If you could design the kind of person God shows up for, Jacob wouldn’t make the shortlist.
He’s a schemer. A deceiver. A man whose name literally means ‘the one who trips you up’ — which, honestly, is a pretty accurate job description for most of his early life. He talked his hungry twin out of his birthright for a bowl of stew. He dressed up in borrowed clothes to trick his elderly, nearly-blind father into giving him the blessing that belonged to his brother. His brother — understandably — wanted him dead.
And then God showed up. Not after Jacob sorted himself out. Not when he’d learned his lesson. Not at the end of a period of moral reform and spiritual preparation. In the middle of nowhere, while Jacob was sleeping on a rock, on the run from his consequences, with no home and no plan and no idea what came next.
God showed up anyway.
That’s the story in Genesis 28, and I want you to sit with it for a moment before we move on — because this is the pattern that runs through the whole Bible, and it has enormous implications for how you understand your own story.
God has a habit of showing up to the unqualified. Moses was a murderer with a speech impediment when God called him from a burning bush. Gideon was hiding in a winepress from his enemies when the angel arrived and called him a mighty warrior. David was so unlikely a choice that his father didn’t even bother to bring him in when Samuel came to anoint a king.
None of them were ready. None of them would have made the list if the decision had been ours to make.
And yet. God showed up.
Chapter 2 of What You See Matters lives in Jacob’s story — in the in-between space where he finds himself, the extraordinary vision he has in that unnamed place, and the promise God makes to a man sleeping on a rock that he will not leave until he has done everything he said he would.
I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.
Not a conditional promise. Not ‘if you behave.’ A declaration from a God who finishes what he starts.
Whatever your in-between looks like right now — between the job you had and the one you’re hoping for, between the relationship that ended and the one you can’t quite imagine yet, between the version of faith you grew up with and whatever comes next — Jacob’s story says: this is exactly where God meets people.
Not on the other side of the in-between. Right here. Right now.
In the middle of the uncertain, unresolved, uncomfortable middle.
What You See Matters — because sometimes the rock you’re sleeping on is the very place heaven opens.
📖 What You See Matters is available now. Grab your copy and start seeing differently.
