As we continue our walk into the Tabernacle of God towards the Presence of God, we have passed the bronze altar standing for the blood and forgiveness of Jesus, the laver standing for judgment and the Word of God judging us as a mirror and judging Satan as defeated.

From there we entered in the Holy Place through the first veil with Thanksgiving and Praise, and we are now at the Table of Showbread (the King James Bible calls it Shewbread). It literally means the Presence of His Face, or that God is staring at it. In our Tabernacle journey, this piece of furniture represents our will, or giving up our own will for God's will.

Something that I want to impress upon your thinking even before you study this chapter is that God will allow you to have your own will. He will not violate your free choice. You must give your will to Him. If you do not, He is ready to allow you to suffer the consequences, even to the point of pain and destruction, and yes, even to the point of spending eternity in Hell. He will move Heaven and earth to give you the options, but you must choose life or death, blessing or curse, His will or your will. Often God will lovingly guide a strong willed person by allowing them to feel the pain of their self will. It should be sobering thought that the Creator of the Universe is personally staring at the very soil of your heart to see your will!

Shewbread.

Exodus 25:30, the King James version says, "And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway." In the NIV version it says "Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times."

The Table of Shewbread was a golden table that had two stacks of six pieces of freshly baked bread. In studying for this lesson, I discovered so many things about this piece of furniture that I could teach for months and never run out of substance! Let us see how much we can cover and still keep it simple.

Bread is symbolic of wheat dying, being ground up, being molded and then being baked in fire. Bread gives us strength for life. Jesus is the Bread of Life (John 6). The Word of God is the Bread of Life, or food for our soul and spirit. Jesus was the grain of wheat that died, that was ground up and burned and was raised from the dead. Just before He was crucified in the Garden of Gethsemene, As recorded in Luke 22, Jesus was agonizing with the Father and said, "not My will but Yours be done." This was the opposite of what Adam did in his Garden 4,000 years earlier.

The soul.

Man is made up of three parts. He is a living spirit, he has a soul, and he lives in a body. The soul also has three parts, the will, the mind or intellect, and the emotions.

When Jesus said that we must deny ourselves, lose our life for His sake, etc., He was using a word that refers to our soul. So we must deny or say no to our old un-regenerated soul. Our will mind and emotions are where we actually take up our cross and make the connection to His Cross and the blood covenant. "Then He said to them all, 'If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life (soul) will lose it, but whoever loses his life (soul, will, mind and emotions) for My sake will save it'" (Luke 9:23-24).

Inside the Holy Place there are three pieces of furniture, the Table of Shewbread, The Golden Lampstand and the Altar of Incense. One symbolic meaning for these (there are many) is that the Table of Shewbread stands for our will, the Lampstand for our intellect and the Altar of Incense for our emotions.

The will is the big thing! I believe that the will can be described as having three functions:

1. It is a choice or decision maker. Man is the only living being that has the freedom to choose. This choice is what gives us the potential for real love; it is also what gives us the potential for evil. This is when the word "will" is used as a participle, kind of like a verb; " I will give..."

2. It is an inheritance. Think of the last will and testament of a relative that named you to share in their inheritance. This is when the word will is used as a noun; "My will for you is..."

3. It goes into and is part of our sub-conscious. We make decisions of what to put into our minds and spirits, but after that our will or sub-conscious takes over and produces the things that are written on it. It is kind of like the software on the hard drive on your computer.

Romans 12:1-2 says that we should offer our lives a "living sacrifice" to God so that we may "prove" the perfect will of God for our lives. In other words, we need to give God our will. When we do that, we are promised that we will prove, or walk out through trials, the perfect will of God for our lives.

Why would God want you to give Him your will?

So He can give you His! In a covenant relationship there is always a swap. Yours for mine and mine for yours! Now who do you think gets the better deal, you or Jesus? All we do is give up "junk" in order to receive "jewels." In spite of this, so many people think it is such a sacrifice to give up their wills and accept God's will. The only person who ever received anything bad by giving up their own will to God's will was Jesus, and He did it with joy, the joy of seeing you and me saved.

Many people agonize over God's will for their lives, feeling that if they give into His will that He will call them to some sort of torture, suffering, or ask them to move to another country. The truth is, if God ever did ask a person for such a task, that person would have a burning desire to accomplish it. God's will for every life is "abundant life." "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

What is God's will for you? God's Word is His will for you and me. We need to see God's Word as a friend who died and left His riches to us. In addition, God has a customized plan or will for your own individual life. However you may be hindering Him from working that into your life by hanging on to your old fleshly will. Ephesians 2:10 indicates that God has a predestined path for each of us, and He calls it the good life, the abundant life. I would much rather have what Jesus has coming than what I have coming. His will is for us to be like Jesus, to have life abundantly and to live above circumstances no matter what comes our way.

He intends for us to listen and obey so that we will be just at the right place and at the right time to encounter His plan. There is nothing as satisfying as encountering God's plan, because you also encounter Him. And He is our real reward!

The Holy Spirit wants to lead and guide you just like Jesus would if He were here in the flesh. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would take His place. If Jesus were here in the flesh, would you have a problem listening to Him before you made any decision? Would you consult Him as the Creator and the Lamb before saying one word or making one decision? God's sweet soft voice can be heard in the here and now! You may be called to be a millionaire and give to missions, or you may be called to live in a mud hut in a Third World country. Whatever your calling is, you best not make a doctrine out of it for everyone you encounter!

There are indeed some basic doctrines that we are to obey just because we see them in His Word. We are to give thanks in everything, we are to walk in love, and we are to lay our lives down for others. However, after the doctrines are obeyed, we will receive specific instructions to obey so that God's will for our individual lives may be worked out. The Holy Spirit will show us how to walk in love and what that means. He will show us how to lay down our lives without becoming co-dependents for others. The Holy Spirit will show us where to construct boundaries for our lives and our families. There is a difference between obeying the Word called logos, and the Word call rhema. Rhema is that personal Word spoken from the lips of Jesus just for you at a particular time in your life.

Boundaries express love. When people are trying to control and manipulate us, putting up boundaries not only expresses love for our families, but for the perpetrator as well. We are helping the perpetrator by keeping him/her from more severe judgement for what they might have done to hurt us.

How do you give God your will?

One way is when we submit to the Word, we are giving our will to God. When we read in the Word to be kind, not to criticize, to give and not be selfish, then we are giving our will to God so that He can give us His.

Other ways are to put your thoughts, plans, and desires "on the altar" and allow God to either burn them away or perfect them. This can be difficult for some people who are strong willed and very talented. They are capable of feeling that their desires are always God's desires because they perform them out of their own power and abilities. However, if we give our plans and desires to God and then back off and see if He performs them, that is the faith life, and it is truly trusting God's will for your life.

If we truly submit to God with our whole heart, He will plant His desires into our hearts, and His will becomes our will. "Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart" (Psalms 37:4). Proverbs 16:3 (AMP) says, "Roll your works upon the Lord, commit and trust them wholly to Him; He will cause your thoughts to become agreeable to His will, and so shall your plans be established and succeed."

God works through His Word to paint pictures on your heart.

God wants to paint His will on the tablet of your heart. God is a visionary, and He created us as visionaries. Yes, He wants us to be practical in the everyday affairs of life, but He wants to transfer His will to us by painting pictures on our heart by the media of His Word.

Look at Genesis chapters 30 and 31 to see how God transferred His will for Jacob into reality by speaking a word to Jacob and allowing Jacob to see a dream about spotted and speckled cattle. We need to trust God more and open up to Him. We can tend to get too cautious and be too "Western minded" and too much into linear thinking. We should take some lessons from the Eastern and other third world mindsets that understand that the supernatural works through pictures on the heart. We just need to make sure that it is God who is painting the pictures and not some other god, and not ourselves.

Oftentimes Christians, even well meaning Christians, can get into the trap of using their own will without God involved. "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails" (Proverbs 19:21).

The devil attempts to plant his will into our hearts the same way God does.

One trap to beware of is that we think we are giving God our desires but we are not replacing them with His Word, and the devil comes along and plants negative images, small goals and the failure mindset in our hearts. "Another parable He put forth to them, saying: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way'" (Matthew 13:24,25).

Abraham and Ishmael.

Lust for things, even good things that we are not willing to wait for, demonstrates a lack of patience on our part. When we move without waiting on God it is can be a sign of rebellion, a lack of trust in God's love, or perhaps just a lack of experience in walking with God as was the case with Abraham.

The Bible story that best illustrates this is centered on Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac. God came to Abram in Genesis 12 to call him out from his own family, his business and financial security, his idols and his method of worship, in order to create a family to be called the "family of God." This would be the Israelites, the Jews, and eventually the Christians, the Body of Christ, who were grafted into God's spiritual family.

In Genesis 15 God appeared to Abram again and they discussed having a child. "But Abram said, 'O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?' And Abram said, 'You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.' Then the word of the LORD came to him: 'This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.' He took him outside and said, 'Look up at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:2-6).

Abram could not figure out how God was going to give him a child since he was so old and his wife Sarah was barren and could not have children. He knew God's will, and he figured that it was time to just do it. So he made his own plans for having a child. The story continues and Sarai, Abram's wife, suggests that her maidservant Hagar become the mother of Abram's child. The child was named Ishmael. Although God loved Ishmael, he was not God's choice for creating His family of Israel from whom the Messiah was to come.

As it turned out, all of the Arab nations came from Ishmael, who was a result of Abraham's plan. Israel, Jesus, and Christianity all came from the supernatural birth of Isaac, which were all part of God's plan and His own doing. God is interested in saving the Arabs now through Jesus Christ. God wants to graft them in just like He grafted in you and me.

God was not finished with Abram. God had other plans, His plans! He came again to Abram some years later and told him about His plans. Genesis 17 records how the Lord appeared to Abram again at a time in life when both he and his wife were beyond child bearing, and promised them the supernatural birth of Isaac.

"Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him" (Genesis 21:1-3).

The lesson we are to learn from this is that we need to allow God to perform those things for us that He wants. Sure we are supposed to work, study and try hard. But so far as our will is concerned, we are to offer that up to Him.

Remember, Abraham did not have a Bible, he did not have audio-tapes, he did not go to Bible school, he had no super spiritual pastor who could give him godly advice. He was a trail blazer in walking with the Lord. If Abraham could learn from his own errors, he would have said, "Oh God, I know your promise to me, I understand You want me to have a child, and I don't see how that can possibly happen. Perhaps I misunderstood you; perhaps You have something else for me. I lay this desire of mine, and promise from You on the altar and ask You to perform it for me if you want this for my life. I dare not touch this to help You. If this is from You, then I will wait until you perform it." We need to refuse to manipulate people and circumstances to get our way. God never does that, and we should be afraid to do it. This will ensure that we do not create an "Ishmael" in our life that we will be sorry for, perhaps forever.

One of the rules I have adapted for sifting out God's will from my will is a method I learned when I used to sail in the Virgin Islands and other parts of the Caribbean. We would begin to enter a harbour and would be warned that there were coral reefs all over the harbour entrance. However we had a map, or a chart, that would give landmarks on the land from which we could line up our entry course. For instance, there would be a church, a water tower, and the city hall. If we would line up those three objects so that we could only see them in a straight line, then, the chart would tell us, we could enter the harbour on that course and would be safe. In the spiritual world I like to line up three or four items to find out if a certain course is God's will. I want to hear from Him in the Word, I want to hear from the Holy Spirit, I want to see circumstances begin to line up, and I want to see the Body of Christ affirming my decision.

Take a lesson from Jeremiah.

The Lord told him that Israel was going into captivity to Babylon, and that eventually they would come back to their land. He told Jeremiah to make a real estate investment in anticipation of this return. However, Jeremiah did not just go out and buy the land even though he felt he knew it was God's will for him. Instead he waited until circumstances lined up with God's promise. Then he knew it was the word of the Lord.

"And Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came to me, saying, Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum your uncle shall come to you, saying, Buy for yourself my field in Anathoth; for the right to redeem it is yours, to buy it. So Hanameel my uncle's son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the LORD and said to me, Please buy my field in Anathoth, which is in the land of Benjamin; for the right of inheritance is yours, and the right to redeem is yours. Buy it for yourself. Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD" (Jeremiah 32:6-8).

Remember that Shewbread literally means the Presence of His face.

God is not only staring at your will, He is also staring at His Word to perform it. Jeremiah 1:11-12 (amp) says, "Moreover the word of the Lord came to me saying, Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said, I see a branch or shoot of an almond tree of alertness and activity blossoming in late winter. Then said the Lord to me, You have seen well, for I am alert and active watching over My word to perform it."

Actually He is staring at our will to see if we are going to choose Him, but also He is staring at His Word to perform it! Once you use your will to decide to believe God's Word about something, He is there to perform it, even if it means that you may have to wait, like He told Jeremiah.

Remember your will is stronger than your emotions. Your emotions will attempt to cause you to act. However if you exercise your will to be united with God's will, God will take over and His power will act on your behalf.

The almond tree budded in late winter when everyone thought things were darkest and impossible. Praise God!

Jesus did the ultimate in exchanging His will for the Father's. In the Garden of Gethsemene Jesus believed the Word that the Father would raise Him from the dead, and for the joy that was set before Him, that is the joy of seeing us saved and going to heaven, He endured the shame of the Cross. He became sin for us and went to Hell for us. He said, "not My will but Yours Father". (Luke 22:39-44 ).

You go ahead now and make a decision to consecrate your will to God no matter what! Make an altar, a time, date and place. No turning back! You will not perform perfectly, but you can repent perfectly.

We begin here. We walk through here We end up here and take up our cross. in God's presence.