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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Thank you for listening to your Daily Bible Verse,

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Speaker 1: a podcast that examines one verse each day to learn

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Speaker 1: more about God and his will for our lives. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Kyle Norman. After a brief message from one

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Speaker 1: of our sponsors, we will continue with today's verse. Today's

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Speaker 1: verse can be found in Genesis, chapter twenty eight, verse sixteen.

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Speaker 1: When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, surely the

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Speaker 1: Lord is in this place and I was not aware

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Speaker 1: of it. How do you find God? Well, this was

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Speaker 1: the question that was recently asked of me. The questioner

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Speaker 1: was lamenting his struggle to find a place where he

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Speaker 1: felt connected with God. Ancient Israel had the Temple, which

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Speaker 1: was known as the House of the Lord. So where

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Speaker 1: do we go? He asked? Is this the local church?

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Speaker 1: But if so, how do I know which is the

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Speaker 1: right one? Are some churches more of God's House than others?

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Speaker 1: If I want to find God, he said, where do

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Speaker 1: I go? It's easy to believe that God dwells in

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Speaker 1: special places, and so finding God involves finding these special places.

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Speaker 1: Celtic spirituality had a concept called the thin place. A

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Speaker 1: thin place describes a location where the veil between heaven

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Speaker 1: and earth is thin, is a place where heaven touches earth.

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Speaker 1: So if you want to connect with God, you just

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Speaker 1: need to find find one of these thin places. And

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Speaker 1: with that in mind, it might be easy to read

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Speaker 1: about Jacob's dream in the desert at Bethel as an

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Speaker 1: instance of a thin place. Jacob dreams about God's presence

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Speaker 1: because he finds himself sleeping in a place where heaven

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Speaker 1: touches earth will lucky him. But is that really what happens?

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Speaker 1: Could there be more going on if you don't remember

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Speaker 1: Jacob's story. Jacob is not the holiest of people at

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Speaker 1: this point. He's a liar and a deceiver, and he

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Speaker 1: had previously conned his brother out of his birthright and

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Speaker 1: stolen his blessing. Esau has vowed now to kill him.

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Speaker 1: So at the point when Jacob lays down to rest,

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Speaker 1: he isn't out for a stroll. He's not going on vacation.

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Speaker 1: He is running for his life. Jacob was neither trying

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Speaker 1: to find a holy place or find the Holy God. Internally,

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Speaker 1: he was probably anxious, maybe a little bit of afraid,

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Speaker 1: and he laid down to rest in what scripture calls

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Speaker 1: just quote a certain place because he was exhausted from

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Speaker 1: his running, and the sun was setting. This was an

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Speaker 1: ordinary patch of desert under an ordinary sky, under ordinary

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Speaker 1: stars on an ordinary day. But what made it holy, however,

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Speaker 1: was that God came and met Jacob. There, Jacob meets

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Speaker 1: the Lord. Jacob's dream is not about this special place.

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Speaker 1: It is about the presence of God with him. God

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Speaker 1: comes to Jacob in his confusion and his lostness. Now,

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Speaker 1: often when we read the story, we pay particular attention

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Speaker 1: to this ladder, to the stairway to Heaven, with angels

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Speaker 1: come and going. We call it Jacob's ladder. But the

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Speaker 1: point of the dream isn't the angels and is not

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Speaker 1: the ladder. The point of his vision was of God's presence,

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Speaker 1: because he sees God dwelling above the ladder, and God

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Speaker 1: expresses how Jacob is part of God's continuing plan and

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Speaker 1: how God would continue to journey with Jacob wherever he went.

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Speaker 1: To the very person who felt lost, the divine word

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Speaker 1: comes and says, You're not actually lost. You are a

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Speaker 1: part of God's plan. To a person who felt completely alone,

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Speaker 1: they hear the word you are not actually alone. I

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Speaker 1: will be with you, and I will continue with you

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Speaker 1: and This event begins Jacob's transformation, because in this moment,

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Speaker 1: he begins to understand that there is something bigger than

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Speaker 1: his own grasping and striving. Jacob begins to recognize, even

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Speaker 1: just for a moment, that God was not an abstraction,

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Speaker 1: and that God journeyed with him in his life. And

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Speaker 1: so he wakes up and he says, surely God is

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Speaker 1: in this place. Psalm one hundred and thirty nine has

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Speaker 1: a great way of describing what Jacob experienced. It says,

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Speaker 1: where can I go from your spirit? Or where can

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Speaker 1: I flee from your presence? If I ascend to the heavens,

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Speaker 1: you are there. If I descend down to the place

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Speaker 1: of the dead, you are there. If I take the

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Speaker 1: wings of the morning or go on the sea, you

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Speaker 1: are there. And scholars point out that these verses don't

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Speaker 1: describe the omnipresence of God, but the pursuit of God.

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Speaker 1: God comes to us no matter where we are, in

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Speaker 1: whatever corner of life we might find ourselves. This is

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Speaker 1: what Jacob experiences, God pursuing him. And so Jacob rises

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Speaker 1: in the morning and says, surely the Lord is in

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Speaker 1: this place. Not because it was a thin place that

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Speaker 1: Jacob happened to stumble upon but because Jacob was there

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Speaker 1: and God desired to meet him. Yes, God is everywhere,

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Speaker 1: but God also comes to us. God meets us where

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Speaker 1: we are, and in that way we get to say,

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Speaker 1: in every place, on every day, surely the Lord is

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Speaker 1: in this place. And we are not always aware of

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Speaker 1: God's presence. Like Jacob, we can be so easily filled

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Speaker 1: with other things that we never give ourselves the time

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Speaker 1: or the space to turn our attention beyond ourselves. But

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Speaker 1: God has promised never to leave us. So what might

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Speaker 1: it look like to simply stop, just like Jacob did?

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Speaker 1: What if we recognize that this place wherever we are

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Speaker 1: right now now could be our bethel, could be our

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Speaker 1: house of the Lord. What if, deep in our soul

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Speaker 1: we believe that God desires to be known and wishes

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Speaker 1: to meet us in this place right now? Could we

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Speaker 1: believe the place where we stand is a place where

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Speaker 1: Heaven touches earth. And might we find ourselves, being soul

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Speaker 1: filled with awe, that we join Jacob in saying, surely

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Speaker 1: the Lord is here,