The God Who Shepherded

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 16, The God Who Shepherded.

"And he blessed Joseph and said, 'The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.'" Genesis 48, verses 15 and 16.

Picture this man. Jacob is over a hundred and thirty years old. He is in Egypt, far from the land God promised, about to die. And before he closes his eyes for the last time, he calls Joseph and his two grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to give them his final blessing.

Notice what he chooses to say in that moment. It isn't a list of accomplishments. It isn't a summary of accumulated wealth, flocks, or land. Jacob looks back over more than a century of life and sums it all up in a single sentence: "the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day."

Shepherd. Think about that. Jacob — the man who deceived his own father, who fled home in fear of his brother, who worked for years under Laban's deception, who wrestled all night at the Jabbok, who lost Rachel in childbirth, who spent years believing Joseph was dead — this man, at the end of everything, chooses the word shepherd. Not judge. Not a distant master. Shepherd. Someone who walked beside him, who guided him through every valley, who never abandoned him even when Jacob himself made so many wrong choices.

And look at the other phrase he uses: "redeemed me from all evil." Not from some evil. From all evil. Jacob, looking back in old age, doesn't see a string of accidents and coincidences. He sees the hand of God rescuing him, step by step, from every danger, every mistake, every consequence he brought on himself through his own choices. That is the difference between looking back at your life with bitterness and looking back at it as testimony.

And now comes the part that moves me most: Jacob doesn't just bless Joseph. He blesses the grandsons — Ephraim and Manasseh, boys who grew up in Egypt, who barely knew the land of promise. Jacob knows he won't live to see what God will do with them. But he speaks the blessing anyway. He says, "let my name be carried on in them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac." He is essentially saying: let the faith I lived not die with me. Let it cross generations I will never meet.

That is real legacy, my friend. It isn't what you accumulate. It's who you leave behind, shaped by faith, after you're gone. Jacob understood that the true treasure he had to leave wasn't gold or land — it was the testimony of a faithful God, spoken out loud, so his grandsons would grow up knowing where they came from and to whom they belonged.

So today, I want to invite you to do something similar, on a smaller scale, but with the same weight. Before breakfast, take a piece of paper and write down three specific moments God has shepherded you to this day — three times He rescued you, guided you, stayed with you when you didn't deserve it. And then, today, find someone younger than you — a child, a nephew or niece, someone you're mentoring, a younger friend — and read that list out loud to them. Don't keep it only for yourself. Let it cross over.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.