Verse of the day: Exodus
2:1-2 And a man of the house of
Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. 2 So the woman conceived and
bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him
three months.
Here,
in this second chapter of Exodus, we see God’s grace in the lineage of Levi.
Levi was one of Joseph’s brothers who, along with Simeon, murdered the men of
Shechem. However, we know that later God uses the lineage of Levi to serve Him
as priests, and here we see the first in this lineage to be used greatly, by
God, to deliver His people from bondage in Egypt. My parents made decisions that
affected my life, and I have made decisions that have affected my children.
However, I too have made decisions in my life that have changed the course of
my life, as my children can also make decisions that will change the course of
their lives. The first, and most important, choice I made was to accept Jesus
Christ as my Savior, and Lord, and choose to seek His plan for my life. My children
also, in having a personal relationship with the Lord, can make decisions that
will keep them on the path God has chosen for them. God, being the merciful God
that He is, did not disqualify Moses from serving Him because of his ancestor
Levi’s heinous crime. Moses also did not use that as a crutch to avoid being
used by God (we will see later that Moses had his own set of personal issues to
overcome in serving the Lord). So it is with us that we do not have to follow
in the footsteps of our parents or grandparents, or use whatever happened in
our childhood as a crutch or excuse to avoid living the life God desires for us
to live. Having come from a heritage of witchcraft, idol worship, and a home
marred by abuse, I praise God that He saw fit to still use me to serve Him
today. I have made my own personal decisions that have caused interruptions in
my service to the Lord, and have affected those that I love; nonetheless, God
has chosen to still use me in spite of me. The bottom line is that each of us
has an opportunity to serve God, and live out God’s plan for our lives, which
first begins with a person relationship with our loving, merciful, forgiving,
and gracious Savior Jesus Christ. One of the best examples I see of this in God’s
Word is Gideon. His father was a Baal worshiper, yet God used Gideon as one of
the judges of Israel. However, Gideon, in being chosen to serve the Lord, first
was commanded to tear down his father’s idolatrous altar, build an altar to the
Lord, and sacrifice his father’s young bull as a burnt offering on God’s altar
(Judges 6:25-27). We, as God’s servants, are not bound by the decisions or
choices of our parents. Ezekiel 18:20 tell us, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt
of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of
the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be
upon himself.” Whatever our past, whatever we have endured in our
childhood, or whatever our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents were or
did, does not have to define who we are today in Christ.
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