12.1 Father as Contention
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Kingdom of God is Father just being Himself through His completed Body, now made visible and known to all. The fruit of that Kingdom is the ordering of all creation by life and by liberty. If, then, the Kingdom is Father being Himself, we must know the characteristics and personality traits of this Consuming Fire who lives in us and instructs us to call Him, “Father,” in order to know the Kingdom.
This session, “Foundations of Father,” is an exploration of Father’s nature as He shows Himself through us, and the next session is a further development of that primary quality of Father, overwhelming Abundance.
Face Against Face
Before we look more closely at Father just being Himself, I want to address an ongoing issue head-on.
The Bible and the Christian life are all about this PERSON that we call, “God.” And this Person, God, is all here now, everywhere in every moment, ALL. And mostly in our face, Face against face, and even more mostly, in our hearts, Heart filling heart. And yet, everywhere I look, the conversation and teaching of Christians is filled with everything but this Person. “Heaven,” “the things of God,” “God’s instructions,” “the Christian life” ad infinitum, ad nauseum (which is Latin for “on and on, I want to vomit”).
Look Me in the Eye
No one will look into God’s eyes staring straight into theirs!
When I was 53 years old, I discovered that I am Asperger’s. I was standing in a Barnes and Noble book store scanning the shelves of books. About twenty feet away, on a bottom shelf, I saw on a book cover a picture of a 10-year-old boy with his eyes screwed tightly shut. I could not do anything except run towards that book. When I saw the title, Look Me in the Eye, I could not do anything except buy and read that book.
I have never looked anyone in the eye; such an act is inconceivable to me. When I was a boy, there was nothing more terrible than for an adult to tell me to look them in the eye.
Fixated Eye to Eye
I am simply without comprehension. Everywhere I look throughout Christianity, every one of my brethren seems to be pursuing this and pursuing that, and NO ONE is looking God in the Eye. I have never been able to do anything else.
Since I was nineteen years old, I have been fixated, eye to Eye, face to Face, heart against Heart with this Mighty Being who claims He is God, who claims He created me, and who claims He is my Father. And this PERSON, who has contended with me from the start, has grown over these forty years so large in my view that I am incapable of seeing what everyone else claims to be “seeing” with their eyes tight shut.
In Our Face
God is a Person, a Person who is in our face. And yes, we take “in our face” both as an idiom of contention and literally, both at the same time.
People use the Bible as an excuse not to look God in the Eye. People use union with Christ as an excuse not to look God in the Eye. People use “obey, do not disobey” as an excuse not to look God in the Eye. I can understand perfectly not looking straight into the eyes of another human; I cannot fathom any pretense of hiding from the Consuming Fire contending directly with us.
If you want to know where God is, He’s the Guy who has you by the shirt collars, shaking you with all His might, “Hey, bozo, I AM!”
Only One Option
People will sing songs of worship as a way to keep from looking this Guy in the Eye. People will cry, “Have mercy on me,” as a way to keep from looking this Guy in the Eye.
You can usually tell someone who does, actually, notice the Contending Forehead and the Bony Finger; that person has shut their mouth. They are no longer yakking, yakking, yakking about “the Bible this,” and “heaven that” or about how successful they are at “doing” what the Guy says. They are toast, and they know it.
And they KNOW that only one option remains. This God in their face must be what He IS.
A Different Path
Isaiah talked about a highway into God, a highway of holiness. We understand that path to mean as well our journey through the tabernacle of Moses from the gate of the outer court into living seated upon the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. Yet Isaiah also spoke of a different path, a path running in the opposite direction.
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isaiah 40:3-5).
A Path for God
This second highway is not a path for humans; it is a path for God. And this highway prepared for God runs from its source in the Holy of Holies, from that seat above the Blood between the mighty cherubim, and out into all the concourses of the universe. It is God who is running this path; it is God for whom we remove the stones and make the crooked places straight.
And what is the end result of God running this path prepared for Him? What is the destination of God? That all flesh would see His glory made visible. That all would know Him.
Cry Out!
The voice said, “Cry out! And he said, “What shall I cry?” “All flesh is grass… but the word of our God stands forever” Isaiah 40:6 & 8b). Let me translate the words of this cry.
Shut your mouth and be silent before Me… let it be to me according to Your word. God, be God, as You speak, in me.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? I would include all of Isaiah 40, for it is my calling and yours, and I would speak it aloud except for the space here.
Wrestle with God Alone
We are the voice crying in the wilderness; we prepare the way of this God who would reveal Himself through us. We are the Elijah who is to come, Jesus Himself, showing Himself through our human weakness, Father revealed in the ordinary and everyday life of humans in this world. But that Highway of our God from the Holiest out into the far reaches of creation, we will travel together in the next series, Symmorphy IV: Covenant.
I just felt a need, out from my frustration with all the looking in the WRONG direction, to adjust our eyeballs, to make sure God Himself in Person is our only sight.
Wrestle with Him alone until He is God in you.