PREPARATION OF THE HEART
TABERNACLE PRAYER is a preparation process. As we pray through this prayer format, we are becoming prepared to meet with the Great I AM. Through this format we find we have the privilege and high honor of entering into the Courts of Heaven and being graced with an audience with the One Who sits on the Throne. For so long we run into the Outer Courts and either pray out or shout out our prayers and intercessions. But the Holy One invites us in. When we are invited in to meet with the Creator of the Universe, we must allow ourselves to be made ready. Yes, we are infinitely loved by God and the Lord longs to hear our voice. But to truly encounter Abba, we must allow ourselves to be prepared. This is a time-consuming process. It’s not done in one day. Just as yeast has to be worked thoroughly in the dough to make bread to rise, so this process will work Holy Spirit thoroughly through us. The Bridegroom is coming back for His Bride without spot or wrinkle. (Ephesians 5:27, Revelation 21:2)
“For the Bride has made herself ready….” (Revelation 19:7)
So many of us, in our times of prayer and intercession we rush in and out with our petitions and our cries. We may even shout out our passionate prayers from far-off in the distance. Wouldn’t we be much more effective if we had the high honor and privilege to meet with the King of Kings face-to-face?
The LORD wants us and is calling us to prepare ourselves. The Tabernacle is a portrait of Heaven, Tabernacle Prayer is a beautiful picture on how we can be prepared to have an intimate face-to-face audience with the Great I AM.
We can’t run into the Courts of Heaven stinking like the world wearing our filthy rags when we meet face-to-face with the King of the Universe. Yes, we can offer our petitions and prayers whenever and wherever we are. But wouldn’t it be so much more awesome, and so much more effective to have the privilege of being invited in to meet with the Great I AM face-to-face? It is possible. The Curtain has been torn. We can enter in. But in order to be invited into the Throne Room, we must submit ourselves to the preparation process, the “beauty treatments”.
The book of Esther describes how Hadassah had to submit herself to a year-long beauty treatment before she was allowed an audience with the king. She already was very beautiful, because she was one who was hand-picked. She was chosen. Like her, the Lord is attracted to the beauty in us. But that beauty is marred and stained by the filth of this world. As with Esther, the Tabernacle format of prayer can potentially be the beauty treatment process so we can be invited in to meet with the King. But, like Hadassah, we must yield and submit to it. The process can be, and is painful. But what a great high honor to be invited in to have face-to-face audience to the Great I AM, the Creator of the Universe!
The Tabernacle is a model on how we can go through the preparation process so we can gain entrance into the Holy of Holies – the Heavenly Throne Room. Wouldn’t it be so awesome to have the high honor and privilege of going there…..DAILY? Instead of a once in a lifetime encounter?
We must prepare ourselves
We must allow ourselves to be yielded, probed, stinking flesh and sin burned off so we can enter in.
In our house of prayer, as we’ve been practicing this model of prayer this past year, at times I’ve been a little frustrated. Why aren’t we in intercession? Why aren’t we praying for our cities? Our regions? Why aren’t we praying topical crisis and needful prayers? I took this frustration up to the Father and this is what I heard:
“Too many times you and others rush in, dump all your prayers and you rush out. You don’t encounter Me. You don’t sit with Me. Sometimes you don’t want to hear Me, or My response. You must be invited in. Worship, prayer and intercession isn’t something you “do”, it is who you are. You must realize you are called to be a priest and a king (I Peter 2:9, Revelation 1:6), yet you don’t even identify with your role. You don’t even know who you are! When you learn the greatness of the authority you carry, then you speak differently. You will think differently. You will act differently. Allow yourselves to undergo the preparation process”.
We must prepare ourselves as children of the Most High God.
The basic steps of the Tabernacle Prayer model are as follows:
GATE:
• Decision
• Praise and Thanksgiving
Decide daily this is your time to encounter the Great I AM. Thank God for all His benefits (Psalm 103:2). Remember all of the Lord’s goodness toward you and offer up sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving.
“You make known to me the Path of Life; in Your Presence is fullness of joy, at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore”. Psalm 16:11
ALTAR OF SACRIFICE:
• Death
• Repentance.
Death to self, death to pride, death to everything who you think you are. Everything has to die within you, every love, every passion, every sin, everything has to go. You must learn to come to a place and grow comfortable with the fact that nothing else matters…..except HIM. Pride must be killed in us…..daily. If not, the Gifts and Anointings given to us will be in danger of being dirtied, perverted in our fleshly pride. We must come to the place where we can say:
“No longer I who live, but CHRIST IN ME, hope of Glory….” (Galatians 2:20)
BRONZE LAVER:
• Cleansing
• Redressing
• Re-identification
Allow the Great I AM to probe you, open you up and expose those “hidden closets” and cleanse you from all sin. Allow the Lord to reveal to you all that needs to be removed and allow the Lord to remove them. Lay down your identity and allow the Lord to give you a new identity – HIS identity.
GOLDEN LAMPSTAND
• Fresh Infilling
• New sight
• New vision
This is a place where we come to the realization that we can’t see. All that we’ve seen in the past was through dirty lenses, all distorted. We can’t be filled until we are first emptied. We can’t be dressed in our new identities until we are first stripped bare from our earthly security and our titles. And, as the oil lamps are refilled twice a day, morning and evening, we also must be refilled at least twice a day, morning and evening.
TABLE OF SHOWBREAD
• Assimilating the Word
• Feasting, banqueting on the Word
As the eyes of our spirits are opened and we see through new lenses, the Word comes alive to us and we banquet on it. “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a Light to my path…” Psalm 119:105
ALTAR OF INCENSE
• Worship
• Intercession
This is the place where we offer up the worship first, then intercession. Or….we can offer up both in the form of “harp & bowl” worship and intercession. As priests of the Most High, we exalt His Name and sing with the angels: “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY” (Isaiah 6:3, Revelation 4:8). As we worship, a realization hits us that this is a place where it’s not about “us”, it’s all about HIM, the Great I AM. There is a difference between praise & thanksgiving and true worship. Very rarely do we enter into this place in our church services or even in our worship & prayer meetings. Much of it is because we do not undergo the death, stripping away and cleansing process in the Outer Court. True worship has nothing to do with us…..it’s all about HIM.
True intercession also has nothing to do with us. It’s all about HIM, all about what the Great I AM can do in a broken, fallen world. True intercession is coming to a place where we don’t ask so that “we” can be benefited. We come to a place where it no longer matters if we even see the results of our prayers. We cry out for a broken, fallen world because we now have the Father’s Heart beating within us and we feel His pain. True intercession is praying the Great I AM’s prayers, not our prayers. Never, ever “our” prayers. Even among intercessors, this place is a rare place to come to.
HOLY OF HOLIES
As we worship and cry out with the cries of the Father’s Heart through intercession, we look up and to our amazement, we see the Curtain has been torn! The Curtain that separates us has been ripped from top to bottom! We can now enter in! We do enter in! Finally we can see what it truly means to “be seated with HIM in the Heavenly Realms” (Ephesians 2:6)
Some, very very few intercessors have visited this place regularly. When they do, as they come out they have been dramatically changed.
Altered.
Some have experienced translations, some have such incredible encounters with the Lord that it boggles our minds!
I have yet to be in that place, am anticipating the time when that Curtain will be ripped for me!