Dwelling in God’s Storehouse!
Verse for Today: Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Genesis 35:1 – Then God said to Jacob, “Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Easu.”
Jacob once vowed to God at Bethel that he would want to come back to Bethel to settle in worship. Bethel was the house of God that Jacob recognized early in life. It was there that he received the vision of the ladder and the promises of God. It was a place of promise from God. It was the place where Jacob experienced the fear of God in His awesome presence. Bethel moved the heart of Jacob so much so that he vowed tithe to God and to build a temple for permanent worship. But Jacob didn’t spend much time in Bethel as he promised. It can be seen that many of his heartaches that he encountered after his return from Paddan Aram came his way when he was away from Bethel. Staying in Bethel would have given the children of Jacob the kind of spiritual atmosphere and upbringing that they required. Jacob moved from place to place, building houses and tents, but God kept telling him to go to back to Bethel. Apparently Jacob knew the personal difficulties in dwelling in Bethel because there were idols in his household. So Jacob became an occasional visitor to Bethel rather than a permanent resident. The frequent movements have also caused him to find other seemingly convenient places where he worshipped God, but these moves gave him more and more trouble in his family, including bereavement, incest, rape, murder and loot. Jacob’s travels became travails for him and his family. In spite of the failures in his life, Jacob found his God keeping His promises to Jacob. But Jacob sadly missed the tranquility and pace that Bethel promised.
Dear reader, are you dwelling continuously in the presence of God and leading a life of repentance, confession and worship? Do the greatness and fearfulness of the presence of God move you to live reverently? Are you able to leave aside all the material blessings that the world offers and to stay close to the heart of God? Are there unfulfilled vows from your part that are still pending in the presence of God? Jacob’s life of misery as he moved about without continuously dwelling in Bethel is a great challenge for us to get back to God in the inner chambers of our lives. If we come back to the House of God at Bethel, we would find fulfillment of all the desires of our lives. Our return to the presence of God means that God gets us for Himself and we get God for ourselves. He will then become the intangible answer to all our longings in life. It is His presence that gives us all the desires of our lives. When we gaze at the beauty of our risen Lord in His glory, it would find fulfillment in our lives in the wake of all our inner needs. He becomes our everything and our all, and we become satiated with Him. If we digress from His presence, God might still keep His promises to us because of His faithfulness, but we will miss His best in our lives. He will also speak to us through the troubles that we get into because we no longer linger in Bethel for Him. Today Jacob’s wanderings speak to us about the urgency to get back to Bethel in our spiritual standing and dwell there so that we would enjoy His best for our lives. Bethel will meet all our needs according to His riches in glory. Let us today draw closer to the Lord at Bethel and enjoy His glory and leave all our cares to Him to handle.
Psalms 84:4 – Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; they are ever praising You.
Thought for Today
When we continually dwell in the presence of the Lord, we dwell inside His storehouse of all the blessings He has kept for us.
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