I Am Rewarded

Dear People of God,
 
What does it look like to be rewarded by God?   So far in our “Leah Beloved” series, Brett has shown the ways in which Leah’s story demonstrated to the Exodus Generation that God sees, hears, and responds to his people according to “ways and means” different from our own!
 
This week we will look at the birth of a fifth son to Leah.  She celebrates him as God’s reward for having given her servant to her husband as a child bearing surrogate, a cultural practice of the time.  But the Genesis text simply states that God listened to her prayer and gave her a son.
 
God answers our prayers with good gifts that we cannot provide ourselves—safety, peace, new life.   Yet when those rewards come, we can make ourselves the center of the equation, thinking that extraordinary things we did prompted God to act more than who he is as a loving father.  
 
What God rewards—more than our works—is our simple dependance on Him. Attaching ourselves more securely to God’s unchanging heart will free us to receive our greatest reward: living from the love of a faithful Heavenly Father.
 
Your servant,
 
Peter