The Dwelling

 

Our dwelling place is a habitation of God depicted in the Feast of Tabernacles. Both individually and collectively the Israelites lived with God. Today it can be a continuous “feast” for those who enter into this truth. Your address is about to change and so is the limited understanding of your union with God.

 

For example, Psalm 91 speaks of “those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High” will now take this to mean, not your natural dwelling, your house, which God protects, but God Himself being that Dwelling. Your natural home will be a safe haven but that is because you have chosen God to be your spiritual dwelling. You will be enjoying the Feast of Tabernacles.

 

Moses says in vs. 9 “if you make the Most High your dwelling…. then” and what follows are blessings and promises.  Of course the first eight verses of promises are yours too. But all of course is contingent upon making the Lord, the Dwelling.

 

The Feast of Tabernacles is upon us as a present truth. We “enter it”. We do this by faith. When we do, all of a sudden many of the truths you have read and believed for years are going to take on the fuller depth of meaning that was intended all along.

 

To get to these fuller experiences you pass through all the feasts of Israel, which are parallels to the Christian life. First there is Passover, then Pentecost and finally the “dwelling” of Tabernacles. You go from first day to second day and on to third day truth. This truth heightens all previous understandings. All the promises of God in Him (Jesus), are Yes and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. 2Cor. 1:20.

 

The major factor is what I will call spiritual distance. Whereas you have seen God “there” and you “here”, you will now experience “together”. Previously, even though many knew God was dwelling within in the person of the Holy Spirit, the distance matter was still an issue. It was as if God’s throne and resources were all “there” and you were waiting for your requests to come here. Your prayers were a long distance issue. Our God is omnipresent, both here and there.

 

Now communication is more direct to the God with whom you dwell and who dwells with you. You see it was His plan to dwell with you first! It has been our reluctance to the whole idea. Like the Israelites, we would rather send someone to the mountain top to do our business, than go there and face Him face to face or be in His presence. But that has been changing.

 

It is changing because we see our need and we feel bankrupt without the God of the promises being our satisfaction. We have much of the blessings and maybe not enough in some cases, but our hunger has grown beyond these blessings whether we received them as yet or not.

 

David was our forerunner in understanding. He loved the little tent that was pitched in Jerusalem. There was the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat over which was the presence of God. That was as good as it got at that time. But David saw something in and by the Spirit that speaks of today. David had “God in his presence”.  But David longed to dwell “in the Lord”. This experience is ours, the Spirit within David revealing a future truth reserved for us.  It is our time to respect and receive what the Spirit was signifying centuries ago. It was acted out in the Feast of Tabernacles and demonstrated by David. Both were shadows of our present reality. We can enter into this dwelling. But how?

 

In the same way God prepared you for the blessing of Passover, to receive the Lamb of God as your salvation, and the same way God prepared you to receive Pentecost, the promise of the Spirit, is the same way God is preparing you to enter into Tabernacles. He puts a longing in you. It is deep calling to deep. The wooing power of the Holy Spirit is amazing.

 

With cords of love God draws us to Him. He is irresistible. We want what He wants. His desire to dwell with us is equaled by our longing for Him. The match is made. We move from first day to second day to DWELLING, a third day experience. The spiritual distance is closed. A union is being consummated. Promises are not there, they are here in the One who dwells within us.

 

Moses had a taste of it and spoke of it. David had an expression of it and reveled in it. We now have a revelation of it and can enter into it in fullness. How blessed we are.

 

Blessings In Christ,

 

Greg Manalli

 


This Ephesians Ministries International
® article is a publication of Ephesians Ministries International®.

 

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