As we read Psalm 84, we are remembering what took place a long time ago, almost three thousand years ago. The psalmist is singing about how wonderful it is to be in the house of God. This man, a prophet of the Lord, is there singing because he knows that God has chosen to dwell in that place. He thinks how wonderful it is to be there, and he wishes he could live there. He watches the little sparrows fly in and out of the Tabernacle, and he knows they have a nest somewhere, but he does not disturb them. As he looks toward the altar of the Lord, he sees a little nest there, a beautiful sight to see.
This Psalm does not speak of a time like today, having to do with a busy life, cities, highways, and cars, but a time when walking was the only way to reach a destination. The prophet has walked a long way to come to the house of the Lord. He is weary and he kneels, holding a rod in his hand. Then he lays it down and starts playing on a little harp. He is aware of the presence of God in His Tabernacle, and he begins to sing this Psalm in a wonderful way.
Psalm 84: 1 God of Heaven’s Armies, you find so much beauty in your people! They’re like lovely sanctuaries of your presence. 2 Deep within me are these lovesick longings, desires and daydreams of living in union with you. When I’m near you my heart and my soul will sing and worship with my joyful songs of you, my true source and spring of life! 3 O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, my King and my God, even the sparrows and swallows are welcome to build a nest among your altars for the birds to raise their young. 4 What pleasure fills those who live every day in your temple, enjoying you as they worship in your presence!
As the psalmist hears the little birds chirping, he thinks about something very precious. He thinks how good it is to live where God lives—how good it is to have the altar of the Lord for a dwelling place. Every time he lifts his hands to the Lord, he considers how the little birds have built their house upon the altar of the Lord, and he wishes he could live there too. He wishes he did not have to go back to all the cares and the hard work of tending sheep, of plowing and tilling the ground just to have enough food to eat. “If only I could live here forever” is the cry of his heart.
Perhaps he is even remembering what Joshua did. When Moses pitched the tent of meeting outside the camp at Sinai, Joshua refused to depart. He went there to live because the glory of the Lord was there. He may have been reminded of other things to take care of, but for him there was nothing as important as living in the presence of the Lord (Exodus 33:11).
Nothing is as important for us as becoming aware of the Lord. Oh, to be like the little birds that flew into the house of the Lord! May we, too, find our way into His presence, and never find our way out. May we begin to realize what it means to come into a new awareness of His presence?
People’s lives become confused when they lose their awareness of the Lord. They no longer know which way to go, and so they start looking around to find answers. We do not need to find answers, even though we may have problems. All we have to do is just abide in His presence.
A problem may seem so urgent that we think it will mean disaster unless we have an answer by a certain time tomorrow, but tomorrow the world will still be going around, and God will still be sitting on His throne. He is still Lord of lords and King of kings, and He is saying, “Abide in Me; come and abide in Me.”
It is time to come and tabernacle in God, it is time to live in Him. We need to change our address and live in Him.
Psalm 84:1 How lovely is Your tabernacle, O Lord of hosts! 2 My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the Lord; My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.3Even the sparrow has found a home, And the swallow a nest for herself, Where she may lay her young—Even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, My King and my God.4Blessed are those who dwell in Your house; They will still be praising You.
How blessed are those who dwell in Thy house! They are ever praising Thee. God never tires of people who praise Him. He loves it. God will listen to praise for eternity. Those who dwell in His presence will be praising Him forever and ever.
The Psalm continues with verse 5: How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways to Zion!
What does this mean? Such a person has learned the paths that God uses to bring someone to Himself, and they have made a freeway of them for their own heart. They know the different ways to reach God. In their heart are the highways to Zion.
We are not coming to God for answers, even in the face of impending disaster. We are coming to the Lord to live in Him. We need to develop an awareness of Him. Of all the people in the history of mankind who should believe this, it is the people who are living these days of His presence. The one objective in this hour is to be alert to His presence and to become aware of Him. We need to learn to become so aware of the Lord that His presence ceases to be distant.
When we are praying and we feel that the Lord has not heard us before we even speak, something is missing. God wants to so lead us that when we begin to talk to the Lord, we will sense that He has been drawing us to that prayer for quite a while. Even before we ever spoke, He was pulling the levers and setting things in motion with the answers. How wonderful it is to be so aware of Him that we live in His presence!
We need to remember that prayer is two-way communication. When we talk to the Lord, we need to be able to also sense what He is saying to us.
When we face problems, we do not worry. We rejoice in the lord always. Every problem will be answered in God.
What is the purpose of a problem? It is to point to the answer, who is a person. Who does God want to become to us in this problem? When the Lord reveals that to us we put him on, we put on an attribute of the divine nature.
A problem is not answered by answers: a problem is answered through an awareness of the Lord. A person may think that if they become close enough to the Lord to hear what He has to say, they will have a list of questions to ask Him. However, the day that we stand in the awareness of His mighty presence, we will not have questions, we will have answers. We may think that there are certain things we need (and there are), but they all point to the fact that God must become a dwelling place for us.
Psalm 90 is beautiful, and it begins, Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Psalm 91 is also beautiful, and it, too, begins with the same thought: He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
What is your address? “Well, my address is God, but I haven’t been home lately. I have been on a kind of a vacation.” Let us not have to say that we have been away, but that we dwell in the secret place of the Most High. He overshadows us, and under His wings we take refuge. That is what tabernacling with God is all about.
When the people kept the Feast of Tabernacles, even in the time of Christ, they looked back hundreds of years. They remembered when a patriarch, one of their forefathers, had looked out at night from his little hut to see the pillar of fire. He probably comforted himself, saying, “Lord, You are living with me. Thank You, Lord.” In the morning, he looked up and saw the cloud which obscured the hot sun as it beat down in the wilderness, and he probably said, “Lord, You are still living with us. We are dwelling where you dwell.”
We can experience God’s same presence with us today. How beautiful to be living always in His courts, ever praising Him. Every one of us can experience the reality of knowing that wherever we go, we have the canopy of His presence over us. Wherever we go, our hearts can be warmed by the glow of the pillar of fire. We do not have to make a move until we know that He is moving. All the responsibility of intricate problems for which we have no answers is laid upon Him. We cast the whole of our care upon him. He has become our Lord. He has become our King.
We need to Practice being aware of God, becoming aware that He knows us and loves us. What will thrill us even more is not our awareness of the Lord, but our awareness of His awareness of us.
The awareness of God involves even more than the fact that He is aware of us, and we are aware of Him. It brings much joy when we become aware that He knows us and loves us and has joy over the fact that we are aware of His awareness—it is a love relationship.
This awareness is the key to everything in regard to our dwelling and abiding in God. There is no greater truth in the entire world than for us to know God and to know that He knows us too, to be aware of Him and to know that He is also aware of us.
What happens when you lose our awareness of the Lord? We become aware of other people, and that is not much fun. Then we become aware of our self, and that is even worse. We are no longer alive to an awareness of God but living on a human level.
There are no fountains, no joys, no bells ringing, no songs; we are focused on our problems, and we go up to the house of the Lord with mourning. Why? We are not going up to meet Him. We are not aware of Him. There is no eagerness in our hearts to be with him.
Listen further to the prophet’s psalm, Psalm 84: 10 For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness. What is he saying? “Oh, I can’t wait to get there. A day in Your house is better than a thousand outside. I would rather be there in Your presence, Lord, than anywhere else.”
We can live a lifetime, merely just existing or enduring the stress of every day life. Every day that we are out of His presence; we no longer enjoy the joy, the love, the peace of being aware of his presence. But we enjoy the fruit of his Spirit every day that we live in his presence.
Where do we choose to live? It is up to us to decide, if we have been born from above. Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place.
Move back in and dwell in the secret place of the Most High. Learn how to live in God. First learn awareness. Keep praying, “Lord, where are You?” He will keep saying, “I am right here.” He is not far off. He is close—closer than the air we breathe, closer than our hand, closer than our heartbeat. He loves us, and will never leave us, he is with us.
We can keep our spirit active, we can keep our mind on God, and we can live in Him. Our whole purpose for existing is to walk with God and to live in His presence, and to be conformed to his image. To do that, we just turn the dial and tune in.
He is there; we must become aware of Him and love Him. If we have not heard from God for a long time and we are discouraged, that is not God’s fault. He is still talking; He is still loving us. He has never ceased to love us and to speak to us. When we finally tune back in, we will know how wonderful and how good the Lord is and that He could have been blessing us all the time.
If we really learn the secret of being aware of him, we can turn the dial wherever we go, and He will always be there. He still will be talking because His presence is a state of heart, his will is a state of spirit.
Do not fear that you will lose the blessing of His presence when you have to face the many problems and responsibilities that are upon you; just turn the dial and tune in to God. If you are tuned in to other things, you will think it has been a long time since God talked to you. But He has been talking all the time! If you have tuned yourself out, tune in again. Open your heart and stay tuned in!