Holy Habitation

Why should we wait for the Lord Jesus Christ to come and revive His church once again in this nation? What profit is there in continuing for long seasons without any apparent activity or productivity? What will men say when they look at us and see that we have not gotten up, nor moved from our places? As a matter of interest, where is the place that we are currently found in the eyes of God?

Between porch and altar...weeping. Where else ought we to be found if not in this single place, doing this single work? It is indeed a work of eternal consequence before Almighty God, but not to be counted as such by those who would not submit themselves unto the beautifully slow and steady and perfect ways of the Eternal Son Who waited for hundreds of fallen generations before entering the midst of His own creation for Redemption's consummate work. "In the fullness of time..." (see Galatians 4:4).

Oh, how we need to learn the fullness of God's time! What is the hurry? Where do we need to be if not at His holy altar, being altered from every unholy ambition and motive, rightly adjusted unto His perfect time, His perfect way, His PERFECTION. Jesus Christ calls us to no other place than to His Father's footstool for one single activity by which the entirety of our lives shall be judged: WORSHIP.

"But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him" (John 4:23). What is the context of that worship? Is it contained merely in the audible words of a song, or expressed only in our ostensible acts of service? Never! Consider this one thing: "worshippers...in Spirit and in Truth." It is not an activity at all that is being sought by the Father, it is the very essence of who we are created to be, out of which will flow the perfection of activity for the utmost glory unto the Father. This state of being requires the melding and bringing together of every activity purposed for God's saints: waiting, worship, work... Such was the calling of a priest who waited upon God before His altar, offering sacrifices by fire in worship, working according to the directives of the One for Whom and by Whom they had been appointed unto the priesthood.

Jesus Christ is to be Lord of all I am, not merely a Savior for my own conveniences. "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure...For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"(2Peter 1:10-11). Give diligence to what? To a ministry that shall never end, to behold the beauty of the Lord, inquiring in His temple, dwelling in His secret place forevermore (see Psalm 27). "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not..." (see 2Corinthians 3:17-4:18). Thus we are adjured: Add to the faith of the Holy God a compounding of those holy qualities of the One Who died, having become partakers of His divine nature--fruit meet for repentance, indeed, the fruit of the Spirit. It is required that we work out what God has so mercifully worked in us, manifesting His life in the daily tasks granted His own. But will we honor Him there, in the round and round of life? Will we be worshippers when no one is around to critique our walk with God? Where is the sensitivity to His Spirit that runs through the very fibers of our soul, keeping us so tender and humble and broken, lest we be found without humility before the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity? "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name [is] Holy; I dwell in the high and holy [place], with him also [that is] of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones" (Isaiah 57:15). Oh, the sweet romance of the High and Holy Lord, a life raised from death to dwell in union with Jesus Christ, where we are ever found within the gates of His Sanctuary and at the Refuge of His throne set up from the ages of eternity. "A glorious high throne from the beginning [is] the place of our sanctuary" (Jeremiah 17:12).

Revival, what a tremendous invitation. Consider what it costs to give account for your own culpability as a part of the body of Jesus Christ that is found to be dead without the Living Head. It will require identification with a household of unrepentant, obstinate, and stiffnecked children who live as bastards rather than sons or daughters. It will require a soul that breaks with a longing for God the Father to reign as King once again over rebellious servants. It will require identification with the beating of God's heart so deep and unrelenting that the slightest breath of His Voice will cause the most immediate attention of your every faculty. You wait, you watch, you weep, you see, and you sit in silence.

Daniel so yearned for the God of Israel to restore His people unto Himself that he associated himself in an indistinguishable way with a wayward people and their sins. In his intercession before God's throne he never pointed the finger at "those sinners." Rather, he lumped himself in with the most heinous of transgressors, if perchance the Lord of heaven would hear and answer the cry of one of His most precious saints in all the earth. "And I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes: And I prayed unto the LORD my God, and made my confession, and said, O Lord, the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments; We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled..." (Daniel 9:3-5). The man who set his face toward the holy city in prayer three times a day in the face of deadly consequence, called on the Name of Yahweh, identifying himself with the very ones who flung themselves out from God's Presence in iniquity. And God so readily received and answered Daniel's interecession that His commandment went forth even at the beginning of his supplications (Daniel 9:20-23). Pray without ceasing...It is a call to unbroken communion with the One Who never sleeps nor slumbers. So how is it that we could ever be found to be asleep in death as the only people on the face of the earth with whom God Almighty has intended to share the wonders of Himself, for the glory of His Eternal Name?

When will we see revival as God has intended it? God's harvest will never be accomplished by our contrived conventions, our calling of unholy assemblies, or our pretense of austentatious prayer. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest..." We say, "Go and do." God says, "Watch and pray." "No," we reply, "That is completely impractical for such an hour as we are in. We must get a move on. What about the Great Commission?" As if God has forgotten about the commandment to go and make disciples. But we cannot produce what we have been unwilling to become ourselves. If we continue in the way we now walk as the church of Jesus Christ in America, we will merely fulfill the words of our Lord spoken to the Pharisees, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves" (Matthew 23:15). We were never called to "evangelize the nations." We are commanded to make disciples of the nations, to become such a continual fragrance of Jesus Christ unto the Father wheresoever He places us that the Holy Spirit has free reign in and through us to bind up the broken hearted, to set the captives free, to preach the gospel to the poor. For out of this ostensibly miserable and undesirable group God will appoint and mold and shape disciples for Himself by the hands of His chosen, who will be spent upon His glory by whatever means He sees fit. "For ye see your calling, brethren...God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised...That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" (1Corinthians 1:26-31).

"Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory: where [is] thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies toward me? are they restrained? Doubtless thou [art] our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, [art] our father, our redeemer; thy name [is] from everlasting. O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, [and] hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance" (Isaiah 63:15-17).

"Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens..." The preceding verses are the key to the answer to this prayer of the prophet of Isaiah. A watchman of God pleading with God for nothing other than His glory and His inheritance. "Have for Yourself, my God, a people who are nothing other than a continual offering unto YOU and You alone." The day will come when Jesus Christ will have a true inheritance among the nations, and His reign will be fully displayed among the kingdoms of the earth as every other dominion bows its knee to Him as Lord of all. But in this hour, the question remains, What shall become of the church in America? Weep between porch and altar. Bow your head, rend your heart, cry out day and night. Give Him no rest, no silence, until He establishes His resting place in the midst of His church once again.

"Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where [is] their God?" (Joel 2:17). Wherefore should they say...Where is their God? Is that not the terrible mockery of the world cast upon us day after day? But we shrug it off, smugly replying that we serve the Living God, as we walk straight down the broad path to death and destruction.

Where are the priests? Where are the ministers of God? Where are those who will be satisfied no more with this world's affections, this world's desires, this world's fancies; those who want nothing more than to be worshippers and lovers of the King of kings? We will never know what it is to be a worshipper until we have gone to our own funeral, dying to everything we ever wanted to be outside of God, or even for Him! God will never be a means to our end. He will never spend His glory upon our ambitions and aims. Jesus Christ did not die to use us or to place us as trophies on display for men to marvel at. The Lord of heaven and earth died to purchase for Himself a treasured possession for His Father in whom He might come and take up His rest, indeed a holy habitation for His Presence--a bride bought with priceless blood for the indescribably majestic Bridegroom and King. What will you be to Him? A vessel useful for temporary use amidst men or an eternal habitation for His Glory?

A temple serves no other purpose than to house the One for Whom it was built. It is utterly useless unless God inhabits it. All the activity around the temple means absolutely nothing if the Living Christ arrives only to depart with tears because He found not a place suitable for His rest. And so our lives are to be a living sacrifice, offered day and night without ceasing (see Romans 12:1-2). "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book [it is] written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [is] within my heart" (Psalm 40:6-8). So shall we prove what is that good, and pleasing, and perfect will of God, Whose will shall persist in preparing a people for His habitation in the earth. For the hope of glory is manifested in this one mystery: Christ in you (see Colossians 1:27). And in Jesus Christ we find that single and sole ONE WHO IS GREATER THAN THE TEMPLE. For He is the One Who "shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I [will be] his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever" (1Chronicles 22:10). And He is building His most precious possession in all the earth into a House of Rest for His Father, living stone meticulously placed upon living stone, fashioned by the hands of the Masterbuilder and Chief Cornerstone Himself (see Ephesians 2:19-22, 1Peter 2:4-5).

This is the expressed purpose of God breaking open our graves, so that He might have for Himself that place of everlasting, undisturbed rest for His Glory. And the covenant of God will be established in all verity with His people, the Bridegroom bringing into union with Himself His spotless bride, an eternal covenant of peace. "For we [were] bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us...to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof..." (Ezra 9:9). The Lord shall have a place for Himself that will be sanctified by His Glory and His sanctuary will forever be in the midst of His people. "Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves..." (Ezekiel 37:12). Why? Because "I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore" (Ezekiel 37:26-28).

Only the broken, only the contrite, only the humble, only the ones who have died with Him that they might live with Him and unto Him--these alone will God Almighty revive, unto these alone will He come to resurrect to be a living bride for His Son. "My church has broken the bond of My covenant and cast off the cords of My love. Her tabernacle has fallen. The stakes thereof have been removed. But I the Lord Jesus Christ declare the decree pronounced from eternity, for I am the Son, and with My Father one: all nations, tribes, and tongues shall serve Me. For I am building an holy house of habitation for My Father's glory. So shall it be. Amen" (see For Weeping and For Wailing post). So the Lord will say of those found to be true children of Zion, "This [is] my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it" (Psalm 132:14). For the Spirit of God has spoken and written it, and it shall be fulfilled, "Behold, the tabernacle of God [is] with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, [and be] their God" (Revelation 21:3). And all of eternity shall tell for the Glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the infinite, the indescribable, the immortal King and Lord and Savior.

Watchman by What Means?

We have trusted far too long in our current situation within the church. We have stood in the midst of dead saints, preaching dead sermons, singing dead songs, praying dead prayers, all the while pointing our boney fingers at the world, proclaiming that it is dead and in need of life. We are without the Presence of God, marching toward a land of promise perfectly content to enter in without the One Who gave the promise to begin with. Yet there is in the church a group and a number who recognize the need for revival. But to acknowledge something by way of natural cognition is one thing; to judge spiritual things by the Holy Spirit is a wholly different matter. "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God...But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned...But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man" (1Corinthians 2:11-15). There is, therefore, a desperate and incalculable need to see the body of Christ as God sees it, and call on His Name in response to that revelation of the Spirit of God.

But what is the solution to our current condition? Is it another spurious work that tantalizes and titillates the outward senses of men, enabling them to think that by some feeling of a spiritual kind they are thereby safe from judgment to come? Even those who preach the need for revival are unwilling to pay the price that is required for this heaven sent redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ in His church. "We live in a generation that has never known revival—God's way. True revival changes the moral climate of an area or a nation. Without exception, all true revivals of the past began after years of agonizing, hell-robbing, earth-shaking, heaven-sent intercession. The secret to true revival in our own day is still the same. But where, oh, where, are the intercessors?" (Leonard Ravenhill). This group that acknowledges the deadness of the church has been as the man with a beam in his eye who points out the speck of dust in his neighbor's (see Matthew 7:1-6). This is because the beam has not been considered before he points out the speck. He is a hypocrite of the most tragic sorts. He has been granted the mercy of God by which he can see the dead bones in the valley, but he has not been willing to be brought down by the Spirit of God into the midst of that valley and behold the dryness, the stench, the utter hopelessness of these bones that he has beheld from afar.

"Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Psalm 85:4-6).

There is no identification with the heart of Jesus Christ Who alone can prophesy to these bones and bring life once again. The pastor, the teacher, the preacher stands aloof from his own condition, unwilling to be examined before the judgment seat of Christ in this present hour so that there will not be condemnation in the final hour. Oh, how tragic is the condition we are in as the body of Christ! We are intended to be the living, breathing, shining people who walk this earth as the primary means by which God has intended to introduce His Good News to the world. But we are lame, sick, and in many respects altogether dead.

How easy it is to point the finger, but never allow the Holy Spirit to deal with us on the deep issues of our hearts. It is not until we have been brought to the place of utter brokenness before Almighty God, and allowed Him to show us the things that no other man or woman in all creation can show us--the secret pride, the selfish motives, the vain ambitions. Only then will we be able to emerge from the secret place with the holy Christ to speak to an estranged bride of her own need for mercy of which we ourselves are partaking moment by moment. It is all too easy to covet the self-proclaimed title of "watchman" these days. How feignedly demure we have become and smooth in our operations within the church. We can look upon the social ills of nation and church, calling out to a "T" the sins and vitiations of an unholy tribe of people. But do not ask us to fall prostrate before the Living Christ for more than our daily devotional time requires, being examined to "the last aching abyss" of our own hearts by the God of Truth. The truth is, it is an honor to be so loved by God the Father that He will go to those places within our souls and deal with everything that could hinder His relationship with us. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable [are] his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33).

It has, in fact, become fashionable to speak of ourselves as watchmen, because the title allows us to call out the condition of the church and world with a sense of authority, albeit self-imposed authority. Oh how great was the cost for Ezekiel to bear that mark--yes, a mark--as watchman of God! He bore the sins of the people upon himself in identification with God's heart, he watched his wife die, unable to cry or lament her death; he saw the Almighty seated upon the throne of His Glory and collapsed in utter despair for his own life for the Majesty and Great Holiness that he beheld (See Ezekiel 1-4, 24). Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, these men knew the tremendous cost of this high calling of God; and to think how glibly we impose upon ourselves this ostensible title of honor, not realizing the actual horror that is faced by those who are in union with Christ in this most dreadful ministry. But we want nothing of the rejection and sorrow that comes with this rare grace of God. For His watchmen are to be so identified with His heart that He will take but three of His twelve closest followers aside to watch with Him, sharing in His sorrows, His tears, His sweating of blood. "And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me..." (Matthew 26:37-38).

Before Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem in its ultimate visitation from God He wept over the city. This Supreme Son of Man understood the full magnitude of that day of visitation, but with whom could He share that burden of the Father? He is the Root out of dry ground, despised and rejected of men, Who has carried our sorrows and God's all the way to the Cross (See Isaiah 53:1-5). His life on the earth is the paragon of priestly prayer, watching with God, speaking only what is heard from Him (see John 12:44-50).

"The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know [it]: the prophet [is] a fool, the spiritual man [is] mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred. The watchman of Ephraim [was] with my God: [but] the prophet [is] a snare of a fowler in all his ways, [and] hatred in the house of his God" (Hosea 9:7-8). Even in God's own house those whom He has sent to warn of impending judgment have been sneered at, rejected, and wholly discounted as mad men. No wonder, for the Lord Himself was said to be "beside Himself" and insane (Mark 3:21). Most ministers of God's altar are far too comfortable to be hated in His house, because the glory of God has no real place in their lives. If only we knew what God's visitation really meant for the house of God and its inhabitants--how terribly we would tremble for fear of His great Glory! "For the day of vengeance [is] in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come" (Isaiah 63:4). Vengeance and redemption, recompense for sin and for righteousness, go hand-in-hand when God visits His saints.

Prayer...when will we understand that simple yet indispensible aspect of our relationship with God? We cannot separate prayer and intercession from the church and remain the CHURCH. What sort of marriage would it be if the wife ran around doing work for her husband but never communicated with him? What sort of relationship would it be if a son toiled days on end for his father, to build him an house that is absolutely unsuitable for his abode, all because the son refused to confer with the father regarding what would most please him? We are a body severed from the Head. We think that running around in our busyness, doing great exploits for God is what He most desires from us. But we are the most insidious of hypocrites, calling the church to repair and rebuild the altars of prayer, as we neglect that very calling ourselves. "Because Ephraim hath made many altars to sin, altars shall be unto him to sin" (Hosea 8:11). The very evidence of our insincere devotion will become the indictment against us on the final Day. All the while, we are daily grieving and spurning His Holy Spirit as He patiently and deliberately calls us back to the Father's footstool to tarry in prayer and silence, listening and crying the intercession of the Great Intercessor, united with His heart in its most secret groanings (see Romans 8:34 & Hebrews 7:25). That "one thing [that] is needful" (Luke 10:42).

"Son of man, do you see...?"
A watchman must see things from no other perspective than from the habitation of holiness with God Almighty Himself. To see as God sees, to see from His perspective, to see things coming from far off--this is what it is to be a watchman of the Lord Jesus Christ. But there are countless multitudes who judge by what they see from their own skewed point of view. There are innumerable companies who contend with men by nothing more than what they hear with their natural ears. But this is not what a watchman is, nor what a watchman does. Only after Ezekiel had been carried into the midst of the valley full of dead men's bones, gazing upon the slain with God's mind and with eyes opened by the Holy Spirit, Who lighted him into that valley, could this son of man finally hear with an understanding that would shake heaven itself when he spoke those requisite words in prophetic obedience. "O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD..." (Ezekiel 37:4).

A watchman for what? For what are we watching? From what vantage point do we view the impending danger? From whose perspective do we perceive the current condition of the church and the nation, and speak in reference to that which we see? Such cost, such a great and tremendous price must be paid before we will ever really know what it is to share God's heart and bear His burden in unceasing communion with Him. Perfect union with Christ Jesus the Lord of Glory...there is no other way. And whether He speaks or remains silent, you do only what you are bidden to do, and speak only what you are commanded to speak by the Eternal God of creation. What if the Lord Who created the very heavens and earth into existence by His Word chose to be silent for a time, would you share that deep, incommunicable, piercing silence with Him in intimacy? Or would you run off to call those wretched sinners to repentance one more time, because you see a need, and they are descending into hell by the droves? The need is never the call, the call comes only by One, the Lord Jesus Christ. And to set the trumpet to one's mouth requires first to be commanded to do so by that Son of Man Who is also the Son of God.

There can be no other way than to rest at the feet of God in irrevocable surrender to the Living Christ, watching, waiting, praying, loving, hoping, trusting, crying, travailing. This is the duty...Nay, the delight of a true watchman of God.