The love of God can break any chain
I have written much about the Tabernacle Blessing and the spiritual experience of Divine Love. Divine Love is, in reality, just the nature of God our Father revealed through us to a fuller extent than most have ever experienced.
Today, as I thought about the Tabernacle Blessing I realized (or it was revealed to me) that I have never shown you the true power of Divine Love. For me, having experienced this blessing, everything I say seems perfectly reasonable and normal. However, if you have never experienced oneness with God what I say may be difficult to grasp from just telling you about it theologically.
Divine Love is a supernatural experience
Therefore, what I am going to share with you today is a little bit of the supernatural nature of the Tabernacle Experience. Though it may seem other worldly to you, this is actually the way we, as the sons and daughters of God, were created to function.
The true power of the Love of God is hard to fathom for many who are not currently experiencing it, but I want to give you a small taste of the first love that existed between God, Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden before the fall. This is but a small preview of the type of love that will exist universally in the New Heavens and New Earth.
The place whereon you stand is holy ground
This testimony, my brethren, is Holy ground. It is sacred place, not because of anything we did, but because God was present in such a powerful way. I would ask that you to loose anything that man has fashion in your mind and approach this spiritual example with as much reverence as Moses approached the burning bush.
To begin with…
When I was a young man, a Bible College student, the Tabernacle Blessing hit our church. It started with a few, but soon God was uniting different members of His body all across the congregation. Brothers or sisters, the ones that God chose unite, literally became “God manifest in the flesh” to one another. “So what happened,” you ask? I will tell you the story of the power of one such heavenly union.
A vision of the bride of Christ
I was walking upstairs after service as the music played sweetly and the choir worshiped in tongues below. I was 24 years old at the time and spent most of my days either studying the word at Bible College, participating in ministries, or working at my job. As I walked a woman, about mid forties, approached me. I had never seen her before (it was a large church) and as I looked at her and she looked at me and I just about fell over.
I don’t know if it was a vision or if she actually changed for a moment, but before my eyes I saw the “bride of Christ.” It was not the incredible beauty that almost floored me but it was the absolute purity which radiated from her that shook my soul. It was as if God Himself was looking at me through her eyes. It is something I felt deep in my spirit and, in truth, nothing in my previous Christian experiences even remotely prepared me for what I saw. Then, as quickly as it has came the heavenly vision faded and I saw a normal women standing before me once again.
That ye may be one
I couldn’t stop staring at her. I felt like I had known her all my life! None of my usual social sensibilities or inhibitions existed anymore. It was like I was reunited with an childhood friend that had shared everything with growing up together. I can only describe it as if her Spirit glowed from deep inside of her and I was looking directly down at it through the windows of her soul.
I had never felt such pure love before in my entire life. I became as crystal glass and she seemed to be just as transparent too. She was not female, I was not male, we were simply two spirits that intermingled so completely that we became one with each other and with God.
I feel a bit like John trying to describe what He saw in the Spirit. How do you talk about heavenly things in a earth bound language? Maybe this is why we speak with other tongues. I just trust that the Holy Spirit will help you understand.
Confess your faults one to another
Later, as we sat down in a pew, Maggie (as she was called,) looked straight at me and said, “I feel that the Holy Spirit wants me to tell you some things.” I said,”sure, Id be glad to listen.” Then Maggie began to recount, from the time she that was a young woman to the present, every indiscretion she had ever committed with the opposite sex. It was as if I was her confessor and she was coming clean about every sin she had ever done.
Normally, as you can imagine, I would have been horrified, turned completely beet red, and been embarrassed to death as she related, one by one, every impropriety she could recollect. On a scale of 1 to 10 this was an a eleven! Yet, oddly enough, that eleven made absolutely no difference to me. I simply sat there feeling nothing but love and acceptance for her no matter what she said. In fact, nothing Maggie said even seem strange to me at the time.
That you may be healed
As she unburdened herself I sensed no effort or embarrassment on her part either. It seemed as natural as sitting down for morning coffee and talking about the weather. When it was over, I hugged her, said I loved her and then… it was over. During her confession she seemed to grow younger as her face relaxed. Maggie appeared lighten up as burdens she had carried for many years lifted off of her one by one. After we parted I too felt calm, peaceful, and most of all loved. After our time together I never once judged her for what she said and I have never once, to this very day, told anyone about the intimate details she shared.
Love never fails
All these years later, when I look back on that day, I almost cannot believe what took place. A complete stranger opening up and confessing their most intimate secrets and regrets to me without either of us feeling embarrassed or ashamed. I figured out, later, that it was the Spirit of God in her and in me that facilitated all that amazing trust. We were moved by His Spirit and therefore everything that happened was as effortless as speaking in other tongues.
I am sure Maggie told me things that she had never told anyone else in her entire life. I am also sure that God healed her that day of feelings of shame and guilt that had festered in her soul for many years. It was like spiritual surgery with the prefect anesthetic: God’s love.
The power of the Tabernacle Blessing
This is an example of the power of the Tabernacle experience. Though it is different for every person who experiences it, the commonality is the complete and utter love and acceptance you share with whomever God connects you with. This is the love of 1 Corinthians 13 expressed down to the letter. Everything that is written in that love chapter speaks about the Divine Love of God shed abroad in the hearts of those who will receive it. You cannot “will” this type of love happen any more than you can “will” yourself to speak in other tongues. It is a gift you ask for and that God freely gives.
I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
As I said, this testimony is Holy ground and I hope you treat it as such. Wherever the presence of God chooses to dwell, we must humbly bow before Him and loose the sandals of this world from off our feet. When we approach our Creator we must come as He made us: naked and unashamed. A natural man’s mind cannot understand or comprehend the spiritual things of God for they are foolishness to him. Only through experiencing God’s love can we begin to know the power of His Spirit to heal and transform us so profoundly that we revert to our natural state of wholeness. Sometimes, when God’s methods and ways are difficult for our natural minds to understand, we can only recognize that the bush is indeed burning without being consumed and just leave it at that.
Here is a truth,
“We are the burning bush of this age.”
I testify to you that there is a place, in the love of God, where every wound and hurt that you have ever received, no matter how deep or painful, will simply vanish. There is a place, in God, where you will be made a whole a person again. Our heavenly Father will freely give, for all those who will dare to receive it, a foretaste of The New Heavens and New Earth and the heavenly love of that world to come. Amen.
How can I apply this teaching to my life?
You were created with the ability to connect with God and with your brothers and sister in Christ. So you already possess what you need to allow the love of God to flow through you. All that remains is that you must, as it were, plug in and let God flow through your spirit to those around you.
The next time you feel love for a brother or sister in God simply allow God to do whatever He wants. If He wants you talk with them then talk. If they need a hug, hug them. Consciously allow yourself to give in to the Holy Spirit and let Him control the interaction.
You don’t have to (and usually should not) do anything radical at first, but simply dip your toe into the love of God and find out how it feels. Do small things until you built up the confidence and experience to do bigger things in Him. The gears of our spirit are rusty so it may take a few drops of the Holy Spirit to loosen you up, but once He does, everything will work just fine.
