Authentic Pain Vs The Counterfeit Self- Genesis 32

I made the critical error of asking God to reveal the depth of His love for me. Never do this if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity.

Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

But He is prepared for us to hate Him in certain arenas on the long journey to loving Him. He knows that His hope poses a threat to the captive mind.

I am here to talk about how

sometimes holding onto God hurts,

but why we should do it anyways.

Why fight for a blessing that involves pain? Why trust in something that requires our submission to weakness?

Who in the world wants to be blessed in such a violent way, where the awakening hurts?

This week I am limping along with my brother Jacob through Genesis 32. We are searching for healing. And we need help to claim our authentic names.

I have begun to lift up this prayer:

God, help me to understand how much You love me.

And after I asked for this blessing, not much later I started limping.

Why? He is touching the place deep inside that is curled tight and hard, attached firmly to a false sense of complete control. He shows me how much He loves me by touching the strained places. He points right at the weakness and then something snaps- the sudden severing of self from sufficiency.

 

This is the inopportune ripping away of denial and suppression.

Also, I might be limping because I literally pulled a tendon in my hip this week. That, too, might explain it.

The timing of my very real injury in conjunction with my writing is funny, but it also really hurts, so I will smile but I will not laugh.

And I don’t want to sit here and heal, I want to get up and do all. the. things. that need to be done. I want to control my environment, make things perfect, and execute my self-worth through production. I am what I do- am I not? Contentment is buried far beneath the laundry list of success. My counterfeit self finds validation in production and performance - this is the essence of control.

Human validation has become

the fly in the ointment

of all our hopes and dreams.

God, we have an agenda already. Can’t you just bless us quickly while we run?

This is the kind of limp where you think, “Yeah I am broken, but not THAT broken. Not me. I can still limp and keep up with the same pace as always. I can heal on the go.”

We rage against rest. We pull back from healing. Hope is an offensive four letter word.

My brother Jacob and I are learning that no person on this earth could ever fix what has been broken- human validation will always fall short. If you need it to succeed, you are destined to fail.

Accepting our limp requires sitting still in the presence of God, admitting weakness, asking for help, navigating emotions, and surrendering our agenda. This is best learned the hard way.

But because we are stubborn and resist change, we will put up a good fight first. He will have to drag us kicking and screaming out of the hard place we are determined to serve.

The truth is, only God knows the true identity of our most authentic self- we might think we know, but we really don’t.  

Not until we start to wrestle

in the dark of night with our trust issues

does the real pain begin.

God, reveal to us the depth of Your love.

Last week I followed Jacob through major relational conflict- he stole his brother’s birthright and inheritance and then ran for his life. He grabbed his blessing, flashed the peace sign and skipped town for good. He left his community behind.

Time passed- twenty years, to be exact, and then he gets the call that everyone dreads: it’s time to have that hard conversation- it’s time to face the past, there is no getting around it this time. Things are going to get heated and complicated.

So we straighten our spine, lift our head and enter the arena.

We are prepared to fight our brother. We are not prepared for what happens next.

Angels gather around to watch the fight.

32 ^[a]As Jacob started on his way again, angels of God came to meet him. ² When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is God’s camp!”

Right away we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who cheer for our victory. We must never forget this. It renews our hope to know that we are all supported by angelic forces. This revelation will serve to prepare us for the dark and lonely place, where the only companionship we will have is our fearful thoughts and angel guides.

But there is still a great deal of doubt and fear. Oh so much anxiety.

So we compose all the reasons that justify and explain our position, trying to make up for a lifetime of offense with a persuasive abundance of carefully crafted words:

³ Then Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother, Esau, who was living in the region of Seir in the land of Edom. ⁴ He told them, “Give this message to my master Esau: ‘Humble greetings from your servant Jacob. Until now I have been living with Uncle Laban, ⁵ and now I own cattle, donkeys, flocks of sheep and goats, and many servants, both men and women. I have sent these messengers to inform my lord of my coming, hoping that you will be friendly to me.’”

Fear is looming on the horizon- fear of the unknown, the dark possibility of a fresh wave of accusation and offense. Even after so much time has passed, anxiety is still firmly attached to memory. The past is haunted with grief and regret. It threatens to overwhelm us now.

⁶ After delivering the message, the messengers returned to Jacob and reported, “We met your brother, Esau, and he is already on his way to meet you—with an army of 400 men!” ⁷ Jacob was terrified at the news.

Persuasive writing cannot save us here. The fear is that all the strife has accomplished nothing at all, and an abundance of reckoning is about to be unleashed upon our finest hopes and dreams.

What exactly are we fighting for here? The question looms.

We realize that this epic battle is going to require a massive surrender of volition, and we will need to hold on tight to Him through the pain. Anxiety is billowing; the kind that rolls in slowly during the night and completely shrouds the future in mystery.

¹¹ O Lord, please rescue me from the hand of my brother, Esau. I am afraid that he is coming to attack me, along with my wives and children. 

We grapple with all the things that we want to understand, so that we can secure our victory, guaranteed.

 “I am afraid”

We are afraid of facing our authentic identity. We shield the places within us that are wounded and weak, preparing for the worst.

¹² But you promised me, ‘I will surely treat you kindly, and I will multiply your descendants until they become as numerous as the sands along the seashore—too many to count.’”

We remind God he owes us, because of what we have lost. “You promised me, God!” We rage at the sky. We shake our fist.

But I have learned the hard way to remember this when I demand deliverance:

The ones I feel opposed to

are not really my enemies at all-

they are just wounded prisoners of war.

The One I will wrestle with is much bigger and more powerful, and He is on His way.

Keep this in mind the next time you find yourself pushing hard against the limits of human brokenness:

Jacob thought, “I will try to appease him by sending gifts ahead of me. When I see him in person, perhaps he will be friendly to me.” ²¹ So the gifts were sent on ahead, while Jacob himself spent that night in the camp.

We instinctually know we will have to face this fight alone, away from all the distractions, so we can wrestle unhindered with our doubts about our true identity.

We must meet our opponent in the midst of solitude and silence, where we stand alone in the lonely place, separate from everything we had planned.

²² During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two servant wives, and his eleven sons and crossed the Jabbok River with them.²³ After taking them to the other side, he sent over all his possessions.

It is the dark of night and we stand alone, completely exposed. We cannot control this reckoning. The creation of our hands has now come to recreate us.

And then our Opponent enters the ring. And it’s not the enemy we expected.

We stand before our Maker.

He loves us too much to allow us into the arena with anyone less than Himself. And this is not what we had planned.

²⁴ This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break. 

Jesus.

What are You doing here? I came to fight my enemy. Where is the brother who hates me?

Jesus??

I brought all my best defenses- anger, wrath, vengeance, defense, excuse, a persuasive abundance of written words.

None of that will help me now.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

We have forgotten that

Love is war.

He has come to rage against my pride. Because it is the heights of arrogance that reveal the depths of depravity.

And I stand before God and I resist His name for me with all I have. I don’t want to be rescued from myself, I want to be vindicated from my hurts.

I refuse to be loved.

But His plans are imminent and divine, and they loom even larger than my regret.

²⁵ When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. 

He points right at the anger and obsession, and with a single touch the realization rocks our world, because He is dead right.

Oh my God, it’s true.

I am my own greatest enemy.

Those wounded prisoners of war who I was prepared to rage against, they do not belong in this arena. All the forces of my defensive anger are deflated by a single touch.

We are abruptly undone, pulled away without warning from our assumptions about ourselves and our world.

Jacob and I thought we knew our authentic self, until reality came and wrenched our self-perception completely out of alignment.

 “Don’t fix my identity it if it isn’t broken” has always been the subliminal mantra of certainty. But counterfeit confidence is the enemy of blessing.

There are wounds in our mind that we want Him to stay the hell away from. But to be healed, this obsession and pride must be broken.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Oh, but not like this.

Jesus!

God, the reckoning hurts like hell. There is a painful breaking of human arrogance in the divine revelation of God’s love.

He asks us to let go of the weapons

we think we need for victory.

He is going to reveal the depth of His love by commanding our brave trust in His insensible intervention. And this is madness. But what exactly are we fighting for?

²⁶ Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!”

The morning comes to light the dark inside of us.

This is the triumph of the Son.

The dawn of our realization is approaching. We are beginning to rouse from our offended slumber, and when numb things awaken they always flood with pain before they fully come to life.

If He asks you to let go of something in the dark of night, something you were positively certain  you needed to win the fight, do you trust Him to still bless you when you awaken with the sun?

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

When we ask for blessing, what we are really asking for is to be authentically loved. Jacob won’t release his grip on the physical nature of God, because he isn’t convinced of the Spiritual presence.

We still don’t trust that He will guide us if we let go. We were so certain of a particular type of victory- we had the outcome determined on our own terms, before He interrupted.

How can we win the battle against offense

if we fight against the people who offended us?

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The breaking of connection between our identity and our grief will mean loosening our attachment to the regret of the past. The place within you that you withhold from Him, that is the place of pain that needs to be touched. And it will hurt like hell, because your authentic self is wounded.

He sees this and steps into the arena to save us from ourselves.

This is what it feels like to fight for a breakthrough- before facing your future you must be broken and blessed in the weak place.

It is time for a renaming of who we are, a declaration of our true identity.

What you call yourself is many names: hurt, broken, wounded, ruined, desperate, angry, offended, wronged, afraid. These are not the names He calls you. Can you cast down these crowns of pride and claim the humble title of beloved?

God will ask us who we are now that our weapons of defense have been broken and our false identity has been found out.

²⁷ “What is your name?” the man asked.

Now our Opponent has pulled out the ultimate weapon, one which ends the match in a single blow: a mirror. A question.

Who are we becoming in this fight?

We stare ourselves in the reflection and realize that our persuasive abundance of defenses have always been destined to become our undoing. We are our own greatest enemy.

Jesus did not enter this arena to replace our offender, He entered the arena to replace our pride.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

The fight we expected is not the one we are in. To spar with your counterfeit self is to wrestle with the demons of your past, present and future, all at once. So Jesus stepped in to take their place.

What is our true name, anyhow? What are we becoming in this fight?

We don’t know anymore.

He replied, “Jacob.”

As we stare into this mirror, standing here in the arena with our Creator, breathing heavy and wiping sweat from our brow, straining and striving against the healing, our reflection begins to look like that of a total stranger.

What is my authentic self?

Why do we need to go to counselors and life-coaches and therapists and pastors and friends and churches to understand the workings of our own inner mind? Why do we need to write angry blogs, make broken resignations, and pour out a persuasive abundance of painful words?

It has come to blows because I am too scared to admit- I don’t understand His love for me. Not at all. 

I have underestimated everything.

We want to choose our own identity- but our present dreams are too small to give us the dignity we deserve as eternal spiritual beings. Now that we are broken, here in the arena with our wounded pride, He wants us to receive our authentic name.

It’s time to surrender to His blessing. It’s time for a new identity.

²⁸ “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him. “From now on you will be called Israel,^[c] because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

We did not realize we were walking into this fight to discover who we truly are in Him.  We did not know we would receive a new destiny. We did not ask for this blessing, but here it is.

Savor this breakthrough moment- it is the beginning of a transformation that will continue on for all eternity.

But don’t get too hasty- our character is not developed here, only our curiosity. We realize we were wrong about God all along, just as wrong as we were about ourselves. There is much training to be done for the fight still to come.

For with the rising of the Son we will face those who we intended to spar with on this night, and we will be asked to address them by their own blessed names.

The battle will never be the same after this.

God, who are You, to know me better than I know myself?  Who are You to wrench away my precious pride?

²⁹ “Please tell me your name,” Jacob said.

This unexpected opponent, He is going to exit the arena for now, but our questions have only just begun.

We are afraid for Him to go, now that we are leaning on Him for support from this pain.

Do we trust Him to bless us in this way, through a breaking and renaming of our entire being? If so, don’t let go when strained things inside begin to break. Don’t’ fight against hope when it hurts. Keep surrendering.

Love wrenches away our masks when it sheds light in the dark places. When we hold onto God in the fight, we give Him permission to authenticate our brokenness.

And this redemption will feel like wrath,

because of our counterfeit perspective.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

He points at the hard place and it breaks suddenly away. This will leave a scar- and a limp.

And then His presence recedes so that we can rest. He will be hidden in plain sight all around us while we slowly heal.

He will not overwhelm us with too much authenticity at one time. He blesses our doubts and honors our needs. He knows when to walk away from the fight. We cannot self-regulate our passion.

More is to come, but He does not want us to strive any more today. It is time to rest from the struggle.

It is time to begin to heal.

He will answer the hard questions another time.

“Why do you want to know my name?” the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

Did Jacob let go, or did God? Was it mutual?

The blessing came in the instant between the wounding and the healing, that timeless pause between defeat and victory, that eternal moment between letting go and falling.

And when He releases us, we feel like time stands still. It’s just the dark and the quiet and the empty hard place.

But we have an awareness now- this pain is a signature, a promise, full of authenticity.

We have seen a glimpse of our divine identity- we hold onto that blessing while we limp away.

Jacob and I, we search our enlightened thoughts for a Name to put to the new desire that is rising in our heart.

The pain of blessing radiates into our entire future. Now we have the power to give the fight inside of us a new trajectory.

³⁰ Jacob named the place Peniel (which means “face of God”), for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared.” 

We thought we would not survive the surrender.

But we tasted holy victory, the kind that comes after waving a white flag in the wind. And now we have seen God, struggled with Him, glimpsed the futility of our counterfeit person and been strangely blessed.

And I believe that one day when we are least expecting it, long after we have surrendered in gratitude and relinquished all control, the authenticity of our deep healing will reveal itself in an instant.

We will discover we have the power to limp with compassion towards those prisoners of war who we had once planned to rage against.

This fight was not what we had planned, but it was greater than we could have imagined. This is the emergence of the authentic self.

³¹ The sun was rising as Jacob left Peniel,^[d] and he was limping because of the injury to his hip.

Yes, the knowing leaves a scar. But now we don’t have to blame broken humanity for our suffering- rather, we can attach Divine blessing to it.

What once stood as a symbol of defeat

is now a war medal of victory.

He gives his beloved a limp that will be seen around the world, with a story that will go down into history as the glorious revelation of an eternal inheritance.

Dear readers, He has wrestled with me this week, and I have resisted Him. I have the limp to prove it. I can accept my weakness or curse it, but it’s a part of my story.

This is my story.

When God touched the strained and stubborn place, it sent off a chain reaction that has the potential to bless the entire world, one renaming at a time.

God, reveal the depth of Your love for me.

Never ask for Divine blessing if you want to maintain control over your perceived identity. Love is always war- it rages against your misconceptions and brings your counterfeit self to its knees.

What is my fully authentic self?

I don’t exactly know yet.

I have no idea what I’m doing. None.

But one thing I do know for certain- He blesses my questions. He prepares me for healing. And He renames my entire being.

He gives my passion

a new trajectory.

I have come here today to talk about how sometimes holding onto God hurts, and why we should do it anyways. The greatest blessings involve pain. This means we must trust in Someone that blesses our submission to weakness.

But who in the world wants to be blessed in such a crazy-backwards way, where the awakening hurts?

Once I am done writing this, I will limp forward from the hard place with mysterious hope in my heart.

The kind of hope that hurts inside as a reminder of where the healing has begun.

And I will come forth into my authentic self, one limping step at a time.

And there, at the foot of the cross where His wounds bless my soul, I will kneel and receive the bread and the cup alongside my fellow prisoners of war.

We will worship the One who has met us in the arena and brought us to our knees in victory.

And one fight at a time we will rise together above our wounds and we will inherit our true identities in the blessed Presence of our Creator.

Our victory is certain, because all are blessed when Love is war.

This is the proud moment 

when our brave surrender 

becomes the catalyst 

for our victory.

Yes, I am talking about you.

Dear tiny tribe of readers.

May all beings be peaceful and happy, even when it hurts. Amen and amen.

~*~

With deepest gratitude

for my tiny tribe of readers-

Rebecca

To read Pearls and Presence, click here.

To read my story, click here.

Precious Stones and Holy Dreams- Genesis 28

Do you ever ask yourself what you will be doing a thousand years from now? For we are all eternal beings, every single one of us.

We all have a story to tell that never ends.

Some of you are blessed so that you can bless others. And some of us are broken so that we can receive.

Today I run with Jacob.

We are learning together that stones are precious things. 

In regards to the anointing of stones, I cannot speak for anyone except myself- and my brother Jacob. You are welcome to join us if you like. Our angels are here with us- you can bring yours, too.

Yet some may see these words I write and say, who is she to speak of holy things?

No, I am not qualified. I am just another girl with a blog. Or so I have heard.

But guess what? Dear World- call me whatever you want, the King calls me Beloved. I AM ENOUGH. (Dear readers, say that with me- it's true for you, too!)

So for those who are always fleeing and never arriving, perhaps you should stop and anoint the very next blessing that you lay your weary head to rest upon.

Anything can happen in this barren place. The desert is a blank slate for God to write the story of the world.

So it’s time for Selah- a divine pause.

Some people say 'stop to smell the flowers'. But what if there are none? 

Some of us are in a desert wilderness, with only dust and dirt and rocks.

We are running away from our regrets with no destination in mind, much too busy to stop and dream or pause to anoint the stones. We run with our tears and our holy oil, clutching stolen promises to our hearts, but we have no idea what to do with them.

And we trip over rocks because we believe God logically, but emotionally we are fleeing blindly. When it comes down to our stony broken hearts, fear has become the justification for control.

We grab our blessing from Him and run like hell.

Problem is, there are angels in this place, within this wilderness, who follow after us and redeem us when we finally stop to rest. These angel guides are anointing our hard hearts with holy hope.

I can’t feel Him, I don’t see them, but when I close my eyes there is a knowing.

It’s the kind of ancient wisdom that you carry not in your head, because it does not live there, but deep in the recesses of your soul.

He is here- they are all here, looking over my shoulder as I write these words.

Hello, my angel guides. I welcome all of you.  Read my story with me.

But first you should know, dear reader, that sometimes I hold the Bible to my heart when I meditate, to join with the broken ones in Scripture who are also striving to produce something good.

Because Jacob and I, we believe a lie in our broken depths, the lie that we are only as good as what we present to the world.  We forget that we are most like our Creator when we are creating, not running.

Perhaps we are creating mosaics of sanctified stones in the desert of our hearts?

We forget that we are loved not because of what we produce, but because of who we are.

We are image bearers who have lost our shining softness. We have become hard as stone.

But God smiles down at us and says, “Be still, my child. It matters not what others say. I say that you are my creation. I say you are beloved. Stop running so I can anoint your stony heart.”

Instead of striving, always straining for more, what if we simply stopped and prayed?

But this is hard, because we are driven to either produce or consume the blessings of others. It’s the programming of our broken heritage.

God just wants us to lay down upon our heavy burdens, so that we can dream.

It’s time for Selah- a divine pause.

We cannot know how deeply we are loved until we stop running, lay still and close our eyes. Only then can we see.

And perhaps this small and insignificant gift of writing that I bring looks like nothing more than a plain, hard stone. Which it was, when I first lay my head down on it to recover. To rebel. To fight. To strive.

But this hard stone, it’s becoming sanctified.

And the angels are all watching in wonder. They gather around and glow with anticipation, pouring holy oil over the daily labor of these work-worn hands.

Did you know you have crowds of angels who follow you everywhere? They are your biggest fans.

They minister to you when you are sad, they celebrate with you when you are happy, they stand with you when you are brave. They follow fast behind you when you run. They anoint you when you become hard.

Jacob and I, we have known what it means to lay down and curl into a ball and try to become like a stone- cold, heavy, lifeless.

When you rightfully run from who you’ve been, without a doubt your demons will pursue. But you cannot stay, because what once served you is now becoming toxic.

What you once loved

is now contaminated with grief,

so it’s time to run away.

Thankfully, your angel guides are running, too.

They read with us here, leaning in closer to see Genesis 28:

⁵ So Isaac sent Jacob away.

This is how this chapter begins- with a hard farewell.

Jacob had a stolen gift- a blessing and a promise, a confiscated inheritance. He took off running with it, because it was not supposed to belong to him. He ran like his life depended on it- which it did. And he didn’t look back.

Jacob was running away from his brother, whom he hurt in order to be blessed.

This is what happened to our world when man rebelled against God- blessings became entangled with curses, fragments of good and bad all mixed together.

“God, what am I doing? Where am I going? What have I done?”

There are at least a few of us out here in the wilderness who ask this question. And I am not alone. I run alongside Jacob, that blessed thief who would someday return to be the leader of his people.

But first he had to cease striving, lay down and surrender to rest. He could not dream until he was completely still in body, mind and soul.

¹⁰ Meanwhile, Jacob left Beersheba and traveled toward Haran. ¹¹ At sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone to rest his head against and lay down to sleep. 

How weary do you have to be for a stone to feel comfortable? When your entire self-perception gets turned upside down, even a hard place looks inviting to the rampant mind.

Regret warps our judgement- rocks are mistaken for something soft and light. We turn to comfort from the wrong things.

But it’s OK, that’s normal, so God makes room for this mix-up, and his angels gather around to see what happens next.

And maybe we know

 exactly what we are running from,

 but are not sure

what we are running to.

I’m certain Jacob cried himself to sleep that night. Because when we finally stop running, our emotions catch up to us. That stone was covered with his tears.

Fear, regret, hope, desire. We run away from failure headlong into a dream.

As we lay down in the hard place, God reaches down to raise our thoughts higher, to rise above the sorrow.

¹² As Jacob slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.

Ah, I told you there were angels here. Close your eyes and see for yourself.

Disturbing wonder is the catalyst

for spiritual awakening.

God saves His best revelations for our worst moments.

When our minds settle down onto rock bottom, God turns that hard place into a foundation for building a new dream in our heart.

13 At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on belongs to you. I am giving it to you and your descendants.

The first thing we must do while we dream is to look up. Most people go through this life without ever looking up. Even in their dreams, their heads are down.

The hard ground we are quitting on, that is the place of revelation. Everything serves a dual purpose on this journey- it is both a physical act and a poetic metaphor.

And the duality is that our dream is about to become a reality, and the plain hard stones of our past are about to be sanctified and multiplied.

14 Your descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth! They will spread out in all directions—to the west and the east, to the north and the south. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants.

What do you dream when your head hits the pillow?

Do the desires of your heart look like victory for the entire world?

Raise your thoughts higher- look up.

There is abundance in this place.

The angels gather around you now as you read these words, enraptured with your response.

  ¹⁵ What’s more, I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”

Ah, but God, it is so hard to believe a promise that we don’t feel deep down in the depth of our being.

 

To believe something as great as that requires a releasing of the lies we comfort ourselves with, the stones that we pretend are pillows.

We are shedding something that is precious because we are growing up.

And as the sun rises, it dawns on us that the ones we are fleeing from are not our enemies at all, but wounded prisoners of war.

16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!”

The first thing we must do before we even open our eyes in the morning is remember our dreams. The ones we have carried in our heart since we were small. If we do this, then when we look around we will be filled with awestruck wonder at the simplest of things- like stones.

And yet, seeing the promises of God is also a bit like looking at a tidal wave which is headed straight for you, right where you stand in the dry desert. His blessings can be daunting and overwhelming.

They will crash over you wave after wave, so it’s best to be prepared. Start small- simply admit you are standing on hard and holy ground.

Name that desert place of dreams- call it Divine.

¹⁷ But he was also afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!”

We have suppressed our emotions for so long that the very rocks within us cry out to be sanctified.

All can be made holy if we allow it.

Remember that angels follow you everywhere, crowds of them, enraptured with your every dream.

How much does God love you- don’t you know? It’s a tidal wave of blessing.

Do not let emotions get in the way of this awakening, rather let them serve it. Seek to know that the Redeemer of stony hearts is the One who loves you forever and always into eternity.

18 The next morning Jacob got up very early. He took the stone he had rested his head against, and he set it upright as a memorial pillar. Then he poured olive oil over it.

What if everything we did in the next 24 hours was holy? What if every word and act and thought was sanctified today?

This is the moment for Selah- a divine pause.

Stop running and pick up a stone.

Anoint it, here and now.

Don’t hesitate.

If you don’t have holy oil, simply use your tears. It’s all the same, really.

 ¹⁹ He named that place Bethel (which means “house of God”).

And we will finally admit that rocks make terrible pillows because they bring no comfort at all. Those hard and heavy things we have grown used to, like fear and anger, anxiety and grief.

But when sanctified, these hard and heavy things can become holy relics of surrender.

We will forget our pain when our hands touch the sky in praise.

The house of God is built upon the hard cold stone inside of you, and the cracks in your walls of certainty let the light in.

It’s ok to admit that- the angels understand. They will ascend and descend upon all of it.

20 Then Jacob made this vow: “If God will indeed be with me and protect me on this journey, and if he will provide me with food and clothing,21 and if I return safely to my father’s home, then the Lord will certainly be my God.

And so we hope to return again to those wounded prisoners of war who we are fleeing from today. We hope to see these stones again. We trust God with the outcome.

What if we surrendered all the heavy things that weigh us down? What if the things in the margins were really the most important pieces to release?

If the hard stones of regret we lay our heads upon can become the foundation for our dreams, then perhaps there is not as much grief as we thought.

To surrender, simply anoint your past with honor and dignity, pouring recognition and compassion upon it. Then leave it behind you, to stand there as a testament of what you once were.

Keep walking, but leave the stones behind. They are all anointed- you can trust that they will be ok. That holy place will still be there when you return someday.

And you will return- although you don’t know when, because that is not part of the dream.

But for now, it’s best to leave the hard things. Bring only the dream which was built upon the bedrock of surrender.

Compartmentalize that which no longer serves you- sanctify the past and lay it down.

Move through the rest of your life trailing the angels of your dreams instead. 

Children remember dreams better than adults, so be childlike when you run to Him.

Now take a moment to say goodbye to the regret of the past. Say goodbye.

Here in the wilderness of meditation, find a stone and sanctify it. Dear reader, what is the stone of regret that you need to leave behind?

 ²² And this memorial pillar I have set up will become a place for worshiping God, and I will present to God a tenth of everything he gives me.”

The next thing to do is worship- this is the only way to survive now.

Worship like your life depends on it- because it does.

We are all spiritual beings in a physical temple, and worship is an act that brings unity to both sides of our composition, allowing them to work together for the same purpose.

Worship is the integrity of body, mind and soul.

And like Jacob, give at least ten percent of your thoughts to the dream in your heart- that’s a window of opportunity for your angels to gather around.

Be mindful of where you have come from, and never forget the lessons of the holy stones you left behind. Mindfulness brings balance.

The emotions should serve the spirit. Your vision should be supported by them.

Arise and go to Bethel- the house of God. This is not a church I speak of, but a community. A safe place to belong, where you can go to love and be loved, where you can anoint the stones of regret and leave them far behind.

Do you ever ask yourself what you will be doing a thousand years from now? For we are all eternal beings, every one of us. We all have a story to tell that never ends.

And when I read about Jacob I realize that All. The. Things. in our story can be holy.

Even the precious stones beneath our weary head.

The angels are waiting eagerly to see what happens next- they are the readers of your every word.  They are hangers-on of your every surrender.

Because Bethel is our city- our dreams belong in the House of God. Here the hard places beneath our heads will become holy and shining, a testament to our victory.

Yet who am I to speak of holy things? I am not qualified.

I am just another girl with a blog. Or so I have heard.

Call me whatever you want, because my King calls me Beloved. We are all His beloved- say it with me:

I AM ENOUGH.

Please realize that some of you are blessed so that you can bless others. And some of us are broken so that we can receive.

Today I run with Jacob.

We are learning together that stones are holy dreams.

If we are always fleeing and never arriving, we need to stop and anoint the very next blessing that we lay our heavy heads to rest upon.

It’s time for Selah- a divine pause.

And after I am done sanctifying my past,

I will walk away like my brother Jacob,

and I will dream like him, too.

Our angels are trailing close behind us, reading every word of our story.

Do you see them? They are here with us both. They are our biggest fans.

When I walk away from the hard place, I take a whole crowd of angels with me. They understand my victory- they applaud my courage. The stone I leave behind me is sanctified and waiting with honor for my return someday.

Dear reader, today I pray that you will find a moment to close your own eyes, rest your head and dream. And when you wake, anoint the heavy place in your heart and then set it down away from you. Leave your regret behind you for another day, because too much grief is toxic to your soul.

Feel how much lighter you are after surrendering the hard things- you can run so much faster.

Now go, move forward into the rest of your life, trailing the angels of your dreams behind you everywhere you go. Run towards the Creator, the Author of your story.

And may all beings be peaceful and happy.
Amen and amen.

~*~

With deepest gratitude 

for my tiny tribe of readers-

Rebecca

To read Pearls and Presence, click here.

To read my story, click here.