Why I Write "Life Together"

Why I Write “Life Together”

I want to share with you something a reader sent me in an email.

–  As Oswald Chambers said once (and this is 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. – 

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 of me, in 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 next things preached on by the apostolic ministry in the fellowship of which I was a part. This ongoing experience 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.

I send out what I write for four reasons. The first reason is that I am a writer, and writers are vain, 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; a part of the knowing I know has always been the 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, insisted, insisted, that it will be what it is ONLY inside a context. That knowing is that Christ IS many walking together as one.

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.

Yet I am an odd sort of person, filled with vast abilities coupled entirely with vast inabilities. The hardest part of having a mailing list is people unsubscribing, especially those who have been reading what I write for years. More than one of those has been a terrible blow, sending me reeling for days, hardly able to recover. At the same time, I am as a child when it comes to needing people to tell me how they are blessed by what I share. I stand there like little Oliver Twist, with my bowl out, saying “More please.” I need your approval more than is healthy.

So, when someone reads what I write for a season, finding life and joy in what I share, and then, because of some objection to something else I write, throws it all out, I have three levels of response. The first level is the surface level, hurt, confusion, the desire to accuse – I’m sure you know the feeling. The second level is the outer parts of my heart, the desire to bless, whatever the cost to me. And so I bravely bless, practicing the Mercy Seat as I have taught, releasing such a one from myself and into the hands of our very capable Savior.

Of course, some put their objection into words sent my way. When someone whom I don’t know criticizes or condemns something I write, that doesn’t bother me too much. But when someone I do know, whether face to face or via written communication, says in one way or another “YOU ARE WRONG, Daniel,” regarding my articulation of that knowing of the beating fabric of my heart, such an experience causes complete short-circuiting inside of me, a depth of confusion that I cannot mitigate except through the patience of time.

You see, through all those years, the knowing arising in me was confirmed over and over through others in the next service or convention, yet every time I made the slightest attempt to articulate that knowing myself, I was shut down immediately by whoever I was speaking to. Being rebuked for attempting to express the knowing inside was a regular part of my life; flinching while expecting to be shut down became habitual.

Let me give just one example. This was after we had left the move communities and were no longer a part of that fellowship, living in Fort St. John. We were gathering with a small group of Christians in someone’s home. In a conversation, I had the rare opportunity to express the desire of my heart, I said, “I want to have a Bible school, where I can teach the Bible.” Instantly the prominent brother in that little group said, “God is not doing that anymore.” End of discussion.

Please understand. This experience was endlessly normal.

Let me bring in a current dilemma. There are two brothers who read what I write, both of whom are dear to me. Each one of them has told me recently that, while they rejoice in many of the things I write, there are other things I teach that they “do not witness to.”

Brother A does not “witness to” Christ as life together in the local church. Brother B “witnesses” absolutely to my teaching that Christ IS life together in the local church. Brother B does not “witness to” Paul’s use of the word “all” in reference to all creation restored to the Father. Brother A “witnesses” absolutely to what I teach regarding the restoration of all things.

I can share every verse in the Bible regarding Christ as life together in the local Church, and none of them will convince Brother A because he does not “witness” to it. I can share every verse in the Bible regarding Christ restoring all things back to Father, and none of them will convince Brother B because he does not “witness” to it.

Here is my problem. Brother A’s rejection of life together is overwhelming to me. Brother B’s rejection of the restoration of all is overwhelming to me. I am like a deer in the headlights, frozen, unable to move. You see, both brothers would rejoice if I altered what I teach in order to fit their “witness.” And if I satisfied both, I would lose both. And all my attempts to “defend” what I teach or to “prove I’m right,” simply increase the confusion and distress inside of me.

[But this is NOTHING, of course, compared to Jesus. Jesus was OFFENSIVE. – Eat My flesh and drink My blood. NO ONE “witnessed to” those words, no one at all. – From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more (John 6:66). The few who stayed with Him still could not think of His awful words as anything but blasphemous evil. Of course, Jesus responded much worse than I could, no matter how much I might want to. When Peter disagreed with Jesus, Jesus said straight to his face, “Get behind Me, Satan.” Please rest assured, I will never do that to you.]

 As I said, there are three levels of my response to any rejection of my feeble attempts to articulate what I must, to put this knowing that agonizes inside of me out there where I can see it. The outer response is normal, the desire to “prove myself right and them wrong.” But since such a response is only part of a larger disconnect of confusion inside, and since I am so accustomed to losing, and since there are deeper reasons underneath, I rarely, if ever, act on those feelings.

I sure wanted to do that recently, but then I listened to recent lessons and heard myself teaching myself to lay my life down, to see Christ alone, to bless and not curse. I want the blessing of Jesus through me far more than I want to be right.

But you see, neither one of those two responses is the bottom line for me, the deepest response, the rule of all my going forward. Here is that 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 do NOT write for you. I do NOT write for God. (Such a thing is nothing but religious pretension, manipulating others to exalt self.)

I write for me.

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.

Such a thought never enters my mind.

And the center of that knowing, its periphery, its beginning and its end, is that Christ life IS life together. And 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.

All my life I have been subject to bullying (neither Brother A nor Brother B are any such thing, both are kind and dear brothers). Bullies have always sensed my vulnerability and seen me as an easy target. Bullies have always been astonished that they have never had the slightest control over me.

It’s not that my following of the knowing inside of me is greater than the effort of the bully, no matter how religious and “of God” they might be. It’s that, underneath my outward confusion, they, in their bullying, do not exist.

Now, someone has objected recently to my reference to Sam Fife (as a cult leader no one knows about – am I trying to start my own cult?)

I refer to Sam Fife, and will continue to do so through writing Symmorphy V: Life, for four reasons.

The first reason is this. I first heard Sam Fife speaking on a tape recording in April of 1977. He was then killed in a plane crash in April of 1979. During those two years, I heard him speak (or pray or prophecy) publicly in five conventions, and a number of times during the three months I lived in his home community in Citra, Florida, during which time he was present a full two weeks inside of our daily life. When Sam Fife spoke, always more deeply anointed of God than anyone I have heard before or since, the KNOWING inside of me connected directly through the heavens with the KNOWING inside of God. When Sam Fife was speaking, I KNEW the knowing in me and I KNEW the knowing in God. I KNEW that it was the same knowing and the CONNECTION between those two KNOWNGS was filled with electricity, that is, ENERGEIA. I can assure you of this, I was not connecting with Sam Fife. I have never done such a thing.  More than that, there are plenty of things Sam Fife said, even while the heavens were open to me, that have no place in what I teach now.

A good bit of Sam Fife’s interpretation of how that knowing of Christ was to work its way out in our lives is fully rejected inside my present knowledge of the knowing in me. On the other hand, I am realizing more and more that the knowing I know is the same knowing he knew. Just as I am fumbling and limited in my attempts to articulate that knowing and to see it birthed in this earth for the sake of all, so it was with him – though expressed in different ways.

The second reason is that, although I am not writing for you, I still bear a sense of responsibility towards the Church of Christ and towards human history. I carry the notion that Jesus might want to use my articulation of this knowing of my heart now and in the age to come for the sake of His Church. If He chooses not to, that’s His business entirely, and I rejoice in Him. But if I do not write as if He might, I have no business writing.

It is essential that this word of Christ our life inside of our life together be known through its historical context. I traced that context partly in The Feast of Tabernacles, Chapter 23 Trumpets (this chapter confirms everything I am saying in this letter). This word, of God dwelling in His Church upon this earth fulfilled, began in the fulfillment of Tabernacles, as the Feast of Trumpets, in 1948, in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, called the “latter rain” outpouring. That word was articulated by George Warnock and published in his little book, Feast of Tabernacles, then through that book to Sam Fife, through Sam Fife to me, and through me to you.

If you are reading me, you are reading that same word, the fulfillment of Tabernacles beginning with latter rain. You are inside a very specific historical context coming out from God into His church. That does not need to mean anything to you, but it does mean a whole lot to me, and I suspect to God as well, since He is big on tracing history in His Word.

The third reason I bring in Sam Fife and the move of God fellowship on a regular basis is that I cannot talk about Christ without talking about Christ personal as me, and I cannot talk about Christ personal as me without referencing what I am. If that is a problem for anyone, they have my deepest apologies. What they do not have is any thought in me to change what I write. And the fourth reason is honesty. When I share with you something that came from Father to me through Sam Fife, I will tell you. If I do not, that is, to me, dishonesty and theft.

Let’s bring all this now to my present writing, Symmorphy V: Life Together. At the end of each of my books, and scattered through my websites, is 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.” Now, I do not mean 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 three things, they have been my close companions for years. What I cannot bear with is much, much worse. Such confusion, coming from my attempts to “defend” myself, disconnects me from the knowing I must articulate for life itself, and bends what I write down pathways I did not want to go. This has happened with my present writing and I know that it will be some days before I can freely connect with that knowing again, before I can write with joy.

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.

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.

And so, when someone wants to debate “the 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.

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.

In April of 1979, God stripped everything from me. Everything. It wasn’t that Sam Fife had been killed, my response to that was only the arising joy of faith. Yet in a unique situation, just after that occurrence, 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.

That people is my Jerusalem.

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.

Yet Symmorphy V: Life is the most important articulation for me of that knowing I must KNOW. And thus I apologize – to myself – for allowing “truth, truth, whose got the truth” to confuse me. Yet all things are Father and me sharing together as one. And thus I see Father, and I see me, and I see that my present approach to Symmorphy V: Life does not satisfy Uus.

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. For that reason, I cannot blunder forward, hoping things will come together. Neither can I leave anything remaining that showed up out of distraction.

Thus I intend, in waiting together with my Father, to specify for myself the outline of this course, to be sure that everything critical – to my full possession of the KNOWING travailing in my heart – is in its place. I will even re-write portions of what has already been written.

From the first that I began to write these letters, in order to KNOW the KNOWING in me, I have positioned myself as Nehemiah, knowing that the protection of that knowing stands above all other considerations. I do not know how to respond to debate; I cannot continue in it. I cannot allow it to disconnect me from the knowing I must know.

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.

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. A precious sister expressed an objection to my referring to God as “Guy.” It was my joy to change most of those references to “Fellow” on the webpage and in the book, for her sake. If my outward expression of words causes someone to miss the knowing I must share, that is entirely my fault, and I will change how I wrote it with all enthusiasm.

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. If you are connecting with Jesus elsewhere, you are utterly free of me. In fact, I said exactly that in a recent letter, and a sister who has read every letter for years took the liberty of that statement to unsubscribe. No matter how much it hurts, I bless her going with all my heart. Jesus does all things well.

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. And if I must, to protect my responsibility to myself, I have no other choice than to discontinue communication. I am not angry with you; I am just going a different way.

And so, in a sense, I am starting Symmorphy V: Life again. I will keep much of what I have written thus far, but even that will be at times condensed or moved around or refocused. Although there will likely be small adjustments in Session I: Perspective and Layout, I will not resend that letter, but refer you to those changes. I may well send you the subsequent sessions over again, however.

The primary difference will be that I have deliberately changed my “audience,” those in my mind to whom I am writing. I am writing to those individuals who have carried inside their hearts the same knowing inside of me. Their own outward expression of that knowing is unique, of course, but inwardly it is the same. The following five points are a description of those individuals to whom I am writing. In actuality, they are point 5, but no one can be point 5 without points 1-4 already utterly complete through all the fabric of their beings.

1. I am writing to those who are complete and secure inside their perfect union with the Lord Jesus Christ. They are one with Him in union, two in communion, and one in expression in all the seeing of their eyes and in all the speaking of their words. Yet they also see this Jesus as every Word God speaks, coming into them to be in and through them what that Word IS. And they are fully at peace with whatever that Word intends to do with them. At no point does anything God says or anything they do become “separation” in their knowing.

2. I am writing to those who have turned around upon the Mercy Seat of God, seeing themselves now as one together with Father in all things. They know the fire; they know His fear; they know His Love. And in that place of knowing that every step is Father together with them, reconciling the world to Himself, they speak life and blessing and the expectation of God into all that exists outside their own bubbles. Yet, as they do, they bear in themselves the tremendous personal cost of seeing others as they are and not as they appear.

3. I am writing to those who, knowing themselves every moment as Father together with them, sharing heart with God, know also the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ for and over His Church. That passion they recognize as their own beating heart, regardless of any human feelings or judgment. And there, inside the absolute security of positions 1 & 2, inside the arms of the cherubs, they see the entire Church of Christ. They see all whom the Father has given to Jesus, they see all who call upon His name or will call upon His name in some way, they see all creation. And knowing that the Passion of the Heart of Jesus is their heart as well, they say, inside themselves, “You, Oh, Jerusalem, belong to me.”

4. I am writing to those who, having come to terms with the knowledge that the Passion of Jesus towards and over His Church is now the fabric of who and what they are, step forward AS the Ark of the Covenant into the Church of Jesus Christ. Never leaving their knowing of Christ as them, never leaving their knowing of Father with them as the Mercy Seat, they enlarge their knowing of themselves to know that they are now as Christ in His Church. And in that knowing, they COMMIT themselves, signing their signature upon God’s signature upon them the fifth time. “I commit myself without reservation to your Church as You, Jesus, my Lord and my Heart, as ALL that You speak regarding her.”

5. I am writing to those who are ready and willing in the Day of His power, as the spontaneous arising of Christ through them, committed now, not just to the Church universal, but to that essential expression called the local church. They are committed to Christian Community in some way, as Christian Community unfolds itself in endlessly varied appearances, yet always the same core reality, that is, brethren, perfectly free in Christ, bound to one another by their own desire and volition, walking together in love, married.

In short, I am writing this present series to those who are ready, right now, to join with me in a tangible and intentional Community of Christ on a shared property, ready as the spontaneous arising of Christ as them causes the outward reality to appear. And thus I am writing the specifics of life together to those who are committed to such a way of living.

So, to put it quite simply as well as quite bluntly, if point # 5 holds no interest to you, then I am not writing to you, not at all. You are free to read, most certainly, but what I am writing in this course has nothing to do with you in the present season. Yet the unfolding of Christ as you has only just begun. Who knows what incredible wonders of Joy are ahead for you as well.