Blog In Audio:
Greetings, Today I am in Portugal. It was great being with the CCVA church in Lisboa this past weekend. There was a strong connection of family and God’s word and presence were hungered for among the people. I always enjoy being with my Portuguese family. I have a few more days in Portugal and then I will head to Angola, Africa on Thursday night.
Last week I began to address the cry of every person to discover that they were born to be a dwelling place of God’s presence. It is only by being a place of God’s dwelling that we can fulfill our destiny in life. God told me that this year is a year of finding new strength in Him. That strength is not the strength of the flesh, but the strength of God’s abiding presence within us. His abiding presence within us will give strength to our spirits, souls, and bodies in increasing measures.
Man only finds continual blessing when his heart cries out for more of God each step of his journey in life. Each of us has been destined by God to complete a journey. Our pilgrimage is intended to be from strength to strength. That can only happen when one finds the secret to life. The secret is that all strength comes from the Lord. Only those who dwell in His presence find the power of increase along the journey. Those who fail to find His presence are left with an endless journey of failure-to-failure, defeat-to-defeat, and weakness-to-weakness. They find themselves in the never-ending spiral downward in a journey of missed appointments and forsaken destiny.
Psalms 84:5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.
God’s desire has always been to bless mankind. God wants an intimate, covenant relationship with man. In the history of God and His covenant people, we find that God’s heart has always been that He might be able to bring blessing into the lives of those who intimately dwell with Him. Man is to be the head and not the tail, above and not beneath.
Deuteronomy 28:13 “And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them.”
We see this principle of God’s blessing to be true in the context of Psalms 84 as well. God’s people are to be those who influence the environment around them and not those who are influenced by the circumstances at hand. God’s people are the solution to the problems of darkness. The world is locked up in the bondage of weeping and God’s antidote to the weeping of the world is that His people might bring joy to the world’s despair. We are light to the darkness. We are hope to the hopeless. We are life to death and fullness to the emptiness found in the lives of the prisoners of the world. As Christians, we must be gateways to heaven that release the power of God’s life around us as we walk the journey of life.
Psalms 84:6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca (meaning: “weeping”), they make it a spring; the rain also covers it with pools.
The future for the Christian is not one of weakness and limitation. Believers in Christ are those who live in God’s presence. They believe in the person God and thus they believe Him in all things. He is God, but He is their friend. Their strength is found by living in His presence. The source of their strength is found in an intimate, personal relationship with God as their Father. They have been given the access and the boldness to stand before God in His holy mountain.
Psalms 84:7 They go from strength to strength; Every one of them appears before God in Zion. 8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
God has put the desire for a personal relationship with Him within the hearts of all mankind. That desire is the cry of the heart that calls for the presence of God. God shakes the nations that they might find the answer to their confusion. The Desire of the Nations is Christ in them, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Everyone must appear before God in Zion in order to find the fulfillment of their destiny.
Haggai. 2:6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: “Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; 7 ‘and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the LORD of hosts. 8 ‘The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts. 9 ‘The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,’ says the LORD of hosts. ‘And in this place I will give peace,’ says the LORD of hosts.”
The latter temple is not the physical structure of an Old Covenant. It is the temple of human flesh made holy by being a dwelling place of God’s Holy Spirit in this life. We are individual altars of God’s presence and together we are the body of Christ. God’s increasing presence shakes both heaven and earth and the nations are freed to come to their true Desire. Jesus is the Savior of the word.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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