It has taken me longer than in previous weeks just to sit down to write this post. I have been greatly moved and have seen new light. My understanding is being opened more and more and it is glorious.

As I am thinking about the restoration of the building where we meet as a church and sometimes catch myself wondering how will it be possible, I am encouraged to know that I don’t have to know. It is enough to know that God knows. And God has shown me that my request is nothing that He has not heard and answered many times before but He has graciously taken me back to the first time.

In part 7 of the Master key 2. Haanel says “Make the pattern clear and make it beautiful; do not be afraid, make it grand; remember that no limitation can be placed upon you by any one but yourself; you are not limited as to cost or material; draw on the infinite for your supply, construct it in your imagination; it will have to be THERE before it will ever appear anywhere else. 3. Make the image clear and clean cut, hold it firmly in the mind and you will gradually and constantly bring the image nearer to you. You can be what you will to be.

Moses was taken up in the Spirit when he went on the mountain with God. He came down with Ten Commandments written on Stone Tablets but also with a pattern in his mind to build a dwelling place for God that the Israelites would be able to move with them as they travelled. When God moved they picked up the tabernacle, a complicated operation fully describes by Moses, and each person had their part to play as the whole community of several million people moved with Him, following His presence signified by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day.

I had always thought that Moses had seen an actual tabernacle in Heaven and the one he made in the wilderness was copy of it. I am not inclined to believe that it was such a mental image in the mind of Moses as Haanel describes: beautiful and grand, without limitation as to cost or material. You can read how a bunch of refugees wandering around the wilderness came up with enough wood and linen,  silver and gold and every other thing needed to manifest the vision and even how people were taught skills beyond human capability to put it all together in the book of Exodus.

So if Moses saw it so clearly in his imagination and the clarity of it brought about its perfect physical manifestation it must be the pattern given to us by God through scripture to manifest the calling on our lives.  The Psalmist says if we delight in Him He will give us the desires of our hearts and I have always understood, mentally and experientially that meant He put the desire there in the first place.

The apostle John in his 1st Epistle wrote “…we are confident that He hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases Him. 15 And since we know He hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.

There are two things to note here and Haanel points both of them out. 1. Our will must be in line with the divine will…and…2. it does not happen by magic…generous people brought the materials that God had provided and willing people did the work as God gave the ability.

So Moses had the idea by inspiration, He visualised it until he could see it in every detail and like John says he already had it at that point though it was not yet visible to the physical eyes. Maybe  people close to Moses thought he had flipped as he described it to them in great detail but he was not fazed.

Faith was the substance of the very thing for which Moses held a sure and certain hope.

Since every single item in the tabernacle has its purpose and each tells a prophetic story of the coming Christ it seems even God Himself is practicing what He taught Moses and is teaching us. He planned from the beginning that all those who believed in the redeeming power of the Only Begotten Son of God would themselves become the tabernacle of God on earth. Some people once said to Jesus “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”  His reply is quite surprising. there was no difficult task to perform, no hoops to jump through.  Jesus simply told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.” John 6:28