to the Tent of Meeting, and meet with Him?  Can we really come to Him "face to face?"
    Moore says that we can start to face up to ourselves and to Him, by going face down before Him. We cannot emerge from such an encounter the same person.  We can only be changed, made more closely into the image of Christ.  Week after week, people enter into and emerge from "worship" with their inner Jacob, their trickster within, firmly intact, which results in powerless lives, and a powerless church.  We speak much of being a "missional" people, but unless we, like Jacob, truly encounter God, individually and corporately at our own Peniel, we will, as Oswald Chambers so clearly tells us, move out without power, and without Him.  James Robison told recently of sharing his deep burden for our decaying culture with his friend Beth Moore.  Moore told him, "I will join you in that burden on the floor, before Him."  Being missional starts with being face down, on the floor before God.  In our spirits, if not our bodies.  As Moore says, if we can face Him, we can face anything.

    T. Austin-Sparks wrote "Does anyone remark, 'What a presence of Christ,' when encountering us?  Or, are we more interested in being complimented on what a good person, worker, teacher, preacher, pastor, or minister we are?  Who do we long for others to notice?  Ourselves, or Christ?  Who do we really wish to see exalted?  How we answer determines the strength of Jacob the Trickster, who lurks within, and who must, as did the original Jacob, "die," so that Christ may live in, and through us.  Tricksters no more.

Blessings,

Pastor O