9.3 The Father's Heart
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
I think you can see with me the enormous risk God is setting for Himself, that of allowing us to place our name upon Him as the final instigation of this Covenant, flinging it into full outward and visible operation forever. How would God ever allow us to claim that seeing me IS seeing Father?
Yet my body is not His until I do so, until I SEE by absolute confidence that it IS.
When we speak of the Pro-Knowing of God, when we speak of the Holy of Holies, we are speaking entirely of the Father’s Heart. Thus when God says that He is seeking for Himself a MAN after His own heart, a man with whom the Almighty can share heart together, we know He is not only speaking of a very BIG deal, but that Father is placing Himself out in utter risk.
A Risk-Taker. Our Father is the greatest risk-taker in the universe. We saw that when He sent Jesus into darkness and murder as a human infant and then said to Him, “You will not return to Me until You bring with You inside of You all that I have lost.” God puts a whole lot of trust in the Word He speaks.
But then, that is the Heart of God – absolute and daring Boldness. And sending Jesus was not nearly as risky as creating man and giving him dominion – in God's image but weak in his own form.
To a very large degree, God has placed Himself at the command of man. Whatever any human wants God to be, God will accommodate at the level of contract/covenant at which that person walks with God. All humans walk with God, there is no other possibility. Yet all humans form God out from themselves, and God fits Himself to their wishes as He is able.
What Do You Want? The greatest question of heart, the dynamics out from which heart operates is – What do you want? I am typically hostile to the dishonest human practice of “fixing” one’s self or “fixing” others. Yet here I see that if we come before God in order to have Him “fix” any element inside of us, it is this ONE THING we want fixed. “God, my Father, give me that desire of heart that draws out from You what You intend me to be. Give me that desire of heart that draws You into me as Your full knowledge revealed as me and through me to others.”
I thought I knew what “turn around” means; I find that God’s action of turning me around has only just begun. You see, I do NOT want to “lay down my life” for anyone. I do NOT want 1 John 3:16 to be in the Bible, let alone one of the ten most important “verses” in the Bible. Yet there it is, and since I believe that Jesus comes to me as every Word God speaks, so I have spoken “AND WE ALSO” in my writing to you over and over.
According to Your Faith. Knowing Father’s Heart is an absurd thought. How could we, in our limited and nonsensical psychosis “know” the very Heart of the Almighty? Yet God’s double riddle turns us around, and we realize that as we know our own hearts, so we know God’s, for we are His image and likeness. God has taught me something about Himself, and something about being His image, about being, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” as I have traveled around visiting with precious brethren on this trip. God has taught me something about Himself and about Himself through me that I have never imagined before, something completely TURNED AROUND.
When Jesus said, “Let it be to you according to your faith,” He did not say exactly what He really meant. He did not say what He meant because He had not died and risen again and Paul had not yet preached his gospel of Christ our only life. Here is what Jesus meant.
“Let Me be to you according to your faith.”
To Be Like Jesus. God will always be to you what you want Him to be, nothing more and nothing less. God will always cause you to be, out from Himself, what you want Him to cause you to be, nothing more and nothing less.
We used to sing in great earnestness of heart and with tears: “To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, all I want is to be like Him.” We were blowing smoke. There was little of honesty in our words or in our tears. Yet the Father saw something in some of us who once sang that song, the tiniest little flame of real desire, desire that says only: “Let it be to me according to Your word.”
Being like Jesus is exhilarating and excruciating both at the same time and in every direction. It is the opposite of any “high and lofty” image I ever imagined.
Being Turned Around. You see, we are turned around. That means that all that we are, all that we do, every moment of our lives is now God through us, revealing Himself as He is to all. But what is God? I thought I spent time on an answer to that question in Symmorphy II: Essence. My limitation was that I was still talking “about” God by “looking at” Him.
But I am sharing my conclusions from this time of going from place to place sharing Christ with some VERY different sorts of people. Let me back up and share the gist of my journey. Basically, as I went from time spent visiting with one person to time spent visiting with another, whether that time was many hours or ten minutes, I began to realize that I seemed to be a very different sort of person from one interchange to the next. I realized that each one with whom I spoke cast me by their image of me and drew from me only what they wanted. Thus what I “was” and what I gave changed drastically, actually, from one to the next. I could not be more nor less than what that one wanted me to be towards them.
Sharing Heart with God. You see, as I have traveled, I find that my only desire is to be life as people wish me to be life, to speak Christ as people want to hear from me Christ living as them, and to be silent when people are not interested. Basically, I find myself giving out to them only what people draw out from me.
And what each person wants God to be through me to them is very different from one to the next. Basically, I am finding what God means by being the Mercy Seat, by being beaten and beaten and beaten into the shape of the human heart, becoming that which each one desires.
And here’s the deal. To each one who belongs to Jesus, their desire is sanctified and holy, regardless of its direction. And God will shape Himself as He is able to fit their own image of Him, and He will give of Himself as He is able to fit their precise desire. And He does all of that shaping and all of that giving through me, and entirely together with me – sharing heart with God.
Exhilarating and Excruciating. A sister wanted to receive from God through me full immersion into the Holy Ghost with speaking in tongues specifically. I have never done such a thing in my life. I just prayed as I write prayers in these letters and to my utter astonishment, the Holy Ghost flooded into her soul and prophetic tongues flowed out of her mouth as rivers. Just like Jesus, I had nothing to do with it. Rather, she, in her own faith and desire, made use of my being there in order to connect with God in her according to that desire.
Another brother also desires to know God through all that I share, yet he is a persnickety sort of fellow who likes to draw people into argument. I have not pointlessly argued politics in 20 years, yet there I was, meeting him at his desire and foolishly arguing over a point that was utterly meaningless to both of us. You see, in times past, I would have gone to bed under total condemnation by such a thing. But I have turned around, and I now see all things as my Father together with me. It was difficult, yes, but I now see that “becoming all things to all men” is not a theatrical exercise, but the very being of God, no matter how excruciating being beaten in some directions might be.
The Five Bars. Now, we are inside the pro-knowing of God. As I am writing these sessions on Covenant, I am seeing that the sessions on these five great words from Romans 8:28-30 are the king-pins, the corner posts, the five bars, even, holding everything in its place. These five specific words are becoming far mightier in the Covenant than I ever knew. And here’s the truth – the Word God speaks will become to us what we want Him to be.
A couple of statements of David that we once sang as a hymn of worship arose in me as I considered the pro-knowing of God, all that God KNOWS as the very essence of Himself first and all creation second. It took me awhile to find them because the song was crafted a bit differently than David’s words. Let me give you the song first, and then the two passages.
My Thoughts Concerning You. Here are the words we sang: “My thoughts concerning you are more than that sands of the sea, they are more than the stars in the sky if they could be numbered.” David is talking about the same thing as Paul, the pro-knowing of God as the place in which we live.
Many, O Lord my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; my ears You have opened. …Then I said, “Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:5-8).
My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with You (Psalm 139:15-18).
God’s Heart in the Covenant. You see, we are using this word, Pro-Knowing, this quality of God by which God knows Himself and out from which knowledge comes all that we are, in order to tie the Heart of God together with the Covenant. God is not saying through David that He “controls” what everyone is and does by “knowing about” their decisions beforehand. God is saying that you and I come out from an unending flow of thoughts inside of God, thoughts which become words, the Lord Jesus, who becomes us, Christ as us.
“In Your book” means the pro-knowing of God. We exist only in and out from God’s “book of life.” Then see where David places these statements about God’s unending thoughts regarding us – “In the scroll of the book it is written of me – Your law is within my heart.” These words are the foundation of almost the most important Covenant chapter in the Bible, Hebrews 10. “Law” in the Old Testament translates directly and only into “Christ” in the New, Christ written upon our hearts.
If They Could Be Numbered. Now consider the stars in the sky, if they could be numbered. Astronomers estimate that there are 200 billion + stars in our galaxy and that there are 200 billion + galaxies in outer space. God possesses inside Himself, inside the story He tells Himself about Himself far more than 200 billion times 200 billion specific thoughts that belong to me and are become me.
Let’s take this back into God’s risk, however. God does not control me. God creates me to be just like Himself out from His own vast knowing of Himself and of me inside Himself and then He sets me free from Himself to do with God’s thoughts entirely as I wish. And out from His own many thoughts regarding me, God becomes towards me what I wish Him to be and works in me which of those innumerable thoughts I wish Him to work.
Yet we have an eternity of expressing God’s endless but specific thoughts concerning each one of us.
To Be Malleable. Thus for us to be like Jesus is for us to be malleable towards each one, to be shaped for all humans with whom we come in contact, that they would be free to draw whatever they want from God out from us. And that desire found in the heart of each is quite different from the next, and much of it is not what we would prefer, yet all of it is good regardless, even when it does not “feel” so good. All of it is good, because Father and I turn all things towards goodness by the hope we bear for all. “Death” works in me that life might work in you.
You see, I am talking about nothing other than the Heart of our Father in 1 Corinthians 13: Father suffers long and is kind. – Father bears all for all. – Father hopes all for all.
We Are in Agony. Nevertheless, this is our point of view as the revelation of Father towards others. We allow all others to shape us according to their image of God and to draw from us only what they wish to receive from God.
Yet many of our brethren want God to be an accuser with them and desire from God only cursing. As God’s expression, we do not curse, we only bless. Therefore in the face of the desire for a “God” who is never satisfied and a longing to be justified in the flesh, that is, to be cursed of God, we are silent. Yet that silence is not passive, for in that demand placed upon God through us we, together with our Father, are in agony. We are in agony even as we expect Oour Holy Spirit to work His wonders upon every heart.
The Terms of the Covenant. We see, then, the central and even critical role the two parallel statements serve in the Covenant. Indeed, these two lines ARE the very transaction of Covenant between God and us.
Let it be to me according to Your Word. <-> Let it be to you according to your faith.
Let me (Daniel) be all that You (Father) think concerning me <-> I (Jesus) will be to you whatever you (Daniel) want Me to be. This transaction is constant, now and forever.
A Terrible Freedom. Now, I am so very glad that Jesus is Savior and Salvation, that He seeks and saves all that is lost, and that He does all things well, because we are speaking of a terrible freedom we as believers in Jesus have in God. Being set free by God is the scariest thing in the universe. That’s why I always speak God’s word that I am seized in His grip. I want God to be such a word to me.
But, as I have said before, we can do anything we want with the word God speaks, though I did not see then what I see now. God’s word NEVER controls us. We control God towards us by our own desire. Yet it is God’s very words by which we bless or condemn others, and it is God’s very words in our own mouths by which we are blessed or condemned, entirely according to our wishes.
What Each Desires. Those who love sin in the flesh find all sorts of word in the Bible condemning sin in the flesh. Such word excites them, and because they wish to boast in the flesh, they draw Christ to themselves through that word, a Christ who is angry against sin and belligerent against sinners. They shape God Himself by their own image of themselves, and they draw from Christ that very thing they want to impose upon others.
Those who love Christ revealed through their weakness find all sorts of word in the Bible exalting Christ made perfect in weakness. Such word excites them, and because they wish to be found only in Him, they draw Christ to themselves through that word, a Christ who is meek and lowly of heart, a Christ who carries all for all. They shape God Himself by their own image of themselves, and they draw from Christ that very thing by which they wish to lift up others.
Turned Around. But when we speak of being the Father’s Heart out from the Pro-knowing of God, we are speaking of something different. We are speaking of ourselves turned around. Now we are the ones given to our brethren, setting forth our souls for them. And thus, as we live entirely and only inside the Heart of our Father, our brethren draw from us whatever they wish from God. And whatever that is, in complete confidence that our every step is entirely INSIDE the love God wherever the whips of men might push us, we walk as life laid down and love poured out, willing to be whatever our brethren need God to be towards them in every present moment.
This is the Covenant of Father’s Heart, sharing Heart with God.