In my quiet time with the Lord this morning I was just spending some time trying to listen for His voice, which more often than not comes in some revelation concerning what He has me studying. This morning as I thought about something that has eluded me for so long I suddenly saw the answer.

At one time or another all of us have either met or heard about someone who has had the blessing of “feeling” the intense love of God. Sometimes it’s in prayer, sometimes in worship, sometimes in near death experiences and sometimes just out of the blue. I have asked God for that experience so many times I can’t remember … “just once Lord can I feel your love for me like that?” You know what He told me — “it’s up to you.”

Then He began to explain it to me in relationship to the book I am currently writing on the perils the bride of Christ in America is facing. The book leans on the teachings found in the Song of Solomon (who we are as His bride), Hebrews (our foundation and the future) and Revelation (warnings of the subtle snares of the enemy). As I am about to begin teaching a study on Hebrews that is where He took me this morning and where He gave me my answer.

Consider the tabernacle and the temple for just a moment as they were in the Old Testament. The Outer Court or the Court of the Gentiles was where everyone entered. For us today that is the world we live in, full of unbelieving and unsaved people. Passing through the Outer Court one entered the Holy Place where the sacrifices were made. For the Christian today, the believer in Christ, this is our salvation, and unfortunately it is where most Christians stay. Consider this for a moment as the place of the carnal Christian; saved but not living the spiritual life God has intended.

But with the sacrifice of Jesus’ life on the cross we are now able to pass from the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies or the Holiest Place. Right past the veil, which has been torn down and into the place where only the High Priest was able to go, and then only one time each year; on the Day of Atonement. The Holiest Place – the very presence of God.

What this represents for the Christian today is the spiritual life, the life of a spiritual Christian. It is our Canaan, our promised land. It is for us “the rest of God;” Jesus’ rest. The place where the blood of Christ has been poured out upon the altar, the place where His blood represents the grace we need and the place where His blood continues to intercede for our sin. It is the very place that He told us that we are to enter boldly – in His name and by the power of His blood. With that in mind the Lord said, “It’s up to you.”

First He told me that the “intense love” that many have felt is the love that we all will feel in heaven; the total absence of sin. In those moments Jesus has allowed some to come into His presence (in multiple ways) but in so doing they had to come without sin. For that brief moment Jesus let them experience the fullness of His love in the absence of sin — no restriction, no limitation, just His pure love.

Honestly, at that point I actually said, “that’s great, I understand what that is now, but what I really want is to experience it.” Then it hit me … the Holiest Place.

We are all able to experience the love of Christ in a deeper and more intense way. If we will cease spending time in the Holy Place and live in the Holiest Place. Yes that is not only possible but it’s what He wants us to do, and it’s there that we can begin to experience a growing intensity of His love. And the secret to staying in the Holiest Place and not stepping back to the Holy Place is our faith. By our faith we enter in and by our faith we remain. And as we linger there our awareness of the sin in our life will grow stronger. And there is the answer.

In the Holiest Place Jesus draws us ever closer and in the process we become much more aware of our sins — we begin to “hate sin” as He does. And as we tarry with Him there we also become more aware of the grace that He has for us and the more readily we confess those sins and apply His blood and receive that grace. Is the picture getting a bit clearer?

It is the absence of sin that allows us to experience His love. As we spend more and more time in the Holiest Place — in His presence — we will continue to deal with the sin that lies in our heart. The more that we recognize it, admit that it is there and ask for His forgiveness the more intense His love will become.

That is eternal life here on earth – the eternal life that we have but so often do not appropriate. Jesus paid the price and opened the door to His very presence. How sad that we so often content ourselves with life in the Holy Place, the abode of the carnal Christian, when the spiritual life is fully available.

How do you find the Holiest Place? In the Song of Solomon Jesus tells us that He has given each of us a beautiful, private garden in which He has placed a bench made for two. He is sitting there just waiting for us to come and spend time with Him. He comes to help us tend the gifts and callings He has sown there, to tend the thorns and to nurture our budding faith. It is a garden sealed from the outside and within there is a spring that He guards and only allows to flow out – uncontaminated by the world outside.

Where is that garden? It’s set in your own heart and it is open to you 24×7. A place where Jesus will point out those thorns that are growing, the little foxes that that destroy the fruit of the vine. And as you begin to deal with those thorns, as you dig them up and lay them at his feet, you will find that as the sin departs you are able to experience more of His love.

Do I still want to experience His love in the fullest? Absolutely! But now I realize that until that happens — sometime down here or the moment He calls me home — I have the ability to enjoy more and more of His love every day.

The Holiest Place is open to us but Jesus will not drag us in. Canaan — God’s rest — was open to the Israelites but they did not enter in. That rest is not “all milk and honey” as there are truly giants in our world. But as God’s rest gave the Israelites the ability to rest from their “work” and trust in Him, so Jesus’ rest offers the same to us. When He said “it is finished” on the cross it not only meant the Old Covenant, it meant that struggling and striving and working on our own was finished. We only need appropriate that rest with our faith. And the more we enter into that rest, the more we deal with the sin that “besets” us, the stronger our faith will become and the more deeply we will experience the love of Christ.

What Israel hungered for, looked for and failed to obtain we have been given; shame on us for just contenting ourselves with the Holy Place. Living in the Holiest Place is fully entering into His rest and it is there that we will find the faith, the strength, the wisdom and the love we need to deal with the giants in our world. It is where we will find the answers we need to get us through this life and on into our ultimate rest … the New Jerusalem.

So I encourage you to join me in spending more and more time in the Holiest Place, sitting on your bench in the garden with Jesus and dealing with those things that are hindering you from experiencing the fullness of His love. Don’t let the cares of this world draw you back into the Holy Place and settle for the life of a carnal Christian, saved but unfulfilled. That is a life that will one day lead to great sadness when we stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ and see whether our life has produced gold and silver or wood hay and stubble. The gold and silver comes as a result of the time spent in the Holiest Place, and that comes as a result of a fully committed life. A fully committed life that is not content with just being in the Holy Place.