28.3 One Heart
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In this final lesson I want to talk about what is most important to me. Here is the covenant I made with God at age 22, a binding agreement that I will never set aside. “God, I will know You in this life and on this earth and I will walk with a people who know You.” God had shown me Himself, and then stripped all of it from me. These words were my bottom line.
Here is what those same binding words mean to me now. “I will live together with you, my brother and sister, inside of Father’s Heart; I will walk together with you as Father’s Heart revealed.”
Sharing the Same Soul. This covenant is not an incidental idea to me, but the certainty of a desperate man in the deepest of need.
This line is the closest to the concept of “one heart.” – Fulfill my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being united in soul {sympsuchos – sharing the same soul), in the same gut-level thinking (Philippians 2:2 – JSV). Sympsuchos, sharing the same soul together.
What does Father want? Whenever the Greek word thelema is found in reference to humans, the translators use desire or wish or want, but when it is used for God, they choose “will.” This thing called “the will of God” has vanished from the Jesus Secret version.
Desire, not “Will.” The “will of God” is typically a Calvinist definition of a separated God imposing an inflexible “plan” upon all. Rather, I find through the Word the DESIRE of an All-Carrying God who cannot impose Himself on anyone because such a thought never enters His mind. Yes, He turns people this way or that, but only through circumstances; He never forces anyone. And even that turning is nothing more than an expression of His own travail, the travail of Love.
When one speaks of “the will of God,” the reference is actually to an inflexible intellect. But when one speaks of God’s desire, the reference is to a longsuffering Heart.
Sharing Heart Together. I know my Father only by heart, by our shared Hheart. It is simple arithmetic; if A = B and B = C, then A = C. If I share Hheart with God and if you share Hheart with God, then our hearts are the same heart. Yet as we have seen, while our own personal commitment to Father is the only foundation of life together, our sharing of heart together cannot be the foundation of anything. Rather, our sharing of heart together is our eternal reward, the fruit of life together.
But what is Father’s Heart? What is His desire? It is clear that Father’s desire is to be known, that is, that Father might enter His creation as part of His creation that He might enjoy us together.
Home for Father. If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him (John 14:23). I have never really wanted anything else except the fulfillment of these words forever, Father making His Home with me inside of Jesus. And I have never considered such a Home for Father separate from walking together with other believers in Jesus.
Yet this “Home” for Father is 100% me as an individual, and you as well, and it is 100% us together as one body as expressed through each local assembly. The beating Hheart is the first organ of any body.
Desire. So then, you are… the family, the domestic intimacy of God, having been constructed together upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself… inside of Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is increasing into a temple, holy inside the Lord, inside of Whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22 – JSV).
Christ lives in your hearts through faith.
The Desire of Father is to be known, to become visible, to be a part of His creation in joy and tenderness. The Desire of Jesus is also very straightforward – I DESIRE that those whom You have given Me might be with Me where I AM that they might behold My glory (John 17).
Glory. Let me define glory. – Having the same care for one another.
Loving Jesus and keeping His Word = Having the same care for one another = Beholding His glory = My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
I know Jesus and I know His Heart. The Heart of Jesus beats, right now, over all those whom the Father has given Him alive now upon this planet. Know that this same Jesus is your own heart and that your heart, therefore, beats together with His, over all those whom the Father has given to Jesus alive now upon this planet. And our shared desire is that they might know Jesus as He is.
Life Together. It has been twenty years, now, this month, since my family and I left the Christian community of Blair Valley in northern British Columbia. Through these entire twenty years, I have placed before God perpetually my desire to bring forth the community of my heart, community as I knew life together must be. Yet I know the difficulty such a way of living can be, and I know how impossible it is for me to bring forth such a reality for me and my family.
Winnie the Pooh was a big part of the development of our children’s hearts when they were little; we all went to see Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor at the theater yesterday evening.
Doing Nothing. This is one movie I can heartily recommend that you see; they could hardly have treated the original essence better. The theme of the story was friends and family and how friends help bring family together and how family helps bring friends together.
But the main line was something Pooh said to Christopher Robin, something Christopher Robin had said to Pooh long years before. “Doing nothing often leads to the very best something.” And when Pooh was lost from Christopher Robin, he sat down in his favorite spot and waited for his friend to find him.
Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.
A Salvation Not Known. It is utter trust in the Spirit, the Spirit and the Bride say “Come,” (doing nothing) that leads to the very best something (Father’s Hheart revealed).
You, who are being guarded, watched over, and kept inside the power of God through faith {through bold confidence against all human seeing and judgment} into salvation ready and complete to be unveiled [the cover taken off so that what has been all along is now made visible] in the opportune time [the right season] (1 Peter 1:4-5 – JSV).
A Salvation ready to be revealed – Father’s Hheart made known. This is a Salvation that no one is expecting, a Salvation completely unknown, the entrance of a cosmos of Life.
Kind and Tenderhearted. I have set before you this vision, dear reader, of friends and family walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, sharing Hheart with God and with one another. It is through this very portal, this Body, that Father steps into His creation, a God that has never been known as He is.
Kind and tenderhearted. – Gentle and lowly of heart. – Covering all for all, hoping all for all, believing all for all, carrying all for all. – Being Himself as He IS through us together, the mirror and face of the All-Carrying One.
Full Measure. And in setting forth this vision for you, I have “cast my bread upon the waters,” and now I wait for it to return to me. God knows I have tried to believe God for the fulfillment of the Community of my heart for fifty years now, not with human ability, but certainly with unflagging desire. Yet my every effort has failed, often in humiliation.
Knowing, now, that you do love me more than I could know, that you do think more highly of me than you do of yourself, that you lay down your life for me, Father in you, brings me into perfect and complete rest inside.
“Doing nothing often leads to the very best something.” – The full measure of the goodness of God. – Life forevermore.