Everyday, from the moment you wake up till you go to bed, you live your life based on who you truly think you are at your core.  

Every decision you make, every encounter you experience and every attitude you hold about yourself is driven by this root belief.

We’ve discovered you can be successfully achieving good things in your career, your family and for God and, yet, still be living from a false sense of self that can put you at risk for serious turmoil, loss or personal failure.

Have you ever wondered how things can go wrong in your life when much of it seems to be going right?

What if I told you there’s a pretty good chance you may not be living from who you TRULY are? 

There’s a great story in the Bible, about two brothers- Esau and Jacob.  Jacob struggled greatly with his True Significance.   Jacob felt “less than.”  His dad, Issac, was a very significant person in their world, and favored Jacob’s older brother Esau. Jacob didn’t feel as important. He didn’t feel like he had as much.  

When you feel like that you’ll try to find a way to compensate for it.  

That’s what I did in MY story. And that’s exactly what Jacob did.

He went after Esau’s birthright.  Which, at that time meant, he would receive a double blessing and inheritance from their father. 

In Genesis 25:29-34, we’re told that Esau, who was a great hunter and farmer (opposed to Jacob, who was more a ‘home boy’) came in one day from working in the fields… and he was famished!  Esau begged Jacob to give him some of the stew Jacob had just made.  Jacob told Esau he would give it to him in exchange for his birthright, to which Esau agreed. 

 You’ve got to know that if you were looking for significance, you didn’t need to look any further than a birthright.  Typically, one’s firstborn son was entitled to receive a double portion of the inheritance from the father, including a special ceremonial blessing from the father.

A birthright meant you would become the head of the family and have charge of the family, including all the family property.  He would exercise considerable authority over the other members of the family.  So Jacob took advantage of Esau’s weakened condition and basically stole his brother’s birthright.

Now…. Surely Jacob would BE significant…. FEEL significant… LOOK significant.  

But you need to know that TRUE significance comes from WITHIN…  

is actually a gift that’s already been given… is extremely fulfilling… and it lasts forever.  

 FALSE significance comes from WITHOUT… and is something that we try to manufacture… create… on our own… is extremely dissatisfying… and it lasts for a brief period of time.

 Now let’s flip the tables of this story.

 You need to know that the soul is unable to live without deep meaning.  

Esau, is now deprived of his true birthright.  Once he reflects on what he has lost, he wants to take revenge and kill Jacob.  So the family descends into chaos for years to come.

 That’s what happens when a person’s TRUE identity is either never revealed, or gets stolen in some form.  It has dire consequences for everyone.  Esau’s cry is: “Father, do you not have a blessing for me?” (Gen 27:28).

 Meanwhile, Jacob takes off… goes running for his life.  He is ‘on the road’ for many years.  Even though he now has an “outward birthright,” he wanders aimlessly, believing that somewhere “out there” he will find his TRUE identity and purpose for his life.  And then he ‘wakes up.’

 Genesis 28:10-17:

When Jacob reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 

Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.   I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

 What Jacob had connived and manufactured on his own… the birthright of his family…and what he thought would bring him significance actually turned out to be nothing compared to what God really had in mind for him.

God’s vision for his life… and God’s later renaming him Israel… and promising him more than anyone in history, had ever had (& fully delivering on the promise) showed Jacob that God’s TRUE significance is so much more… and so much better !  But that significance is a direct result of a powerful discovery.

 The ladder that Jacob saw was the place where the Divine AND the Human co-exist.  Jacob gets an epiphany of this ladder between heaven and earth.  Who he really was… and what he was being offered as a gift was BOTH being Divine AND Human.  He found out that he was really a son of earth and a son of heaven!  He was shown the gate to it all and given access to it all.  Guess what?  YOU’VE been given the same thing!

Jesus taught that what’s TRUE about YOU in heaven, is also TRUE about YOU here on earth.  

 In re-awakening to your TRUE significance… your TRUE identity…. You will find that it’s more grounded, marvelous, original and freeing than any identity you could devise for yourself.

 To help you anchor these truths we have just released a

FREE video resource — “5 Days To Your True Significance.”

It’s will help you discover your TRUE identity that will lead you to TRUE significance.  When you discover what has been yours all along you’ll no longer have to build, protect, or promote yourself to feel significant.  To obtain your FREE copy of  this video resource click this link: “5 Days To Your True Significance” and sign up to receive your FREE copy.  

You can be like Jacob awakening from sleep and joining the chorus of so many of us:  “You were here all along, and I never knew it.” 

(Art by Brian Kershisnik)