Genesis 32:9-12 "And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. (10) I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. (11) Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. (12) And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude."
The Lord appeared unto Jacob and told him to go back to his father's house. He
was fearful to go back, but he was learning to depend upon the Lord. He
remembered the dream where he saw the ladder and had heard the words of God.
For 21 years, he had those words imprinted upon his heart. No doubt, his father
Isaac, had told him of the time when God had provided the ram as the substitute
for the burnt offering. He knew of the way God had blessed his grandfather,
Abraham. Now it was his turn to draw from those lessons and seek to have God's
mercy applied to his life.
It
was time for him to prove to himself that God's promises are true. Notice the
prayer, "O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac..."
Do you see anything missing from the first words of his prayer? When I see
those words, I notice that he does not speak of God as being "his
God". We will see that he is brought to the place of confessing God
to be his God as well as his fathers', but for now he seems to be drawing from
what he knows God has done in the past.