"The tabernacle of God is with men." Revelation 21:3
God is preparing men to be His dwelling place. We see God doing this now within mature Christians. God intends to makes it possible for Himself to be at home within us.
"And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14
God sends the Spirit of sonship to now dwell within our spirit, causing us great change. This causes us to grow, to reach higher, to be molded into a fuller stature than church ministries have been able to produce. The full grown men among the called out are certainly filled with the Father's powerful mind. Within their spirit the divine nature is grooming us for His glorious habitation.
Our spirit is being filled with His loving kindness, His holy presence, His knowledge. God is patiently doing an inner work to manifest Himself to us until we grow up to be like Jesus. Then we too may truthfully say:
"If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.... I and the Father are one." John 14:9, 10:30
Paul grasped the deep reality that God was working a oneness within himself when he said,
"For me to live is Christ." Philippians 1:21
Paul didn't say, "For me to speak in tongues, dance in the Spirit, fall out under the power, and heal the sick, cast out devils, and get into the 144,000 is Christ." No, he said, "For me to LIVE is Christ." Living is Christ meant Paul was centered on WHAT CHRIST WAS PRESENTLY DOING INSIDE HIS SPIRIT. He did not mean those supernatural moments when he was caught away seeing revelations of the third heaven, or while being active in teaching, preaching, and writing. Paul meant he had an inner relationship that was continually guiding him.
As he walked from one dusty town to another on hot, dirty roads, he realized God thru Christ was present in him. More and more he realized that he was caught up within his own spirit to a spiritual place in God. THAT COMFORT HAS BEEN GIVEN US. When Paul was sewing tents, Christ was helping him make quality tents with real value. Paul’s daily life was a manifestation of this delivering life of Christ working inside him. Everyday living in the nitty-gritty of every Christian’s human experience should also be guided, and helped, by a manifestation of CHRIST.
Now, Paul was one who was born out of due season so to speak. He was an example to show us what we all are to experience of God the Father through Christ. Christ comes to make a home in us, humbling our soul's mindsets and rough offensive ways enough that He can dominate our spirit to manifest Himself in our daily issues naturally, without any abnormality or strain.
That's exactly what He does when He brings us to feast on the spirit of the Lord’s day. This is the third thousand years of the King of God when He is making an abiding place within His people. God is sending the spirit of Christ to live in us. Abiding with us is His life, light, and love. In us He has an office. He set up a workshop of understanding so that He might deal with the ungodly things in our house and rearrange every relationship we have in life.
The truth is that God made us to desire His love and leading touch ABOVE ALL OTHER THINGS. This is the way we are made kings and priests of Jesus Christ. Jesus also was made that way, demonstrating God's will in every facet of His life— spirit, soul, and body:
"For thus says the One high and lifted up, Who tabernacles the future, and holy is His Name: In the high and holy place am I tabernacling, And also with one crushed and lowly of spirit, To revive the spirit of the lowly, And to revive the heart of the crushed." Isaiah 57:15 concordant
God dwells in a high and holy place. He is quick to remind us, "I also dwell with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit." Our crushed spirit can learn from His Spirit to daily submit to His will until it becomes our LIFE too. Primarily a spirit can receive Him better if that one has been made poor in spirit. A humbled, exercised spirit that is discerning good and evil sharpens the spiritual senses to refuse the evil and discern the portion of Christ coming from the kingdom of heaven.
Only the humbled, discipled ones taught of the spirit are skilled in understanding His fountains springing up within the desert places of their lives. So, they have learned to be glad! God’s righteousness leads one to happiness and blessedness. The humbled partake of it now. As we embrace His crucifixion, we are crushed enough to stop religious church works and discover the reality of God's dwelling-place working deep within our being now.
His called out mature people do enter into a similar kind of experience as Paul when he declared "for me to live is Christ." Overcomers have discovered God's inner dwelling-place, and have learned to look to it, to see Him abiding WITHIN their spirit:
"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with mankind, and He will be tabernacling with them, and they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them." Revelation 21:3-4 concordant
"For you did not get slavery's spirit to fear again, but you got the spirit of sonship, in which we are crying, Abba Father! The spirit itself is testifying together with our spirit that we are children of God." Romans 8:15-17 concordant
God sends the spirit of sonship to testify to our spirit about the things His offspring should know. This is not only to bear us up in time of trouble, but to fill us with insight into His lasting Kingdom in facing every daily experience we have. We are to know the Father’s thoughts, cleansing our inner man from malice, hatred and fear. When Christ is crowned as Lord within our spirit, we are focused on Christ. He becomes our LIFE, continually releasing and cleansing us from man’s soulish thinking and every human way that would defile His holy heaven.
God's Spirit is sent through the one, Jesus, WHO ALSO LIVED OUT HIS LIFE IN THE FLESH AS AN ABIDING PLACE OF GOD. Jesus has now sent the completed seven fold spirit to His followers. Jesus is the Lord of ALL. Our King is not Lord in a far off heaven who will COME SOMEDAY do something on earth. He is God’s King who HAS delivered us from death’s workings within our being. So, we now have the right to enter the city, the kingdom of God wherein righteousness dwells.
This is present truth for all those who follow on to know the Lord. In every situation and circumstance, God’s spirit is testifying that He is Fathering us by a spirit of sonship. As we grow to know Him in the spirit, Christ becomes our LIFE. The cleansing effect of His life releases us from our defiling darkness. The old is to be cast off. Thank God, He has delivered us from the kingdom of darkness:
"Therefore we also, from the day on which we hear, do not cease praying for you and requesting that you may be filled full with the realization of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, you to walk worthily of the Lord for all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the realization of God; being endued with all power, in accord with the might of His glory, for all endurance and patience with joy;
at the same time giving thanks to the Father, Who makes you competent for a part of the allotment of the saints in light, Who rescues us out of the jurisdiction of Darkness, and transports us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in Whom we are having the deliverance, the pardon of sins, Who is the Image of the invisible God, Firstborn of every creature, for in Him is all created, that in the heavens and that on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, or lordships, or sovereignties, or authorities all is created through Him and for Him, and He is before all, and all has its cohesion in Him." Colossians 1:9-17 concordant
We come to know the spirit of sonship as the fragrance of His life in the ANOINTED PRESENCE WE SPIRITUALLY DISCERN:
"Because of the savor [fragrance] of Your good ointments, Your name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love You. Draw me, we will run after You." Song of Solomon 1:3-4
DRAW ME! How? He sends forth a sweet fragrance to capture us, causing us to consciously desire to look upon Him ONLY. “Your name is an ointment poured forth.” Your name here represents God’s whole divine nature and character. CHRIST LIFE has been poured out like an anointing containing heavenly love, mercy, and righteous power.
The anointing reaches into our spirit when we suffer being crushed and rejected of men — thereby made poor of spirit and thereby able to receive THE FRAGRANCE coming from the kingdom of heaven. We find an awakening of a deep desire to look intently at HIS COMING NOW. He is coming by the spirit to annul ALL OTHER INFLUENCES within us. Herein we too have found peace and enjoyment of rest.
The cares of this world have turned many people’s lives into a time bomb ready to explode any time now. The strain of living is intensified because of the world's population and its political problems, economic pressures, blatant meaningless noise, life destroying pollution, multiplied hectic schedules that keep people always on the run.
Caring for this world’s activities completely fatigues the body, frays the nerves, disturbs our weary minds, causing emotions to be buried so deep that at trials unawares these hidden elements burst like volcanos erupting into fiery conflict. Yet the vital presence of the Lord has been crowned within our spirit to save us from these conditions and their negative effects upon our lives. He is now casting out the inner darkness of heart that defiled us with its death.
The presence of the Lord known in a secret place is what David described as being “in the shadow of the Almighty”. It is like the cloud overshadowing the Camp of Israel throughout their journey in the wilderness. It was a shade by day and a pillar of fire by night: it was none other than the PRESENCE of the Almighty. Wrote the enraptured psalmist:
“In Your presence is fullness of joy," Psalms 16:11
As a garment plucked from a perfumed closet bears in its fibers a sweet aroma, so they in whom God dwells radiate his glorious life in the power of His most beautiful attributes. The ointment Mary poured extravagantly upon the feet of the Saviour filled all the house where He sat with its fragrance. David wrote:
"All Your garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made You glad," Psalms 45:8
Dwelling with HIS PRESENCE is to be MADE GLAD! We are enabled to spiritually sense Him, to be taught of Him, to abide in His presence being aware of HIS IMAGE, HIS WORD and SPIRIT. Man can never hope to attain to the likeness of the Lord by keeping any outward rule or regulation. It cannot happen by reading scripture and deterrmining in his own human mind not to touch, taste, nor handle evil.
It is not knowing the scriptures that commends us to God, but a heart that is changed by His rule. It is not recitation of scripture, but by the divine law of Life in Christ Jesus that transforms our lives into oneness with God who Fathered us. As believers become conscious of His Presence, they testify saying they have been with Jesus.
God is abiding in men now to cure our every ill, banish every enemy, dispel all darkness and death. This is a transformation that conforms our spirit, soul, and body into the image God made in Jesus Christ. Christ is ALWAYS AVAILABLE AND ACCESSIBLE to all believers! We believers need only to take the time to avail ourselves of Him, to expose our lives to Him, to experience His restorative power.
Beloved, haven't you heard our Lord's voice calling you to come apart with Him, to leave everything and everyone that hinders you? To come, come out of fleshly activities to a greater place of separation, unto a spiritual growth to oneness?
Most Christians keep our Lord waiting while they fulfill the demands of the world. Often they get too busy to know anything of His presence, being centered on getting what they want. So many do not hear Him ask for time for daily bread, to share communion while meditating on His word and spirit. He has asked each of us to take up our cross daily and follow after Him! Yes, He has! Being separated unto the Lord limits the clamoring voices of strife and the opinions of men about this world. It brings us to a place where we are comfortable in silence.
Our strife ceases when the veil of our earthly mind recedes. Then heaven’s presence can draw us near enough to see the unseen with the eyes of our spiritual understanding. From the unseen we hear the voice of the Lord’s word in order to understand His messages. Much separation and communion makes it easier to known His great abiding work, to see how we are being restored again and again in the judgments of the Lord.
Our Beloved is calling us to touch the spirit of sonship and commune in the secret meeting places within. The fragrance of His presence is manifested to each of us there. Such sweet communion we can now have with Him, beholding God tabernacling within! How peaceful and reassuringly gentle His Spirit makes us to be.
When He unfolds the mysteries of His Kingdom into our awestruck hearts, they becomes our LIFE, just as Paul wrote, “for us to LIVE IS CHRIST.” We take spiritual communion daily with Christ. Christ is coming to Christians who seek Him until they find His restful presence:
"…no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light." Matthew 11:27-30 NJB
Nowhere else can anyone find the presence of rest that He gives. In the spirit we expose ourself to the fragrance of His life. All of life’s daily trials, our life’s storms and hurricanes that come against us, do not dismay, disturb, frustrate, upset, unsettle, agitate, distress nor cast us down from our abiding union because we are separated unto HIS PRESENCE within our spirit. “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”
Even in turmoil, or just under the mundane pressure of everyday life, when things have not gone as we thought they should, when there have been mistakes and blunders, when hell has broken loose to make the whole world around us swirl wildly, HOW UNSPEAKABLY PRECIOUS AND RESTFULLY SETTLED WITHIN OUR SPIRIT COMES HIS WORD TO US. The abiding assurance of Christ is sweet and swift to make the King’s will known as the need requires.
We can hear the voice of our Master speaking to the hurricane’s billows to quiet them. We can hear the whispering call to come away, to know the draw to be separate from others and rest on His own bosom. Within us God's peace then takes its rightful place, releasing us now to walk on a higher path to freedom from the many pressures and tensions of life.
When all around us is mundane or in a whirl of unrest, in our secret inner closet, in our spirit, we shut in and lock out other activities in our life in order to be still before His presence. We study, wait, rest, meditate, pray. Then He reveals more of Himself. Quietly and smoothly He steals the old awareness in order to comfort us as friend comforts friend. He brings manifold brotherhood more than any one friend could bring comfort to us.
He is our leader into LIFE. We are to directly receive revelation from God by the spirit and be separated unto His presence. We are to know that we too are gaining grace to say truthfully: “Christ is my LIFE”. When Paul said, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”, he was considering his every persecution and cause for unrest and distress to be seen as nothing but ashes to be brushed away:
"‘Lo’! the tabernacle of God is with mankind, and He will be tabernacling with them, and they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them. And He will be brushing away every tear from their eyes. And death will be no more, nor mourning, nor clamor, nor misery; they will be no more, for the former things passed away. And He Who is sitting on the throne said, ‘Lo’ New am I making all! And He is saying, Write, for these sayings are faithful and true." Revelation 21:4-5 concordant
This is a lasting testimony, an affair God is consummating. He has communion that assures us He is taking care of making all things new. If we LOOK AWAY from the demons and death about us in the world to behold the Father of our spirit, He can give us understanding, a sensing by the spirit of the anointing of HE WHO IS OUR LIFE. We learn to be led of Him to rest in the peace of God that passes all understanding. God is saving and keeping our soul in a humility of a poor, crushed spirit, a submitted spirit with childlike, expectant faith.
Yes, we are separated and apart unto the Lord’s presence, to learn what He wants revealed through us. He who knows our every need, how we Christians are to become like the apostle, to think in agreement with and testify, "FOR ME, TO LIVE IS CHRIST." God intends we Christians should truthfully say like Jesus, "when you see me, you see the Father."
May our Father open wide our spiritual eyes to the full experience of being separated unto His presence. There is no substitute for that experience that cleanses and renews us.