So I have looked for You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Psalms 63:2

The place David was writing of here is the very rooms you are in - the Sanctuary – the place where the ‘power’ and ‘glory’ of God is first seen. If you want to see power and glory consistently operate through your life, there is no avoiding the transformation you will go through in the two rooms of the Sanctuary. It is here, in these Rooms of Mystery, that David’s secret to power and glory was disclosed. Here is the place of God’s presence. It is here, in Him, that our deepest desires are realized. Why is it that so many try to take a short cut thinking they can circumvent God’s process in their life? Have we made Christianity too cheap? Yes, Salvation is free, but ‘discipleship’ is costly.

TWO STONES
Perhaps this is why these two rooms, are the two two stones, as well as the two chambers of God’s heart yet are one in the bosom of God. Here is the place where passion, desire, discipline, obedience, and submission are mingled into one lifestyle of intense spirituality. It is a place where the cost of the ‘Transition toward Transformation’ is eventually found to be worth it – though you may all too often fight it.

Holy Ground - have you taken your shoes off? No one could enter this Holy room with shoes or sandals on, not even the High Priest. Remember, Moses was told to take his sandals off when he approached God, because the ground where he stood was Holy. That is why this room is called the Holy Place and why the next Room is called the Holy of Holies or the Holiest of All. It is where the presence of God is made manifest.

RIGHT TO LEFT
Now you can make your way to the first piece of furniture in this room that will begin your deeper Transformation. This piece is on the right or North side of the room. Remember, Hebrew writing is read right to left so you proceed to the furniture via the same path – right to left, then to the center piece of furniture, that is furthest from you, and on through the Veil to the next room. But, the process is not that quick and certainly not that easy.

So the first piece of furniture you encounter in this mystical room of smoke and golden amber light is the Gold Table of Showbread. This bread is referred to in the Hebrew as the Bread of Presence or Bread of the Display of His Presence. It was to portray the coming Messiah. Little did even Moses know then how much the tearing of this bread would depict the tearing of the flesh of the Messiah, Yeshua who is Jesus.

WHAT IS THE SHOWBREAD?
Jesus expressly preformed this tearing or breaking of the Showbread the night before His Crucification at the “Last Supper.” He even referred to this bread as His own body when He said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Thus He equated the Bread He broke as the Showbread of the Sanctuary. That night, in that small, sanctuary-esk, upper room, Jesus spoke of what He was about to do as well as what He was about to become. He was about to fulfill the very fabric of that which the Hebrew children had been observing and practicing for 1500 years. The Table of Showbread would be served to mankind.

The Gold covered, Acacia wood table that the bread sat on is called the “Pure Table” and is mentioned twenty one times by Moses alone. The wood represents the “tree” Jesus would be crucified on and the Gold represents the purity of His sacrifice.

You see this Table is different from the Brazen Altar in the Outercourt. The sacrifice done on the Altar atoned or covered your sin; this is called Grace – which is the receiving of something good that you did not deserve. The tearing of the Bread/flesh that was laid on the Table of Showbread was for the sake of mercy – which is not getting something bad that you did deserve.

POWER AND GLORY
Remember, these two rooms are about power and glory therefore, this table represents something we can receive, and that something is that which only God’s power and Glory can grant, because it comes from within Him. Remember in these two rooms you are within His bosom

Interestingly enough, the height of this Table is the same height as the grate of the Brazen Altar on which the sacrifice in the Outer Court was laid. With this knowledge, you find that Jesus shed His blood and laid down His flesh on the Brazen Altar. On it He offered His body to be sacrificed in order to cover your sin. That salvation is not covered again by the Table of Showbread. But, if this Table and the tearing of the Showbread is not about Salvation, what is this about? Simply said, it is about power and glory, in other words it is about Healing and Miracles that were provided for you through the tearing and breaking of His flesh.

THE TABLE OF HEALING AND MIRACLES
This is why Prophet and Priest Isaiah was able to write, “By His stripes we are healed.” His stripes were not just stripes inflicted by a whip. The reality is that His flesh was torn apart by the metal tips on the nine tailed whip use to flog Him. With every lash, each of the nine tips tore His flesh. There were thirty-nine lashes multiplied by nine metal tips, that means three hundred and fifty one times the flesh of Jesus was torn and broken and that is just from the lashing of the Roman guard. This does not include the whipping given to him by those who held Him before He was turned over to Pilot.

The provision for healings and miracles is a matter of the Kingdom and the right for that Kingdom to exist was purchased through the entire process of Calvary. The whole of the Tabernacle, and the two rooms of the Sanctuary is a prophetic picture of that which was planned before the foundation of the World. Is it also the Dark Night of the Soul? Yes, for we will go through the same thing Jesus went through. We will have to take up our Cross and follow Him. As He provided for us, there are many parallel ways we will have to provide for others. What we have freely received, we must learn to freely give.

I’ll write more on the Table of Healings and Miracles (Showbread) and how I came to this understanding in my next post.

May you enter this next year with the passion to process through this room and beyond.
Blessings,
John Paul

CROSS-TIES
Here, in the first Room of Mystery, you have come face to face with The Dark Night of the Soul. It is a place where obedience and discipline become the two tracks on which the rest of your life will ride. Each “cross-tie” under those tracks are there to stabilize you. Yet, too many see them as obstacles to their future. What are the “cross-ties” in your life? Cross-ties are things God places in your life that you have little choice over and if they are not there you will not become the man or woman of God He created to be. The train of your life will fall off the track when you hit unstable conditions.

WHAT ARE CROSS-TIES OF THE SOUL?
Cross-ties are the relatives you have, the geographic location where you live, the boss you work for, even the personality of the children you have. Cross-ties are also the flat tire you have, the dog that digs up your flowers, the cranky neighbor, and the stop light that always changes to red right before you get there. All these things and many more are “cross-ties” and they are there to help you become more self-disciplined and obedient. As you grow or mature in these two areas, you will notice a remarkable shift in your emotional makeup and in the way others act when they are near you. Just what do I mean by that?

PET PEEVES
If you are like me, there are things others do that drive you crazy! In some cases it is so bad that you may even try to steer clear of them. It has been a wonderful, self-revealing, surprise to find that as I become more disciplined and obedient to that which God has called me to do, others stop doing the things that irritate me. Further, when what they do stops irritating me, they stop doing the thing that irritates me.

It is almost as if God provokes them to rub me the wrong way just to work on me. Can you imagine that! God is always working on our emotional Stability, and He uses cross-ties to do it.

This room is designed to work on the matters of the soul. The area you just came from, the Outercourt, dealt with matters of the flesh. That is why what you are going through is called, The Dark Night of the Soul. It is depicted in what Jesus said right before they took him to be crucified, “My soul is exceedingly troubled.”

THE CORE ISSUE OF THIS ROOM
In this protected and covered place God deals with your internal make-up and takes you one more step, one room at a time, toward Holiness. That is why the Scripture calls it the Holy Place. The problem is this, here in the Amber swirl of this room, you will feel anything but Holy. You may even have the feeling that if this room is a Holy Place, then if God finds out you are here, He will instantly ask you to leave. Here then is an important lesson, God does not take you into this room because you are Holy, He does it to help you become Holy.

YOUR AGENDAS VERSE GOD’S

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The first step to Holiness is drawing close to Him who is Holy, the second step is to choose His agenda over yours. That takes discipline and obedience – those two facets then allow you to make the right choice on any decision that lies before you. When you exit this room you will be able to make wiser choices than you have ever been able to do – and life will get better!

The Dark Night of the Soul has little to do with religion, economics, war, politics, or geo-physical issues. It is not about what goes on around you, it is about that which goes on within you. First we change, then the world will change. It is a WAY of God.

In my next posting I will write about the first “Deep Mystery” of this room. This one will be quite a shocker!

Blessings,
John Paul

For those who are actually pursuing a deeper, vibrant relationship with God there is a cost. Yes, salvation is a free gift from God through Jesus the Messiah, but the spiritual life many search for is only found by letting go of the old in order to gain the new. In other words you gain by losing. The loss is of nothing you can hold onto, it is a loss of a thread of something that you might think is good, but it is actually keeping you from your destiny. It is a virus, an infection, a germ that needs eradicating before it can metastasize.

ALL NEW THINGS BEGIN IN DARKNESS
From pregnancy, to creation, to anointing, every new day begins in darkness. It has been that way from the first day of creation and it continues today. There are three levels or deep times of darkness that we will encounter on the road to true, pure spirituality. With each one you feel like you are immersed in a deeper darkness than you have ever been in before. At each deeper level you see less clearly, if at all, where you thought you were going. During each new level you most likely will not understand the purpose of it and why God is allowing you to go through such a dark, difficult time.

You do not go through these times back to back. There is a season of recuperation and rest between each one. You can stop and not go on to the next one, but if you do that, you have chosen to walk a more worldly walk and there one is susceptible to a deeper, evil darkness.

JUSTIFYING OUR OLD LIFE
At the beginning of all three dark nights there is a natural tendency to look into our life to see what is wrong with us. Usually the first things we find are not the issue God is getting at, things like anger, jealousy, fear, are real issues, but they are surface issues. When we start to get closer to the real issue we will find that we will tend to justify the very matter God is after, that in itself is a clue to what this time is all about. It may be the actions we have taken, emotions we have harbored, and why we do what we do, but much of the time we actually believe we have a right to do it, feel it, or think it – at least initially.

When we touch the issue God is after we will often naturally recoil and in so doing it becomes easy to blame someone or some event that impacted us. We actually think that what happened gives us a valid reason for doing, thinking, feeling the way we do. We may even believe we can continue what we have been doing without any guilt.

SELF-IDENTITY
What may surprise you is that most who enter this Dark Night find they actually take some form of self-identity from the very issue God is wanting to reshape or get rid of in our life. It may be attitudes, ego, self-promotion, control, manipulation, or a thousand other issues, yet each one will keep us from the leadership and influence we should be having on others. To reach the purpose for which God created us, we must have no thread of iniquity that is not being addressed.

Even for a while after we are well within the dark night’s eerie confines we will continue to do the blame shift or use the problem as a crutch – for a short while. To some that short while may be a day, to others that may take a week or even a year, but it will eventually come to an end and the quicker the better.

A SENSE OF FAILURE
At some point in all three phases, as we finally realize that what we have self-justified is actually hindering our destiny, and with this realization there is often a sense of failure or sorrow or both. This is actually the initial sign of healing, you are on you way out. It is the light at the end of a long tunnel, it is hope for a better life and it is soooooo refreshing. Though you know there is still the rest of the tunnel to go through, you know you will make it. However, up to that point, which occurs at each level, you’re pretty sure you won’t.

THREE DARK NIGHTS
The three dark nights are commonly known as the Dark Night of the Wilderness or Desert, the Dark Night of the Soul, and the Dark Night of the Spirit. One leaves the first two with a hunger to get on with life, to accomplish something and in so doing a hunger to please God. The dark Night of the Spirit is a little different, but we’ll get to that later.

Next post I’ll address the Wilderness or Desert, which is the entry level to our greatest change.

Blessings,
John Paul