I had a dream where I was looking up at a large billboard that was standing on the side of the road. I looked up and read the large letters that seemed to stand out from the sign, pulling me towards it. The words stuck in my mind. They read:
“Now is the time to come unto Christ.”
“Now,” was emphasized… and it hit me with urgency.
I remember a voice inside my head telling me to encourage everyone I knew to come as well.
And I woke up.
This stirred my thoughts…. I already believe in Christ, but the feeling that i was getting meant more than just belief… It was like he was at my door, knocking… Have I opened it up so that He could walk in? Have I come to Him, or is he still trying to get to me?
Part of me feels that this entire time, I have just been speaking to him through the little window in the door. And that I still have this partition of wood standing between us? Have I truly let him in?
This again reminded me of “the circle”. (from my POST: The Hug)
My inner space, where, if cared for diligently, could be filled with the Holy Spirit, wherewith even Jesus can come and dwell with me also.
Solomon’s Temple provides a vivid description that helps illustrate this. Where do we spend our time in Solomon’s Temple?
The outer court is likened to going to church. It is the place where we pay our tithes and offerings. It is the place where we spend time learning about God. It is the place where we socialize as a group in Christ. This is the court of the Gentiles…but it is only the outer court.
I believe that this is where most of us are most of the time. We frequently walk into the court, conduct our observation, and then walk back out. We might even hang out for a while, but we always walk back out. Even though there is nothing wrong with this, are we missing the center or focal point? Why are we not going further? There are other levels. This is where most of the churchgoers are, and they never go any further…
There is the inner court. This is where we go further, by seeking to draw closer to God by personally taking the time to read our scriptures and say more intimate prayers… We take the sacrament, and we seek after God in a greater way than just church attendance, but we are still not yet in the place of greatest import. We are getting closer to God, but we haven’t reached the Holy of Holies… the inner sanctum of the temple.
Many times, I feel that my attention is more focused on performing religious duties than on actually seeking God. My heart isn’t really in it. It’s just something that I do, a duty that I grew up with. Certainly, it has meaning, and sometimes I even feel the Holy Spirit, but it’s still not the bullseye.
This is a better place to be than the court of the Gentiles, where I believe many of the good members still are. But we need to go further. It’s like God is compelling us to come up higher…
This inner court makes us feel good about having stepped into it; we feel a greater peace from the spirit, our faith grows a little stronger, but we walk back out into the court of the Gentiles, and then out of the temple altogether. I feel that in my entire life, I have never gotten to the holy of holies and actually communed with God himself. I am still not going up higher…
In ancient times, only the priest could enter the holiest place, and even then, only once per year, after they had prepared and purified themselves.
There was a veil that separated them from God. And if they were not purified when entering, they would fall over dead… It was sometimes customary to wrap a rope around their leg as they would enter, so that if they did not come back out, the other priests could pull on the rope to get the body back out from behind the veil.
After Jesus was crucified, the veil was rent in twain, opening up the way for anyone to enter. No longer was it only a high priest who could enter, but we would still need to be clean.
The Temple of Solomon is a blueprint of all the statuses that exist in our lives. Non-believers never even enter the court of the Gentiles, and most of the believers never go any farther.
Jesus opened the way for each of us to go further. We need to create our own Holy of Holies.
Our holiest place should be the circle that we draw around ourselves. It becomes our Holy of Holies. We reside in this circle. We create it by drawing an imaginary circle around us, and everywhere we go, we are always within this space…this circle, this holy of holies, because we purify ourselves to be in it.
We purify ourselves by what we let into that circle and by what we keep out of that circle.
We do our religious observances by entering into the court of the Gentiles, then we proceed further by walking into the inner court through prayer and fasting, seeking a deeper relationship with God, then we purify our inner circle seeking Him personally, where our hearts want to be with him, and we keep him in our thoughts wherever we go. This then becomes the holiest place on earth. We keep it sanctified so we always feel the Holy Spirit around us, and if we are a fit vessel, then Jesus can come unto us, and we can sup together.
We don’t go into places that would affect our circle. We don’t look at things that we shouldn’t be looking at in our circle, we don’t listen to things that shouldn’t be listened to in our circle, and we don’t say things that we shouldn’t say because we are in our circle. We keep ourselves spotless at all times and in all places because we are standing in our Holy of Holies, the space where we talk face to face with the lord.
For me, I don’t want to just talk with the lord through the little window that’s built into my door anymore. I want him to step through the door and into my circle, so he can come and sit with me and talk. I want to move out of the court of the Gentiles and move past the inner court. I want to always be standing in the Holy of Holies, where I can stand at the throne of God.
I believe that this is what the message on the billboard meant. “Now is the time to come unto Christ.” Open the door and literally let him in.