3.2 A Home for God
God is all here now – all of God, Personal and True, inside every moment of time and every particle of space. All creation, including the vastness of the universe and all the heavens filled with spirit beings and realities, is just a tiny, tiny thing carried inside of this infinite God. It is an amazing thing, then, that His whole attention is upon us.
If God is ALL everywhere, how then, can He “come Home?” The problem for God is that He is invisible Spirit and cannot be known or detected by any created thing. God “coming Home,” then, is God entering into the knowledge of His people. – I will be God inside of them and they shall be a people inside of Me (Hebrews 8 – the Covenant).
God’s Entrance. God has one entrance only into the knowledge of His people, and that one entrance has three parts. The first part of God’s entrance into our knowledge is Christ Jesus, inside of whom God comes.
The second part of God’s entrance into our knowledge is through our faith, which can be only the faith of the Son out from God inside of us. This faith must be personal to each member of God’s House and it must be an active faith, that is, we Acknowledge God at Home in our hearts. – Christ lives in your heart through faith.
Then the third part of God coming Home is that reciprocity of God-Love taking place inside each local gathering of believers. Christians loving one another reciprocally is God come Home.
Jerusalem, the Church. Now, this “Way” for the Father to come Home sounds quite simple – and technically it is. Nonetheless, we humans are tricky and desperate, and it turns out that God’s Way Home is as through a raging storm.
But the Way for God to come Home is the next lesson. In this lesson we want to know what is a completed HOME for God. A completed Home for God is Jerusalem, the Church of the Age of Tabernacles, begun now as that which closes out this present age of war against God. Later in this text, we will consider the Church fully inside the Age of Tabernacles, but here we want to consider her in the weeks just prior to the Resurrection.
Not Having Seen. Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who believe without having seen” (John 20:29). – Whom, not having seen, you love, into whom now you believe, though you do not see outwardly; moreover you exult with joy inexpressible and filled with glory, receiving the full completion of your faith, the salvation and healing of your souls (1 Peter 1:8-9).
We infer from these statements that ALL Word concerning the Church will be believed by her in FULL prior to any outward transformation. God will be fully at Home inside His Church BEFORE any outward resurrection takes place.
One Community of Christ. Again, we are not talking about what is True, but what is acknowledged to be True. God is not at Home unless we acknowledge Him to be at Home.
We know that the Church is both universal and local. But the universal Church cannot be real except each local gathering together be real. Thus to know Father at Home, we must know one Community of Christ. Father at Home is Christ Community. We cannot know God as individuals except we walk together with a people who know God together.
What do you want?
Their Togetherness. So here we have one Community of Christ, several dozen believers in Jesus, walking together daily inside of commitment, yet still possessing bodies of mortal flesh. God is completely at Home inside of them in all.
In considering this Home for Father, we will assume that each person inside this Community lives and walks in the full acknowledgement of Father with me, in all the knowledge and power of the gospel. Having assumed this, we will limit ourselves only to a description of the togetherness that is the dwelling place of God. – As Paul said, “You also are being built together for a dwelling place of God.”
Five Arenas of Fellowship. It is the togetherness that is God’s House, not unrelated individuals, no matter how “in tune” with God they are. But those who truly know God accept nothing other than togetherness and reciprocity.
The essence and structure of God’s dwelling place is found in the various expressions of fellowship taking place inside this particular Community. There are five arenas of fellowship inside of any committed Community. Those five arenas are fellowship of conversation, fellowship of work, fellowship of worship, fellowship of victory, and fellowship of heart. In reality, these five arenas are often intertwined.
Conversation. God is at Home inside of our conversations together. Conversation means informal visiting wherein we get to know one another, the human me and the human you.
We are distinguishing between formal speaking and informal visiting. Inside of the worship meeting, the governance meeting, and the fellowship of Victory only formal speaking is found, as the oracles of God and the speaking of the truths of Christ. Casual conversation can be found both in itself, sitting around a campfire, for instance, or along with ongoing work, and even inside of one part of worship, that is around the dinner table, breaking bread (worship) together.
The Reflection of Your Face. Now, it is inside of our knowing one another wherein God is found at Home. And each of these five arenas of fellowship are critical to our knowing one another. But knowing one another happens slowly over time.
Visiting informally together is just one part of knowing one another, essential, but not complete. My impression of you, that is, Christ Jesus reflected from your face, comes partly from visiting, but I also have my view of your face inside of worship – how you love Jesus, and inside of victory, your determination and perseverance in battle. I also know how you approach work, and the ways in which you and I have learned to work together.
Laughing Together. One time at Blueberry, three individuals got up after supper and shared a hilarious story that happened to them on their drive home from Fort. St. John. We laughed and laughed, and the warmth of our enjoyment of one another as humans is etched in my heart even now. Then, when I stood in front of the assembly in the performance of The Great Divorce, the family and I both saw a side of me unknown before. I was utterly astonished at the fact that I had made Bill Grier – and all of Blueberry – laugh!
All of these things are part of the fellowship of conversation, getting to know one another in informal ways. We did not really know that God was laughing with us, fully at Home inside our knowing of one another.
Working Together. Getting to know one another by working together is a critical place for God to know and be at Home. It is important for there to be an interweaving of different kinds of work together with different people throughout the unfolding of our days.
First, we have that work in which we specialize, for me, either building or teaching. I was involved daily with only a few people inside the construction task, but I got to know those few individuals very well. More than that, in my experience, these were just men who shared similar skills with mine. Inside the school, however, I worked with a whole different set of people of both genders, including the students.
Chances to Know All. That still left quite a number of people with whom I rarely worked. Yet there were two areas of occasional work in which I enjoyed fellowship with all of those. Those two tasks were cooking Sunday dinner together and everyone going to the garden together to harvest or to plant. I now see how important those two arenas of working together really were, even though they did not happen often. It was only in those two places where I worked with many individuals.
We work each in unique ways, and knowing how each one works, knowing each one in the work, is a very important place for God, that He might be at Home. And when we say “God at Home,” we mean Love among us.
Valued Fellowships. But of all my working with others, the fellowships I valued the most was on the one hand, working with my students in the classroom, and on the other hand, the seamless working together that I enjoyed with four individuals, Jimmy Barkley, George Hawkins, Don Howat, and Amos Stoltzfus.
Here’s the thing. Because these are the working fellowships I enjoyed the most in my life, I know that God also enjoyed these the most. In other words, we know God inside of knowing one another. I cannot really know you and you cannot really know me and God cannot really be at Home unless we have opportunities, over time, to engage in some useful WORK together.
Eating Together. Our eating of meals together is one of the most important parts of HOME for God our Father. Indeed, breaking bread together is an essential part of worship, even though the words of our conversation are informal.
In traditional Eastern culture, a guest was not invited into one’s home to share a meal together except as an explicit statement, an agreement to be there for one another in all protection and provision. Our eating meals together is the real Eucharist, the daily expression of our covenant and commitment to be there for one another, especially in battle, in protecting one another from evil. Wow. Eating meals together contains four of the forms of fellowship, work, visiting, worship, and war.
I Do Not Forget. Thus we must say that the Eucharist, breaking bread together daily, is the central part of Father at Home. If I am not sharing meals with other believers in Jesus on a regular basis, I do not and cannot actually know God, nor any part of Father at Home inside His dwelling place. I believe this; I know this. And yes, regardless of any and all flow through me of word and anointing, it still remains empty for I do not know you, and thus I cannot know God as He is.
Yet God has brought me to an end of all my effort to make a community happen. What He has not done is tell me to give Him a break, that He might forget Jerusalem. I do not forget Jerusalem, and neither does God.
God Dwells inside of Worship. Knowing one another inside the worship service is where we know the normal heavenly qualities of human life. The Psalmist said that God dwells inside the praises of His people. That means singing worship songs together. Yet, of truth, we must hear one another’s voices as we sing, for it remains our knowing of one another wherein God dwells. Thus a praise service in which the musical instruments are the only thing one can hear is a service in which God cannot dwell.
Worship is kissing God together and together, being kissed by God, Jesus upon our faces. So many brethren, men and women in the move communities, I KNOW and remember them by their faces in worship.
Desire and Word. Then, in the ministering of the word preached into us, we hear each one speak the Word of Truth into us together, the very Sperm of God entering us. And then we ourselves, each one, stand before the family, and speak Christ into all, again, the experience of which James spoke, “Out from His DESIRE, God plants the Word of Truth inside of us by which we are conceived of God.”
That Desire and that Word is passing through me into you and through you into me. Yes, we are speaking of the very dwelling place of the All-Carrying One, Father at Home inside this most impressive place of knowing one another as God through each.
Victory Together. Knowing one another inside of spiritual warfare together, in perseverance and in victory is an essential part of Father at Home inside His House. Here is where we share one another’s sorrows; here is where we act as the Mercy Seat together – for one another.
The time when Sister Edie Dwyer stood up at her seat at the beginning of a service and spoke an extended word of thanksgiving, and everyone knew this was what the Spirit was doing, this was knowing one another inside the power of VICTORY. For over two hours different ones stood, one after the other, and spoke words of thanksgiving. I can assure you that demons were fleeing, and that God was mighty inside our knowing of one another.
God Is Spirit. Every aspect of the gifts, ministries, and anointings in full expression through different gatherings together, out from one to all, flowing back and forth among the many, these are how we know the power and reality of the realms of the heavens in which we live. God is Spirit, and we know Spirit flowing only in the togetherness of the full expressions of Pentecost inside the Church. We do not see Pentecost as in part, but as the Spirit of God in whom we dwell together, in continual mature expression in the Church.
How can God be at Home if we don’t know God by the Spirit together? God is mighty and He moves as Rivers of Spirit among us in power and in victory, and we know Him.
Inside Regard and Respect. I have now added a critical fifth arena of fellowship, and that is the fellowship of heart, of making decisions together, that is, Community governance. This will be a permanent addition in all future teaching, by God’s grace, and of course, five is the number of grace, that is, God at Home in His people.
It is in making decisions together that we know one another inside the highest regard and respect. It is in submitting to the decisions we make together, even when it costs us what we would prefer, that we know one another’s great weight of value. When I yield myself to you and to us together, I am valuing you and God above myself.
Submitting One to the Other. I can picture in my mind the faces of individuals in that moment when they yielded to the decision of others, submitting one to another in the fear of Christ. I can name three – John Clarke, Don Howat, and Sue Sampson. And here’s the thing. Because I saw in their face that yielding to Christ in one another, I TRUST them as individuals, even with my life and the lives of those I love.
I can guarantee this to you. When there is an absence of submitting one to the other inside the fear of Christ in any gathering of humans, there is the absence of Father at Home AND the presence of unthinkable horrors.
This is the meaning of firstfruits, the core and center of the dwelling place of God.
Salvation Is God Made Visible. Now, let’s be clear on this absolute. If God is not AT HOME inside His Church, as I have described, then there is no Salvation of God to be revealed into creation.
So much of modern day evangelism (though definitely not all) is just one big waste of time, for no real Salvation is being established or going forth. God alone is Salvation, God made visible, God through His Church, God as Christians loving one another with pure hearts fervently. There is no other life; there is no other Salvation; there is no other future for anyone.
Being Built Together. BEING BUILT TOGETHER for a dwelling place of God.
Even in the move communities, though this word was in our sight and why we lived together as a community, still, we did not really believe this word nor walk in its reality through faith. And for most Christians, this word has no real meaning or purpose; few seek to live inside of its meaning.
Yet I am proposing that God will have such a Church all across the earth, many local communities of Christ, and inside of their many aspects of fellowship together, God will finally be at Home – before the resurrection. And I give myself to God, my Father, that He would have a passage through my faith into His Church.
God Builds His House. Out from [Jesus] the whole body, being joined together and being held together through every joint of its supply or provision, according to the energeia inside the sharing from every part, causes growth of the body into the construction of itself inside of love (Ephesians 4:16).
God wants a Body in which to dwell; Father wants to come Home. Who will be with me this togetherness that is the very Desire and Heart of the All-Carrying One?
“God, our Father, cause us to come together, to walk together in commitment; cause us to be Your Jerusalem, Your dwelling place forever. God, You alone must build this House.”