Allowing the Wheat to Fall

I don't know if I have ever found such a rich topic as the threshing floor in the Bible.  Every time I study it, God shows me more and more!  It is like peeling back the layers of an onion...I can only hope I will grasp its whole significance!  God showed me so much on this subject a few years ago.  This post won't make any sense without reading that first. 

So, just this week, God is showing me that substitutionary death often takes place on a threshing floor.  Mt. Moriah was the location that encompassed all these things:

1.  Abraham about to offer Isaac when God Himself provided the ram.  Jesus is alluded to as the horn of our salvation since the ram was caught in the thicket by his horns.  This is the place where Jehovah is now Jireh...our very provision.  He allowed a substitutionary death in this place.

2.  David orders a census of the nation and his pride gets him in big trouble.  He would rather place himself at the mercy of God instead of man, but it still costs him 70,000 of his own men to a plague.  He goes to the threshing floor of Araunah and offers a sacrifice on an altar there.  (How awesome is it that this place belongs to a Gentile...a non-Jew...it is like preluding the fact that salvation is for all, not just the Jewish people.)  It is the same location where Abraham offered Isaac!  Araunah offered to give him the threshing floor, but David insists on buying it.  He knows that substitutionary death (in this case, an animal) must cost something, or it means nothing. 

3.  Solomon (David's son) builds the temple (everything about this temple points to the coming Jesus) none other than the threshing floor of Araunah...the place where substitutionary death has already occurred twice.  God is saying that it is coming again...for a final time...in the form of Jesus, his beloved Son.

And here is where the light bulbs are finally going off for me.  If I am a New Covenant Believer, then the temple of the Living God is inside of me.  Therefore the very temple in me is built on a threshing floor.  Jesus bought my threshing floor just like David bought Araunah's.  Jesus put His life on the altar and allowed the ultimate sacrifice so that my plague of sin and death might be stopped forever.

Grace bought me.  And it was costly.

Do I live my life worthy of this substitutionary death?  Do I allow constant threshing on my threshing floor...to allow the wheat to be separated from the chaff?  To allow the Holy Spirit to do a constant work of sanctification?  To allow Jesus to make me more like Him and less like the world?

Do I allow this?  Or do I pretend that my threshing floor didn't cost Him everything?

I think God is showing me a new way to pray...

"I pray that what is right would be weighted down with your glory (after all the Hebrew word for glory...kabod...means weight) and fall down on the threshing floor as true wheat.  I pray that my family and I would receive true nourishment from what is true instead of ingesting in what might hurt us.  I pray that what is false and unworthy of our time or the gospel would become like chaff on the threshing floor.  I pray that the wind would sweep and carry all chaff away without leaving any trace behind."

I can pray this over so many areas!
*how we spend our time as a family
*our boys' hearts
*my husband's work
*our futures and all decisions
*my own spiritual growth
*the words that come out of our mouths