Gen 35

Things like how broken Abraham's family has become in Genesis 35 - it's hard to miss. And yet God continues to both use and bless them.

This chapter opens up with God giving Jacob an instruction to build an altar to Him. That is a gift of a task, a chance to serve the Lord and carry out His direct order.

But do you know what Jacob has to do first? He has to empty his house of false idols. Here is what Jacob says in verse 2, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes." God means business. He wants Jacob to totally wear new stuff and do new stuff as of then. its like drawing a line and crossing it immediately and never looking back.

I feel like that sometimes.
I feel like God has a task He wants me to do.
He has a lot He wants me to accomplish for Him, but my house and my heart are too full of foreign gods.
There is no/little room for Him or His work.
I have my own mission and do not have the time or spiritual space in my heart for Him.

I wonder though, does God still work that way?
Does He call us to do things that we can't really do when we've still got foreign gods in our eyes?
Do we ever have to empty our own houses before we get to build an altar to Him?

Hard to say, but a few months ago something happened that makes me think maybe that's still the way God works.

On a Saturday late nite, I supper-ed with my mentor whom we're not in the habit of meeting up regularly. I basically said, "I need to start everything all over again. There are a few silly things which I started and has grown and I think I will become a jerk if I don't get absolutely grounded in the Lord." Within 24 days after I sent that email, sumtin happened.

Maybe that was purely coincidental. Perhaps emailing my mentor wasn't an act of me cleaning up my house and my heart.(which i tink is true) Perhaps the event which happened had nothing to do with anything at all. Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps

But mebbe, God still believes that we can't build His altar, we can't walk His road, we can't move in His direction, if we harbour that ghost of a feeling with a foreign god(s).