Stairway to Heaven

He was a young man of great potential. With the legacy of his famous forefathers and a powerful destiny on his life, his future was bright. But a life of deception and family dysfunction leaves him confused and desperate, fleeing a murderous brother and exiled from his homeland with only a stone for a pillow.

Jacob was the second-born son of Isaac and Rebekah and inheritor of the great Abrahamic promises, but he had never personally experienced the transformational encounter of his father’s God or embraced the holy lifestyle required of a great leader.

It all changed in one night. For the first time Jacob encounters the presence of God. And it happens in a dream.


He sees the skies opening before him. Angels climb a stairway that reaches far into the heavens. He hears a voice speaking to him; calling him to his future. These were not second-hand promises passed on from his father, but a direct invitation to divine relationship – a gateway to the presence of God.


The dream changes Jacob’s life. He had gone to sleep feeling lost and alone; alienated from God. He wakes up knowing God’s presence and seeing past the natural circumstances. Surely the Lord was in this place and I did not know it (Genesis 28:16). For the first time, he makes a genuine commitment to follow God and takes the first steps towards his destiny. He meets God in a dream!

Tertullian one of the early church theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries (AD.160-230) – the man famous for his writings on the Trinity – made this statement: “Nearly everyone on earth knows that God reveals himself to people most often in dreams.”

So is the potential of our dreams. Jacob’s dream revealed a gateway to heaven and a meeting place with Almighty God. The dream rolled back the curtain separating the natural world and unveiling the spiritual realm. Today God still wants to reveal himself to us. Like Jacob he wants to show us our futures, give us vision beyond our current circumstances and call to us personally in the midst of our everyday lives. Let's be people that are awake to these life-changing revelations of the night!