The Divine Exchange: Trading Your Plans for God’s PurposeSample

Bethel: My Altar of Assurance

There’s something about hitting rock bottom that suddenly makes you very attentive to Heaven. I had reached my own “Jacob moment”—the kind where you’re not running away from anyone in particular, but still end up exhausted, unsure, and strangely allergic to hope.

In those quiet, in-between years after my business closed, I often wondered if God still remembered me. Everyone else’s life seemed to be moving—mine looked like an old movie on pause. I was faithful, but frustrated; obedient, but occasionally dramatic about it.

Then one morning, while reading Genesis 28, I stumbled upon Jacob’s story again. There he was—alone, broke, sleeping on a rock (which I imagine was not the most comfortable pillow option). Yet in that wilderness, Heaven opened up, angels ascended and descended, and Jacob heard the voice of God promising, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”

That verse hit differently that day. I realised that like Jacob, I needed to build my own Bethel—a place to remember that even when nothing around me made sense, God’s covenant hadn’t expired. So I began to rebuild—not a business, but an altar. I wrote down promises, prayed through tears, and learned to listen more than I spoke.

Lesson
Bethel moments remind us that God’s silence is not His absence. The altar is not a monument to your pain—it’s a reminder of His presence. Return to your Bethel. Revisit the promises He made before life got noisy. Dust off those words, because His “I am with you” still stands.