JACOB:
LONGING AFTER GOD; LONGING FOR GOD; COMPLACENCY

Probably it would be difficult to find anywhere in history a more miserable or more lonely man than Jacob as he left mother and father and home.

Knowing the lives of Abraham and Isaac, we can surely believe there had been religious teaching in Isaac’s household. Jacob must have known about the covenant-making God of his grandfather Abraham and the God of his father Isaac. We must conclude that Jacob, as he began his journey to Haran, not only hated himself for what he was and for what he had done, but he felt an inner longing for the knowledge and presence of God. Only God could answer his human need.

I think Jacob had come to a place of inner crisis in which he was self-stricken, hating himself for his sins and his flaws. He at last discovered that he had joined the great army of the discontented. Those conditions and that attitude added up to a deep, unsatisfied longing after God.

The person who is spiritually discontented has good reason to thank God with all his or her heart. Most people in our world have a feeling they are “good enough.” They are complacent. They are quite well satisfied with themselves. Not bad enough to be much troubled by their consciences, they have no longing after God.

Genesis 28:5, 10–22; Psalm 51; Luke 18:9–14

Men Who Met God, 52, 53.