Hey my friend welcome to the latest edition of my newsletter, thanks for being here! If you don’t already receive this email or want to share it with someone - sign up free at thelowkeychristian.com/newsletter and you can view all previous posts in our archive here. God bless you, now let's get into it.
There is a story in Genesis that most people read once as a child and never really return to.
It is about two brothers, a birthright, and a bowl of stew. And it names something about human hunger that we would rather not look at directly.
This week's theme: Hunger.
Today, the hard truth. Most of us are one hungry afternoon away from trading something we cannot get back.
ESAU
Esau was the older twin.
Under the customs of the time, that meant he was the heir. He would inherit his father Isaac's blessing, his lineage, his standing before God. It was called a birthright, and it was not just a legal claim. It was the whole line of promise stretching back to Abraham and forward to Christ himself. Esau carried that.
One day he came in from the fields, exhausted and starving. His younger brother Jacob was cooking a pot of red stew. Esau asked for some.
Jacob, being Jacob, saw an opportunity. He said, "sell me your birthright."
"Look, I am about to die," Esau said. "What good is the birthright to me?"
Read that sentence and let it sit. He was not actually about to die. He was tired and hungry. But in that moment, in the sharpness of the immediate craving, the eternal thing he was carrying felt worthless to him. He could not feel it. He could only feel the hunger.
He sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.
The text says he ate, drank, got up, and went on his way. And then a line that has stayed with me since I first read it. "So Esau despised his birthright." Not in a moment of considered rebellion. In a moment of immediate hunger.
Here is the hard truth of this story.
Almost nobody trades something eternal for something eternal. Almost everybody, when they do trade, trades something eternal for something immediate. The exchange rate is never fair. You never look back on it and think it was worth it. You look back and think, "how did I let that go for so little?"
The bowl of stew in your life is not going to look like a bowl of stew.
It might look like a conversation you should have walked away from. It might look like a scroll session that ate the hour you had set aside for God. It might look like a compromise you told yourself was small. It might look like a relationship you leaned into because it was easier than being alone, even though you knew where it was going. It might look like the anger you gave into because in that moment holding your tongue felt impossible.
None of it will feel like Esau in the moment. It will feel like you are just tired and hungry and this one small thing will get you through.
That is exactly how Esau felt.
The scary thing is not that Esau was different from us. The scary thing is that he wasn't. He was tired. He was hungry. He had a birthright he could not feel in the moment because his stomach was louder than his soul. And he made a decision he could not undo, and Hebrews 12 tells us he later "sought the blessing with tears" and could not get it back.
Some trades are that permanent.
This is the part of hunger we do not want to look at. That the hunger, if left un-named and un-fed by God, will eventually come for something that matters. Not because we planned it. Because in the moment, we could not feel what we were carrying.
The way you protect the birthright is not by pretending you are not hungry. Esau was hungry. That was real. The way you protect it is by feeding the real hunger, at its real level, before it is loud enough to trade something for stew.
That is what this whole week has been about.
YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY
Ask yourself one honest question today.
What in my life is my birthright, and what could I be about to trade it for a bowl of stew?
You do not have to fix anything today. You just have to see it clearly before the trade gets made.
Father, forgive me for the times my hunger has been louder than my birthright. Feed the real hunger underneath. Show me clearly what I am carrying, so that when the bowl of stew shows up, I can see it for what it is. Amen.
OVER TO YOU
Where in your life does the birthright feel most at risk right now? A word or a line, sent back to me. Every message read.
God bless you, my friend.
The LowKey Christian
P.S. my newest eBook ‘Known: Discovering Who God Says You Are’ is out now. Newsletter readers get an exclusive 50% off this product - just use discount code ‘Newsletter’ at checkout:
