10.4 Engaging with Symmorphy
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In Symmorphy I: Purpose, you were confronted early on with our need to engage personally with God in us regarding every Word that we receive. We dare never to treat the Word God speaks as ideas for us to contemplate or to debate.
Every Word from God comes to us as life or as death. If we hold that word on the outside of us, either as theology or as human performance, it can only kill us. But if we allow the Word to become Jesus, personal and alive inside of us, by the Holy Spirit, then that Word connects us directly with the Father as one person together. Symmorphy is always active, always now.
Inner and Outer
The practice of symmorphy, God and us doing all things together, always has two parts, the inner and the outer. The inner always comes first, the outer always flows out from the inner. The inner practice of symmorphy is the Mercy Seat, the throne of God, sharing heart with God. The outer, always coming out from the Mercy Seat of our hearts, God with us, is our speaking good grace into all things. We practice both of these all the time.
But the fulcrum, the pivot for both of these practices of God and you together making all things good is absolute rest in all the love of God for you and all of your love for God.
Meek and Lowly of Heart
You and I actively engage with symmorphy, Jesus and us as one person together.
And suddenly, I now understand the blockage. When I wrote Symmorphy I: Purpose, I knew that the only door into the mighty things I would write about God and us together was the lesson “Does God Have a Heart?” and God’s description of Himself through Jesus: “I am meek and lowly of heart – I think of you more highly than I think of Myself.” But by realizing that all humans already live as symmorphic beings, containing other persons inside themselves, sharing the same mind and will and voice with demons, then I saw that all humans define symmorphy with God by the symmorphy they already know.
Arrogance vs Lowliness
The heart of all symmorphy already known by all humans is arrogance and superiority. The heart of God and thus, the heart of symmorphy with God, is lowliness, life laid down and love poured out. Thus when most Christians read or hear you and me speaking about our symmorphy with Christ, they instantly imagine arrogance in all of its forms and directions as the definition of “God.” They do not know a God who is meek and lowly of heart, who walks beneath, who carries each hurting soul. And thus, the only way we will convince anyone is the same way God convinced us.
By This We Know Love
By this we know Love, because Jesus laid down His life for us; our brethren will know love as we lay down our lives for them (1 John 3:21 modified).
What is symmorphy? Symmorphy is God and us together drawing all things into the Mercy Seat of our hearts. And so I link you back to Lesson 23.3 The Mercy Seat and the assignment following Session 23: Practicing the Mercy Seat. Read through and engage with these again.
Symmorphy is not really something I can define for you. Symmorphy is something you alone must know by practicing the acknowledgment of your symmorphy with God. Every moment we see that God lives utterly together with us.
Tithemi Psuche
Laid down life is, in the Greek, tithemi psuche, which can also be translated as “set forth soul.” Tithemi is the same root as pro-theses, God’s set-forth purpose. But Jesus did not “lay down” His zoe, that is, His Life, but rather, His psuche, His self, His soul.
Now, the three great questions of What is God, What is man, and What is symmorphy, the togetherness of God and man, will develop further throughout this course. And the primary means by which we will come to know the full answers of these questions in personal practical experience is by our own tithemi psuche, laying down our lives, setting forth our souls for the brethren.
Practice the Mercy Seat
Only as you practice being that Mercy Seat, drawing all things into the love of God abounding in your heart, will you be able to know this togetherness of living in the same form with a God who fills you full with all of Himself. Any outward life laid and love poured out can come only out from this continual practice of being the Mercy Seat.
However, this practice of symmorphy MUST BE rooted and grounded in love. We will walk as one person with the Father only as we KNOW Love. The primary objective of Sessions 6-8, in Symmorphy I: Purpose, filled with all the fullness of God, is to establish us permanently in that Love. Peruse back through those lessons.
The Purpose of God for Man
The purpose of God for man, as we have seen out from Genesis 2 and as we find in the clearest statement of God’s pro-thesis in the Bible, Romans 8:28-30, is that God might work together with us and we together with Him to make all things good.
Writing Lesson 21.2 Count It All Joy in Symmorphy I: Purpose was a milestone event for me. Before writing that lesson, I had seen giving thanks as being a relatively passive and random activity. After writing that lesson, I saw speaking good grace as being an active and targeted river of life. Yet the truth of that lesson is only unfolding over time.
True Prayer
Every moment of our lives, every circumstance of our path, God walks utterly together with us, through Christ Jesus, sharing with us the entirety of our form. We do not “pray to” God; true prayer is Father and us sending forth the Holy Spirit together.
“Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me” (John 11:41-42). Jesus did not “pray to” God, except that people might believe Jesus Sent into them. Jesus spoke, the Father spoke, same thing, and the Holy Spirit did what the Holy Spirit does.
Captain Ahab Is Dead
We do not “pray to” God, but we do always commune with Father inside our own hearts, glad that He is always utterly one with us, and glad that we are not the “same” one, that we are never alone. So, having practiced again the Mercy Seat together with the Lord Jesus, we now look at the outflow of love poured out, speaking good grace into all things.
It is God who has made us, and not we ourselves (Psalm 100:3). Captain Ahab is dead. There is nothing about ourselves or our circumstances that we hate, and there is no lust in us for heavenly death.
Zero Difference
We KNOW that everything that we are and every circumstance of our lives IS God through us as He is, as He wishes to show Himself. We KNOW that there is NO future anything that will make us more the appearance of God to His creation than we are right now.
Yes, there is a future unfolding of seasons in our outward appearance, but no future season is more the Father’s desire than His revelation through our present mortal flesh. We will find zero difference inside ourselves when our outward appearance is an immortal resurrected body than the faith in God in which we walk right now.
Spirit Sent Forth
The practice of speaking good grace into all things, together with God, really is walking in all resurrection life now before our bodies change.
But what is speaking good grace? Eucharist (give thanks): to speak good grace for, in, or into; from eu, good and charis, grace or gift. The gift of God is the person of the Holy Spirit sent forth to accomplish the purposes of God. Speaking good grace and praying with God, then, are the same. Now our expectation is not disappointed, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Romans 8:5 – modified).
Give Thanks
When we give thanks in and for all things, we are speaking the grace of the Holy Spirit to go forth to accomplish all that God and us together desire. When we give thanks, we are speaking out from the Mercy Seat, sprinkled with Blood, out from all the authority of God.
When we speak good grace into our loved ones, our enemies, good circumstances and bad, we are really and truly speaking together with the Father as one person with us. And Father and us together are sending forth our Holy Spirit to do what the Holy Spirit does, to accomplish all of God’s purposes in heaven/earth. Our expectation cannot ever be disappointed.
Practice
As we speak together with God, sending forth the Spirit, calling forth Christ in all things, faith KNOWS that we are setting creation free regardless of what we see or don’t see.
But remember, speaking good grace is the outer part, the second part of two. Drawing these things into the Holiest of all, into the Love of God shed abroad in our hearts, Father and us together there above the Blood upon the Mercy Seat, always comes first. I’m not speaking of an always two-step process, but of our full awareness.
Practice the assignments for this session, drawing into the Mercy Seat and sending forth grace, until they are your habit.