If you don't like it, change it!

I believe that Jacob deserved the years of hard labor he got after what he did to his elder brother Esau. Read the story in Genesis 27 to 30. After tricking Esau out of his blessing from their father Isaac, Jacob fled for his life. Esau had a score to settle with him and decided to kill him. Rebekah his mother, who was in on the plot with Jacob helped him escape to his uncle Laban who lived some distance away.

Jacob gets scammed!

There in a foreign land, Jacob fell in love with Laban’s beautiful daughter Rachel. Laban makes a deal with him that he can have Rachel if he works seven years for her by tending his sheep and goats. Well, when the years of labor were over he discoverd to his horror on his wedding night that the veiled woman he married was not the lovely Rachel but her older sister Leah!

Again, Laban promised Jacob the hand of Rachel for seven more years of labor. The time passed and finally, perhaps because Laban had no other daughters to deceive him with Jacob marries Rachel, the girl of his dreams!

See the operation of God’s golden rule in the story. Jacob deceived Esau but was in turn deceived by Laban. Now for the climax to the story, it was of course Laban’s turn to get deceived and would you believe it, it happened by supernatural means!

Hard work will only take you so far.

Jacob had learnt a hard lesson, one that we all need to learn. Hard work will only take you so far! Having worked for many years for someone else, and getting ripped off, Jacob sorely wanted to stop working for someone else and start his own farming business. He approached his uncle with a plan and said to him, “I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them. Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen."

Laban agreed to Jacobs request but tried to deceive him yet again. That same day the Bible tells us, he removed all the male goats that were streaked or spotted, and all the speckled or spotted female goats and all the dark-colored lambs, and put a three-day journey between them and Jacob so he could not find them!

He left Jacob with white sheen and goats. What a swindle!

Let your imagination do the work!

Jacob did not like what he saw, white sheep goats everywhere.Still, Jacob did not despair but wized-up. He didn't like and decided to change it. I believe that at that point in his life God gave him a revelation of how to create a future by supernatural means.  This is what he did. Jacob took fresh-cut branches and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood. Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. 

Thus he made separate flocks for himself. In this way we read that Jacob grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and maidservants and menservants, and camels and donkeys.

The striped branches and the striped and spotted shadows that fell on the animals helped Jacob to imagine that all the offspring that were born to the animals that were mating in front of them would turn out striped and spotted. Was there a special power in the branches? Absolutely not. The power for supernatural change lay in  his power to imagination. This is God's gift for change to everyone, regardless of religion.

Now its your turn!

Go ahead, think of the end result you want in your life. Perhaps you want to marry the ideal mate, perhaps create  the ideal career. If one of the fathers of our faith was shown how to do it, then you are allowed to do it. Create an image of what you desire to happen. Then, imagine it happening. Contemplate the end result and it will start to happen.  It took Jacob time to get there. Be patient and persist in spending time actually envisioning the desired end result. If you don’t give up, it will happen!