The Tabernacle

It is 2 days before Christmas. I awoke aware of all the things still yet to do, make & get for Christmas.

Yet I was also aware that it is Tuesday, & Tuesday is one of the days I spend in intentional, set apart time in the Tabernacle with my Lord. So I yielded myself, my day, my time, the pressures, needs all to my Father. He called me into His space.

Immediately, He rested upon me. I cannot find other words to express what I experienced, other than I just laid down. Simply laid down & rested. As I rested there, sensing an unusual heaviness over this day, He begun to immerse me in His truth & love.

My tired, weary body begun to experience reviving. My spirit filled with light.

He reminded me again of His call upon me, to simply be with Him. The words of Beni Johnson echoed in my memory. “To me, the mystics are just normal people. They are normal people consumed by the presence of God. Mystics are no different than you & me. They are everyday people who have chosen to lay their lives down to seek after God. They do not limit God. Mystics seek after God with their whole hearts. They go before God & say, “God, you are all that I desire. No matter what it looks like, or what it costs me, I must have more of you.” The heart cry of the mystic is, “Take the world but give me you.” (The Happy Intercessor, p.167)

I became sharply aware of the contrast & ‘clash’ with what was happening all around me. While the shops thicken up with that last minute ‘rush’ & people bounce from one Christmas event to another, He invited me to simply be with Him. The ‘note’ of the world’s hum contrasting so strongly to His song over me.

My son came running into the Tabernacle not long after this, & grabbing my bible which sat next to me, He opened it up, lay down next to me & said, “Mummy, read this.” He had opened to Psalm 62.

“For God ALONE, my soul waits in stillness; from Him comes my salvation.”

Again it struck me. This was what the Father had called me to this day. “FOR GOD ALONE, my soul waits in stillness.”

“For God alone” I reflectively reiterated as if to remind myself.

Not long after my son’s visit, my phone rang with a prayer request from a pastor we have been getting know. Their daughter’s friend, a 10yr boy, Drew, was right now in emergency heart transplant surgery.

Again, the words of Beni Johnson echoed in my memory. “Mystics do not seek after fame, glory or worldly desires, but they have chosen instead to lay their entire lives down so that they can hear the heartbeat of Heaven.”

The greatest action we can do for ourselves & on behalf of others, such as Drew who fights for his life right now, is to seek for God alone, making our soul wait in stillness for His salvation. When we do this, we are able to hear the heartbeat of heaven.

And heaven’s heartbeat is exactly what this season is all about.

The other day I was in the Tabernacle just lingering there.
After a time, I left.
I left with no prophetic word, no great revelation from the Scriptures or experiences with my Father.
I left only knowing as I had other times before,
that I had simply been with the Lord, just sharing time & space with Him for Him.
I had simply gone to BE with Him.

In our Western world, life is so much about productivity.
Here in the USA, a key word it seems is ‘DUTY’.

But what of just being with Jesus for HIM?

What if being with Him was actually about Him!

Being with Him
not for what He gives
or for what He has promised over our lives,
or because it is our ‘duty’.

But because He is heart too!

He longs as we all do,
to be sought after because of who He is
not what He does
or will give.

This is the ‘one thing’ David sought for most -
“to dwell in the house of the Lord delighting in Him” (Psalm 27:4)
David, the man God said was ‘after His own heart’.

When Jesus came, the first thing He DID was BE.
Be a baby.

There is an ache today in the heart of the Father
for His children
His people
His bride
to simply BE with Him
doing nothing,
no intercession,
no ‘pushing into his heart for others’,
but simply hanging out with Him,
enjoying Him.

This is relationship.

Uptown is the name of a building in Munich, Germany. A few years ago Helen & I were living in Munich and God very strategically and repeatedly pointed out this building to us. The full story is here.

This Blog is about hearing God’s voice and then what we do with those words, it is also about the Greek spirit and how this tends to make our thoughts centre on us (MAN) and what we do rather than God and what He does (Hebrew thinking).

Just a few nights ago God gave me a download about how I can assume way too much of the need for me in God’s plans. In the opening of the Uptown story I say how God said to me “I want the top 5 floors of that building for My worship house.” Where I believe I went wrong was that I also inferred that I had to achieve this for God, or that this would involve me in a major way. (Greek spirit, me at the centre)When this additional thought came to me I was gripped by fear. Why because this extra thought wasn’t from God and it was meant to grip me with fear, and successfully did get my eyes and thoughts off of God and His greatness and onto me and my smallness. As I look back I also realise that I expected to be playing a big part and central (there it is again Greek Spirit, glorious me at the centre). What had God said? “I want the top 5 floors of that building for My worship house.” He was just letting me in on His plans, He wasn’t stating His desires and then expecting me to fulfil them for Him, that is sooo backwards in Gods economy. He is God and I am so very not! As it turns out we did get to go up to the top two floors and we played worship music up there and we made some spirit led declarations. We also followed a prompt to prayer walk around the building again making declarations. This is what God prompted and allowed, what didn’t happen was the stuff that I added that included me and what I was going to do.

In the last year God has been talking to me about Tabernacle amongst other things being like Angelic staging or rallying points. That God is using these set apart places for supernatural purposes. So what we dedicate and set apart in the physical, God is then using in the supernatural/spiritual, helping and participating in the releases that He wants to bring to cities and Nations.
This throws a whole other light on Uptown for me. The top 5 floors of this building, the premium/best floors stayed empty for years after the building was completed. So did God achieve exactly what He said He would? “I want the top 5 floors of that building for My worship house.” Was our part simply in preparation by coming into agreement and in the declarations and prayer walks?
Then of course God did exactly what He said He would, as the other floors of the building were rented out the premium top floors remained empty, or at least empty of other businesses.
The apartment that we stayed in for our last season in Munich was provided for us ‘rent free’ the full story is here. This was a gift from a very special family who said that they believed in what God had called us to and wanted to offer this apartment as a first fruits offering unto the Lord. Initially this apartment wasn’t available as planned, Helen & I then returned to Australia for the birth of our son. Later when the apartment did become available it sat empty, set apart and waiting. A few months later we returned to Munich and lived in this lovely light filled apartment. Previous to this revelation I would have said that we arrived and set up a Tabernacle there, but I can clearly see now that God had already established His Tabernacle in that set apart place (The cost was incurred the space was set apart, Holy, with or without us in it.) and was well underway achieving what He wanted to with no need at all for Helen & I to do anything at all. God loves our hearts and our efforts but He is God, not us as Thessalonians reminds us 1Thessalonians 5:24 God, who calls you, is faithful; he will do this.”

As I reflect on this I am sitting in the new Tabernacle room of our home in Denver. This home on a hill above Denver has sat empty for a year before we moved in here. Has God done the same thing here, that this time He set this place apart designating its purpose, using this place for His supernatural and spiritual purposes long before we arrived in this country? Greek thinking tends to focus on us and our efforts but I am coming to see that the things of the spirit are not determined by the things of this world, it is the other way around.

So my update on Uptown is that I believe God did exactly what He wanted to with that building, I believe I added thoughts that people would be involved and praying and praising up there. I think it is OK to dream like this with and for God, but it isn’t OK to think He has failed if our dreams are not fulfilled.
The picture at the top of this Blog is the image of the building from above from ‘google earth’. You can see the cloud of His presence over the building. After God said to us that it was finished, that He had done what He wanted to in Munich and that it was time for us to leave, I looked again and the google earth image no longer showed the cloud. The top floors are now rented out to a business.
Oh to be ‘IN’ on His plans and to be able to try to be useful rather than to have our efforts in fact mucking things up, God help us get over ourselves and look to You and what You are doing I pray.
Thank you that You are God and that You love us and that You are doing mighty things on the Earth.

Today was a good day! It reminded me of The seventh of September.

To start the day I had a 9:30 meeting with a local pastor. This was a great time God has so obviously prepared this guy and has been moving him on a track to be really open to the things of the Spirit and we are developing a great friendship, we sat in starbucks for more than 3 hours ‘as iron sharpens iron’. (Proverbs 27:17) talking about the deeper things of God and calling each other to those deeper things. I love that this relationship came as I just followed a prompt and wandered along to his church one Sunday just a few weeks ago.

After this meeting I went down to the Bank where I had to do an address change, I met with our ‘personal banker’ who we have been building a relationship with. She is from Africa so as ‘Aliens’ in this land I think we have an affiliation. She has from the beginning known why we are here and what we are doing. This visit I found myself talking with her in depth about hearing God’s voice about how God loves to leave an element that requires us acting in Faith. About the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) and how we can look at the fruit of words we hear in our mind, and see if the fruit of those words matches with the fruit of the spirit or indeed if they match with the opposites of these fruit. Being the opposites of the fruit of the spirit indicates two things, one that it is NOT from God, and two that these words are from the enemy and need to be dealt with accordingly. That is NOT listened to or taken to heart. She said she would be taking the risk and obeying God next time, you see she wants to find out for herself just how good and reliable God really is. I did also get the banking stuff done somewhere in the conversation as well.

I left the Bank and went to an electronics store where yesterday I had purchased a printer. The included software DVD was cracked so unusable so I went to the store to get another one. This took the longest time waiting for this to be sorted and while I was waiting I got to talking to another lady that was waiting. She had just recently moved from Texas, she asked why I was in the USA and got very excited, especially in the spirit when I told her why we were here and what we were doing. I have no doubt that it was a divine meeting and that God wanted and wants us to connect in some way. we will see what He wants to do from here.

It has been a good day, I haven’t listed everything that happened here but when I got out of bed I knew of one meeting, now as I ponder going to bed I can reflect on at least three. Yes I believe God had set up and prepared all of the meetings, preparing me and them to be ready to 1 peter 3: 15 “Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. 16 But you must do this in a gentle and respectful way.”

I love the thought that God sets meetings and opportunities before us, I can even live with the fact that I believe that I was supposed to be inconvenienced with a cracked software DVD so that I had to go back to the store, also that I had arrived at the store close to five hours after I had planned as I had been waiting and then talking with people about God all day. But otherwise I would have missed this lady and God’s next appointment for me. God you have my life, thank you that you are taking it and using it, I want to be more and more available for your meetings, help me to be hearing you and flexible enough to look for Your timing and Your appointments in the day, help me please to not let my appointments and tasks and agendas over rule yours. Thanks Jesus I love you Amen (So be it.)