Welcome! Take a listen to the message on Sunday on our YouTube Channel and then read through the prayer directive and reflection to dig a littler deeper.
As we continue to move into this Kingdom Era with new ways of living and relating, there were some great keys released this weekend to help us in the shifting.
From Visitation to Habitation | 2 Kings 4: 8-37 | Psalm 23 | John 2:1-11
All through scripture, the Lord revealed Himself in special places. He has a love for places and spaces. They are sacred to Him. We know that He inhabits us, and we take His presence wherever we go, but there is something special that happens when we set aside an intentional space for Him to come and inhabit. This is what we see in the story of the Shunammite mother in 2 Kings 4:8. She prepared a place for the man of God, for the presence of God to dwell.
When we set aside a place, we set the table with expectation of companionship; we pull up an extra chair in anticipation for Him coming to sit with us; if we were using candles before there was electricity, we would light a tall one in hopes He would linger for a while; if we were back in the Old Testament times, we would pour His cup to overflowing, a gesture that says, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” (Psalm 23)
In order to move from a lifestyle of visitation to a lifestyle of habitation, we must do something different, maybe even some rearranging. We are invited to do something new, to change something in the way we relate to Him. What is that new thing for you? How might you intentionally prepare a place for the Spirit of the Lord to come and dwell? There are secrets that He wants to share in this place of habitation, this place of hospitality and welcome.
Take a moment to think about the difference between when someone just drops by your place and when you have intentionally prepared a place for them to come. The date has been on the calendar for a few weeks, maybe you will be preparing a meal they like, or thinking of them as you tidy and clean. You might imagine where you will invite them to sit or the conversations you want to have with them as your anticipation of their presence builds. Can you see how hospitality is a form of intimacy between you and the Lord ? How it sets the stage for secrets to be revealed between friends? Hospitality is a heart that says, “Come on in, I’ve been waiting for you.”
As a side note, I thought this was especially interesting because we are moving ahead with hosting our community families at the end of June. It takes a lot of preparation and intentionality to create a place and a space for people to come. But we can know that as we position our hearts in this holy hospitality, we are screaming from the rooftops, “Come on in, we’ve been waiting for you!” And we have to know that it’s not just an invitation from us, it’s an invitation from the Father! As we create the space and the place, He comes to inhabit. How might we do this in our families, in our workplaces, in our schools, with our friends? How do we live this lifestyle of habitation? As we keep following Jesus, he’s showing us the way!
From this place of habitation, we, like Jesus’ mother when He turned water into wine, can say, “Do what He says!” (John 2:1-11) Think about it – Jesus’ mother created a place for Jesus to inhabit for the first 30 years of his life! Not just brick and mortar, but a safe space in her heart for him to come. She hosted the literal presence of Jesus. And from that place of intimacy with Him, she could ask – more like expect – things of Jesus knowing that He would fulfill them for her. To me, this mirrors the confidence that the Shunammite mother had in the man of God, Elisha. They both were able to say of the man of God, “If I ask, he’ll do it because I’ve created a place of habitation and I know him and he knows me.”
You’ll also notice that because these two women created a place for the presence of God to inhabit, the ‘crazy’ ideas didn’t seem crazy. In fact, the two women were the ones who came up with these ideas! It was the Shunammite mother who asked Elisha, even though she hadn’t seen him raise anyone from the dead before and it was Jesus’ mother who asked Jesus to turn water into wine, even though she hadn’t seen Jesus do a miracle yet. As we learn to live in this place of habitation, God’s crazy ideas become a little less crazy to us. The supernatural begins to seem reasonable to our renewed minds and we begin to ask or simply say, okay!
God Inhabits our Losses | John 2:1-11 |John 11:35
We must know how God handles the losses in our lives if we are going to create a place of habitation for His presence. We must know what kind of a good Father He is and the only way that happens is if we will place our losses in His hands and watch what He does with them. The Shunammite woman didn’t allow an unfulfilled dream to stop her from building a habitation. How? We won’t know for sure, but I’d guess that she must have processed the disappointment, grief, disillusionment - all of it - with the Lord. There is no way that she just stuffed it away, ignored or numbed it because she seemed genuinely okay with the desire left unfulfilled. She had laid it to rest and made peace with it.
You may not have voiced it, but the Lord knows what is on your heart. You might have dreams that you and God have decided you’re okay with not seeing fulfilled in this lifetime. You might have been through or are in the process of letting them go. But our Father longs to reveal how intimately He knows us and this revelation of His goodness, kindness, closeness draws us into intimacy with Him. It kindles our fire to know Him. God responding to our need and our desires that we have let Him make peace with, keeps the fires of our hearts burning towards Him. It deepens our trust with Him as a good Father, a faithful Father.
I hear the Lord inviting us fresh today, “You can leave your loss with me. I can take the loss and bring resurrection life.”
Where might you be feeling loss? Can you name it? It might be from what was and is now no more or from what never was and what you feel like never will be. It’s very true that you can feel a deep sense of loss even when it’s over something you’ve never had. Take some time to be honest with the Lord about where you are experiencing a sense of loss. Let the Lord show you how He feels about it. Jesus doesn’t belittle our grief or loss. Our Father is a grieving Father! It’s part of what makes Him good. At all times, He carries the weight of grief that comes because things are still out of place and causing harm to the one’s He loves in this earth and at the very same time He holds hope, joy, peace, patience, kindness, love, gentleness and offers it to us.
When Lazarus died, Jesus wept because he was so troubled. He grieved over the loss that He was experiencing and that others were experiencing around Him. This was His reaction even though He knew that He could – and would – raise him from the dead a little later. There was no talk of, “Just get over it. Oh, ye of little faith. Don’t you know who God is?” Instead, He stayed right there with them, empathizing to the point of weeping and being so moved by compassion at their grief that He brought resurrection life. We need to know by experience that He will respond the same way with our losses.
What we see in this story of Lazarus is very similar to the Shumanite mother - the Word of God coming into the presence of God to bring resurrection life. Was this Shunamite mother a foreshadowing of what Jesus said in John 4:24, where true worshipers must worship in Spirit and in Truth? Where the Spirit (living presence) of God and the Truth (Jesus, Word) will dwell together in our temples? Was this an act of true worship from this unnamed Shunamite mother? What a beautiful picture of what can happen when the Word and Spirit collide!
Personal Reflection
Take some time to be honest with the Lord about where you are experiencing a sense of loss. Let the Lord show you how He feels about it. Let Him speak and listen to the way He carefully holds the loss and grief you might feel. As you place it in His hands, in His presence, notice what happens in you. Are there any new feelings that arise? Any new sense of Him? Practice this over and over until you sense the promise of resurrection life bubbling up from within you.
What might it look like for you to prepare a place for the Lord to inhabit? How can you be intentional about a space and a place? As you make the preparations, notice if there is anticipation growing to meet with Him over time.
Corporate Prayer
Pray for the continual movement from visitation to habitation. Pray for the changes, shifts, rearranging needed. Pray that the Lord would continue to shake everything that can be shaken in us so that we can move into this deeper place of communion with Him.
Thank the Lord for the release of secrets and the anticipation in this month. Pray that the fear of the Lord would draw us near to the Lord in love and adoration as well as in fear and trembling.
Pray for alignment to the times and the seasons of the Lord. Pray for the misaligned places in our lives and in the lives of the body. Pray for the release of the places we are caught in old cycles that hold us in visitation rather than allow us to move forward into habitation.
Pray that the Lord would collect the losses. Bring any that He reveals to you across the body of Christ and place it in His presence as intercessors. Breathe the breath of God over them and believe for them to be resurrected!