The Tabernacle

It was Sunday morning & we were preparing the house for an open inspection (as we are selling it) before we headed off to church. I was rushing through the lounge room trying to find my beautiful 3 1/2 yr son’s jacket as we headed out the door. As I did, the lyrics of a song playing, arrested me. I was so profoundly impacted that I actually was bought to a screaming holt in the middle of the room.

The lyrics echoed again. “This is such a holy time.”

I looked out the window at the rolling green hills sparsely covered by grazing cows & felt the twang of pain that this would soon no longer be my home.

Then the words echoed again. “This is such a holy time.” And I knew the fear of God in that moment.

Holiness & sacrifice are related. Holiness is something that belongs to God, something set apart for God. Sacrifice to the way to holiness – to belonging to God.

In fact in the Old Testament when God gave the 10 commandments to the people of Israel defining them as His people & a holy nation, He immediately reminded them again that they were “not to make anything to be with Me – gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves.” (Exodus 20:23).

Nothing is to be with God. It is not a case of God AND….

After stating this, He then gave them instructions for the building of an altar. It is to be made of earth, it is for Him, & its purpose is for the sacrifice of offerings. (Exodus 20:24).

I have observed in my own journey that at EVERY stage when God has called me to move with Him, it has always involved sacrifice & in this sacrifice, I have had to define & determine again who’s God!

Sacrifice is about who is God.

You see before you can enter a new season in Him, He must know who’s God.

Because nothing is to be with God.

He is jealous for you because He loves you. It’s about Him having more of you. He is jealous for his dwelling place, His Tabernacle, YOU.

The altar was always the first thing encountered at the entry of the Tabernacle & temple. It is the place where something we love & cherish was given up for something we love & cherish more.

It’s about the fear of God. And the fear of God comes through such holy times. The time of sacrifice is a holy time.

When God calls us to move with Him, when He calls a season change, it will it seems, inevitably involve sacrifice.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken & contrite heart – these o God, you will not despise.” (Psa 51:17) The Hebrew word used here for ‘broken’ means to “bring to the birth, crush, hurt, destroy, tear.” (“shabar”)

How true this is! For when God calls us to a new thing or a new season, He is in affect calling forth the birth of something new. This is what sacrifices to God are.

Ultimately, He, is the very thing that is being birthed in us.

For the journey, the sacrifice, the call, the task, it’s not about these. It’s about Him & Him being known as God in us & to us.

Sacrifice is about who is God & this is such a holy time.

Jesus said, “You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times.” (Matt 16:4)

Discernment is one of the most critical gifts to have when God changes the seasons.

God made four seasons in nature. Our lives, our families, our nations, our time in history has seasons also. God is a seasonal God.

We are invited to not only know how to discern the weather but the times we live in, be it individually or collectively. God wants us to know what the season is. The word for discern used here in Matt 16 is ‘diakrino’. It means to “separately thoroughly, to withdraw from, to differ, to judge”. This is how we are to transition with seasons.

God wants us to know how to move! He is not a ‘fixed term’ God. Nor are our lives! We are the people of God on a journey! (Vatican 2’s definition for the Church)

The journey has seasons & God wants us to know how to separate thoroughly from one season to the next. He wants us to know how to do this well & by his Spirit. God chose a cloud, fire, tent & ultimately the human body to be His dwelling places – Tabernacles. All these are temporary & moving. Even the huge Temple made of stone turned out to be temporary. So the invitation is, if the cloud moves, then so do we!

But how do we discern?
Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I speak to you, they are spirit & they are life.” (John 6;63). Jesus words are spirit & life. The knowing & discerning of the seasons & what to do, comes in the words He speaks to us. His words, his utterance to us will be of spirit & life.

Where does Jesus get his words from?
The amazing thing that Jesus claimed was that none of his words were of himself, he only did what He saw the Father doing (John 5;19). So here is Jesus, fully God & fully man, speaking & moving only as He SEES His Father do.

How’s your seeing these days? What are you looking at or to?

Do you see the face of Father or just the face of the sky? Do you know what the face of the Father is like?

Jesus declared, “..The Father loves the Son, & shows Him all things that He himself does..” (John 5:20) This is not just for Jesus, the Son of God, but also for us. We are the Tabernacle of God where “the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you..” (Romans 8:11).

Yet we are not only the space where God houses himself, we are also sons of God. For as we are “led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God” (Romans 8:14). As a son of God we are loved passionately & totally; & we are shown things by the Father who leads in Spirit (John 4:24). He is for you!

Do you want to see the things the Father wants to show you?

Discernment comes from hearing the words of God not by what search results you get on Google. The words of God are spirit & life, they will require of you a leap of faith, not a leap of understanding or knowledge gained from your world of experience & reference.

God’s words come from His face. From His face we can know the life & spirit of & for the season.

“The Lord bless you & keep you. (It is He who does the keeping of you!!!)
The Lord make His face shine upon you & be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His face upon you, & give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

I have been reflecting on hardship and seeing some very clear blessing in people’s lives as a direct result of them encountering severe hardship.

I am reminded of being told ten years ago that Russian Christians were praying that the Christians of the West would suffer persecution, in order that their faith would become more real and grow in depth. It is one thing to have faith in God when you don’t need Him and an entirely different thing to have faith in God when you absolutely DO need Him and you are in grave danger if He doesn’t come through for you.

Helen & I have met some amazing people on our travels, people with an amazing depth of faith. We’ve lived with a German Princess, who was in Indonesia as a child during WWII. She was born into Dutch royalty and her Dad served in the Dutch army in Indonesia when they were overrun by the Japanese. This lady, her Mum and sister said goodbye to their Dad and husband one morning knowing that they would never see him again. Stories of her childhood years in a Japanese internment camp being fed crumbs by her Mum who slowly withered away,and near the end of the war turning down two chances to leave Indonesia, as they heard God say not to take those options!! Imagine staying under those circumstances. The ships they were offered were sunk by Germans! Eventually they got home safely and transitioned from the internment camp in Indonesia to a castle in Holland. She had not seen a fork before let alone sit at a table with 3 forks set before her.

We have a good friend who is very high up in the world of finance in London. She holds a job that many people would give anything to have. She and her family of origin were refugees from Vietnam. Her Mum had married a Chinese man and this later became politically very incorrect. She remembers the raids during the night from the police,and being forced to stand outside in the middle of the night as a little girl. She remembers having to leave and being stripped of their property and wealth. We really cannot imagine what this was like in reality.

Last week I met with a guy here in Melbourne who is now a Youth Pastor. Last time I met him he was married, now he isn’t. He told me his story of betrayal, of divorce, of shame. Then He told me about God, as a matter of fact you couldn’t have stopped him if you tried! Scripture and the goodness of God just ran from his lips. He had tasted and seen that the Lord is Good! Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who trust in Him!”

The thing that these people have in common is that they KNOW that God is GOOD. They don’t have to be told this or quoted a Biblical text, they know it as their personal testimony and their life experience. Because when it became very very dark in their lives, Jesus, the light, shone brightly and gladly proved Himself to them.

I am also reminded of 2 young guys that we took on a missions tour into Russia. They both had their passports and visas stolen while we were there and therefore were unable to leave the country. Of course God came through powerfully and miraculously. They both went into full time missions. They KNOW the character of God, and their HARDSHIP experience has made it much easier to trust God, their own testimony proves this to them.

How we can avoid hardship like the plague? What are we missing in our character development? What are we missing in our faith development? What are we missing in what we KNOW about God? What are we missing in what we are believing about God?

What are we ascribing to the devil as unwanted hardship that could well be the Lord wanting to promote us? The Hebrew root word for bless or kneel (to be humbled) are the same. When a Hebrew says to you, “May the Lord bless you”, it can be translated “May the Lord humble/humiliate you”. As when you are humbled or humiliated it is then that you are unable to operate in your own strength and that you open an opportunity to make some space and time for God to act, allowing Him to prove Himself to you.

So when Hardship comes are you going to avoid it? Or look for God in it? If your finances are suddenly reduced are you going to stop tithing? Stop or reduce giving to the work of God, or would you INCREASE what you give away opening a door to taste n see if the Lord really is GOOD?!

I have seen an ADVANTAGE in the faith journey of people that have endured hardship. People who chose to look to God instead of becoming bitter; their faith moves to the facts of their own testimony. When hardship comes we have choice: avoid it at all costs and become bitter if we have to suffer it, or take it as an opportunity to taste n see if the Lord is GOOD and to allow Him to become bigger for us.

When is something real? Helen & I have been working towards applying for visas to live and to base All4Him the Tabernacle from out of Denver in the USA, we believe God has asked us to move there.
It has been a long journey as I found it quite hard to get good visa information, anyway.
About a week ago which was about a week before our scheduled interview at The US Consulate God said to me “Mark you will be granted these 5 year visas” at that point I chose to believe that it would happen, that our visas were granted in the spirit and it was just a matter of walking out the steps to see them eventuate in the physical. Yesterday at the conclusion of the interview the guy said to us “I will grant these visas they will be forwarded to you in a few days.” Were they real then?

In a few days we fully expect to have our passports back with the visas in them.
But when is it ‘real’ that we have our US visas? What are we basing real on? When God said that they would be granted, was that the point? Or when the visa guy said that he would grant them, is it OK for me to put more faith in what he says than what God says? Or is it only real when our passports have the visas inside them? Or when we have our passports back with the visas in them?

For me a week ago when God said that the visas would be granted, it was then that we had our visas there were still some steps to go through, if we hadn’t turned up for our interview I don’t believe we would have had US visas miraculously appearing in our passports, there were some steps to follow through with in the physical world even though they had already been released in the spirit. When God said that they would be granted, He ‘spoke them into existence’. It was certainly easier to believe this when the visas guy also spoke them into existence. “I will grant these 5 yr visas”. Why is it really easy to have faith in what this guy that I have never met before said, yet much harder to believe what God says? Will it only be irrefutable in a few days when they are in my hand, or is it irrefutable now, or last week? I think that depends on our faith.

But is was a very interesting exercise to muster the faith to live in the reality that we had visas in the real as soon as God said, that is even before our interview as what God speaks into existence always happens.

Jesus said, “He who receives you receives Me, and He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”(Matt 10:40)

Begs the question… who are you receiving?

I was driving back from the supermarket this morning, when the Lord whispered to me, “What you receive is what you get.” I pondered on these words as the rain continued to fall steadily like it hasn’t in many years.

The Lord continued his ‘chatting’ to me. “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” (Matt 10:41)

I had long been mulling over this verse.

The Lord then said to me, “The level you are prepared to receive is the level you will get.” I knew this to be so true.

I had experienced this as we travel among the nations & noted that those who received us as righteous people, received a righteous man’s reward, but the contrast of those who received us in the name of a prophet was markedly different! What they received was at times mind boggling, breath taking and wonderfully exciting…. Not because of us, no! not at all; but because of THEIR faith in HIM.

You see, when you receive a believer, you receive God. Jesus declared this in the previous verse, “He who receives you receives Me, and He who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”

We are the living breathing tabernacle (tent) of God. I am constantly stunned at how much HE wants to dwell with us & how persistent He has been since the creation of the world to find a place/space for His presence to live with us.

When we receive a believer, we also receive to whatever level we choose, the giftings & calling God has established in them. This challenges our commitment to honor one another.

Pastor Bill Johnson of Bethel Church made the comment, “In an absence of a culture of honor, you can live with spiritual wealth and die in poverty. Familiarity can keep us from the richness on people’s lives. God invites us to honor who people are and not stumble over who they are not.”

What you are prepared to receive, you will get. This is true of God especially. How much of Him do you want? You choose. You will have to leave behind your earth bound thinking & experiences (Isa 43:18), for God is Spirit (John 4:24) & what HE offers is a whole new thing, a whole new dimension (Isa 43:19).

What are you prepared to receive?

This you will get.

I have owned this house in Diamond Creek for twenty one years now. Just 3-400meters down onto the main st from us is a reception centre called ‘the Abbey’. It is called the Abbey because that is what the buildings once were, an Abbey. They sit right beside a still functioning Anglican church.

Now in the last 7 years God has taken us deeply into the contemplative stream showing us clearly how our Christianity needs to be about Christ and what He does and has done, not about us and our efforts. (Greek thinking that focuses everything on us and our efforts and very little on God and His efforts. Yuk! I want to praise God, not me and my efforts.) We have lived in Germany and searched out and discovered ‘Thin places’ like monastery sites that have 1000 years and more of Christian presence, we have loved discovering the keys that God has revealed about how continued prayer and devotion to Him has unlocked major mission movements and shifts in the spirit throughout history.
God impressed us greatly just over a month ago when we were about as far away from here as you can get, literally on the other side of the planet both in a north-south and an east-west sense, in Northern Scotland, where we were in a church by a Loch where there has been a continuing functioning church running on the site since roughly the year 600! What a special and thick sense of the presence of God was in that place. Wow!!

On the weekend back here in Melbourne, Australia I went for a little walk over a hill and found myself overlooking the abbey, when God said to Me “yes Mark that was a Tabernacle ‘a presence place’ a place for My presence where I was worshiped, it was about Me”. I was dumbfounded, here we are pioneering this ministry, at times feeling so alone and misunderstood here in Australia, that the new world doesn’t think in the same way as the old (Europe)yet here just 400 metres from where we live and where we have established a ‘Tabernacle for His presence’ was a much older one. How could we have not seen that sooner, how could we have never made that connection, Diamond Creek has a monastic heritage, and that is where God placed us.
Thanks God that you so know what you are doing, even when we cannot see it though it is SOOO clear.