Zion - brought forth by prayer

Zion - brought forth by prayerBy Lars WiderbergReading: Hebrews 12:18-281. Zion is firmly positioned at the centre of the pictures of the final section of time, pictures which God has painted and given to His people. All things are brought in to be measured, all things are undergoing minute scrutinizing, even shaken to pieces, to dust, in relation to what is captured and contained in Zion as being the primary product of the intention and installations of the Father. Zion, its factual existence must be confronted. Zion is the source of the fundamental controversy of the end time. The victory of Zion cannot be tolerated. Zion, an insignificant hill in this world but a stronghold of immense potency because of the choice of the Lord.Zion summarises and solidifies the hope of the saints. Abraham, the father of faith, became the marked beginner of this search for a city in which it is possible to dwell in a reasonable fashion. Pilgrims along the path of faith have been carrying on compelled by the same inscrutable urge and longing. The Lord dwells in Zion, Ps 9:11. Zion belongs to Him, it is His holy mountain - Ps 2:6. She is that place where faith becomes substance, where man can rest securely. She is the city which has foundations, Heb 11:10. This city is the one from which the Lord brings His law to all nations, to all peoples, to all their places of dwelling – Isa 2:3. This is why she is not welcomed among the many and the great. But, God has decided…

2. Zion is a community, a people travelling through this world determined by the Lord to carry with them, to carry within them that reality which reflects eternal values. Zion is a company, a companionship, set up by the Lord to carry the privileges of effective intercession. This is what is at the heart of the conflict. A House of Prayer fulfilling its purpose by existing as a testimony regarding the majesty of the Father. He lives in Zion. The Lord has a controversy with his own people concerning the goals and objects of prayer. What He is looking for, what He is after is intercession which takes the demands of the Throne seriously and stands with it. He is prospering a prayer life which allows for the realities of Zion to have absolute priority. Many believe that the Father is glorified when His children are allowed to have what they want. But, we have not arrived to that when we enter Zion. Zion is different. Zion is not like Sinai – a play ground, a place for parties.

3. The pilgrim who threads the path to Zion is searching after a way of prayer which is worthy the greatness of God. The pilgrim is trying to track down expressions which fit in with the Glory of the Lord. The intercessor acts unflinching in his efforts to tune his prayers according to the will of the Lord. A pilgrim is ever eager to compose and quiet his soul and to adjust his will for the sake of being in balance with the mind of the Father. The law of Zion is the law of the Spirit of life, a protocol which allows for Heaven to draw near. The system which belongs to and is named after Sinai is never capable of anything but showing forth man’s eternally self-assured efforts to tame time and circumstances. Sinai causes nothing but disturbances and disorder in its ambitions to bring regularity and establish its rule. Pilgrims and intercessors turn their backs to that mountain and looks for the city, the hill of eternal hope.

4. The gathering at Mount Zion consists of people who are awestruck and forced to their knees by the majesty of God, by the greatness of God, by the His holiness and righteousness. Those gathered there tremble by the fact of these realities. The people of Zion have reached that faith which is substance, Hebr 11:1. This people of Zion carry with them a prophetic relevance, because of a simple and single fact which is a turning away from the very things which constitute Sinai. You have arrived at Zion, the City of the Living God, where everything which belongs to Him reaches its conclusion. You have come to Zion, where everything relies on and relates to and finds its reason for existence in Christ. You have found Zion where everything is nurtured and sustained by the life of Christ. Zion is the situation in which He is about to fulfil and become all in all. This is the testimony carried by Zion, through which she speaks to those who have ears to hear and to anything that cannot hear. Zion is the place where God finalises his intentions. It is the situation where the pilgrim finds rest because of the finality and irrevocability of the purposes of the Lord. Zion is the situation is which God is vindicated. Zion will stand for ever.

5. Pilgrims, intercessors, have come to Zion. They left Sinai behind. They are like Abraham who left the city of Ur to look for a city with foundations. Any Christian should be found in this category. With them should be found a leaving behind of the territories where the material reality has the upper hand. Among them should be found a giving up as to the possibilities of ruling on the grounds of the flesh. In their hearts should be found a leaving behind of the rights to rule in order to give room for the throne of Zion. An idol has entered the scene, which is called “Relevancy in this hour”, opportunistically adapted and fitted to the trends and fashions of the present day culture – relevancy through present day truths. The prophetic voices are many and insisting. In a great chorus they all incite and call upon compromise and they all produce the same old mistake as the many generations before them, by trying to entice people to fill empty seats in churches by fleshly ambition fitted in a Christianised format.

6. Faith has arrived at an altogether different type of expressions in Zion. Relevancy is measured according to other standards in Zion. Worship is tuned according to other tempering modes in Zion. Prayers are prayed according to the burden of the Lord among the people of Zion. “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness go forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burneth.” Isa 62:1. This is the burden of the Lord. This is the perennial burden of God. A company of committed which prepares to be engaged in the purposes of the Lord will find themselves to be solely and fully absorbed in the producing of a testimony of the reality of Zion.

Hebrews 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,In the beginning God made a garden and put His new creation, man, in the center of it. God entered into His rest and put man in the middle of it. In our dispensation He has made Christ our garden, we are to dwell in Him, He is to be our home. This is my personal heritage as a believer, as a new creation in Christ. He is our rest, our abiding place. In the garden man was given a trust (life) and a commandment (be fruitful and multiply). He must develop a family and life suitable to the garden. When it became unsuitable man was thrust out of the garden. We have a tremendous responsibilty to honor the divine life in us. To let that life flow to the world around us, so that His life might be transferred to others. No Chrisian should be a dead end, he must be fruitful and multiply. It is the justification of our existence.We are come to Zion, to all the provision for a life like that, it's all there already, we need to enter into this purpose fully. Mount Zion is symbolically the whole of God's work in Christ.It also represents all the people that have entered into that completed work. (Exodus 15:17)Zion is the place of transcendent victory over all enemies; sin, satan, death. Ye are come, praise God!In Christ,Ron

7. You have come to Zion. Where the burden of the Lord finds an opportunity to carry out its business Zion is found. God dwells in circumstances of that kind. He invests in a situation of that particular category. He is ready to give Himself to a community in which the partakers have been willing to erect an altar for the sake of a burnt offering, a total sacrifice. Zion gathers relevancy by allowing God to dwell in it according to his own terms and conditions. Oh, that my people would listen… Oh, that my people would seek my face… Zion is His face shining.That other city, the city which one should turn ones back to, is full of altars – but only those that are built for personal gain. That other city has built halls full of mirrors for people to come to live in, twisting and turning in a surrealistic dance of introspection – no clear crystal, as from Heaven, to be found there. In that other city any and every investment is done for the sake of prosperity and personal affluence. Zion has nothing of this. In Zion this one thing is stated and consolidated as the foundation of progress and spiritual maturity: “Not what I am, but what Christ is…” There is rest and stillness in Zion.

8. We have come to Zion. Zion has become ours. Zion will never become ours – we belong to Zion. The burden of God is Zion, Zion only. The final goal of God is Zion. He has installed His King, His Son, upon Zion. The perennial priority, the continuous, ongoing heavenly operation of the Lord has this one thing, this one thing only, in focus – Zion. Our prayers prayed, our intercession, become relevant only as far as we have allowed His burden to ignite and saturate them. We are relevant as a church, as a community before the Lord, only as far as Zion is relevant and important to us. Have we arrived at Zion?Zion is the city which Abraham longed for and searched for. Zion is the city which every pilgrim is trying to reach. In that city the feasts of the Lord are celebrated with genuine gladness. There is no true celebration, no true relevancy, no true worship anywhere else. Zion is the hill of the eternal hope, the hill of holiness and relevancy.Pray to be able to arrive at this destination.Pray for companies who dare to take on the hard work to prepare the way to Zion.

“You have come to Zion. Where the burden of the Lord finds an opportunity to carry out its business Zion is found. God dwells in circumstances of that kind. He invests in a situation of that particular category. He is ready to give Himself to a community in which the partakers have been willing to erect an altar for the sake of a burnt offering, a total sacrifice. Zion gathers relevancy by allowing God to dwell in it according to his own terms and conditions.”I find the same dimension described in the following quote from Mr. Arthur Katz:“The book of Acts, Chapter 13, commences with a group of people ministering unto the Lord. In that mode of being, the Holy Spirit could say, “Set apart for Me Barnabbas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” These men were set apart, or consecrated, in a separation of such an ultimate kind that they would have been just as content to remain in the place of worship at Antioch as to be sent into the purposes of God. They had come to a place of death to themselves, even the religious desire to serve God, and to see fruit, and to be used, that it was all the same to remain as to go. It was a separation from the deepest and most subtle elements of ambition that hide themselves in the last place in which they can find refuge, namely, a religious and spiritual ambition to do for God.”