To be a takeover leader, you must be taken-over. Something bigger than you, outside of you, must take over your highest values, deepest trust, and strongest motivations.
You are giving your life to what is highest, and locating your values and valuables in what you love. The first choices of life are matters of the heart: value, trust, and passion.
Jacob’s motivations are tainted. His destiny is God-made, like yours, but his motives are “a bubble off balance.” He is blessed because of his inheritance. He operates in fear.
God knows it is time for Jacob to stop fleeing and start flourishing. He as spent years running from his duplicity with his father, Isaac. Serving his father-in-law, he receives blessing through further duplicities. He is walking in favor but doing the right things for the wrong reasons, experiencing favor with the wrong objectives, and encountering God with the wrong passions.
Still, God is after him. He breaks free from Laban accused of being a thief and a liar by the one who has stolen from him and changed his wages over and over again. Getting free from a thief, he is accused of stealing. Breaking away from a liar, he is accused of lying.
hell uses this lie to trap people: once you get caught, you are forever marked. Not true! But being a liar, he ends up serving one. Being a thief, he ends up serving one. Oh my! He was destined to receive the blessing he lied and cheated to steal!
You are called to be a serving leader, but you cannot get into that destined purpose without a transformational surrender else you will have acquired the very thing God has for you by the wrong means and motives.
For Jacob, the blessing of Isaac functioned without a break – his livestock prospered, he had several children, and his life was marked by favor. But he was living in exile because of his fear of Esau because he obtained what was his in the wrong way!
Meeting God’s Angels
Jacob is running into God’s takeover! On the way, he encounters angels. He recognizing that angels have arrived to accompany him, so he calls the place “two camps.” God’s camp meets up with his.
He recognizes that a spiritual reality and a physical reality have come together. He is no longer required to use guile, scheming, and clever shifting to get what is already his as he did with Laban.
Jacob has attempted to overcome his enemies by being quicker and smarter. Now, he is running right into a new way of living. God is coming to take over Jacob! On the way, Jacob encounters angels.
From this experience, Jacob interprets with a devious mind, a spiritual revelation. Because he sees “two camps” when God’s camp meets his camp, he decides to apply this revelation as a strategy in meeting Esau, who he’s been running from all this time in fear.
Jacob gets a good revelation but immediately runs it through the filter of his devious nature. Instead of immediately realizing God has shown up to march with him, he jumps to the conclusions of his inner twist and applies the revelation in a defensive way.
“Two camps” becomes his strategy – if Esau attacks one camp, the other can escape. He will salvage something from the disaster.
This is not what the angels arrived to do! God has something in mind for Jacob that Jacob can’t see because of the unresolved issues of his heart.
Do you realize that God’s presence and angelic assignments have been available to you because of your destiny, but you haven’t been able to properly interpret these available advantages because you insist upon being clever, being quicker, being in control?
Jacob sends everything and everybody over before him, and he is alone with God.
Wrestling with God
Jacob’s immediate response to God is to grab hold and wrestle. He’s been wrestling since before he was born, trying to wrestle Esau to be the firstborn when God had a strategy for him to receive the double portion properly, in the right time, and in the right way.
God arrives to bless him, and Jacob wishes to control God! All he needs to do is surrender, relax into Divine intention, but Jacob has to be in control, to make things happen, and he frustrates the flow of Divine favor with his fear.
Jacob responds according to his heart: “I gain advantages through being more clever, quicker, and stronger.” So, he applies these devious skills to his spiritual life. Jacob attempts to deal with God the way he deals with people. Oops!
Taken-over Yet?
Some people refuse to sit still for their extractions! They continue functioning with a sour tooth because they won’t surrender to the pliers! Some people won’t sit still for their instructions because they won’t be instructed, they are not teachable.
Jacob gets his father’s blessing. He is blessed. Yet, he spends years of his blessed life serving a thief, cheat, and liar! Why? Because when you refuse to surrender to God’s strategy, you are limiting yourself to the level of your own strategy.
Illustration: I discerned that a woman is a prophet. She is afraid of that responsibility. Her husband has no intention of allowing his wife to be a prophet when he is supposed to be the “alpha male” spiritually and she is supposed to be a support for his ego. So, the end result is that they determine to design ministry to the level of that function. They dumb down their own destinies to fit the level of their stubborn, unsurrendered ministry function. They start redefining ministry to some kind of aberrant, God lives in a closet, everybody is supposed to be a boy scout for Jesus mentality. Anyone who attempts to do anything with more impact than that is in pride and flesh.
Bottom line: they do not intend to allow God to bless them beyond their level of fear and control. You wanna live and minister from that place?!
Some of you are failing to interpret the events occurring in your lives because of false mercy and silliness. Recognize that the most powerful qualifiers of your leadership will be received experiencing real life relationships. You will learn about betrayal firsthand because people you love and trust will betray you. You will understand Judas and Jesus when you hear the hiss of the kiss on your own cheek!
Don’t be silly about the motivations and actions of people! Learn your lessons by preparing interpreting the motivations behind people’s actions. They say one thing while they do another because they are justifying their bad behaviors. They will say you are a liar because they are lying; they will say you dishonored because they are dishonoring. These are not personality conflicts or misunderstanding. They are the lessons of real life that prepare you to lead!
Learn from Jesus and Paul. They would immediately and properly interpret the motivations of people. They didn’t attack people or act out of flesh, but they were big enough to deal with the harsher realities of human frailty and deviousness.
Hit Where It Counts
So, Jacob wrestles to get a blessing…I lack time to properly address the change of his name except to say, God’s takeovers will transform you so deeply that you will do the right things for the right reasons. Jacob is changed forever.
Here I want to speak to the location of Jacob’s correction: as a wrestler, he gets hit where it counts. He loses control of his hips.
Leverage is the wrestler’s advantage. Jacob is a leveraging schemer! He uses his cleverness and quickness, as any wrestle, to his advantage. Without the strength of his hips and the balance advantage of his legs, he is “out of the wrestling business!” God hits him where it counts and knocks the wrestling nature out of his life!
One Divine adjustment at the strategic fulcrum of your selfish advantages can make all the difference! God will go for the jugular!
Why don’t you give God your struggles? Your surrender will allow you to receive what is already yours the right way, at the right time. When you struggle you set the limits of your blessing, and you put the blessing under the control of someone God never intended to rule your life.