Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”

So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.”

Genesis 27:46-28:4

God is the God of grace and mercy, loving his Creation without condition, ready to bless and to give us good gifts. Right? So why does he ask us to change? Why does he create laws that give us knowledge of sin and thereby condemns us as evil?

God the Father is like any parent, wishing for the best for his children. But more than that, he is the omniscient Creator who knows what is best because he knows everything! Not just “everything” in the same way a parent knows more than a child but everything that can be known!

So when we see conditions setting us apart from God’s blessings, understand it is not God who is limited. It’s not that God can’t forgive, can’t bless, can’t be lenient. We are simply held back by our own conditions. Changing that condition by obedience to God will bring us into harmony with Him, setting us apart from the world and becoming holy.

Ethan Kirl