163 | The Blessing You Thought You Missed: God Uses Broken Families, Yours Included (Genesis - Part 3)

Find the full episode here: LivingOnPurposeInChrist.com/blog and the companion printable resource here): PaulaBehrens.com/store

Family stories can be painful, confusing, and honestly a little embarrassing to say out loud sometimes. But, when we open Genesis we find that God is not scared off by any of it. From Isaac’s quiet life in Genesis 26 to the emotional chaos between Jacob and Esau, we trace a single steady thread: God keeps His covenant promise even when the people carrying that promise are a mess. If you’ve ever felt like the overlooked one, or you’ve wondered whether God can still use you after poor choices, this conversation will meet you right where you are.

We talk about Isaac inheriting a promise rather than receiving a brand-new one, and why that matters for anyone living inside generational prayer, legacy, or calling. Then we face the family dysfunction head-on: favoritism, a birthright traded for a bowl of stew, and a blessing taken through deception. The stakes are real, the consequences are real, and the Bible refuses to tidy the story up for our comfort.

From there, hope breaks in. God meets Jacob at Bethel when he is alone and running, and later Jacob wrestles through the night and refuses to let go without a blessing. We dig into the meaning behind the word “blessing,” including the Hebrew bāraḵ (בָּרַךְ) and the connection to “eulogy,” as future-shaping words spoken over a life. The result is a bigger view of spiritual blessing through Christ, and a reminder that sometimes the wrestling is what shapes us into who God is calling us to be.

If you want to go deeper, we also point you to a printable Genesis Bible study companion with word study, reflection questions, journaling prompts, and a step-by-step leader’s guide: PaulaBehens.com/store. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope for their family, and leave a review so more listeners can find Living on Purpose in Christ.

><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><>

YOUR NEXT STEPS:

*Accept Jesus into your heart*

"Partnering with God to Reset Your Finances" (Course): Sign Up

"Partner with God In Your Business" (Free Event): Register HERE

"Which Woman Of the Bible Are You?" Take the Quiz

7 Prompt Cards (FREE): PaulaBehrens.com/prompt-cards

Visit our website: LivingOnPurposeInChrist.com

Snag Freebies in our FB Group: DevotionDrops.com

Join the Private Bible Study Circle: EssentialFaithJourney.com

Free 15-Minute Discovery Call > PaulaBehrens.com#discoverycall

Email: hello@paulabehrens.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

When Family Feels Hopeless

Paula Behrens 0:00

Have you ever looked at your family and thought, there is no way God can bring anything good out of this? Maybe you grew up feeling like the favorite was always someone else. Maybe your family has more scheming and sibling rivalry in it than a soap opera. Maybe you've done things you're not proud of, and you wonder if God can still use somebody like you. Friend, if any of that resonates, you are about to feel very much at home in the book of Genesis. Welcome back to Living on Purpose in Christ. I'm so glad you're here. Today we are stepping into part three of our four-part journey through the book of Genesis. And this one might be my favorite so far because it's so wonderfully, refreshingly honest about what real families and real faith actually look like. We're going to spend some time with Isaac and then with his twin sons, Jacob and Esau, and we're going to watch God keep his promise, even when the people carrying that promise are, frankly, a mess. Stick with me all the way to the end of this episode because I'm going to tell you about a printable Bible study that goes so much deeper into these chapters than we can go here today, including a deeper word study, reflection questions, journaling prompts, and even a step-by-step leader's guide if you want to walk through this with your small group, your Sunday school class, or a friend over coffee.

Coaching Offer For Clarity And Peace

Paula Behrens 1:24

Are you finding it difficult to figure out where God is leading you through the whirlwind of daily life? Perhaps, like me, you've had moments of doubt, surprise encounters, and maybe even a bit of overwhelm along the way. Well, if that resonates with you and you're yearning for clarity, peace, and faith-focused encouragement, this podcast is for you. Friend, if the weight of life, ministry, or daily responsibilities has left you feeling drained, isolated, or in need of spiritual direction, take heart: the Lord longs to meet you right where you are with his presence, peace, and care. That's part of what we can gently walk through in an Aroma Freedom coaching session. Together, we'll uncover what feels heavy, clear what keeps you blocked, and make room for greater peace, freedom, and connection with the Lord. Here's how it works. When we meet for our focused one-hour private Zoom session, we will start by getting clear on what you want God to heal or strengthen. Through gentle spiritual mentoring, prayer, and the grounding truth of Scripture, we will uncover the specific emotional triggers or past hurts that feel heavy. Then we'll use the Aroma Freedom technique to help you physically and emotionally release those thoughts that keep your mind racing. You'll also receive a bonus, Overcoming Limiting Beliefs printable, so you can continue this restorative work at home. The benefits of our time together go far beyond a single hour. You will experience a true mindset reset, stepping away from the session with a quieted mind, released emotional baggage, and a clear, peaceful path to partnering with God in your life and ministry. There's a gentle way forward, and I would be honored to walk that path with you. Save your seat now for an Aroma Freedom Coaching session at Paula Behrens.com /coaching. That's Paula Behrens B E H R E N S .com /coaching (no spaces). Before we dive in, I have a quick favor to ask. If this podcast has been a blessing to you or helped you grow in your walk with Christ, would you take a moment to leave a review? Thank you so much. I truly appreciate your support. Okay, it's time to get started.

Isaac, the Quiet Middle Link

Paula Behrens 3:46

Grab that cup of coffee, your Bible, and something to take notes on, and let's get back into Genesis, beginning with the story of Isaac. This story often gets skipped over because his story sits sandwiched between two much louder personalities, Abraham before him and Jacob after him. But we don't want to rush past this. In Genesis 26, we find Isaac living through a famine, just like his father Abraham once did. And God tells him something remarkable: stay in the land, don't go down to Egypt, and I will be with you and bless you because of the promise I made to your father Abraham. Did you catch that? Isaac isn't receiving a brand new promise from God, he's inheriting one. God is simply continuing what he already started. And I think that's worth sitting with for a moment, because so many of us are living inside promises that started before we ever arrived. Maybe it was a grandmother who prayed for your family for decades. Maybe it was a parent who planted seeds of faith you didn't understand until years later. God's faithfulness doesn't reset with every generation. It carries forward. Now Isaac's life isn't really that dramatic. He does things like re-digging his father's wells after the Philistines fill them in one at a time. But if you think about it, that's comforting. Especially if your walk with God feels less like fireworks and more like showing up again and again in the ordinary places.

Two Brothers, One Bent Family

Paula Behrens 5:21

Now we get to the part of the story that feels a little too familiar for comfort. Isaac and his wife Rebecca have twin sons, Esau and Jacob. And right from the start, this family has a favoritism problem. Isaac loves Esau because Esau is the rugged outdoorsman who brings him the food he likes. And Rebecca loves Jacob, the quieter one who stays closer to home. You can already feel the tension building, can't you? Esau as the firstborn holds the birthright, which in that culture carried both a double inheritance and a position of leadership in the family. But one day Esau comes in from the field exhausted and hungry, and he trades away that birthright for a bowl of stew. It's an impulsive decision made in a moment of physical need, and scripture doesn't let him off the hook for it either. Then Jacob and his mother, Rebecca, take things a step further. They scheme together to deceive Isaac, who is old and losing his eyesight, into giving Jacob the formal blessing that was meant to be for Esau. I want to be honest with you here, because I think honesty is what makes this story so useful. This is not a family you'd hold up as an example of healthy communication. There is favoritism, there is manipulation, there is a mother helping her son deceive her husband, and there is a brother so wounded and furious that he vows to kill his twin the moment their father dies. If your own family has ever felt tangled up in comparison, rivalry, or old wounds that never quite healed, you are not reading about strangers here. You are reading about people very much like us. And yet, this is exactly the family God chooses to carry his covenant forward.

The Running, the Wrestling, and the Renaming

Paula Behrens 7:20

Not a perfect family, a real one. Because of the fallout with Esau, Jacob has to run for his life, and he ends up alone in the wilderness one night with nothing but a stone for a pillow. It's there, in that lonely, vulnerable moment, that God meets him in a dream, a staircase reaching up to heaven with angels moving up and down on it, and God renews the covenant promise with Jacob personally there. Jacob wakes up and says, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. He names the spot Bethel, meaning house of God. I love that God doesn't wait for Jacob to clean himself up before showing up. Jacob is on the run because of his own scheming, and God meets him anyway, right there in the dirt, and speaks a promise over him. That is who God is. He doesn't wait for us to deserve his presence. Years later, after decades of hard labor, a complicated marriage situation with Rachel and Leah, and building a large family,

Wrestling, Renaming, And Reconciliation

Paula Behrens 8:26

Jacob finally heads home to face the brother he wronged. The night before that reunion, something extraordinary happens. A man wrestles with Jacob until daybreak, and Jacob refuses to let go until he receives a blessing. That man, we come to understand, is God himself in some mysterious physical encounter. And at the end of that wrestling match, God gives Jacob a new name, no longer Jacob, the deceiver, the heel grabber. Now he's Israel, one who struggles with God and prevails. Jacob walks away from that encounter with a permanent limp. He also walks away changed. He's finally ready to make amends with his brother Esau, and remarkably Esau runs to meet him, embraces him, and weeps. Esau who once wanted his brother dead, and Jacob, who may have been harboring jealousy, are now reconciled. God's faithfulness didn't just preserve the promise, it healed the family that carried it.

A Quick Word Study: Blessing

Paula Behrens 9:24

Before we close out these chapters, I want to give you a little taste of something we go much deeper into in the printable study, because there's a word running underneath the whole section of Genesis that's easy to breeze right past in English. The Hebrew word is bāraḵ (בָּרַךְ), and it's usually translated blessing or to bless. It shows up again and again in these chapters. Isaac blesses Jacob by mistake, Esau begs for a blessing of his own. And at Peniel, Jacob wrestles through the night and refuses to let go of that mysterious man until he says, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Bāraḵ (בָּרַךְ) isn't just a nice wish for good things to happen. In the Hebrew understanding, it carries the idea of favor, empowerment, and a future being spoken over someone, like God or a father standing in God's place, who is releasing something real and active into a person's life. When the Old Testament was later translated into Greek in what we call the Septuagint, the translators reach for the word eulogeō (εὐλογέω) to translate the word bāraḵ (בָּרַךְ). You might recognize the root of that word. It's where we get our English word, eulogy, which today we mostly associate with funerals, words spoken over someone's life after they're gone. But eulogeō (εὐλογέω) literally means to speak well of or to speak a good word over. Isn't that a beautiful thread to pull on? A blessing in both Hebrew and Greek is fundamentally about words spoken over a life, words with weight, words meant to shape a future. So when Jacob wrestles all night for a blessing, he isn't just asking for a pat on the head. He's asking for God to speak something true and good and future -shaping over his broken, scheming, exhausted life. And friend, that's exactly what God still does. Through Christ, we are described in the New Testament as those who have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, the same eulogeō (εὐλογέω), that same bāraḵ (בָּרַךְ) now poured out on us. You don't have to wrestle all night in the dark to get it either. It's already been spoken over you in

What This Means for You

Paula Behrens 11:44

Jesus' name. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. If you've ever felt like the overlooked one in your own family, remember God saw Jacob in the dirt at Bethel and He sees you too. And if you ever feel like you've been wrestling with God for years over something, maybe a calling, a relationship, a past sin, a wound that won't heal, take heart. Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life, but he also walked renamed. Sometimes the wrestling itself is the very thing that shapes us into who God is calling us to be. God continues his promise through Isaac's quiet faithfulness, through Jacob's messy wrestling faith, and he will continue his promise through you too, limp and

Printable Study And Series Wrap

Paula Behrens 12:28

all. Okay, I told you I'd circle back, and here I am. If you'd like to go much deeper into these chapters, I've put together a printable Bible study companion just for part three of this Genesis series. It'll walk you through Isaac's story and Jacob's journey with much more depth. It includes a deeper word study straight from the original Hebrew text, reflection questions to help you process your own family story in light of God's faithfulness, journaling prompts, and a full step-by-step leader's guide if you'd like to teach or lead a discussion through this material with others. You can find it by visiting PaulaBehrens.com /store and looking in the "Printable Resources" section. That's Paula Behrens B E H R E N S .com /store (no spaces), and you'll find the study in the "Printable Resources" section. And don't forget, this is part three of a four-part series walking through the whole book of Genesis. So if you missed the earlier episodes on creation and on Abraham, go back and grab those two and be watching for part four, where we'll finish the series with the incredible story of Joseph.

Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

Paula Behrens 13:41

Thank you for tuning in today. And remember, just like setting biblical boundaries, it's okay to say no to things that don't serve you well, like that third piece of cake at the church potluck. If you were blessed by this episode, be sure to share it with a friend and leave a review so that we can reach even more listeners like you. Check the show notes for all the links. Join us next week as we continue to discover how to live on purpose in Christ. Until then, keep leaning into Him and walking in His wisdom. See you next time.