| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “The awesome reality of the presence of God” Our Bible verse for today: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Genesis 28:16 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Every place is potentially a sacred place” A.W. Tozer was a pastor, author, magazine editor, and mentor of pastors in the early-to-mid 1900s. He was a friendly, down-to-earth, and easily approachable person, but he had such deep spiritual insight that he was often referred to as “a modern mystic”. Tozer’s many books are still widely read today, almost sixty years after his death. Writing about the awesome reality of the presence of God Tozer once said, “Men do not know if God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew.” Yes, what a difference it would make in our lives if we would remain aware of the awesome truth that God is right here with us. There is never a time when we are out of His presence. The Old Testament patriarch Jacob needed to learn that lesson. In Genesis chapter twenty-eight we read about a young Jacob on a journey to the land of his relatives to find a wife for himself. One night, out in the wilderness, God gave him a vison in a dream regarding the great future He had in store for Jacob. When he awoke, Jacob declared, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” He concluded that this must be a sacred place so, he named it “Bethel” (house of God), and he quickly built an altar there and worshipped. The important point that Jacob missed though is that God is everywhere, all the time, and therefore every place is potentially sacred. It’s all sacred space. It’s not that God wasn’t there with Jacob before the dream, or after it, it’s just that during the dream Jacob became aware of God’s presence with Him, and therefore decided it was a holy, sacred place. We need to learn the same lesson. As Tozer said, what a difference it would make in our lives if we knew, if we remembered, that God is right here with us, in this place, at this very moment. If we did, then we would realize that every place has the potential to be a sacred place where we can encounter God. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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