3. Why I Write
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
A reader sent me this response. – As Oswald Chambers said once (paraphrased),"The greatest books are not the ones that teach us something new, but they are the ones that give voice to what's already in our own hearts." Your writings about Christ our life have done exactly that; given voice to what's in my heart. –
I want to explain to you, not only why I write, but why I write about Christian Community, why life together MUST BE the end result of every word that has ever flowed through me. From age nineteen, when the Lord restored me to Himself, and even earlier, from age twelve, I have carried inside my heart a voice that I could never express. Finally, after all these years, this text on life together IS the voicing of that heart.
A Knowing in Me. Why do I write? I do not write for you. I do not write for God. I write for me.
I have carried a knowing inside the depths of my heart, a knowing that I sensed on occasion through my childhood years, a knowing that became a regular part of my life from the age of 21 on. I did not know what that knowing was, nor could I possibly believe it meant something. Yet it was a constant experience that those things that arose in my own mind and heart, out from that knowing, were also the things preached on next by others anointed of the Lord.
And that knowing has always rejected the idea that we are experiencing all that God intends for our Christian life today.
Voiceless Agony. This ongoing experience, however, over many years only increased my agony, because I could not believe in myself and I had no ability to share out from that knowing. For all those years, until I started writing this letter, that knowing, though insistent, was voiceless.
I write for one reason only. I write to articulate, to somehow “give voice to what’s in my heart.” And I continue writing because the expression of that once voiceless knowing is not finished. I must know, I am driven to know, the knowing that has travailed in me in unheard cries of agony over so many years, the agony of travail for something that is NOT.
Christ Is Many Together. I send out what I write for four reasons. The first reason is that I am a writer, and writers like to be read. The second is that I know that without an outflow to others, the spring in me must become stagnant. The third is that I have the idea that what I write might be a blessing to some, and I do desire to bless.
But the fourth reason is the biggest, and the worst, the one that carries in it all that agony of travail of this inescapable thing inside of me. From the first time that knowing first placed itself fully in my view at the age of fifteen, all the way through endless heartache, confusion, and misunderstanding, all the way through healing and joy and victory, that knowing has insisted that Christ IS many walking together as one.
Being a Part. And so the primary and real reason why I send out what I write, making it as available as I can, is the so-far unrequited hope that this great need inside of me, this overwhelming cry, would be fulfilled in my being part of a family of people walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, knowing the same knowing I know and must know, Christ among us in all our interaction together.
I know that the vast majority of Christians disagree with me. Here is the bottom line, my base response towards any disagreement with my attempts to articulate this burning knowing, a cry for something that does not yet exist, a knowing I must express or die. – I DON’T CARE! –
True Failure. Now, I have come to terms with my complete failure to please God or to do what He says, and I rest inside of Jesus inside of such staggering inability. And I have come to terms with my complete failure in the church and in the world, my inability, even to provide for my family, no matter how humiliating such failure continues to be.
But if I were to fail to articulate this agony of knowing inside my heart, then I would be a true failure. I will have failed myself. And that knowing is that Christ life IS life together.
The birthing of life together has been my only purpose from the first letter I sent out. If you “disagree” with that, I will bear the hurt, I will bless you, but most of all, I DON’T CARE.
I Cannot Respond. Let’s bring all this now to my present writing, Symmorphy V: Life Together. I have presented the following statement. “Those who wish to debate will likely not receive a response. Responding to debate is a gift God left out when He fashioned me inside His heart.” It’s not that I don’t “want to” respond. It’s that all attempts to respond result only in confusion, humiliation, and wrenching autistic agony. Sometimes it takes days for the agony to subside; sometimes it takes weeks.
Yet I can bear with those things and have for years. What I cannot bear with is much worse. I cannot bear the confusion that comes from my attempts to “defend” myself as it disconnects me from the knowing I must articulate for life itself and bends what I write down pathways I would not go.
Nehemiah Refused. At one significant turning point in my life, the Lord put into my hands the book, Hand Me Another Brick, by Charles Swindoll, a book on the story of Nehemiah. Through my study of that book, coming into its place inside a critical time, was the picture of Nehemiah, on the wall of protection he was building around Jerusalem, around God’s people, around the fulfillment of all that is Christ in the earth, with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. That is who and what I am.
Then some people wanted Nehemiah to come to the temple to discuss truth with them. “I agree with this, I disagree with that. I witness to this, I don’t witness to that.” Nehemiah refused.
I Cannot. Why did Nehemiah refuse? Because the KNOWING inside of Nehemiah knew two things. He KNEW that truth cannot come out from discussion, that human sensibility will NEVER accept God manifest in the flesh. And He KNEW that if he left his place on the wall, God’s precious people would be ripped apart by their enemies.
When someone wants to debate “truth” with me, to show me how I am “wrong,” I may want to defend myself, I may hope to bless them, though I often fail in doing that, but I CANNOT do either one. I refuse. And in refusing, I must cut off that communication. I have no choice.
Human Sensibility. Why do I refuse? Because the KNOWING inside of me knows two things. I KNOW that truth cannot come out from discussion, that human sensibility will NEVER accept God manifest in the flesh.
And I KNOW that if I leave my place on the wall, God’s precious people will be ripped apart by their enemies. I look across this earth at a Church sleepwalking into her darkest hour, in bed with those who hate her, oblivious to God as He is and oblivious to her enemies. And I see the enemies of the Church closing in for the kill. There will be blood.
Human sensibility cannot know God.
A Covenant with God. In April of 1979, God stripped everything from me. Everything. In a unique situation, God allowed a knife to pierce through and strip away as folly everything to which I had committed my life, every practical element of my knowing of God’s knowing in me.
I drove home in the dark from that experience, an hour’s drive, weeping the whole way. And in those dark miles I made a covenant with God. I WILL KNOW You, on this earth and in this life – AND – I WIILL KNOW a people who KNOW You.
God will fulfill this covenant. That people is my Jerusalem.
I Am a Caller. And I will call her forth into her place, and no one will prevent me. And I will build that wall of protection inside of which she, the entire Church of Christ across this earth, can dwell, and no one will draw me away in order to discuss what is “the truth.”
Yet that is not why I write. That knowing of Jerusalem is the knowing inside of me, most certainly, but that is not why I write. If the Lord wants me to stop writing, He will do so, and I will rejoice. But until that happens, I write for me, for my great need to know the KNOWING in my heart, to see it out there, not just on paper, but as a Community of Christ, my brethren, walking together with me, loving one another with a pure heart fervently. If that is not for you, that is absolutely wonderful. You are not diminished in any way, neither in my sight nor as Christ as you.
Articulating the Knowing. Symmorphy V: Life is the most important articulation for me of that knowing I must KNOW. When I complete Symmorphy V: Life, I must have, before my eyes, a complete and full articulation of that agony of KNOWING that I must express. Such a MUST is greater to me than life or breath.
I have realized that the reason God has me isolated right now, and has given me this one means of articulation, writing in the early morning hours and then sending out what I write into the Winds, is this. When I am bouncing around inside the contention of foreheads, inside of “who’s got the truth,” as happens in any Christian gathering, I am the loser. I am the loser, because I cannot articulate the knowing of my heart, and that is the one agony I cannot bear.
Editing and Correction. Now, I love editing. If something I write is not clear or you have questions, I love responding to those questions and I love changing my wording to make it clear. More than that, in a community setting, my ways of doing, my ideas for the community, etc. etc., are freely subject to reciprocal interaction from all with whom I walk. In that context, regarding what I do, I know I will be constantly corrected by others.
But when it comes to my great need to articulate this KNOWING that has travailed inside of me since I was twelve years old, if you “disagree” with what I write, please understand. That’s perfectly fine.
Not Satisfied Until. If you are connecting with Jesus elsewhere, you are utterly free of me. But in being free of me, please know this. If you disagree with the knowing I am attempting to articulate, I simply don’t care. It is impossible for you to get my attention or to turn the determination of my heart.
I am not angry with you; I am just going a different way.
God speaks life together in the New Testament. I am not satisfied until all that God speaks is fulfilled in His Church right here on this earth. And I am not satisfied until I am fully a part of such a revelation of Jesus Christ.