4. Limiting Our Study
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
What you are reading now, in Sessions 1-8 of this course, is my second attempt at laying a foundation for the remaining sessions. That is, Sessions 1-5, now, are that foundation; from here on forward, I intend to limit our study severely.
I now know why God has me in this incongruous place of writing a model for Christian Community while being almost entirely by myself. My ability and my vulnerability are two sides of the same thing. Whatever in me allows this that you are receiving to flow through me, it is entirely coupled together with my being easily intimidated by direct interaction with other people.
Through Difficulty. And so, as I wrote the first version of these sessions, unknown to myself, I was actually writing, in part, out from a frustration, and by that frustration, I was trying to “prove” that Christ is Christian Community. Then, just as essential oils flow out by breaking the plant, and just as the Mercy Seat, God becoming visible, is formed by the beating of hammers, so the Lord walked with me through difficulty.
The result is that I reached down further inside myself to find the expression of what I really wanted this course to be. And so what you are reading now is all the good stuff from the first versions, but formed instead by an expression of what has been inside of me my whole life.
Making the Transition. My “proving” that Christ is Community is what Symmorphy II, III, and IV, Essence, Kingdom, and Covenant are about. If someone, reading this particular course, is not so convinced, then nothing written here is for them in the present season.
You see, in Symmorphy I: Purpose, I taught the ten most important verses as applied to each one of us individually. Then, in Essence, Kingdom, and Covenant, I gradually made the transition from us individually to us as the Church. Now, in Symmorphy V: Life, I am applying these same ten verses specifically to life together. This is God’s order for us.
Having presented the bottom line of my own heart and vision in Sessions 2-5, for the remainder of the course, I am limited to how all this works inside a specific community.
The Graham River Tabernacle. Let me use the example of my best experience in construction, leading 65 men through 4 days of work to build the Graham River Community Tabernacle from start to finish.
You see, the raising of the tabernacle was a work of constant fellowship together, 65 men moving as one over four days. Yet every step taken in those four days happened ONLY because for three entire months prior to those four days, I had sat by myself before my drawing board, envisioning in my mind and heart every single piece to be crafted and assembled in that building and every single action to be taken by one or another of those 65 men. And I inscribed those actions in differing forms on paper.
My Role. All through those four days of the practical application of the plans I had drawn, however, there was a free flow of action. Although each one of eleven crew leaders had their action plan on paper in front of them, still, the actuality of time veered off from those plans. Thus my role was to circle from one crew to the next, directing the flow so that everything fitted together perfectly. And I was able to do that for two reasons. One, every piece of that building and every step of action to be taken was written all through my knowing. And two, the anointing of the Spirit arose through me to conduct the work as all of us together.
My writing of this text serves in the same way.
It Is He Who Has Made Us. Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 100:3). God made me exactly the way I am for His purposes and for your sake.
Another priest… has come… according to the power of an indestructible life (Hebrews 7:15b-16 – condensed). Here is how this Priest, the Lord Jesus, works this power in me. I know Christ in every moment of my life, and nothing that is Christ can ever vanish from me. I may not be experiencing something right now, but that means nothing. All that is mine remains and will come back to me again.
Fitting the Flow. And from that rock, I draw from my commitment over many years to Christian Community, and all I experienced through that time as Christ Jesus my only life now. All of it belongs to me, and from all of it, I now share Christ with you. The fact that I’m not “doing community” right now means nothing.
What I mean to say is that part of how God made me is the ability to draw from 21 years of such commitment as if it is all current and right now. Everything I share must fit the flow and the reality of actual life together, but first I must see it out from my own heart and entirely in the privacy of the precious morning time Jesus and I spend together.
The Community of My Heart. Community itself is a very fluid concept. The commitment remains the same, but the outward form changes with the seasons. Everything I share must be applicable to any number of differing forms and expressions and purposes for any given local Church.
Yet nothing I share can be real of any variation, unless I know it to be real inside a specific community of my participation and partly of my design. Thus from here on forward, I will write in terms of a specific Christian Community I will envision as if it is real, a teaching community, the Community of my heart and my home.
Envisioning Every Piece. When I designed the Graham River Tabernacle over those three months of solitude, I could envision every piece of the building and every action of its construction because I had done each myself so many times and because I had already built many buildings of my design and knew exactly the correlation between plan and reality. The same thing applies to this design and model of Christian Community that is the remainder of this course.
Yet, even though I will make things as specific and concrete as I can, still, it is the principles behind the specifics that I will also iterate and show how those principles can take so many different shapes and outward appearances.
Every house design is the same, and every house design is different.
I Am a Builder. Every house provides an area to eat together, another area to sit and fellowship together, and a private area to rest, etc. Yet these three things can be arranged, dimensioned, and constructed in innumerable numbers of ways.
Church, by its nature, requires a commitment to walk together, to eat together, and to share life together beyond what is generally known in the modern church. Community is not limited to a shared property; the principles of community will apply to many different arrangements. Somehow – “being built together” as God means it, however, must be part of the life of every believer in Jesus.
Every building must be built. I am a builder, and my Home is God.