The following came to me in prayer the other afternoon. It was as if I could see a swirling cloud that looked like a hand that was rising and reaching into the heavens. Reaching, Reaching and finally connecting with another greater hand that came down from heaven. This smoke was coming out of a room.
The Room that is You
When David sat on the backside of a Judean hillside playing his psalms of praise, lost to his own thoughts and forgotten by his father, what did God see?
When David stood their shocked and surprised as the oil dripped off his chin and splattered on the dirt floor at his feet, what did God know?
In another time and setting, Noah is offering a sacrifice to God of the Clean fowl and beast, and this sacrifice ascended into the presence of God as a sweet smelling savor, what caused God to declare a covenant and a token of the same? What did God see when he looked at Noah on this day?
Humanity is bound up and is surrounded by a reality that does not affect God. This undeniable power and fact of our existence is time. So often we don't think of the past or the future because it is yesterday and the other we do not know. So we plunge headlong into the moments of life only thinking of the present. However God does not see us this way.
I like to think of our lives and how God sees them as articles and objects in a room. The milestones in our lives that happened in time, I see them as unique objects in the room that is our life. Because we are so time conscious, and the present is always so pressing it causes us to reach, stretch and strain to get in touch with that presence of God. This presence is beyond the present, it is an Eternal Spirit. The Eternal Spirit that we know as God.
You know what I think God saw when David thought he was alone and forgotten? Or when he was listening to the bellowing blaspheme of a Giant named Goliath? Or when he stood stock still looking at a man that wanted to kill him? God saw David in his finest moment. I think that was when David escorted the Ark of God back into Jerusalem dancing in a linen ephod with all his might bringing the presence of God into it's rightful place.
Noah standing their on that mountain that day offering a sacrifice God was not overly impressed with the clean birds burning and swirling smoke rising, but it was the essence of the man, the spirit of the man that came into the nostrils of God that caused him to say, "That smells so Good."
Noah working on a boat in a world that did not need boats, propelled by a purpose that was not logical in his time, but made perfect sense to God. Noah had heard from the Eternal presence of God, and that voice gave him a connection to be able to build an ark that took him one hundred and twenty years to build. In a generation that cannot perceive ten years, this man waited one hundred and twenty years building an object that had absolutely no purpose until it rained. He worked on it everyday, because the weather never interfered.
This man that devoted his life to a divine word from God that was so outlandish that the whole world did not believe him. Today you can gather a crowd that believe in UFO's and Aliens with no proof, and Noah could not even get one person out of his family to be saved. Home Missions might be tough, however I don't know anyone who would judge Noah as successful in today's world. Give him his due; his family was saved.
So here is Noah offering a sacrifice, I really don't think God was looking at Noah in the present, but he was looking at "NOAH" the man, the life, the sacrifice, the obedience, the prayer, the message, the perseverance?Noah was the savor that God accepted.
In David, all Samuel could see was a young kid that smelled like sheep, but God saw a him dancing in an ephod and all of Isreal following his lead.
God sees us for who we were, are and will be. I believe in spite of his foreknowledge, every living soul gets the same grace and opportunity. However for those that will be found called, chosen and faithful, God knows.
You know why I think people fail God, throw in the towel and cease to serve God? They forget about the fact that we are but a vapor or if a may a misty cloud that carries qualities that can please or displease God. They cease to hear the voice that Noah heard as he kept working. People cease to see beyond the moment and become blinded and die a spiritual death to that connection that should not be severed, that connection to eternity.
Sure David demonstrated his failure. However, his failure was an event and not the essence of who he was. Like many of us, we all have events that demonstrate that we have come short.
When God looks at us, it is not simply a linear timeline, but a three dimensional history or if I may repeat the concept, a room. We choose what we represent by the objects we bring into our room and at times get out of our rooms when we realize it does not belong.
When I get down on my knees and pray, I don't believe that the only thing that God hears are those simple words of the moment, but that he hears a chorus of not only my prayers, but the prayers of the tens and maybe even thousands of people that have prayed, wept, fasted and cared for me. They have filled my room with that eternal incense that is prayer. Prayers never die, the saint may die, but the spiritual influence is an element that never leaves us.
In these moments when we interact with Eternity, I believe God looks down on our "room" and will rearrange, alter or maybe just watch over us as we strain in our sojourn in time. In eternity, these things will be different, but now we are in the here and now. Only God knows how we will be able to appreciate "now" when we see it as he does.
To think that when God uses his "white out" it only erases your sins and not your victory. When he looks at the history of your life, he sees your vistas of victory and not your valleys of defeat. How else could the New Testament say that Abraham did not stagger and include Samson in the role call of faith?
Your failures don't have to be final. Your mistake does not forever stay on your record. But your sacrifice is never forgotten. Your labor of love is not overlooked. Your sacrificial offering is still on the ledger book. Your forsaking love, fortune and fame to follow the call of God, that blessing is still accumulating interest in your account.
Look at the room that is your life. Dust the objects of past victory and replay the prophetic utterances you have received. Reread the journal of your journey. You too have a Giants sword wrapped in an ephod. There is a pot of manna of God's provision, there is a rod that proves your priesthood and yes don't forget God's covenants are as real as if he wrote them with his finger on your heart.
If you have been discouraged or distressed? find a dark room, turn off the phone, lose your cell shut down the computer, pull the blind and ask, seek, knock, pray, walk, meditate, rehearse, remember, stir up and cry out to the God that has brought you this far. That Eternal spirit that touched you before, reach out and let that holy hand of the most high touch you again.
This all came to me in prayer the other afternoon. It was as if I could see a swirling cloud that looked like a hand that was rising and reaching into the heavens. Reaching, Reaching and finally connecting with another greater hand that came down from heaven. This smoke was coming out of a room.
I am that room. So are you.
In Him, By Him, Through Him,
Scott Phillips
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