Chosen Grace

Hey y’all. Before we begin I just want to say welcome to March! We made it 3 months into 2021 and that is a blessing in itself. Ok, now enjoy this post!

The other day my mom called me. She was super excited to talk to me about her new pillows that she had gotten. As she told me about them, she described to me that they were the softest things that she had ever felt and she wondered, “Where have these pillows been all my life?!“

Just like the pillows that my mom recently purchased were the softest ever, life has it’s own pillows. Sometimes the pillows of life are just perfect- and we can easily put our trust in them as we lie down at night. And there are also other times where the pillows of life aren’t comfortable at all. Instead these pillows are hard and lumpy- making everything uncomfortable.

I’ve come to realize that when we are faced with the hard pillows of life, these are the times where God has called us to simply trust in Him. He wants us to rest our heads down on the hard and ugly thing that we don’t want to. And this is hard- trying to rest in the uncomfortableness.

To be transparent with you all, I’m in a a season like this right now. God has me in a very uncomfortable spot- and I don’t like it. However, I’m learning to rest where I’m at.

I also want to encourage you that God will bless you (and me) in this season of uncomfortableness. As I was asking God to help me out in my own journey, he led me to Genesis 28- where we meet Jacob. Let’s check out what he’s got going on in the verses below:

“¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. ¹¹ When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 

Now, these verses are in the middle of an important change that Jacob is undergoing. In the chapters before this one, we find Jacob busy tricking his brother Esau out of his birth right and tricking his father, Isaac, into blessing him. The anger that his brother had towards him caused him to flee from his home. And that’s how he found himself in this “certain place“, as it says above.

In this place- Jacob found himself alone and in an uncomfortable situation. The sun had gone down, meaning that he couldn’t see a thing- and he didn’t know which way to go. Our guy Jacob was completely worn out by life. Yet instead of running away from the place where God had put him, he decided to take a stone from the unfamiliar land and lie his head on it.

There are periods in our own lives where we get exhausted of running the race of life. And when this happens, like Jacob we must learn to stop where we are and rest. Once we do, God will show himself to us- like He did to Jacob in the verses below:

¹² He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it^[c] stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. ¹⁴ Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.^[d] 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. ¹⁶ When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” ¹⁷ He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

Alright…this is powerful. God revealed his glory to Jacob in a very miraculous way. Because Jacob rested- he was able to hear the voice of the Lord more clearly. He was able to have vision about where God was about to take him next.

This wouldn’t have happened if Jacob would have remained back home with his family- back where he was comfortable. Because he allowed God to move him into unfamiliar territory, he was able to hear God’s voice more intimately than ever before.

The same way this happened to Jacob- this can happen with us as well. If we rest in our uncomfortableness, God is sure to speak to us about what are next moves are in store for us. God will surely give us beauty for our ashes (Isaiah 61:3).

¹⁸ Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it.

This last scripture I shared with you all is important. After realizing how God was with him and for him, Jacob pours oil on top of the stone that he had rested on. This act that Jacob did seemed simple, but definitely has a much deeper implication.

Oil is always significant in the Bible, because it represents the Holy Spirit. The act of pouring oil on the stone was Jacob’s way of sealing and surrendering to God. He sealed the promise that God had spoken to him- that He would remain with him (verse 15). Jacob also surrendered to God. This act of surrenderance gave God full range and control over his life.

With the oil flowing, Jacob allowed God to work in his uncomfortableness.

We too can have oil flowing in our life. If we step back and rest in our uncomfortableness, God will take the very rock we lay our head down on and use it as a stepping stone to propel us into our destiny. After all, all things- the good, the bad, and the ugly– are working for our good (Romans 8:28).

As this post comes to an end, I just want to encourage you all to rest in whatever season God has you in. It may not feel good and it may not be where you want to be- but trust that God will never leave you nor forsake you.

Rest on your Rock….The Rock that is Jesus Christ.

With love and a new appreciation for uncomfortableness,

Malaysia