God wants your eyes opened to a dynamic, spiritual world that both coincides with and transforms the physical universe. He wants you to live extraordinarily in the context of the ordinary. He wants you in on the secret – the supernatural is accessible. Yes, God desires to live with you, despite the infinite distance between the two of you. He wants you to see the unseen and build the eternal, even while stuck in moments of time.
The unveiling of this awesome, spiritual realm can happen at any point, in any place. Consider Jacob, son of Isaac. Running from his brother, Esau, whom he had deceived, Jacob finds a place in which to rest one night. “Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep” (Genesis 28:11, ESV). Then God gave Jacob a dream about a staircase set up on the earth that reached to Heaven. Angels of God were ascending and descending on this glorious staircase. To me, one of the most amazing parts of the dream was what the Lord said as Jacob watched angels travel from Heaven to earth and from earth to Heaven. God promised, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and your offspring . . . Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land” (Genesis 28:13, 15, ESV).
Did you catch it? God is interested in even the dirt beneath our feet! God is in the business of bringing His presence to this earth and His promise to the very real and practical places of our lives. The Lord does not beckon Jacob to somehow climb into a spiritual-only realm way out “beyond the blue.” Our God shows Jacob that He connects the earthly and heavenly. The Lord tells Jacob that the very ground on which he rests with a stone as a pillow will be the land that is blessed – the land where God will be with us. Our Creator has not forsaken us or the earth His hand fashioned. No, our Maker reveals to Jacob – and to us – a portal to the spiritual realm of blessing. Through God’s supernatural working, the ordinary stuff is transformed into the utterly amazing.
When Jacob awoke, he proclaimed something that resonates in our own hearts, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16, ESV). Yes! We need awakened to the reality that God is right where we are – working and moving. Your house is more than just a house; it is a place where God lives and moves and comforts and grows you. The stoplight at which you sit in your car is contained in no mundane intersection; it is a location where angels dwell and where God’s Spirit speaks. Do you see the staircase? Is your heart open to that portal between the regular and the miraculous? If not, I can tell you why.
That staircase – that Way – to the spiritual realm . . . is Jesus. He said to Nathanael one day, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51, ESV). Jesus here declares that He is, in fact, the staircase of Jacob’s dream. Jesus Christ is the Gate through which we enter the supernatural world of God’s blessing. Jesus is the Way to see what truly matters in the midst of the ordinary. He paid the price for our sin, in order that we might experience the miracle of God working right here where we are.
Ultimately, God will bring His dwelling place to us. The apostle John declared in a vision from God of the future, “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:2, 3, ESV, emphasis mine). Until that day when God surrounds us with His fullness, we thank Him for Jesus, the staircase that opens the way for us to the things of God even now . . . as we walk this “ordinary” terrain.