Eric Clark Ministries

The Rock of Earth and Ladder of Heaven

     In the book of Genesis, chapter 28, we find Jacob running from his brother Esau.  He will eventually end up in Haran in the house of his uncle, Laban.  He will then marry two women, work for over 14 years, and inevitably return to reconcile with his brother. However, in chapter 28, I see an interesting thing happen.  “And Jacob lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night because the sun was set, and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it…” Genesis 28: 1-13a. 

     God then affirms the covenant with Jacob that he had made with his grandfather Abraham.  “And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called that place Bethel:  but the name of that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” Genesis 28:16-22 KJV

     “This should be your ambition: to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we commanded you before.  As a result, people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others to meet your financial needs,” I Thessalonians 4:11-13 NLT.  This tells me that I have to work!  Christians need to work!  Lindsey and I have been married a little over 5 years now.  We have been blessed.  One of our strengths is finances.  It doesn’t mean we have a lot of money (for real), we just know how to handle what we do have.  Actually, we have lived with very little for quite some time.  We are huge givers and we love to give cheerfully.  We give of our self, substance, and service.  About a month ago, the Lord spoke to me.  I can’t say that God speaks to me like this all the time, but this was one of those times I heard him clearly.  He said to me, “I AM GOING TO PLACE A LADDER OVER AND ABOVE YOUR LIFE!  In exchange for this blessing, I am going to use up every drop of faith you have in this season of your life.”

     You must recognize the ladder of God in your life.  What do I mean?  For example, God let bread from heaven rain down in a desert and fed the hungry nation, but the same God that opened the windows of heaven and gave bread also closed them up.  It was a space, time, and open portal where God was blessing supernaturally.  Luke 5:17 says, “And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.”  Did that mean it wouldn’t be present anymore?  Of course not!  It meant that the writer recognized a special window of God open over his Son.  I tell you that the Lord said to me “I am about to re-pay you!”  Now, if you get offended at what I am about to say to you, you aren’t saved!  My wife and I have lived our lives giving to others.  We can’t even begin to tell you the labor we have done for the widow, poor, homeless, underprivileged, etc, just because that’s what we love to do.  Not out of constraint.  We love it.  It’s our duty and privilege.  We never thought about reward, never.  Yet, a few weeks ago the Lord said to me, “YOU CAST ALL YOUR BREAD UPON THE WATER AND THE TIME HAS COME FOR IT TO COME BACK TO YOU.”  At first I was a little like “okay, ahh Lord I’m broke.”  Not anymore!  I had a sure rest and peace about being broke.

     The lord took me back over the course of the last 5 years of my life.  Then he showed me the times that I thought my life would follow the pattern of others.  I thought it would happen for me like it happened for everyone else.  “I haven’t ever called a man and said let me come preach in your pulpit,” I heard a man once say.  I thought, “I have!”  I didn’t beg, but I have had to put my own gas in the tank from time to time.  It wasn’t all the wonderful open doors of men or God that helped.  Sometimes God helped me by using me to help me.  I looked around and seemingly everyone else was either sky lifted, driven by car, escorted by luxury, or with guidance walked straight up the mountain of life.  Then, I watched as God set me at the bottom of this mountain and gave me a shovel and said, “DIG”.  I had to go straight through the bottom of the mountain and many of you have as well.  I’ve had no silver spoons, butlers or bakers.  I’ve had trouble, temptation, testing, and hell.  But, I’m better for it!  I would have never had a “God Ear” had my pillow been soft with a silky inheritance.  I watched hundreds go up the smooth side as God snatched me up and said, “NOOO, HERE’S your path!”  Are you kidding Lord?

     I’ve never robbed God.  Oh there have been times I’ve said to myself, “I don’t have the money to pay tithes or offerings.”  But, we paid it anyway.  The path was filled with sharp rocks, just full of rocks.  He never told me “when” but he told me the day will come when I will make you lie down in a green pasture!! GREEN!!!  So a few weeks ago God told me, “Get up, I’ve come to bless you.  If you delay you will get left.”

     I told you if you break God’s laws and principles he can’t bless you…right!  Well, Jacob broke a lot of Dave Ramsey principles, and according to Genesis 30:43 was very wealthy.  Yeah, and he also got a hip replacement by God in Genesis 32, as he was knocked to the ground and had his thigh pulled out of joint and was smitten before he prevailed!!  So pick your poison!  HE WAS WEALTHY!  Because of his genealogy?  Maybe.  But do you think that it had anything to do with the fact that while on the run from a man that looked just like him (his twin brother Esau), he met God on the journey?  God has got something for anyone who has felt him….just once.  I have a cousin named Lloyd, who once got right and then backslid.  Time rocked on and he was in an accident that just about killed him, but left him with some scars.  Time rocked on and he kept running.  I got a voicemail from him, “Eric, just wanted to tell you that I’m going to church in the morning to get right.”  I said, once a person has had their inward candle touched/heated they can never pretend as though it hasn’t ever been lit.

     In Genesis 28, while running from life, Jacob got TIRED.  Sin, when it assimilates you to itself, will then drain all your vital energies and passion.  Everything will be a burden!!!!  Jacob came to a certain place and sat down.  He decided to sleep there and took the stones of that place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep.  IT’S HARD TO REST WHEN YOUR SPIRIT/SOUL ISN’T!  He dreams and sees a ladder reaching to heaven with God Himself standing at the top.  Can you recognize this ladder?  Do you see a God moment when it comes or do you miss moments?!  Do you understand that there are seasons in life?  Don’t worship them though!  Many, when you ask them, “How are you?”, don’t know where they are!  They talk about this season they are in or that season, always a different story.  Don’t worship them, but recognize if God has given you an effectual door to walk through.  For example, occasionally God will open the Bible up to me in a way that at other times, I can’t see.  It’s not that at other times I don’t receive, it’s that when God gives me a ladder over the Word I can climb up in it and enjoy it more!!!  Recognize if God has sent that to you.  One move you make can change your entire course.  Worship Him if you feel this.  Worship like you’re aiming at nothing and you’ll hit something I promise!

     I was so sick of just getting by, so sick of just making the payments.  If God controls all the money then why do the wicked seem to have most of it?  It always comes back to the issue of money.  I’m sick of it!  Rocks, Rocks, and More Rocks.  The purpose of the rocks in your life is to show you what’s really hard!  You will look back at life and where you are at the moment your reading this and say, “This isn’t hard, THAT was hard!”  It helps you to distinguish what’s real or a joke!  For many, life has been a pillow of stone.  All you ever talk about is the life of hell you’ve had!

     God said to me recently, “I’m going to repay you.”  It seems that God does these things at the oddest times!  Jacob woke up and 3 things happened: He made a vowed to God.  You are compelled when God opens his window to make a decision with your life.  You can’t waste time.  “God, if you’ll do that..I will serve you with all I am.  I will live a life with open hands and hearts.”  HE changes the name of the place Jacob was in from Luz to Bethel.  Luz means almond.  An almond is one of the healthiest nuts you can eat, but it’s real small!!  Bethel, of course means the house, sanctuary, or gate of God.  Some are called to change a community, others the world, and some the entire foundation of a city!

     Jacob said, “This is the house of God and gate of heaven.”  Lastly (the biggy), he turned his pillow into a pillar.  He poured oil upon that rock/pillow.  This was an act of worship.  A pillow is for rest, a pillar for remembrance.  It’s vital that you have life scars to remember what God did and where he did it!   This rock and ladder is a declaration that God opened a window in this season and told me, “I’m with you boy!”  You don’t forget that!  This place of a hard thing has become the measuring stick for all situations.  I can take the storms because, as Jacob, I’ve seen the face of God.  You have dreams, nudges, and times where his presence comes upon you and tells you something but you don’t have the money or anything else.  That stoned pillow is a declaration to not despise the hard place; you’ll remember it, I promise.  It will be a landmark.

     THE STONIEST PILLOW IS SOFT AS SILK TO HIM WHO SEES THE LADDER OF HEAVEN ALL AROUND HIM.  THIS LADDER KNITS EARTH TO HEAVEN.  UPON IT, ARE ALL BLESSINGS AND MERCIES, AND IT LEADS THE WAY TO THE VERY HEART OF GOD FROM WHOM THEY FLOW!

     I have felt God most near upon the hard ledge of defeat and confusion.  Praise you Lord!  I’m not in a recession, I’m successful!

“My Father will Feel Me”

Genesis 27:12 KJV

“My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.”

Genesis 27:21 KJV

“And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.”

     The Bible says in Genesis 27:1-4 KJV, “And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.  And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.”  The problem with Isaac’s request is that his wife overheard him. Rebekah then goes to Jacob, their youngest son, and creates a plan to get that blessing from Esau.  The plan would go as follows: Jacob was to go and take from the flock two goats and Rebekah would prepare a meal that his father would love, and then Rebekah would dress him in Esau’s clothes and cover him with goat’s hair.  Jacob then makes a profound statement that brings us to what I want to deal with in this writing.  Jacob told her, “My father will feel me and know that I am a deceiver.”  What a thought!  The child knew his father was a man of intimacy.  They proceed with the plan and something very interesting happens.  Isaac makes this statement in Genesis 27:22b, “The voice is Jacob’s, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 

     I believe we, as the body of Christ, must focus on what comes from the lips of the Father, rather than his hands.  What is coming out of the head of the body is more important than what comes from the body.  What do I mean?  Hearing God’s voice in my life is just as important to me as seeing the works of the Lord.  Many times it’s learning to “hear God” when you can’t “see God”.  Judas, the Bible records, was sitting at the table with all the other apostles, eating the Passover and the question came up, “Lord who is it that will betray you?”  Christ responded, “It is he who dips his hand with me in the dish, the same will betray me?”  What a statement.  Can I tell you that in the last days many leaders in the body of Christ will have a hand in the bread basket and a heart for the devil?  We can see that all around us.  The bread represents the word.  We’ve never lived in a time of more “revelation” than now!  The “laying on of hands” is commanded in scripture, but it profits nothing if the heart is far from God! 

     Jacob said, “What if my father feels me?”  This statement rang inside of me for a while.  I thought to myself that one of our problems is that we are, by nature, a little too prideful to be completely honest with God.  Feelings are a part of life.  Feelings are not altogether good or bad.  The flesh feels, as well as the soul and spirit.  We are taught as Christians, by leaders of the church that we are not to live by feelings.  This is an accurate statement; however, the other side of it seems to not ever be dealt with.  Nothing in you has the ability to respond to the will of God as God would have you too.  You must first get, well…a feeling!  A person must be convicted before they come to God.  Feelings are a part of life.  They must be regulated.  You must say to your feelings, “Feelings, you can live and work here, but you can’t be the boss because you don’t own the company.”  Faith doesn’t say with brash rebellion, “I don’t care how I feel, I live by faith.”  No, Faith hears your feelings.  Why?  Because sometimes that little bump you feel may be God saying, “Slow down, stop, or go.”  Then, after faith hears your feelings, that same faith tells you to stagger not at the promise of God.  A child of God has a gut feeling from the Holy Ghost, a witness that guides him through life.  That is a spiritual feeling!  There is a danger that comes with taking every feeling you have and calling it the devil or God.  We can’t substitute blissful emotions, or feelings for the Spirit of God’s voice.

     Yet, feelings get bashed too often.  God made you.  He didn’t make you a stoic, lifeless, emotionless robot.  God gave you feelings.  They are ok.  They are of God.  We, in the New Testament, can feel God without a veil to hold us back.  More than us feeling God, God feels us.  He feels!  My father will feel me.  God will lay claim to his possession that was purchased by His son.  God, you can live here because you are the owner.  We often say or pray, “Lord, touch me” or “Lord, lay your hand on me.”  The problem is that in itself.  We tend to hate for God to get into our most secret part.  The Father doesn’t need human hands to feel.  He’s not trying to find me because he already knows where I am.  He is a high priest that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmity!  Have you ever wondered why God wants you to ask Him for things He already knows you need, or tell him specific pains that He already knows you have?  I believe the reason is that God wants you to come into a reality and an agreement with the fact that He knows how you feel.  He feels my struggles and pains.  If I were to attempt to rob God of his privilege of intimacy with me, I couldn’t.  I can’t get “HOW HE FEELS” out of him.  I can’t change God’s mind about me.  I cannot change God like I can my fellow man.

     In the life of David, there is triumph and tragedy.  One tragedy in particular is when his son Absalom murdered his other son Amnon.  Amnon had raped Tamar, Absalom’s sister.  Absalom flees the country and we come to a place, where the writer of 2 Samuel, tells us that the soul of the king longed for Absalom.  Did you hear that?  David mourned for his son every day, according to the Bible.  Even in disarray the king’s heart was toward his child.  Do you and I know what this is?  This is an inner longing for someone.  I have heard the story of many mothers who in the middle of the night would wake up with a “feeling” that something was wrong with their child and be right about it.  Do you know what it is to be David here?  What is that?  To love the person, but hate what they have done; to have love and hate in the same heart; to have fear and faith toward the same situation.  This is a part of life.

     Isaac says to Jacob, “Come here son, I just want to feel you!”  It’s an eye opening thing when we take for granted those we love and when they are gone we say, “Oh, if I could just touch them again.”  I’ve heard people say about someone who had passed, “I can still hear their voice, but I just wish I could hold them again.”  Isn’t it strange how we desire intimacy too late?  The father of Jacob says, “Come to me, son.”

     Jacob is hiding and pretending to be someone else.  Maybe you’ve said to yourself, “If I come to God, He will know!”  Know what?  What you already know?  Huh?  It’s a little too late for that I think!  So we dress up, tape it up, and put on a face and then just eat up time, hoping all the while our demons will just go away.  Somehow we think we can “recipe” our way through life.  We think to ourselves, “I’ll put a little of this and a little of that and bam I’ll be me.”  All the while the Father of Heaven is saying, “Come near and let me feel your hands and hearts!”  Yet, we don’t see God blessing the real us.  I’ve often said that there are 3 people you are: Who you think, who others think, and who God knows!  We just can’t see God blessing the part we know He knows.  Somehow we think we have to impress God, so we flex our jobs, money, homes, pride etc.  I have found a great constant with many of us, and it is that deep inside, we never feel like it’s good enough.  We can never do good enough to “feel” like we please God.  If I come near Him he will show me my flaws.  It’s okay, you can’t fix them anyway.  My father feels me. This issue must be settled inside your heart or else you will look to another god.

     The Bible calls this salvation “a great salvation”.  Truly its greatness can be seen in the story of the prodigal son.  Luke 15 tells us of a boy who left his father’s house with his inheritance, spent all he had, and nearly ate from a pig trough.  Then the young man said, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of they hired servants.”  Is it just me, or do we always come to the Father with a transcript in our hands?!  We have a plan.  We have a plan to repent.  We think, “I’ll do this or I’ll say that.”  This boy had a recipe, he thought.  He had even thought of what he would say to his Father and what he would say about his own self: “I’m not worthy, just give me a job!”  This is us in a nutshell.  We flop and then try to work our way back to God’s lap of love.  The father sees his son coming from down the road, and the Bible says in Luke 15: 20b, “But when he saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”  What a dad!  However, if you think you can love your children, you can’t ever fathom how much God loves you.  The father then had the servant kill the fatted calf, put a ring on his hand, and put new shoes on his feet.  They were going to celebrate with a festival.  Can I tell you that many of us, as God’s children, never get to the festival?  What’s this?  One real issue is settled at this festival of the Father, and it is that God loves you and there is no controversy between you and God.  You don’t have to prove anything.  Is God a judge?  Absolutely!  Yet, God disciplines us in grace.  God doesn’t solicit the devil to do his work, whether it be healing or killing!  However, God’s not trying to kill you, but save you.  What is the evidence that you have accepted God’s love to you?  It is a quiet, unassuming, child like rest in Him!  Let the Father feel you today.