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[no audio] [INAUDIBLE] Calling for us to come away. Somehow we can be whole to do what God gives us to do

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and accepting the challenge of life. And he's calling today, maybe you're in me or somewhere, away from your responsibility, away from God and what God wants you to do.

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And calling us, softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling from you and from me. [Music]

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[ Music ] [music] [Music] ♪ Standing near the shady creek ♪

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♪ He saw a man standing near ♪ ♪ Was a man of great strength ♪ ♪ He was a man of great strength ♪ ♪ He touched down the hill ♪

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♪ I've lost the key to the other key ♪ ♪ But now I'm free to dream ♪ ♪ Oh, so am I, shall I be free ♪ ♪ Shall I be free, oh, shall I be free ♪

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♪ Oh, so am I, shall I be free ♪ ♪ Oh, so I'll be in your peace ♪ ♪ And I'll be in your peace ♪ ♪ Still be in your peace ♪

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♪ Still be in your peace ♪ ♪ Oh, I'll be still be in your peace ♪ ♪ Oh, so I'll be in your peace ♪ Barry Bowern, silent meditation.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] (dramatic music)

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(coughing) (dramatic music) [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music]

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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[MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [Music] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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[MUSIC] [Bugle plays] Jacob came to a certain place and tarried there all night

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because the sun was set, and he took of the stones of that place and put for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep. Genesis the 28th chapter and the 11th verse, the 22nd verse is at the end of that chapter where Jacob says, "And this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's

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house and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee." Jacob's pillow, P-I-L-L-O-W, and Jacob's pillar, P-I-L-L-A-R-O. Jacob's pillow and Jacob's pillar. A pillow. As we think of a pillow, we think of sleeping.

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Support for the head of a sleeping person. Sometimes it's a cloth bag filled with feathers. Sometimes it's sponge rubber, sometimes it's cushion, but it is considered a block of support. We have a great deal of concern about how we rest, how we relax, how we get our strength

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renewed. Some people like to sleep on a certain kind of mattress, maybe a beauty rest mattress. Some like, well, when I was a boy, I slept on a feather mattress. I went up to Fort Worth a few years ago and they said, "Rev. all we have in that particular

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motel, Ramada Motel, is a water mattress. And I slept, I said, "Well, give me that." And I slept on that mattress. I felt like I was just floating on water all night.

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So how, what do we have to support us When we seek rest, relaxation, and renewal, has a great deal to do with our health, not only physically, but spiritually.

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We are concerned about sleeping, and as we are concerned about sleep, We have to rely upon pillows to help us, to support us in that. Now a pillow, P-I-L-L-E-R, is a post that is used for support.

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The great structure which we have here, as we look out even and see very clear this morning in our balcony, that pillow which supports all of the weight up there, and other pillows all along this building to support this great superstructure.

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Also it may be used as a monument, stone to remember certain events that take place, point up certain experiences that have occurred in life. And I want you to come with me in the long ago and see a man called Jacob who

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has run away from home. He is now out in the wide open spaces. He's tired. It's time for him to get rest, to go to sleep, and he has a stone, not a soft pillow that we're accustomed to, but a stone-fied pillow. That would appear to us to be pretty hard sleeping, to have to sleep on a stone. We complain when things are not quite comfortable. If the air conditioner is

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off, we're immediately disturbed. We are accustomed in our modern society to certain comforts and conveniences, so was Jacob. But here he finds himself in a desert place. He finds himself in a wilderness. When the Bible really speaks of a wilderness, it means a lonely place, no one there but you. This is where life has led Jacob. It seems

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Jacob's own maneuverings have led him to this point. In the course of his activities. Jacob has now come to the place where he must rest in a hard place. I used to hear the older people say when I was a boy that if you make your bed hard you've got to lay in it. Sometimes we come to a place in our experience where

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bed is hard. This is what has happened to Jacob. He's come to a place in his life where he's out here in the wilderness with a stone for his pillow. As a child he had been accustomed to a kind of cushioned security. He was his mother's favorite child. He usually got things the way he wanted them. Whatever he wanted to eat, his mother

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took great pains to get it and prepare it just the way Jacob wanted it. He received special attention and many favors. And all of those things seem to have added up to a cushioned life. But Jacob thought that he could get ahead by mistreating his brother. He's remembered as a trickster.

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He was trying to live by his cleverness. And that's true of our society. We have devised a great number of techniques, and we're clever in many ways.

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And many times, we use our cleverness to cause other people to suffer injustices. So what Jacob has done has led him by seeking to deceive his father and to rob his brother

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of his birthright. He saw his now on his heels seeking his life. All of the things that have worked in his life seem to have added up to something wrong.

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Jacob, to use the terms of our days, was a kind of spoiled brat, a pampered pet, who thought that everything had to go his way.

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In addition to the favored position at home, he had let it move him in the wrong direction, and he has come now to a point in life where he has a hard place to rest his head. He's in a lonely place. His tricks have led him there. He thought they were working well, But they have got him in serious trouble. He's alone and a long way from home.

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Have you ever been alone and a long, long way from home and in trouble? Things not working the way you expected them to work? And you're out there on your own, And you don't have a telephone to call home. And sometimes if you had the telephone to call home,

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that what you needed, home didn't have. Have you ever been in that position? Well, there are those situations in life. And if you haven't gotten in them, you just keep living.

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They are along the way. This is the kind of position that Jacob is in. It's night. He now is under the cover of darkness.

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He's tired. He's alone. He's disturbed. And he lies down with a stone for a pillow.

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for a pillar. Now I'd like to call that what Georgia Harkness calls the dark night of the soul. Now you know what it is to be in the darkness. You know what it is when all of the lights are out and there's no no light at all to give you any direction. You go home like that one night and try to move around, do everything, cook and do all of that with no light, not at all.

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And there is this kind of experience that comes in the soul, the dark night of the soul. When you find yourself surrounded by darkness and you do not see where to go, you don't know what to do, nothing seems to point us a direction for you to travel. It's the dark night of the soul. There's no one there to support you.

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Husband, wife, sister, brother, father, mother, no one there, you're alone. The dark night of the soul. And you've got to wrestle and wrestle,

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wrestle with yourself and try to work out that the solution to that problem. You've ever been in that position? - Yes.

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- That's the position Jacob was in. That's a hard place. You have a stone-fire pillar. It's a hard place. You know, some people like to talk about how when their pillar is soft. But when we look at Jacob, the thing that makes this message here, this word in our Scripture,

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it's written there not because it doesn't tell us about how soft his pillar was at home, but what happened to him when he had this stone for a pillar? And what really determines your character and my character, what really determines this one spiritual strength

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is what happens when you have a hard place in life. What really happens when you have a stone for a pillar. What really happens when life gets hard?

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When life gets hard, what really happens to you? Well, Jacob fell asleep, seeking rest, relaxation, spiritual renewal, fearful, and a sense of frustrated, disturbed within, doubts about whether or not he was going to make the journey safely, unable to see what was ahead, not knowing really where he was going, he's come to this point.

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And as he sleeps, he has a vision of God. As he sleeps, he has a vision of God. And in this dream that he has, this dream of Jacob's, he sees a ladder which is let down from heaven and angels going up and down that ladder.

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See, there is no circumstance, there's no condition that we can get in where God does not appear. In the hardest condition and circumstance, there Jacob had a a vision of God and he was able to enter into an encounter with the eternal reality when life really got hard for him.

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That's when we are really tested, when things are really rough for us. is always present because he never forsakes us, never leaves us alone. It's strange, but yet it's true. Some of the circumstances you'd like to get rid of, we wouldn't welcome it at all, a hard experience, and yet it can be used.

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And many have used it when we've had a stone for a pillar. When Jacob entered into it, he said, "Well, surely the Lord was here, and I didn't know it." You know, sometimes when you're having trouble,

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you think that it's because God has forsaken you. And we've got a way, you know, in the community, He said, "Why is this happening? "You know, they must not be living right."

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That's the usual theology. That's the usual lay theology that you hear when people get really in a hard place and have a stone to their pillar.

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That's what people say. If you really get hard up and everybody knows that you lose your car, you lose your home, you lose your job, and people say,

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"They must not be living right." The Lord wouldn't let that happen But no matter what happens, sometimes life really gets hard when you have a stone for your pillar,

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that you can have a vision of God. And Jacob, he would know what all of his tricks and all of the mess that his cleverness had got him into. When Jacob saw God, he said,

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I thought I was out here in a God-forsaken country. But he said, "Surely the Lord was in this place." And I didn't know it. As you get older and you have this happen,

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this to happen to you, this ailment, that ailment, arthritis, rheumatism, whatever it may be, and you begin to say, "Why did the Lord "let this happen to me?"

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But what Jacob is saying, that right here in this place, with all of the illness, with all of the pain that's there, surely the Lord is in this place. That the Lord will be with us in our suffering.

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The Lord is in the hard places of life. Surely the Lord is in this place. Look at the great men of history. Dante dreamed his immortal dream

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when he had a stone for a pillar. An exile from his own country, who was wandering from place to place, from patron to patron,

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in a hard path to travel. William Ernest Hindley, who wrote that poem, Invictus, out of the night that covers me,

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back as a pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my incomparable soul. But here was a man suffering from tuberculosis, talking about, it matters not how straight the gate,

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how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I'm the captain of my soul. You see, in the hard places of life, right now when you have a pillar for a stone,

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God is there. And he said, "Surely." He said, "I know God is here. "Surely the Lord is in this place."

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Milton wrote "Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained." A man suffering from blindness. Hard place, stone for a killer. Beethoven, when he wrote his last great symphony,

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was practically deaf, couldn't even hear the music that was being played. the great symphony that he had written, but there was something he could hear in his soul.

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Surely the Lord is in his place. - Stone for a pillow. - Surely the Lord is in this place. Well, Jacob said, since my trouble

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has led me to have a deep experience with God, with God, he said, "I want to take this pillow, this stone that I've used for a pillow, and I'm going to erect a monument right here that I'll never forget. That whenever I pass this way, within the colonies of my memory, I'll have a monument

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Do you have any stones? You know where your pillar was hard and you put a, you've taken that pillow, that P-I-L-L-O-W, and you put it there as a pillar? Because here your life has been strongly supported by the trouble that you've had. You know, I talk about my college experience because that was a stone I had for a pillar. Nobody didn't see how I was going to make it. And somehow in the midst of all of that adversity, God miraculously led me through.

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Well that's a pillow that has become a pillar in my life. If you've had a great illness, doctors have given you up, and you didn't know how you were going to get well. and somehow God led you through when everybody else said that you won't get through, that's making that pillar into a pillar. Surely, whenever you come to those hard places brothers and sisters, say in the language of Jacob,

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Surely the Lord is in this place. That's the language of faith. It's the language of one that has calm confidence that what has happened, that God has been in the midst of it

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in spite of all of the reverses and the adversities. God has been in the, surely, and I like the surelys that God gives us. Surely, surely the Lord is in this place.

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Surely, no matter what happens, we read this morning in the response of reading, surely, he will deliver thee from the snare of the fowl. Surely, surely. Now Isaiah picks it up, he says, surely, surely, he has borne our grief.

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Surely, surely, surely. Then David in the 23rd Psalm says, "Surely," when you have faith, no matter what's gonna happen down the road,

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when you come to the hard places, it says, "Surely, surely, surely goodness and mercy "shall follow me all the days of my life, "and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

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And so, brothers and sisters, when you get to those hard places, and if you haven't come to them, they're down there, just when you get through it,

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God comes to your rescue, put a monument there. And say, yes, I remember how God led me through it, this place. And that's the experience that causes us

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to get nearer to God. And that's why that song was written, Nearer, My God, to Thee. It's really based on Jacob's experience.

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But that's not Jacob's experience alone. It's my experience, it's your experience. And as the choir sings, "Nearer, my God, to Thee," we invite you to come this morning.

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Make that pillow into a pillar, that hard place. Make it a glorious experience with God to enrich your life. You can be able to say, "Surely, surely, surely, surely,

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The Lord is in this place. I didn't know it at first, but he was there. Came to my rescue. Lifted me up.

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Set me on my journey again with new determination and new strength. Come now. [MUSIC - "HERE RULES MY LORD"]

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Here rules my Lord too. mirror my God to thee, mirror to thee. Even in the hard places. Even though it be a stone, that cross, still for my soul shall be a crown of thine. [Music]

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♪ My soul shall be ♪ ♪ Nearer, O my God, to Thee ♪ ♪ Nearer, O my God, to Thee ♪ ♪ Here am I to thee ♪

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♪ Though I'm a wanderer ♪ ♪ The stars are round ♪ ♪ Drown this grief over me ♪ ♪ The light that starts over ♪

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♪ Yet in my dreams I'll be ♪ ♪ Here on my God to thee ♪ ♪ Here on my God to thee ♪ [Music]

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[ Silence ]