Rev. 4, After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.” 2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. 3 And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads. The Throne and Worship of the Creator 5 Out from the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; 6 and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. 7 The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. 8 And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.”
A wardrobe is just a portable closet, and it’s interesting to me that the wardrobe in CS Lewis’s book was the entrance into another world called Narnia. Our prayer closets are also portable, for it doesn’t matter whether you are praying while driving in your car, or are in some set apart room, it is still your prayer closet; “The secret place of the steep stairway,” where the real Narnia is waiting for you. In Revelation 4 we have an amazing description of our spiritual Narnia that we enter into every time we step into our portable wardrobe (prayer closet). The heavenly Narnia that we enter into every time we pray, is a place that burns with the light of his glory, splendor, and wholeheartedness. For me, fresh brokenness, healing, filling, and wholeness of vision and perspective happen every time in that secret place of exquisite encounter with the one who sits on the throne high above all of the thrones, and whose name is love. In Ezekiel 1, and Revelation 1 both Ezekiel and John fall down before his glory, and beauty that they encountered in his burning presence. John reports that when he looked into the eyes of fire, he fell at Jesus’s feet as if he were a dead man. There is always a fresh falling down in surrender, and a fresh dying to self will, and the unbelief that flows from unholy perspectives, in the presence of his beauty. I rarely pray when my experience of Narnia isn’t filled with cleansing tears and laughter. In the passage in Revelation 4 the invitation to John was to “come up here, and I will show you what must take place in the midst of these things.” Jesus was inviting John to enter into the wardrobe and to see reality on Narnia’s level so that he could see from Narnia’s throne room perspective into the situations that were going on in Earth’s reality. That’s one of the most important things that happens in prayer; he invites us to “see up here,” so that we can “see down there” from “up here’s perspective,” which is always a reigning, throne room, seated in the heavenly places, point of view. I always come away from prayer still in prayer, with heavens reality dominating my thoughts and my emotions in all the freshly engaged battles on earth’s side of the wardrobe.