The Running Mercy Seat

Shalom!

A few days ago the Lord woke me up, talking about how we are the Tabernacle of His life. How He creates us, each one of us, to be His Tabernacle in the desert of the world. He showed me the exquisite detail, the ravishing colors, the extravagant expense and expanse that He spends on each one of us as He crafts us into His jewels. He showed me how He protects His Tabernacle, so nobody can see its full beauty, under skins of humility and redemption and grace, until people walk inside of it, inside of our hearts, and are stunned by His created beauty and the glory and majesty and delight of what He is establishing within and through us. He showed me how meticulously He crafts us to carry His loving presence into the desert, His Tabernacle of holy surrendered presence. His oasis of truth and love.

The next day He continued with more details about the Tabernacle’s creation. (This is all part of this week’s Torah portion, Exodus 25-27.)

When God gave Moses instructions for building the Tabernacle He started with the Holy of Holies and gradually made His way to the outer courtyard. In other words, He started with Himself, His home, His seat of justice and mercy, His presence, and gradually made His way out to the entranceway for the people. Conversely, we start our journey towards Him from the outer courtyard, gradually making our way towards Him and into His Being, into the Holy of Holies. Starting with our redemption from sin through the blood of Yeshua, we learn from His Spirit and the light of His Presence, His menorah, eat of His showbread and drink from the pure wine of His covenant, lift up and lay down our worship, our self-sacrifice on His altar of incense. Dying to ourselves, as Christ died upon the cross, we walk through the torn veil up to the Seat of Atonement (the Hebrew name for the Mercy Seat) into the very presence of God. Atoned for.

Our journey has led us to Him as His journey first led Him to us. Now, seated on His Throne of Atonement, our viewpoint, our position becomes like His, and we experience Christ manifest within us. His home is now our home, and we begin. We look out at the world seated between His two angels, our comprehension of righteousness and judgment covered by His mercy. Within the very heart of Christ, from the vantage point of Christ’s goodness, we look back, back into the holy place, into the place where we learned to worship, to surrender, to honor, to steward our relationship with Christ, with God the Father, and we look further back, back into the bronze laver, where Christ first washed away our sins, finally arriving at the place of evangelism, the courtyard where people are being invited into this remarkable journey of grace, and we run, running back out into the world to join them, inviting them into heaven on earth, just like YYHVH invited us. His ambassadors. With YHVH cheering us on, with the Mercy Seat dwelling within us, we yearn to bring them home.

Some people never make it this far, some people never make it to the Mercy Seat. They are satisfied to stay in the Holy Place, a truly remarkable place in and of itself, learning about God, carrying His anointing, offering up prayers of Thanksgiving. But they are not willing to pay the full price to come all the way in as His mercy carriers.

Where do you stand on this journey? Where do I? Where do I revolt against dying to myself? Where do I want to hold onto my judgements? Where do you? And how do we take the next step forward together?

Let us become ever more drenched in God‘s presence, walking ever more deeply into the place of encounter where our souls die and thrive, and our spirits arise in holy communion with YHVH.

This music is a sound picture of my journey.