The Holy Place – Prayer – Part 11

As you prepare to enter the holy place, having been washed, dressed, anointed, and consecrated, you must remember that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him”.  You must remember that you came into the outer court through the gate of His finished work.  He became the way for you to see your true reflection in the brazen laver and to sacrifice your will on the brazen altar.  Now at the door of the tabernacle, you are about to enter the realm of intercession.  You have come into a deeper walk with the Lord under the new anointing He has poured upon your life.

But as I said earlier, at this new level you must approach the Father by way of Jesus Christ.  The door has the same four colors that were in the gate: white, blue, purple and scarlet. But now, they have taken on a deeper meaning.  Let’s see how this applies in your daily walk.  According to 1 Corinthians 1:30 and Revelation 19:7-8, the white, fine-twined linen speaks of the Lord, who has become your righteousness.  His righteousness can now be clearly seen in you by others.  It is the foundation and assurance of victory for every burden you receive from God in Prayer.  Blue (turquoise), the color of heaven, speaks of Jesus as the second man, the Lord from Heaven.  He was revealed to you at the gate, and now He’s being manifested in you daily as the living Word.  When people see you standing at the door of the tabernacle, they will begin to see the kingdom and will of God being validated in the earth through you.

Purple is the color of kingship which means you can be clearly identified as an ambassador of the royal family of Jesus Christ.  When people see you in the natural, they see you beyond your title, gender or nationality, all the way to your biblical roots.  Principalities and powers in the Spirit realm will also begin to recognize your heritage and bow to your royal lineage.

The last color is scarlet which speaks of a sacrificial blood that Jesus shed for you to be saved and come into a deeper relationship with Him.  It also signifies that the battle has already been fought and won for you in the Spirit realm.  Now as you begin to make intercession, fully clothed in your priestly garments, you will be able to experience the blood of Jesus going before you and setting the captives free.

In the Holy place, the realm of total truth, God requires that the grace of His Son be made manifest in you. Why? This door, the first veil of the tabernacle was not merely an entrance to an enclosed space.  This door shut out common (natural) men.  Most importantly, it was the only passageway that led to the manifest presence of God on the threshing floor.

Are you ready to enter His marvelous light? Eternal light is your final destination.  Now you must walk knowing that you have come out of the outer court where the light is only temporary.  As an intercessor, the works of Christ must progressively be revealed in and through you.  You can never go back.  As you prepare to enter the holy place, know that you will begin to operate in the supernatural light as you learn to pick up the burden of the Lord.  Remember, God hasn’t called you into the marvelous light just for you to sit there and gaze or to be afraid on this new level and run back to the comfort zone of the outer court.  There is a divine purpose for you and grace to meet every need just beyond that door.

There are two reasons why priests entered the holy place.  The first was to perform the service of the Lord. In performing the temple service, they made sure to replace the shewbread regularly which represented the Word of God.  They kept the menorah filled with olive oil which represented the light of the Lord and the oil of the anointing.  They also kept a constant fire burning on the altar of incense representing the place of worship and total surrender, ensuring that the glory of the Lord was maintained in that whole area.

The second reason they entered was to lay prostrate before God in prayer.  Both purposes speak of a higher degree of separation and devotion to God.  The golden altar represents a place, time, and position in prayer where you are separated from everybody else. Once you have gone through all the stages of altar – you will be able to experience the oil of the anointing.  The Word of the Lord will become alive to you at the golden altar and true worship will begin to rise out of your spirit.

This is your place of separation.  This is also why prayer can be practiced anywhere.  This is how we know that we are on our way to the threshing floor because separation is the heart of the threshing process. To thresh means “to separate grain or seeds from straw by beating the stems and husks”.  The divine threshing process actually begins when you enter the gate to the outer court in prayer.  Then the process of personal repentance in the outer court separates you from a life of sin into a life of obedience to God.  Now that you have moved into the holy place, the separation continues as you begin to live within His purpose.  Each piece of the tabernacle furniture deepens your intercessory experience.

The furniture inside the holy place was positioned with the table of shewbread to the north, the golden candlestick to the south, and the golden altar of incense to the west of the outer elements.

(Teachings from Juanita Bynum)

Romans 8:28-32

As I read Romans 8:28-32, I feel a message lies within these words.  I notice in many verses God always speaks in absolutes – using the words “all” and “every”.  There is never a sense of partiality.  We know that in “ALL” things, God works for the “GOOD” of “THOSE” who “LOVE” Him, who have been called according to His purpose.  Seems that if we love God, it is because He has made it so.  So why are some called and others not?  Have we not all been hardhearted at one time or another?  What makes us different than any one else?  I hear the Spirit saying, “CHOICE”.  We who are called freely chose to love and believe in who God is.

Wow! Romans says we are predestined, called, justified and glorified.  All these words have a special meaning in that each is a “privilege” not a “right” to receive.  With that said, these words take on special meaning.  The dictionary defines the word “justified” as to declare as righteous, to erase away our sins.  What about glorified?  Worthy of all honor and praise.  I see how that applies to God, but how does that apply to us?  Do we deserve such a thing?  In itself, “NO”, but we do if we have been justified through the blood of Jesus.  So what differentiates being chosen and being called?  The Bible tells us that many have been called, but few have been chosen.  It is through the shedding of Jesus’ blood, we were justified, that is, forgiven of our sins.  As we were, we could never have stood before God, but bathed in His blood, we became perfect in His sight.

This verse keeps ringing in my mind – “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him”.  You know if you are not careful, you could miss some of the meaning to this verse.  Let me explain.  When I read it the first time, I interpreted it to mean that no matter how bad the situation you were in, God would work it out to our benefit.  As I read, I began to learn that this verse also said that God would use everything in our lives to remake us and transform us into the likeness of Jesus. This tells me that this verse doesn’t stop at just working situations out to our benefit, but that situations in our life’s will be used to make us better in Christ.  This really gets me to thinking – no one will walk into a fire or should I say into an uncomfortable or hard situation. Our instinct is to stay where things are easy and safe.  Sort of like I was a few years ago.  I never would have volunteered to go to war.  Being cold, tired, overworked and now in a place where people want to kill you is not my idea of fun, yet this situation, if you really think about it brought out a lot of things in me such as faith, trust and a love of God.  I guess what I mean to say is – we can learn and grow to depend on God or we can let these things destroy us.

I feel like the secret to this faith walk is walking toward God and growing close to Him.  We all have a choice – life or die.  It’s funny because God always seems to push us outside our comfort zone.  It makes me think of a baby.  We as mothers know that the child must be burped frequently as they feed so that air doesn’t form in their bodies causing discomfort.  Doctors teach us that patting a child’s back works the air up, child burps, relief is achieved.  How does that compare to what I just said.  When God puts us into a position where we are outside our comfort zones, a place where we squirm and sweat, that’s when the ungodly things surface.  As these traits, characteristics, habits come to the surface, we learn we must deal with them by fixing them.  If things never become tough, these traits would never surface.  They would always be the root of our problem; they would always be the obstacle in our life that would keep us from walking forward.  Interesting, isn’t it!

Let’s take this a step further.  The first step to fixing a problem is to recognize you have a problem.  If the problem never surfaces, we never recognize it’s there and as a result we never fix it.  Have you noticed that problems never seem to surface until the situation begins to take a turn for the worse? Some of these problems are so deeply rooted in us that they are part of us.  To lose these things would be like losing what we feel is an integral part of our existence.  Most don’t realize until they struggle through the corrective process that things are so much better without it.  I think the devil’s goal is to convince us that we cant and don’t want to live without it. Convince us that we have to have it or we are less of a person than we are and the enemy has achieved his goal – “we never walk forward in God”.  It is so sad as I look back and see how much of my life was wasted thinking just like this.

The hardest part of this walk is just taking the first step.  I guess I am thankful because that is where God usually comes in.  Like a parent, God gives us a loving shove out the door.  We dont always accept it in th eway it was meant, but once we travel the road and look back, then we see it differently.