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    Leah Unveiled: Your Best Life Later, Discovering Identity Stronger than the Struggle
    Leah Unveiled: Your Best Life Later, Discovering Identity Stronger than the Struggle
    Leah Unveiled: Your Best Life Later, Discovering Identity Stronger than the Struggle
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    Leah Unveiled: Your Best Life Later, Discovering Identity Stronger than the Struggle

    By Michelle Kelso Kafer

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    About this ebook

    In the book of Genesis, we see creation, God’s pursuit in covenant, displays of righteousness and faith, but also humanity’s rebellion, judgment, racism, social inequality, and depravity run amuck. We see the difference in walking by faith with God and walking by worldly standards. We see holy justice and raw human injustice. In Genesis chapters 29 and 30, there is no shortage of these elements, where God chose to preserve a diary, of sorts, of a matriarch of the faith. Though history has reduced her story to only descriptive paragraphs, this twelve-week Bible study will unveil why God chose to carry her testimony for our benefit in living out the Christian life. God took her humble position and grafted her into the scarlet thread of the Gospel story. You know her as the wife to a patriarch, who was in love with her sister, and a mother to eight of the original twelve tribes of Israel. Her name is Leah. After this expository styled study, you will be astonished and captivated by her testimony of how faith wrestles to thrive in the land of the living while yielding to the hope of heaven. She is a channel by which world history has been shaped and our hope secured in Christ. You will be encouraged and convicted as you wrestle with the God who revealed Himself to her and who stands to do the same for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateJan 14, 2020
    ISBN9781400326839
    Leah Unveiled: Your Best Life Later, Discovering Identity Stronger than the Struggle
    Author

    Michelle Kelso Kafer

    I was given a heritage of loving the Word of God, and drawing near to Him - Psalm 145. The study of theology was nurtured by family and a multitude of theologians, missionaries, churches and ministry affiliations. My academic degrees in philosophy, economics, and business have served to strengthen my Biblical worldview. My husband and I live in the Nashville area with our three children. Theology is central in our home and our local church family is a vital part of our lives.

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      Book preview

      Leah Unveiled - Michelle Kelso Kafer

      WEEK 1

      Leah Who?

      Read: Genesis chapters 29 and 30.

      Have you ever heard of Leah?

      [Your Response Here]

      If so, what do you know about her?

      [Your Response Here]

      In beginning a journey to read through the Bible chronologically, Genesis 29 and 30 stopped me in my tracks. It became evident I was reading a diary of sorts, a woman’s testimony of her personal, spiritual journey; a woman I knew relatively little about. If you had asked me prior to this study, I could have summarized her saga into one paragraph.

      A breached contract made her a wife to a man who was in love with her sister. She was wife of a patriarch and mother to eight of the original twelve tribes of Israel. Seeing how the tapestry of the gospel was woven into her life was all new to me. Ask me now, and I will say, Go and sit at her feet. There is no way she could ever have imagined that, years later, 1 Corinthians 13:12–13 NKJV would capture the concept of her story and faithfulness for every follower of Christ today.

      When you look at the image of your life right now, does it seem too ordinary? Too bleak? Come with me to sit at the feet of a woman who could empathize with you. Let us learn from her faith, hope, and love. Meet Leah, Jacob’s first bride.

      For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

      Leah’s diary is outlined through the profound artistry in the naming of her children. Every name a window to the ponderings of her heart. The Scriptures clearly state that Jacob gave no input; Leah named her children.

      The love story of Leah goes unnoticed because of the natural allurement to the Jacob and Rachel romance. Yet, in tender-eyed, ordinary Leah, we’ll see a picture of God’s extraordinary love which transcends the love of man. The love story of Leah is not of earthly romanticism, but her narrative highlights what it means to be loved by God in the present, with current hopes deferred, struggling to trust that somehow, some way, at some point, He would fulfill her desires. The human object of Leah’s desire rejects the key to her heart that she so willingly offers. But God. He will cherish, and hold dear, her tender heart.

      Leah is representative of the vast majority of our lives: no grand overtures, plainly mundane, and ordinary. However, her life story captivates anyone who will open themselves to learning the rich theological truths that can be found in her diary. There is a uniqueness to the Genesis 29 and 30 chapters, for they tell of spiritual growth from a woman’s perspective. Here Genesis echoes the heart of a wife and mother’s soul. Her story is old, yet her message is relevant to this present day. Leah’s exceptional devotion and loyalty give rise to a profound blessing that she never could have imagined in her wildest dreams.

      My hope is that through Leah, you will gain a better grasp of how God reveals His nature and works in our hearts, regardless of our circumstance. My prayer is that you will find the reflection of God’s awesomeness in how He revealed Himself in and through Leah’s life both encouraging and convicting. Amidst all the humbling grandeur of meeting my Lord and Savior face to face in heaven, I look forward to meeting Leah, a matriarch of the faith in the prophetic, promised seed, Jesus Christ.

      Think it through:

      Take a moment to view your current life situation in a mirror. Take a moment to view yourself in a mirror. Write down the adjectives that come to mind in the images you see.

      [Your Response Here]

      How would you like the image of your life situation and yourself to be different? Write down your thoughts.

      [Your Response Here]

      Take these matters to the Lord and ask Him to open your heart to the lessons He wants to teach you as we sit at Leah’s feet and hear her story.

      WEEK 2

      It’s Complicated

      H

      uman relationships, whether they involve a spouse, parents, children, siblings, extended family, friends, or coworkers, are complicated. Leah, most definitely, experienced an unfair share of complication from those with whom she resided in the various phases of her life. To truly understand her plight, as we study her life, we must take a look at where her story began.

      Our story of interest begins with Jacob, the patriarch. The son who tricked his father, Isaac, into giving him the revered firstborn’s blessing that belonged to his older brother, Esau. The son who took advantage of his older brother’s moment of weakness and swindled the birthright from him in exchange for instant, temporary gratification. Yet Jacob, the deceiver, renamed by God, was the chosen, and separated out, one, Israel. From his seed would come a nation that singularly continues to dominate world history and current events.

      Jacob left his own home at the advice of his father, Isaac. Per his mother’s wishes, Jacob sought a bride among her relatives (specifically her brother Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian).¹ He saw Rachel and rejoiced. Jacob loved Rachel. From the moment he saw Rachel, she was his infatuation, everything he worked for, his one desire. Rachel was his beloved and he would do anything to get her as his wife.

      Love at first sight is a familiar story. Sometimes real, sometimes a fairy tale. Love stories mesmerize us, stir up emotions, leaving impressions on the mind. We love them and history proves our fascination with them. Romance novels, poetical comedy, tragedies, and mythological tales all avail to harness the unexplainable ways of human love. Some of the greatest love stories ever told are found on the pages of the Scripture, but not all of them proceed as blissfully or smoothly as we would wish.

      Whether we are aware of the occurrence or not, life gets wrapped into the customs we call traditions, norms, familiarities, perspectives, etc. Day-to-day life is simply lived out as we know it, until we encounter a different culture and live among them. We are born into and raised among influences that impact every detail of our lives. Even then, we cannot always fully comprehend a culture’s invisible traits. So too, for Jacob. As a sojourner to Padan-aram, he was a stranger to their customs.

      Think it through:

      Have you ever been in a situation where you experienced a different culture? Write down some of the adjustments and adaptations you had to make from your day-to-day way of living.

      [Your Response Here]

      Were there any unexpected surprises?

      [Your Response Here]

      Laban unashamedly played the card of cultural customs through the birth-order marriage of daughters. The oldest daughter had to be married first. Another custom was handing over the bride to the groom in the cover of darkness! So, Leah was led to Jacob’s bedchamber at night. The rising of the sun unveiled the deception of the night’s secret. Behold it was Leah (Genesis 29:25).

      Surprise! The dawning of the new day turned Jacob’s bliss into a complete culture shock nightmare! No Rachel. His beloved was not his bride. Leah, the oldest daughter, became the object of Jacob’s

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