This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, I want to welcome you to Daily Drive Time Devotions in Day 3 of Week 10,
which means Chapter 48 of the book of Genesis. We've been talking about what
dream managers do, and I want to focus today on something else that Jacob did in
getting ready for the future and looking forward to the future. In that, we
learn something else that dream managers do.

Let me begin by reading verses 1 to 4 in Chapter 48. "Sometime later Joseph was
told, 'Your father is ill. ' So he took his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim,
along with him.

When Jacob was told, 'Your son Joseph has come to you,' Israel rallied his
strength and sat up on his bed. Jacob said to Joseph, 'God Almighty appeared to
me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there He blessed me. And He said to me,
'I'm going to make you fruitful and will increase your numbers.

I will make you a community of peoples, and I will give this land as an
everlasting possession to your descendants after you. '" In these verses, the
first four verses, we find out what Jacob knows. He knows that there is a
promised land.

He knows that God is going to make these people fruitful. He's going to increase
their numbers, but he has to take that dream and not only look forward to the
future in his own mind, but he also has to pass that dream along. And in these
verses, he's going to begin to pass that dream along.

Looking to the future with your dream, the dream that God's put into your life
for ministry for service, that's one thing. Passing it along to another person,
that is quite another. Paul talked to his disciple Timothy about passing on a
God-given dream in 2 Timothy Chapter 2.

In verse 2, he said, "And the things that you've heard me say in the presence of
many witnesses, entrust to reliable men, who will also be qualified to teach
others. What we learn, we pass along. " How do you do that?

How do you pass along a God-given dream? This is one of the jobs that God has
for Jacob here at the end of his life. We talked about three of them yesterday.

Here is the fourth one. He's passing along this God-given dream. How do you do
that?

There are a number of different ways to pass along a God-given dream. Let me
suggest four of them to you. And I want to focus on the fourth one because
that's what we see Jacob doing here.

You can pass along a God-given dream sometimes by teaching. You teach someone
else what God has done in your life, either in a Bible study or in a school
setting or in a seminar setting or one-on-one. You teach one or usually a group
of people, "Here's what God's done in my life.

" That is one way to pass the dream from one person to another. It's not the
most powerful way, but it's one way. A second way, and it's a little bit more
powerful, is by modeling.

Not only do you teach somebody else what God has done in your life, but you also
model for somebody else what God has done in your life. This is the way many
times that a parent can pass along a God-given dream of loving others, of loving
your kids. Not only do you teach your kids about things that they should do, but
while you're teaching them, you model for them the kind of love that Christ has
for you.

Now, you're not a perfect model as a parent or anything else. There's no such
thing in this world except for Jesus Christ, but God can use the ways that
you're following him to show others the ways to follow him. So you model the
life that Jesus Christ is working in you.

As you model the dream that God has put into your life, a dream for growing a
ministry, a dream for reaching a country, a dream for making a difference in a
community, as you model that dream, as people see how you do it, that's another
powerful way, a more powerful way even, to pass along a God-given dream. There's
a third way that we do it, and that is through what I would call mentoring. Now
you're not just modeling somebody who's looking at you from afar.

You're mentoring. They're not only seeing what you're doing and hearing what
you're doing in your teaching, but they're able to sit down and ask you about it
and learn from you. This is what Jesus did with his 12 disciples.

He mentored them for three years. He said, "I want you to come along with me,"
and he taught them, and he modeled for them what they were to live out, but he
also mentored them. He let them ask questions, he answered their questions, he
dealt with their confusion, he helped them walk through life, teaching and
modeling and mentoring.

That's usually what we think about when we think about passing along a dream,
but there is a fourth thing that's vital, and Jacob models it for us here. It is
blessing. One of the ways that you pass along a God-given dream is through a
blessing.

Yeah, it comes through teaching and modeling and mentoring, but also through a
blessing. Here in chapter 48, we see the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh. Let
me read for you verses 10 down through verse 14, and then skip through 17 to 22.

Let me read this section of scripture for you. Now Israel's, Jacob's, eyes were
failing because of his old age, and he could hardly see. Joseph brought his sons
close to him, and his father kissed them and he embraced them.

Israel said to Joseph, "I never expected to see your face again, and now God has
allowed me to see your children too. " Then Joseph removed them from Israel's
knees and bowed down with his face to the ground, and Joseph took both of them,
Ephraim on his right, toward Israel's left hand, and Manasseh on his left,
toward Israel's right hand, and he brought them close to him. But Israel reached
out with his right hand, and he put it on Ephraim's head, though he was the
younger, and crossing his arms, he put his left hand on Manasseh's head, even
though Manasseh was the firstborn.

When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim's head, he was
displeased, so he took hold of his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head
to Manasseh's head. Joseph said to him, "No, my father, this one is the
firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.

" But his father refused and said, "I know, my son, I know. He too will become a
people. He too will become great.

Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants
will become a group of nations. " And he blessed them that day, and he said, "In
your name will Israel pronounce his blessing. May God make you like Ephraim and
Manasseh.

" So he put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh. And then Israel said to Joseph, "I'm
about to die, but God will be with you and take you back to the land of your
fathers. And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land
I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.

" Here is the blessing in these verses of Ephraim and Manasseh. And here in this
blessing, the younger actually receives the greater blessing. This has become a
habit in the way that God works in the people of Israel.

You remember that Jacob himself had experienced this. He was the younger, but he
was blessed above his older brother Esau. And then along comes Joseph, who is
one of the youngest brothers.

Only Benjamin was younger, but he is blessed in a way that he is raised to a
position of authority above his other brothers. So Joseph shouldn't have been
surprised, but he was, because dads always want the oldest son to get the
greatest blessing. We've always dreamed of that, but no, that's not what God was
about to do.

And so Joseph actually crosses his hands, putting his right hand on Ephraim,
left hand on Manasseh, giving the greater blessing to the one who's on his right
hand. The idea of a blessing being greater there. It's amazing how God works.

And I want you to get, we're going to talk about this more tomorrow, I want you
to get this idea of God's blessing and how you and I can pass along to someone
else. Might be a son, might be a daughter, might be somebody that you've spent a
lot of time with in work or in school or close friends, somebody in your small
group. Somebody maybe even that you've just met sometimes.

You can pass along a blessing of what you see God doing in their life. Three
questions. Number one, to whom do you need to pass on God's blessing?

Not just encouragement. Hey, you're doing a great job, but a blessing. A
blessing is more than encouragement because it includes faith, it includes God.

A blessing is a sense of what God is doing in that other person's life. What
he's doing now, what he's about to do, what he's going to do in the future. I
see God working in your life in this way, and that's a great thing to see.

When you say that, you are passing along a blessing. Who do you need to pass
that blessing on to right now? Maybe it's somebody in your own family.

Maybe it's a close friend. Who is it in your life? Let me ask you a second
question.

For whom do you need to accept God's blessing that God has decided to bless
them? In these verses, it was Ephraim that received the greater blessing, even
as it had been Jacob and Joseph. And here's what I want to say to you about
this.

Don't spend your life fighting the way that God has blessed another person. Just
recognize and accept the fact that God's chosen to bless them. And recognize and
accept joyously the fact that there is plenty of God's blessing to go around.

When you get caught up on the fact that some older brother or sister or younger
brother and sister seems to be getting more than you are out of life, and you
get bitter about that, you're cutting off God's blessing from your life. Not
from their life, but from your life. God's chosen to bless them as he's chosen
to bless them.

And maybe the reason he gave them more financially is because they needed it in
order to grow. They needed them more financially in order to recognize they
didn't need them more financially. It's not all about what's happening in this
world.

God's preparing us for eternity, remember. So who is there in your life you need
to accept? God's blessed them.

And I accept that. And I want to take joy in that. And now I'm going to look for
how God's blessed me.

Who do you need to pass on God's blessing towards? Who do you need to accept the
fact that God has blessed them? And then I have a third question, and that is,
who do you need to honor in your life?

Who is there right now that maybe has blessed you that you need to honor? Even
as Joseph honored his father Jacob here. Even after he dies, we're going to find
he honors his dad.

He honors what his dad asks him to do. One of the things that keeps you and I
from passing on a dream is not honoring those who pass the dream on to us. When
I start feeling like it's all mine, when I start forgetting to honor those who
passed a dream on to me, it does something in me, does something that keeps me
from passing it on to other people.

I begin to become a jealous person. I begin to become a self-centered,
self-focused person. Who is there in your life that you need to honor?

Maybe you did early, but you haven't for a long time. And you just remind
yourself right now, God worked in my life and I honor that person for it. You're
not really a dreamer.

Listen, you are not really a dreamer unless you pass it on. Dreams don't end
with one generation. We're only here a short time on this planet.

All of us need to be part of a God-given dream that outlasts our lives. And that
means you're not really a dreamer unless you pass it on. Jesus Christ, thank you
for the dream of faith.

Thank you for the dream of living out the kind of life that you want us to live.
And thank you for the dreams of ministry and building things that you put into
our hearts. Lord Jesus, help us to do these things.

Help us to bless those who have come into our lives and are living out that very
dream that we've had in our hearts. Help us to bless them with a blessing that's
full of faith and full of your direction and guidance, full of joy. Instead of
thinking the dream is ours, help us to recognize it is yours.

And in that, give us the freedom to bless others. Lord, forgive us for sometimes
becoming selfish with what is yours. And help us instead to bless others
concerning what is yours.

Thank you for what you're doing in this world, God. And thanks for letting us in
on it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow. We're going to continue to learn about blessings. We're going
to learn about faith and consequences in the way that Jacob blesses his sons.