God’s Presence in the Temple
If there is something that is easy to loose sight of but that should always be a priority in everything we do, it is to bring God’s presence into the earth and into our daily lives. God wants to invade his church. God wants to be involved. He so loves to be in the midst of our lives. It’s like being a parent and seeing your kids really happy: nothing is better than that. When God sees us happy, he is rejoicing more than we are. It is the presence of God that changes our lives.
II Chronicles 7 - When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifices, and the glorious presence of God filled the Temple. Every so often, people start to have problems with giving. They say that tithing is not of the New Testament or of the New Covenant. I know that God doesn’t change. The Bible says he is the same yesterday, today and forever. Let’s observe God and how he moves, functions, operates and interacts with His people.
God loves offerings. He loves when we bring a sacrifice. The result of God receiving our sacrifice is that He fills the place in which the sacrifice was given. Because under the New Covenant, everything that has to do with giving and offerings has to do with our hearts, this is very powerful to us. If God fills the place where the sacrifice was given with His presence, what that’s saying is when we give God fills the environment from where the gift was - it is our heart. Giving under the New Covenant is from the heart. When you give from the heart, God’s presence fills your life. Our hearts are like an altar. It is the channel by which we relate to God spiritually. It is where we bear our thoughts, desires and troubles - we lay them on the altar. God has always wanted that personal, heart to heart relationship with us, and He knows what is in our heart. It is futile to try to hide our hearts from God because He knows us. He can always see our hearts.
The altar was the barest, most open part of the temple, and it revealed the heart of the nation - their attitude towards God. Out of our heart, we give and sacrifice and bear the truth to God about where our hearts are. When we give and sacrifice from our hearts, that is a trigger for God’s presence to enter our lives. When God’s presence dwells in this kind of way in our hearts and in our lives, everything is different. There is also our individual walks with God - our individual hearts - and then collectively our heart joined together in the body of Christ. We have individual altars and then our collective altar, which is represented by us coming together, putting God first and worshiping Him together.
The most important thing that can happen in this church is for people to find God, for God to become real to them and for them to start on their journey towards God’s calling for them. We are in a fight and a competition to win people for God - we are competing with everything else around them to get their attention and bring them into a place where they can experience God. We want to bring them to a place where they understand that God loves them as they are and wants them as they are. That is the most important thing we are involved in. All of the things we do in this house are moving us towards creating an incredibly environment for those who are unconnected to God.
Paul says I will do extraordinary things so that I might win one. I will be all things to all men so that I can win just one to Christ. Everything we do - all of the effort and prayer and time and sacrifice we put in to things is all to win people to Christ. This church is about connecting people to God - in everything we do, we will never forget that the most important things is connecting people to God. I know that what we do is minor in the process compared to what God does, so we want to do things to create an atmosphere for God to show up. We want to bring people into the environment and create a meeting point for the lost to come in to the presence of God. There is nothing more powerful to change someone’s life than the presence of God. We can’t rely on our own efforts or ideas - it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that changes people and delivers the realities of God into people’s lives.
We not only need to have the presence of God here every time we meet, but we also need to carry it with us all the time. We have to keep our hearts right and our attitudes right so that we are always prepared to connect people with God. It’s easy to have a good attitude in church, but it is harder in the world to keep our hearts in the right place and stay in a place of servitude. The more you serve, the farther you will go with God and the higher level of ministry you reach the greater your level of servant hood becomes. We get strength from church and fellowship so that we can go out and reach others outside of church. You find God in fellowship.
This church is a church of the presence of God, and we want it in the midst of everything we do. We want the presence of God in the temple always - our heart temple and the church temple - because the presence of God changes lives and transforms hearts. God always shows up. Sometimes we have to wait for Him, but He never fails to show up.
