Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Early on in our walk with God we were introduced to the truth that we were to be a dwelling place of God and not simply a place of visitation (Eph. 2:22). We eagerly believed and embraced this, but we encountered problems in the outworking of this truth.
We did not understand how to handle the shifting and changing seasons in the Spirit. Circumstances seem to indicate a visitation culture was more real than the habitation truth. Some of the habitation teachers seemed to reject different manifestations of the Spirit and that really confused me. Why would we reject what God was doing?
We were just people hungry for the presence and power of God. We did not want to debate habitation versus visitation theology. We did not want to reject a measure of the Spirit in the moment for a theology that says we have fullness, but there was no reality of that fullness anywhere to be found. We knew the kingdom of God did not consist in words, but power (1 Cor. 4:20).
We felt God was trying to grow us by the measure. So we simply rolled with what God was doing, but our heart was for a dwelling place of the living God. We loved and valued His Presence above all else.
Over time we gained greater revelations of the manifold grace of God. The River of Grace burst forth into our lives and made real that we are in Christ and we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3). We can rest in Him and the finished work of the cross; no trying, just trusting.
We also were given a grand revelation of the Father (John 14: 6-14). The orphan spirit that had dogged us all our life was put on notice that its’ days were over and done (John 14:18). We found out that we are loved beyond measure and what words can tell, totally accepted and approved of by the Father. In the middle of all that we began to know our true identity and we discovered we have access to everything in His house. All He has is ours (Luke 15:31).
We came into some new understanding of the Holy Spirit. He descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove and rested upon Him. That is a picture of the resting place of God on earth. God found a resting place, a dwelling in the person of Jesus. He desires to find that same resting place upon us. Because of this we are learning to value the Holy Spirit’s Presence and activity above all else.
Along the way we also came to see that revival, renewal, times of refreshing and manifestations of the Spirit are meant to awaken us to the reality of habitation, the resting place of God. Although these may not be habitation in its fullness we embrace them because in time they will lead us into a fuller reality of habitation.
So we are learning and growing from these and other revelations. We are not trying to get His Presence, we have His Presence (John 14:21), but we want to grow in the awareness and sensitivity to His Presence. His Presence really is the most important thing there is. We really are a home for the Presence of the Lord.
Many Blessings, BW