Meri’s Sunday Musings
March 11, 2018
Tonight I searched through my small bookcase looking for a
book by AW Tozer but didn’t find it. Instead I picked up what appeared to be a
well read small booklet by Norman Grubb called Touching the Invisible. I
clearly had read it at least once as it is well marked with various colored
pens. Yet in some sense I was reading it afresh and found it to confirm
thinking that I had been struggling with. Perhaps my base thinking was in some
way formulated from an earlier reading of this, I do not know.
I have mentioned in previous emails that I have had a
struggle with some hip and lower back issues for the last couple of years which
have seemingly increased in their severity in the last six months. It has been the commitment of my heart to
trust the Lord, to trust that indeed I am seated with Him in heavenly places
and that all spiritual blessings are mine IN HIM. It is the foundation of my
trust in Him that He lives and moves and has His being IN me., and that as He
is in this world so am I.
And I know that I live and move in Him who IS. And as
the IAM, He is my very personal
provider, righteousness, healing, health and healer, my Peace, my Hope, sanctification
and sanctifier ,and just everything!!
His word is true and I know that Holy Spirit delivers
everything that Jesus is into my life and teaches and equips me to live in Him.
And I trust that process.
I have had several times when the Lord’s hand has been felt
on my back and I was “unaware” of my back, meaning there was no pain, for a
couple of days. And then there would be awareness once again that there were
actions that I couldn’t do without suffering consequences. It has not altered
my trust in WHO HE IS IN ME.
This morning as I traveled the 20 miles to services, Holy
Spirit spoke to my heart once again , Meri I want you to just rest in me during
the service. I want you to just rest in
assurance you are in me and I in you…and you are indeed seated with me in
heavenly places.
OK Lord….and as the praise and worship time progressed I
kept hearing the words from the singing…”waiting for God”….and the song they
sang was about “waiting for God.” And then there was talk of “needing a touch
from God.” And I recoiled in my Spirit
and wondered why are we “waiting for God to do something?” Does He not promise that as we wait upon
Him…serve Him with our praises because of WHO HE IS, that He will in his choice
of time do all that His Word has said that He will do?
My heart was at rest and it was like I was hearing once
again…Meri, it’s about habitation not visitation.
OK,…that’s been the mantra so to speak that I’ve been
dealing with and that’s being worked in
me recently. I was glad he had said
REST, because I felt oddly out of whack with the cries of the folks around
me…which isn’t so strange for this prophetic personality! But I also know I can “miss it good.”
So it was with such a sense of blessing and even surprise,
that I open up Grubb tonight and read on page 13:
If we trace our weakness in the
exercise of authoritative faith to the source, we shall find that our spiritual
vitality is sapped at the roots ˆthrough
failure to take a bold grasps of the truth of ‘Christ in you’, sufficient to shatter the illusion and
consequent weakening effect of a false
sense of separation. We know God only at a distance. We know “touches
of His power and grace, visitations which come and go.” We are sure about the past through trust
in His atoning work and the future through the promise of eternal life. But we
have only a variable consciousness of His daily presence with us.
The transforming truth is that of
our inward fusion with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.”
I remember many times
when there is talk of sickness and need for healing, that the offer from
the altar was..”DO YOU NEED A TOUCH FROM THE LORD?” I heard this last Sunday and my inner man
cried out…”I want more than a TOUCH, I
want to know you intimately as My healer and My health and My healing…for that
is Who you are and as You are in the world so am I.”
We are as a church across America being taught this is no
longer the time for visitation…but of habitation…it isn’t the time to go to services
and “get”, but it is a time to go to services as the “church” and allow God in
us to move through us out into the world about us. Yet I realize for many who have been in the
pew for more years than I have and that is increasingly fewer a the years go
by, their focus is about going to “church” to get…to be refueled, to get
healed, to get encouraged.
This morning the sermon was on the 10 virgins….and as it was
presented I kept thinking even as I reflect on it now…were those 5 that didn’t
have sufficient oil in their lamps and no extra supply…were they ones that were
dependent on getting it from someone, were they not intimately acquainted with
the Lamp and the Oil …Word and the Spirit themselves? The scriptures says that is true for the man
keeping the door said I DON’t HAVE INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF YOU”
As was preached, today we do need to be prepared….for it is
almost the midnight hour and Jesus IS coming SOON…but do I have to go to the
“church service” three times a week to be obedient to the scripture to not
forsake the gathering together as some will in the last days to make sure my
lamp doesn’t go out and I have an supply that won’t run out? In years past I learned that in some
Pentecostal circles, much to my surprise coming from the background I did as a
pastor’s kid, that I was told I was
unfaithful to the Lord because I didn’t attend Sunday night services and
Wednesday night and any other thing held at the church. I wondered if I wasn’t hearing something
similar this morning.
Are we to be “wherever the Holy Spirit is moving” in a community or are we to be obedient to
what the Holy Spirit is speaking to our hearts as He reveals Jesus to us?
If our walk is about Christ in me the hope of glory, then
learning to listen to Him and to follow the teaching and instruction of Holy
Spirit in my spirit is the essential aspect of obedience. Some years ago when there was another move
of God within a 100 mile radius, I found myself wanting to go to this meeting
and that. And at the time the Holy
Spirit spoke to me and reminded me of the scripture…which I heard as “don’t run
after the Anointing”…..for they will say Christ is here, or Christ (the
Anointing) is there…..but the reality is Christ, the Anointing is IN YOU.”
God’s Presence was very present in the service this morning
and I love the sense of His Presence. And I trust He moved and worked on some
hearts.. But how sad it is if we are dependent upon being in a building at a
given time during the week to have God work on our hearts. What if we let him
work all week and equip us so that when we gathered together we could allow Him
to be “poured out” in our midst…we could allow Him to do what He says He will
do when we are together in Unity…one in His Spirit? Does that mean we all are
“waiting for Him to do something”….or does it mean we are so trusting Him, that
when Christ in me and Christ in You and Christ in someone else all gather
together and release the power that is Christ, that HE can do something he
can’t do otherwise?
I believe God wants to “blast this entire county” through
the congregation where I gather on some regular basis. But for now it seems
they are busy waiting for God to touch them, and rejoicing in the touches of
God despite the teaching they are getting on habitation. But that habitation
teaching is that God wants to dwell in the HOUSE…and He definitely is choosing
to share his Presence in that place more often than in other congregations I’ve
been in because he is welcome there. But what does He want to do????? He wants a people that He is in relationship
with through whom he can speak to this whole county and state….as they speak
the gospel TO THE PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS over this region according to
Ephesians.
Long ago I listened to a service out of Scottsdale Arizona,
and it was different from most radio broadcasts because of what took place
during those services. They allowed GOD to do something and He was dealing with
breaking down forces that held other areas in bondage…so that other areas could
be set free…so souls could be set free to come into the “house of the
Lord.”
The time is very short and things are surely going to
accelerate in this hour as has been proclaimed by the prophets and others in
the last few years with the death of Billy Graham. I heard of yet another who had a dream
several years ago totally independent of the ones that have been shared…and
said again that things would accelerate towards the culmination of this age
unlike what we have seen after Billy
Graham died. This from a very close
trusted friend of mine. And of course many prophetic voices have it on record
as God saying similar things to them in the past few years.
So how are we to be prepared? God wants a people to call Sons..he wants His
inheritance in the earth…Jesus’ inheritance….SONS>>>>>habitation
means Holy Spirit is working in us to make us or conform us to His Image, so
that when we see Him He recognizes HIMSELF In us….our inner being having been
opened to His gaze and the penetration of Holy Spirit, to change us through
repentance and change of mindset to behaviors emanating from the mind and heart
of the Lord himself., thanks to our being a “new creation and the old passing
away.” He wants Sons that can rule on the earth and who have been trained while
in this mortal body to yield to Him and allow Him to change us, work in us and
through us to accomplish that work necessary for Jesus Christ to gather the saints unto himself and rule and
reign with them upon the earth.
How blessed are we to know Him, to know He dwells within us,
to Know Holy Spirit is forever present to teach us his ways and equip us to
walk in His paths!!!
Bless the name of Jesus.
