Sanctuary

Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.

Exodus 25:8

Make a sanctuary. A set-aside, holy and consecrated place.

And He will dwell among us. Abide. Live with. 

In college I worked in the cafeteria. The other students and I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to prepare breakfast. Three hundred eggs and four hundred biscuits or two hundred pancakes. I flipped pancakes and eggs in my sleep.

Our schedules varied; we worked different meals every day. After we prepared the food we would be sent to the line to serve. Something happened in that food line. I’m not sure how it began. I don’t know when it even started. But I began to pray for students who came through the line—pushing their trays along the chrome bars, talking and milling. I watched their faces. I didn’t realize then how much the Spirit was working through me, how much He was teaching me about God’s people and about prayer. I didn’t understand He was setting a precedent for my life. He was establishing the cadence of future routine.

I was too young. Too immature. Too clueless.  I had no idea of what real responsibility entailed.

But I prayed. The Spirit highlighted someone in the line and I would ask them how they were. I learned to discern very quickly the honest answers, the veiled answers and the flat-out lies. Then while dishing out fried chicken or scrambled eggs I prayed. Quietly in an ongoing dialogue. For two years this was my routine. I didn’t know I was doing anything grand or big or important. I just knew God was prompting me to pray. Sometimes the urgency would be overwhelming.

I graduated, married and moved away and some of that ministry dissipated. Life events happened. And I forgot. I forgot how to pray for others. I certainly forgot how to pray for myself.  

Prayer became one sentence life-preservers. Prayers cried out in the midst of crisis and chaos and chronology. Instead of dialogue my prayers became redundant refrains I spoke in desperation. Prayers that only concentrated on the very moment—no looking forward, outward or beyond.

Somewhere in the midst of those seasons I forgot who I was and my calling. I forgot, but God did not.

Scripture says God’s gifts and call are irrevocable. In those years of dormancy God was cultivating my gifts and detailing my calling. I couldn’t see it. I felt inadequate. Like a failure. Like a fake. Like a building with a false front façade created to make the building look bigger than what it really was. And I wanted so badly to be real. I longed to be authentic. To be the honest-to-goodness real thing.

Part of it was my own fault.  I accepted things I shouldn’t have. I played a part I should never have played. In my head the scenarios of what I would do if only were pretentiously grandiose and grossly exaggerated. Oh, I am embarrassed now to think I lived the inward life of a Walter Mitty—because God’s children do not have to live that way. God’s people are called to something far bigger than our dreamscapes. Far greater than the trailers in our heads.

He’s proven this to me just in recent days.  

I’m working a line again. There’s a large group of beautiful, but hurting people who come through my line. And one day I looked at someone and asked them how they were. They lied to me. How do I know? Because we interpret how are you as a greeting that rarely ends with a question mark. The phrase really doesn’t require an answer, and certainly not an honest one if you do. But the Spirit prompted me and I prayed for them. Just like I did all those years ago when I was twenty-something.

Prayer is my sanctuary. The throne room is the safest, most terrifying place in the world. Yet, it is the place I feel most at home. Most myself.

It has nothing, nothing, to do with me—my gifting of words comes from Him and the promptings to pray come from Him. It all begins with him. He has called me to pray.

Prayer is a sanctuary.

The enemy cannot touch us in this sanctuary.

When we are in the throne room, the enemy cannot wield his venom and ugliness against us. When we have bowed and are interceding before the Almighty, the enemy’s weapons are impotent. When we are being the priests Peter says we are, Satan’s tactics and schemes are neutralized.

The enemy tried to keep me out of the throne room for years. I believed his lies. I accepted the twisted half-truths he whispered to me.

But no more.

God can create a line no matter where you find yourself. He’s doing it again.  

Here.

In the sanctuary of Seventy Palms.

Where hopefully our Father will find a place he can dwell.

(This Sanctuary tab is the only one that will change daily. Morning prayers will be posted hopefully much earlier rather than later. Comments will be open on this tab. If you need prayer please don’t hesitate to contact me.)

Father, how precious you are. You have provided faithfully and fully during the year that just slipped away. You moved mountains, changed attitudes and transformed hardened hearts. You extended your grace with lavishness. We praise you for being this kind of Father. Generous. So, utterly generous.

2014. A brand new year. Father, this is thrilling and frightening. It causes me to take a deep breath wondering what will be written on its days. I worry, even now, about making mistakes—causing dark spots on the endless sea of white days. I worry, wondering what blunder I will make, what wrong thing will I say, what wrong action will I do? But your word anticipates that I will, we will, do this. And through your blundering Peter you exhort us to cast all our anxieties on you. Why? Because you care for us.  

Even in the last twenty-four hours you have repeatedly told me you are doing a new thing. And there are times we will be blind to it, miss it and not perceive it. But you make blind eyes see. You place road markers for our journey and you give us wisdom and insight to see what otherwise might be invisible. Help us not to live in fear of this New Year. Instead help us to have faith that even if it is a year of wilderness and wasteland you will provide. A way will be made clear. Streams will emerge even from the drought-ridden lands.

And our mistakes? Oh, we will make them, but there will be none that will be beyond your ability to make them work together for our good. And it is in this truth we must live out the days of 2014. Don’t allow us to live in fear, for if we do, we will miss the treasures in the darkness.

Father, help us see this new thing you are doing. Enable us, give us the faith, to trust that you have the days in your hand. Each one. You have already seen the blunders and sins of 2014. But you are not daunted; you are not dismayed.  

Father, I asked for us to be stretched. Stretch these muscles of our faith so that they might not atrophy. Do a new thing in us, Father. Something we have never thought of or imagined.

May we like Isaiah in the Temple see your glory and be undone. May we like Moses see your back and be carried in the wake of who you are. May we like David be abandoned in your Presence—dancing transparent and unhindered. May we like Mary hear you call us by name and may we answer.  

Come 2014. Come, because our God has already arrived.

Amen and amen