VenusDeMalayo(VenusAtFar)

What is your bowl of soup? A question left in our life group. I have missed many life groups already and have been missing in action from church. And this will be like the first time attending for a long time again. Why? I don’t want to explain to anyone. Not even to my mentor. But life gets in the way. I am a working student and school has been so hard. Work has been so demanding. I have compromised my commitment. I stopped reading the Bible. I stopped praying. The fascination and reverence that I have for the Bible, for prayer, and for the church are gradually being lost. The love I have for the Lord is growing cold. I knew it deep inside and I should be doing the right thing. Read the Bible and fall on my knees again in prayer but I did not. I chose to compromise. I chose to devote my hours to studying or to worldly things like watching TV, browsing through social media. For the first days, the guilt seemed to be gnawing at me but I learned how to not listen to the guilt. I became good at running away from the guilt and yet every Christian knows that the conviction will be there until it is gone because you completely turned your back on God and your heart becomes hardened.

The story of the bowl of soup comes from the story of Esau who exchanged his birthright for a bowl of soup.

Esau Sells His Birthright

²⁹ Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. ³⁰ And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Edom.^[a]) ³¹ Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.” ³² Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” ³³ Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. ³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright

How important is that birthright that Esau gave away?

As the firstborn of Isaac and Rebekah, the heir of the Lord’s promises (26:1–5), Esau should have clung to his status tenaciously. The birthright of the eldest male child in the ancient Near East conferred upon him the headship of the clan and a double share of the inheritance (Deut. 21:15–17). How foolish, then, is Esau to reject this prize (and redemption) when he sells his birthright for stew? (https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/despised-birthright#:~:text=As%20the%20firstborn%20of%20Isaac,21%3A15%E2%80%9317).)

He exchanged something so valuable for a bowl of stew. Which to me, is a shortsighted decision. He was starving and at that moment, nothing is more valuable than food. ( And by the way the Bible reminds us that we not only live for bread alone. We live for every Word of God. And we fast in order to reign our body and have the self control.) And oftentimes, I make shortsighted decisions. I lose sight of the most important. My relationship with God, which is the most important thing in all eternity. I trade the times I should have been with God with things of this world. And it made me realized. This is how relationships break down. How people drift apart. When you say you love someone and you know what to do to make the other person feel that love and yet you choose to ignore them. You choose to do other things instead that will make the other person sad. You do them time and again until you tell yourself, maybe I don’t really love him. If I love him, then why can’t I do it and choose to make him happy? Maybe I should leave. Doubt comes in. And you just leave. That was what happened to me during the period I stopped praying.

But with God, He knows our love for Him falls short. And truly, we don’t really know how to love right. And so He had set an example. He gave His only Son to die for us (John 3:16) He reminds us to love other people just as how much how God loved us. He reminds us that if we truly love Him, we should follow His commandments. God pursues me. That much I know. When I fail to do the right things He convicts me and yet I can feel the gentle forgiveness when I pray. I hate to admit that I am making the wrong decisions. I realized that. My bowl of soup is my ego, my pride, my dreams that I refuse to surrender in His hands. I only focus on the dream of becoming a lawyer. I only want a good life. But I have been reminded that God had been the One carrying me all along. He is the One making my family safe. He gave me life. He saved me a countless times. And He had put this dream of becoming la lawyer into my heart. I remember praying to Him to give me a sign that if I open up the TV and that law movie comes up then I will enroll. And true enough, the movie Legally Blonde is the movie playing the very moment I turned the TV on and it was just starting! And I cannot make it this far in school without Him. I cannot believe I could be so foolish! (very much like Esau)

Prayer:

Lord, make me like Jacob who has the spiritual wisdom and eyes to see what is eternal. Give me eyes to see the things that are approved to you. And give me the strength of character to chase those things. Make me realize before I make a decision what I am giving up and what I will loose. And help me love you. In Jesus mighty name, Amen.