God Is in This Place

Pastor James Cole

You, uh, you know that feeling, right? That moment on a Monday morning when you wake up, and, and, and before your eyes even fully open, the weight of the week just hits you. Maybe it's an overflowing email inbox. Or maybe, maybe it's waiting on a phone call from a doctor, or an uncomfortable conversation you have been avoiding all weekend. You sit up on the edge of the bed, and, and you just feel... well, you feel completely on your own. It is so easy, so natural to look at the mess in front of us and just assume, well, God must be somewhere else. Somewhere holy, somewhere quiet, somewhere far away from this stressful little room.

Pastor James Cole

But I have been thinking a lot this week about a story in Genesis. Chapter twenty eight. It is the story of Jacob, and, er, Jacob is not sitting in a comfortable bedroom. He is on the run. He had cheated his brother, he lied to his father, and now he is fleeing for his absolute life across the desert. Night falls in this desolate place called Luz. He has no tent, no blanket, not even a soft patch of grass. The text says he takes a stone, an actual, hard stone block, and lays his head on it for a pillow.

Pastor James Cole

I mean, can you imagine that? Sleeping on the dirt with a rock under your head, terrified that your brother might track you down before dawn. But while he is lying there, exhausted and anxious, he falls asleep and he has this extraordinary dream. He sees a ramp, a massive stepped structure, what the Hebrew calls a sullam, stretching all the way from the dusty ground right up into heaven, with angels going up and down on it.

Pastor James Cole

And then comes the detail that just, well, it stops me in my tracks every time I read it. In verse thirteen, it says the Lord stood above it. Or at least, that is how a lot of our English Bibles translate the Hebrew word, uh, alav. But scholars point out that alav can also be translated as, God stood beside him. Standing right there beside Jacob as he lay exhausted in the dirt. Think about that for a second. God did not wait at the top of the staircase, looking down from a safe distance while Jacob suffered on a rock. God came down the steps. God stood beside a lying, anxious fugitive on the dirt of Luz, before Jacob had prayed, before he had repented, before he had done a single thing to earn it.

Pastor James Cole

It reminds me of a season in my own life, oh, about twelve years ago now. I was sitting in a hospital waiting room late at night. The fluorescent lights were buzzing, the coffee was terrible, and someone I loved deeply was behind double doors in surgery. I remember looking at the linoleum floor and thinking, God feels so distant right now. This place feels so secular, so cold, so stripped of anything sacred. But sitting there in that uncomfortable vinyl chair, I began to realize... grace was not waiting for me back at the church sanctuary. Grace was right there on that linoleum floor. I just had not opened my eyes to see it yet.

Pastor James Cole

When Jacob wakes up from that dream, he startles awake in the dark. And he says this amazing line in Genesis twenty eight, verse sixteen. He says, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it. He was so shocked that God was there, in that bleak wilderness stop, that he renames the place Bethel, which means the house of God. He realized that the ground he thought was just dirt and rocks was actually the very doorway of heaven.

Pastor James Cole

And, and I wonder... what if our problem on a Monday morning is not that God is absent from our routine, but that we are simply, well, unaware of Him? We tend to divide our lives into two piles, do we not? We put church and prayer and scripture in the sacred pile, and then we put traffic jams, folding laundry, spreadsheet reports, and tedious meetings in the secular pile. But Jacob's story turns that whole idea upside down. The rock in the wilderness, the hard, uncomfortable place you did not want to end up in, that is the exact ground where God encounters you.

Pastor James Cole

So here is my invitation for you today. A simple, practical practice you can carry with you right into the middle of your Monday. I call it the Bethel Pause. It takes maybe thirty seconds. Before you walk into that difficult meeting today, or before you click join on that awkward video call, or before you walk through the front door into a house full of chaos... just stop at the doorway for one breath.

Pastor James Cole

Put your hand on the doorframe, pause, and quietly whisper in your heart: God is in this place, and I am stepping into it with Him. Just that. That tiny pause changes everything. It reframes the room you are about to enter from a battle you have to fight alone into a sanctuary where God is already present, standing right beside you.

Pastor James Cole

Let us pray together before you go about your day.

Pastor James Cole

Heavenly Father, Lord God, for everyone listening right now who feels like they are sleeping on a hard pillow today, facing a week that feels overwhelming or lonely or mundane... open our eyes. Remind us that You do not stand far off at the top of the ladder. You walk down into our wilderness. You stand right beside us on the ordinary dirt of our lives. Give us the grace to pause today, to breathe, and to remember that Surely the Lord is in this place. We ask this in Your holy name. Amen. Go in peace today, my friends.