Just a Guy and his Journey Back to God

Send us Fan Mail When the Egyptians were starving, Joseph provided nourishment. Eventually, they gave up all they had because they couldn't eat their wealth. It's the same with God, we must surrender all of ourselves to Him and His will, so we can have life abundantly! The 16th century preacher, Matthew Henry says the following: "There was no bread, and the people were ready to die....

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever known God told you something would happen, but it's just taking a lot longer than you anticipated? That happens to me all the time, especially as I get older and our daily world speeds up!  In Genesis 46, we read how it has been 215 years since God promised Abraham that his offspring would become a great nation and yet, they only numbered 70! God's timing a...

Send us Fan Mail Just as Joseph knew all about his brothers, show does Jesus know all about those He died for. As Spurgeon notes: "the Lord Jesus Christ knows all about those whom He has redeemed with His precious blood. The Father gave them to Him from before the foundation of the world and He took them into Covenant relationship with Himself before the earth was. Often has He thought of the...

Send us Fan Mail As we take up chapter 44, we will witness a life-altering transformation of the brothers that will variously involve conscience, repentance, enlarged sympathies, intercession, sacrifice, and substitution - all wrapped in a growing brotherly love that speaks of Christ. Under God's direction, Joseph's method was to reconstitute the temptation to which the brothers succumbe...

Send us Fan Mail Envy is a nastier sin than mere covetousness. What an envier wants is not, first of all, what another has; what an envier wants is for another not to have it. . . . To envy is to resent somebody else's good so much that one is tempted to destroy it.  Envy was what drove Joseph's brothers to their murderous deed. They cared nothing about owning Joseph's beautiful coa...

Send us Fan Mail Jacob's remaining sons, up to this point, were not what one would consider upstanding leaders, but God didn't give up on them. He could easily have brushed them aside and found better people. Thankfully, He didn't do that then and He doesn't do that today! God's grace extended to the brothers of Joseph just like it does to you and me today!  Join me in rea...

Send us Fan Mail Today also there are a few men and women who can face the coming year without discouragement or terror. They are Christians. They are not smiling optimists who draw their comfort from a denial of the facts or base their hopes upon false expectations of peaceful intentions among nations. Rather, they are of all men the truest realists. They will have nothing to do with fantasy—they...

Send us Fan Mail It's the season for conferences in my business and I'm on the road again. I'll be returning on the 27th. Until then, choose a short reading plan or go back through some of the 200+ podcasts and listen to God's word again.  Until we meet again, have a wonderful day and God bless you!    Just a Guy and His World  

Send us Fan Mail  In the Genesis account, we see Joseph's life being "shaped and honed and tempered by God through the fires of life that it becomes a mighty blade of deliverance, a daunting instrument of salvation. This is what we have been seeing in Joseph - the sharpening of a life to such an edge that he became a singular instrument of redemption. It began when Joseph, as a callow, i...

Send us Fan Mail "The Lord was with Joseph." Genesis 39:2 God was with Joseph, but He's also with each of us. The separation isn't distance, but character. As AW Tozer writes, "If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact...

Send us Fan Mail The shocking account of Judah’s relationship with Tamar, which interrupts the story of Joseph in Egypt, fulfills an important role in Genesis by providing a record of Judah’s family line. The chapter concludes with a birth account in which a firstborn twin is pushed aside by his younger brother, Perez. The royal line of David—and therefore of Jesus Christ—will come from Perez. Alt...

Send us Fan Mail Do you ever wonder if God is really in charge of what's happening? Genesis 37 starts the journey of Joseph as he's sold into slavery. I bet he didn't think God was in control then! He was probably wondering why God had abandoned him.  Ultimately, the story of Joseph is about God working his will through the everyday events of life. There are no miracles here. God do...

Send us Fan Mail Esau was full of the manliest interests and occupations and pursuits. He was a very proverb of courage and endurance and success in the chase. He was the ruggedest, the brawniest, and the shaggiest of all the rugged, brawny, and shaggy creatures of the field and of the forest, among whom he lived and died. Esau had an eye like an eagle. His ear never slept. His foot took the firme...

Send us Fan Mail On the day after National Mental Health Awareness day, we see Jacob change his life completely. He moves from a deceiver whose family had just murdered and pillaged an entire city, to a man with no idols, false gods and obeys God's will!  As a person that has struggled with depression in the past, Jacob takes many of the same steps I had to take to move into a healthy existen...

Send us Fan Mail Chapter 34 again shows us that Jacob isn't the perfect father, son or leader! In fact, we read in the Preaching the Word commentary, the following statement: "The cost of Jacob's turpitude was immense, as chapter 34 records - rape, degeneration, treachery, and genocide. Yet in all of this a fierce grace was at work. In Shechem, in the event we are about to consider,...

Send us Fan Mail When God’s will and our will are contrary to one another, we may be sure that there is something amiss with us. We are never right till God’s will becomes our will and we can honestly say, "The will of the Lord be done." Therefore it is a sad thing when a Christian cannot say, "I have enough."  To be able to say "I have enough," is when I know my hear...

Send us Fan Mail "God may be wrestling with some of you this very day. He may be saying to you (clever, astute, capable as you are), "You have believed in me, but you have always manipulated your own life and made your own arrangements. My child, what is your name?" Preaching the Word Commentary This is what Jacob has been doing for the last 20 years and he's come out of it pro...

Send us Fan Mail One of the amazing things about Jacob's flight is that we see that Jacob has made spiritual progress. He is now utterly faithful to God. He begins obediently and does not waver. Here this habitual deceiver is honest and rightly declares his integrity before Laban. Most significantly, this chronically self-sufficient man gives all the credit to God.  See how Jacob begins chang...

Send us Fan Mail I find myself thinking poorly of Jacob and his wives in these chapters and then, I catch myself and wonder how can I? I'm an extremely flawed person too! I have sinned and deceived in my life, so who am I to look down on the behavior of others!? Jacob and his family are a work in progress, just like me. And just like Jacob and his family, God loves me and still works in my li...

Send us Fan Mail So often, I try to control the outcome God has for me. I know God wants me to do something but instead of resting in Him and His promise, I take "control" and mess things up! Despite Jacob receiving an incredible blessing from Isaac and accepting God as his God, Jacob controls his life and starts many years of hardship. As it says in the Preaching the Word Commentary: &q...

Send us Fan Mail Chapter 27 is the story of a dysfunctional family and yet, God's will is done. As Spurgeon writes,  "The whole story reflects no credit upon any of the persons concerned. It certainly brings no credit to Isaac — he was a true Believer in God, but he was a man of an easy-going, gentle spirit who did not control his household as he ought to have done. And it appears that i...

Send us Fan Mail "And now you are blessed by the LORD.” Genesis 26:29 Abimelek says this about Isaac. Maybe Isaac didn't see it, but it was obvious to others. Why did God bless him? Was it because Isaac was perfect and was incredibly righteous? Or because he did so many good deeds? Nope! Isaac was a flawed man. In fact, he does the same thing his father did!!! He tells others his wife is...

Send us Fan Mail Does being a Christian feel like a big checklist of Do's and Dont's? Welcome to the club! LOL However, what I've discovered on this journey is quite different! What I've discovered and will be focusing on is that it isn't a checklist but a relationship! We don't have to be perfect! If I make a mistake or sin, God's love for me doesn't change...

Send us Fan Mail Hey there - Work is calling me away for a little while. I thought about recording one or two more chapters, but felt we were at a good stopping point. Abraham had passed away and now it was time to focus on Isaac and Jacob going forward.  I'll keep you in my prayers and I look forward to finishing the second half of Genesis on my return. Listen to some of the older podcasts a...

Send us Fan Mail The New Testament is painstakingly clear that the order of nature does not determine the order of grace. "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the...