Heart Tracks - The Dwelling Place

"How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. I long, yes I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. ....Even the sparrow finds a home there and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young - at a place near Your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God." Psalm 84:1-3....."Then wonderful times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord." Acts 3:20

It may be well for sparrows and swallows to build their nests "at a place" near His altar, but I don't think it will do for you and me. He does not call us to come near to Him alone, but to come to Him. All of Him. To come and dwell not just with Him, but in Him. To abide. Our problem is that too often we are people who settle for "nearly" in too many aspects of our spiritual life. Lloyd Ogilvie tells of the time he sought counsel from one of his professors concerning an issue of surrender with the Father. The wise saint told him, "You cannot sneak around Golgotha." We cannot just come near the cross, we must come completely to it. Come to be upon it. We cannot just come near to His altar of sacrifice, we must place ourselves upon it as living sacrifice. We are willing to come close to Him, but not too close. Like the Israelites, we're content to keep our distance.

Whatever was placed upon His altar as a sacrifice was burnt up as an offering to Him. Fire consumed it. That only happened if the offering was placed upon His altar and left there, surrendered completely to Him. It is no different for those who profess to be His. He invites all to come to Him, but His command is that all will come to Him with all that they are. No longer their own, but His. All that we are is surrendered to all that He is, and then all that He is consumes all that we are.....with His holy fire. Without this happening in our lives, our fellowships, and our ministries, we will always be going about with a lack of power and a lack of His Presence. This will be so because we continue to depend on a great deal of our own power, and so a great deal of our own presence is showing through. We aren't decreasing and He surely is not increasing because of it.

The beauty of Psalm 84 finds its fruit in the words of Acts 3. In the Old Testament, the priests burnt incense before Him that resulted in a sweet fragrance permeating the Temple. Our act of placing ourselves on His altar, completely yielded to be His burnt offering results in the beauty and fragrance of His life emanating through ours. He will offer wonderful times of refreshment through our lives. Are we, individually and as the Body of Christ, such a fragrance? An even deeper more probing question for us is, what kind of fragrance are we to Him?

Where do we want our dwelling place to be today? Someplace near, but not too near to His? A place that keeps Him nearby, but not so nearby that He might deter us from our plans, agendas, and desires? Or, will we make our home upon His altar, and in Him? Will we be such an offering? Our God is a consuming fire. How much of us has He really consumed? What part of us has yet to be surrendered to His altar? What part of us do we keep back?

Blessings,
Pastor O