The Tabernacle

Vacillation is part of all our journey’s!

Vacillation is characterized as hesitancy, uncertainty, a fluctuating back & forth. It is not unlike a leaf slowly wavering up & down, back & forth, eventually moving from tree top to ground. It is a journey.

Such it is in the presence of the Lord.

I have seen in my own experience & in the larger corporate sense, this vacillation.

The vacillation point pivots on the awareness of his presence & my own.

We are so afraid of being diminished. What would happen to us if we were lost in him? And this fear only reveals our lack of knowing him, for he never wants to diminish us.

So in the immersion of his presence, suddenly the question arises again, “What about me?” And we vacillate between his presence & the absorption of our presence.

But there comes in the journey of knowing him & being familiar with his presence, a moment in time when the fear of being diminished, the question of the developing identity, “What about me?” finds a place. It is put to rest. It becomes no longer a question, nor even a topic.

The question rests IN HIM. As we become familiar with His presence, we become entwined IN HIM. The wonderings of us, become imbedded IN HIM. In Him is our place, our resting. In Him, the journey of vacillation reaches its destination & no longer do we shift ‘out’ of him, but abide in Him. We rest in the new focus of our adoration, HIM.

New questions, new conversations, new experiences are then had in His presence. Jesus said, “Abide IN ME & I abide IN YOU.” (John 15) There is no danger of being lost IN Him. There is only the wonder, joy & freedom of being more aware of His presence than our own!

God invites us to an adventure, not predictability.

In actual fact, adventure involves unpredictability, unknowns; otherwise it is not an adventure. In the vastness of uncertainty, things get unsettled. It is then that we know what we really believe. Our behavior is an echo of our belief.

This week the Media declared ‘The Chinese Century has begun.” (ABC News) They also posed the question, “Will China save us?”

G8 is now G14. Communism is booming in capitalist Japan. And the nations scramble, groping for a secure position of expectedness.

These are the “times of the Gentiles” said Jesus (Luke 21:24). He likened them to the days of Noah & Jonah (Matt 24:37, Genesis 6), where the heavens & earth would shake, men’s hearts would fail them from fear, distress in the nations with perplexity & all the while people would continue eating & drinking, marrying & giving in marriage.

Yet in this time of the Gentiles, we have turned a corner in history. The adventure has a pitch of unfamiliarity to it today.

So what & who do we believe for the unfolding adventure? Magnifying & adventure walk together. We were created to magnify because when we magnify, we worship. What we worship, will direct us.

So come magnify the Lord with me…

“Behold, the nations are as a drop in the bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales..
All Nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing & vanity..

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges of the earth useless.
Scarcely shall they be planted, scarcely shall they be sown, scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth, when He will also blow on them, and they will wither and the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.

Lift up your eyes on high, And see who has created these things,
Who brings out their host by number, He calls them all by name, By the greatness of His power; not one is missing.

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run & not be weary, they shall walk & not faint.” Isaiah 40:15-31