2.3 Father in Fellowship
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Father in Fellowship. This lesson is Father revealed through the fellowship of friendship, and we will go there soon. But the Fire of that Sword keeps slicing all through me. This course is for one group of people only, those who would be the Hheart of God inside of Jerusalem forever.
The cutting of the Covenant is by that Sword of Fire. As we lay all night before God in the Holiest Place in the universe, we allow that Sword and that Fire to pass through all our cut open pieces until we are every whit pure, until Christ alone is in our lips. This is not performance, for we are entirely incapable of such a thing. This is faith – we believe in Jesus.
Friendship Is Two. Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me (John 14:1). This is the only Jesus I know. And this Jesus is the cause and the connection of the fellowship I so enjoy with my Father.
Friendship is two individuals walking together, sharing together all the joys and the sorrows, the loves and the travail of life. Friendship is two individuals working together, setting each their hand to the required task in full symmetry together, each yielding to each, each helping each. Friendship is two individuals in the trenches, in the shield wall together, each keeping the other’s back, each laying down his life for the other in the midst of all assault, each securing the victory for the other.
Knowing One Another. I’m talking about Father and me together as well as you and me together. That you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
My fellowship with Father is Oour sharing together every moment of life, every difficulty and every joy. When I acknowledge in my mind that whatever is hurting me, is hurting Father first, and worse, and that Father and I together are turning it to good. When I tell myself that whatever makes me happy, also makes Father happy with me, and even more so. There, in those moments, comes the fellowship of knowing one another.
Real Friendship. This is the fellowship of Father and Son, a fellowship into which we enter and of which we fully and actively partake. No one who defines God by time and space can know this fellowship; for all that is God is God NOW and God HERE, a God in ACTION filling me with all that He is. The walk of the Atonement was God placing into space and time a picture of WHO and WHAT He IS and what He does, that is the express image of His Person. AND-WE-ALSO is that same God now in and through us.
Now, if knowing one another, Father and I, in the victory of battle were all the knowing there is, it would not be sufficient. Real friendship also includes two other arenas of fellowship.
Three Arenas of Fellowship. The other two arenas of fellowship are also critical to knowing one another – the arena of working together and the arena of sharing joys and sorrows together. In an upcoming session I hope to weave these three arenas of fellowship with Father and with one another into a full fabric inside of which we can see every element of life together.
And as I think about my own life experience, I see that God has given me much rich and good fruit to taste over the course of my life that I might share that fruit with you. Victory in battle I KNOW through my fellowship with Jesus over the last sixteen years, beginning when I fell to my face in tears as He first thrust His knife of healing into my largest unhealed, pus-filled abscess, my wrenched and battered heart.
Working and Sharing Together. The fellowship of working together I have known over many years of working with several other men, closely together over a significant period of time with each. From each of those shared fellowships of working together, mostly in some form of construction, I can draw a different aspect of this tapestry.
And the fellowship of sharing joy and sorrow together I have known through twenty-seven years of walking together with the most precious woman God could have given me, Maureen. And the heart of those joys and sorrows shared together is the bringing forth of four wonderful children, full-grown now, each one of whom brings such pride and joy to our hearts.
The Beating Hheart. Do you see what is happening here? I knew that friendship and the fellowship of friendship, was the core Hheart of the Salvation of God revealed through His Church, the New Jerusalem. And thus that same fellowship of friendship IS the beating Hheart of every successful Community of Christ.
Everything of God inside of my years in Christian community, I tasted as fruit of the good things to come. And thus, I draw from all I tasted to show you that it is, indeed, a good and pleasant Land into which God is taking us. Yet it is from bits and pieces of flavor that I draw together the whole picture; we never actually knew the real.
For Father. And yet, as important as my own personal knowledge of Father is before I ever walk together with you, and as rich as our fellowship together might be, all that is about me or about us. Over the last while God has given me a picture of what our fellowship together as the Church really is for Father.
I now understand the joining of Symmorphy and Koinonia. It’s all about how Father becomes visible. We are talking about a fundamental aspect of reality.
Yet in referring to fundamental reality, we cannot rely on what we have known. The thinking of Christianity in this world, as well as all modern science, continues in the flow of Adam’s split-apart death.
Nicene Thinking. I don’t want to spend much time on the contrast, but we must have three false ways of thinking clear. Christianity interprets “God is One” as savagely isolated transcendence, a God who cannot be known in our hearts. Christian thinking then interprets God’s binary as a contest between good and evil, a life of fleeing from an evil self, and a fulfillment, an end, consisting of a place all good, forever connected to a place all evil. And the definition of “many” swings back and forth between rugged individualism, as separate from one another as God is from His creation, to mindless collectivism, our own self-identity merged entirely into an amorphous “group.”
Scientism and New Age. Then science comes along and pretends to give us a more accurate reality. Yet every good thing that science brings into our lives is attended by an equal or even a much worse evil. An even worse problem with science is that it is filled with scientists who happen to be human – and who are staggeringly willing to lie for conformity, for money, and for power.
And then there is “new age” thinking. Surprisingly, there is much understanding of fundamental reality in some elements of new age thinking. Yet what is missing is a Personal God and a Personal Savior inside their knowledge of “all is one.” And the removal of a Personal Father must result in the removal of our own persons.
Life, not Death. In other words, I see Nicene Christianity, scientism, and new age thinking to be more alike than different. In all three there is a murderous concept of one, that is, eliminating Ppersonal here and now, a tree of knowledge duality, good at war with/in bed with evil, and the same problematic view of “many” as they have of “one.”
Through this entire course, I want to cast life together as the Church, Church by Father, entirely inside the thinking and reality of a universe flowing out from the tree of life. So, when you say to yourself regarding specifics, “Oh, that’s new age, or that’s separated Christianity, or that’s scientism,” my answer is “yes and NO.” I am thinking only inside of life; I invite you to see all things in the same way.
A Very Personal Father. It is the same universe we are looking at, life or death is in our eyes, how we personally see and think about all things.
What I want to present to you now may sound very “new age” to some, but it is not, for I am speaking of a very Personal and real Father one with us in essence, in communion with each of us individually, and expressing Himself through us together as many. And I am talking about a very Personal Jesus Sent as Spirit Word into us.
So the question is this. What is the mechanism by which Father becomes seen and known, heard and touched, through our fellowship together as the Church?
How We Call the Church. The answer to that question is – our faith, the faith of the Son of God sent into us now become all that we are. The story we tell ourselves together about ourselves together. How we call the Church, life together, is what church is to us – and, sadly or gloriously, what church is to Father.
I think of one who was with me in the same two communities over a number of years. That one testifies now that “God was not there.” She is completely correct. My testimony of those same years in those same circumstances is, “God was everywhere and in everyone, I knew His love and His presence regardless.” I also, am completely correct. We reveal only ourselves by our own contradiction or affirmation – of God and of His Church.
One through Many. There is a concept in “pagan/new age” thinking in which an invisible being shows him or herself through many together as one. I am thinking, for instance, of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories. In them a spirit being shows herself through the swirling together of many butterflies. As they take on the form of a body, she can now speak through their voices. The butterflies swirl together through the air, slightly and fluidly altering their shape, yet they retain a human-like form, and she, the invisible being who is revealing herself through their gathering together, can continue to speak and to be heard and seen. The moment the butterflies go their separate ways, she is no longer knowable and thus, apparently “not there.”
A “New Age” Gospel. I read a story recently in which a similar being showed herself in a similar way – through many together as one. As I read that picture given in the action of the story, I saw symmorphy together with koinonia as I never have before. I will not refer you to the actual book because I don’t want to open the charges of being “new age” against myself.
But look at these things – immersed into one body, drinking of one Spirit, put on the Lord Jesus, members of one another, one voice of many waters, two or three gathered together THERE I am in the midst of you – these things are entirely “new age.” Indeed, sometimes I find more understanding in some non-Christian avenues than among God’s people, as Jesus said.
The Wonder of Symmorphy. In the story, the main character was seeking help from a powerful personage. She was in the right place, but all that was visible there were a bunch of little fairy creatures flying around, each one its own person with a name, each one charming and personable. Then, as she sought to speak with the personage whom she did not know was there but invisible, the little fairy persons flew together into a swarm. Through their voices came the voice of the invisible person with whom she wanted to communicate.
And here is the wonder of symmorphy. The author noted that, in spite of the fact that another being was now seen through them together, each one of the fairy persons retained entirely his or her own person and identity.
Glory inside of Glories. Now, I am describing the body of Christ, the body of God, what it is and what it’s for. Yet Christianity has called Church nothing more than a temporary assembly of human ritual on our way to death.
Later, in the climax of the story, that same great personage appeared on the scene, now as a multitude of little fairies, all swirling together in the form of a woman. Yet she herself, the invisible one, was now clearly heard and known by all – and with power. And the amazing thing is that not one of those little fairies had lost its own identity. In complete contrast, the honor and person of each little one was magnified inside the glory of the one revealing herself through them together.
When We Gather Together. I’m talking about Church, about life together, about Father revealed, about God seen and known by all. When you and I live our separated lives, we can “talk about” God, but God Himself is not seen and known. It is when we gather together, walk together, speak together, that Father becomes visible through us to others.
And the mechanism that makes it real is our FAITH, our absolute confidence that Father IS revealing Himself through our life together. Just as I speak Christ as me, so I speak Christ as us together. Just as I acknowledge Father revealing Himself through my every circumstance, so we together acknowledge Father revealing Himself through our every step together.
Symmorphy IN Koinonia. Father reveals Himself through our fellowship together, Symmorphy IN Koinonia. We know it is true by our confidence that it is true. And we are confident that Father is made known to His creation THROUGH our fellowship together because we call it to be so, we call Church by Father.
And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy (call forth Christ) (Revelation 11:3). – Again He said to me, “Prophecy to these bones… surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live (Ezekiel 37:4-5).
Some may think that you and I are incapable of calling forth the revelation of Father through our gathering together. Let them think again.
God in Spirit/Flesh. It is through our fellowship together, many as one, that Father shows Himself, now seen and known, to all creation.
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). – In whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).
Father IN fellowship. Symmorphy IN koinonia. An invisible Being and Person, speaking and acting through many moving together as one, yet each one of many honored by name. One Being – God – in His Spirit/Body, now part of His creation. – God manifest in the flesh.