DAY 15

Access to His Presence

Today, we’re going to begin at the end! 2 Chronicles 5:13-14 gives us the climax:

...the temple was filled with the cloud…for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. 

This was the goal of all the temple building and acts of dedication; that the glory of the Lord filled the house. 

This is to be the goal of all our lives and all our worship, too!  

So, what is the glory of God? Here, the glory is seen as manifesting in a physical way – as a cloud. This same glory appeared to the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Similar visible manifestations of the glory of God occur throughout the Scriptures, be it with Moses on Mount Sinai, with the angelic appearances to the shepherds at Bethlehem, with Christ on the Mount of transfiguration and with Saul on the Road to Damascus. 

Pastor Jack Hayford, in his book Glory on Your House (p.22-23), while personally experiencing the glory of God visibly, wrote: ‘This does not mean you have to have a vision of something visible, as I did. God may be noticeably present in glory and power without any such manifestation. The Hebrew word translated “glory” helps us grasp this, in that it is also the word for “weight”.  When the Bible speaks of “the glory” it is not speaking so much of something aglow as of something with substantial force to it… When the glory of God is in a place, something forceful, weighty, mighty is present in the spiritual realm.  People can recognize it. They will want to be there.’ 

The great news is that as the new covenant people of God we are in a much better place than the Old Testament believers: now we have Christ in us “the hope of glory” (see Colossians 1:27) and can expect to be transformed with “ever-increasing glory” through the Holy Spirit (see 2 Corinthians 3:18).

worship song

Holy Ground