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Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.” Genesis 34:30 Yesterday was…
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Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. Genesis 34:1 With my daughter going off to a public university a couple years ago, I had a few things I needed to tell her. It wasn’t stuff she wanted to talk about, but…
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And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her. Genesis 34:2 I used to enjoy politics, embracing the us versus them conflict. Particularly as my own life descended into my addiction, it was comforting to focus on the…
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“Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” Thus he urged him, and he took it. Genesis 33:11 For years, my daughter and I have enjoyed watching Bob Ross and his Joy of Painting reruns. We’ve always wanted to recreate one and…
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I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered. Genesis 32:30 Even I hate the scale at the doctor’s office – and I’m a doctor. I can fool myself for a while, avoiding my scale at home. When I go to my doctor’s office though, they want to check my…
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But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. Genesis 3:4 Even as I write this, I’ve got someone whom I need to forgive. I feel I was wronged, and now, I’m clinging to my resentment. Why? I’d suggest that resentment is an addiction…
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Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Genesis 32:24-25 When I was 35 years old, I played…
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He himself went on before them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. Genesis 33:3 When I lost my job and had to go to treatment due to my opioid addiction, I was horribly embarrassed and ashamed. After I got out of treatment, I considered leaving town. Starting…
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This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, to do harm. . . and Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country and called his kinsmen to eat bread.…
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These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now…
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