23.1 God Manifest in the Flesh
This chapter begins the final section of this study, titled “Ekenosis and Apocalypse.” We have only five chapters remaining before we must consider our final expression of the definition of “mankind.” Most of what we have considered until now has been a definition of the human in terms of God’s intention towards each individual person.
This first approach is absolutely necessary, for if humans are not connected with God in full as individuals, then there can be no real connection together as the House of God. Nonetheless, God’s goal is not a bunch of humans unrelated to each other, each one “revealing God” by him or herself.
The Gathering Together. God requires a Body, that is, many humans moving together in one, as God shows Himself to creation through their togetherness.
God uses so many metaphors to speak of His revelation through us, and there are so many ways in which God shows Himself and for differing purposes, that it is quite hard to pinpoint any one metaphor to use for any one of these purposes. The Greek word translated “church” is ecclesia, which means simply an assembly of people. I prefer the word “church” over “assembly,” but “the gathering together” is better than either, though it is cumbersome.
Yet it is this “gathering together” that is at the core of the meaning of God’s House, His Temple, the place of His dwelling and revelation forever.
Being Fitted Together. You are… of the household, the family, the domestic intimacy of God, having been constructed together [as a House] upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone and the secret place or bond, inside of Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is increasing into a temple, holy inside the Lord. Inside of Jesus, you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22).
What makes this “being fitted together” much more than a mere assembly of people sitting in chairs once a week listening to someone talk? That something is a commitment to one another to share life together, a commitment that is Jesus as the bond or Covenant.
How God Designed Us. This portion of our study is not meant to repeat the things we learned in Symmorphy V: Life however; rather, we remain focused on the definition of the human. Specifically, how did God design us such that we could fit together, and such that our fitting together could be His dwelling place?
In the next lesson, we will consider our togetherness, and in the third lesson, we want to know how the Father makes Himself at home in our togetherness. I do not want to move randomly through the remaining chapters and lessons, however, and so I have placed this lesson, titled “God Manifest in the Flesh,” as a way to tie everything together into a cohesive whole.
Commitment. There is no walking together without commitment to do so and there is no revelation of God without walking together. If you want to know God, you are committed to walk together. If you are not committed to walk together, at least as the set of your face towards God’s season for you, you do not want to know God, no matter what you “feel.”
Commitment to walk together is COSTLY.
For this reason, a man shall LEAVE his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, that the two might become one flesh. This is why the marriage ceremony is made a big deal, because it is a big deal. There is no marriage of two without leaving everything and everyone else behind.
My Personal Anguish. I am writing this morning out of a bitterness of soul, an agony of distress that the Father is sharing with me.
Many Christian ministries prefer what could be called “spiritual fornication,” going from one place to the next planting seed in anyone who will hear, praying for people and rejoicing in “God showing up” when mighty demonstrations of power take place. Yet what they will not do is agree to commitment, to reserve themselves for a people who have entered into an agreement with them to walk together as the Body of Christ. Why not? Because marriage costs you everything, whereas the other feels good and costs little.
Yet such are Christians in this present age.
The Costliness of Commitment. Yet in my agony, I am brought short, for God’s focus is not on you, but on me. For there cannot be any true gathering together unto Christ without a bond of costly commitment at its heart. And without a true gathering together unto Christ, there is no House of God, no Father at Home in our midst.
Through the year prior to my marriage to Maureen, God cleverly designed the circumstances of my life to “pin me to the wall,” so to speak, in order to wake me up to the requirements of costliness that a marriage must be. I abandoned a lot BECAUSE I preferred marriage to Maureen, and we abandoned a lot BECAUSE we loved our children.
Whosoever Will. Don’t think for one moment that “God manifest in the flesh” is a mighty revelation of excitement and “glory.” Don’t think for one moment that you will ever be “zapped” into the final marriage union with the Lamb, that is, commitment to walk together.
The choice is yours alone. It is a simple choice; it is a human choice, and only you will be making it.
Yet here is my dilemma. How can I make these things clear without also placing a weight of obligation upon you? For the moment there is an “I must, I ought, I should,” there is no longer a true call of the Lord Jesus. – Whosoever will may come and freely drink.
Only One Place. My job is to make it clear to you that there is only one place where God reveals Himself and that is in the gathering together first, and then, in the commitment to walk together wherein this incredible process of “being fitted together” actually takes place.
God reveals Himself through our “being fitted together”; no “being fitted together” means no God-Revealed.
Yet in my own life, I cannot make something happen, and neither could Jesus. – Of myself, I can do nothing. I must have real, and real must arise from within. Real comes out only from the hovering and the wooing of the Spirit. It is the Spirit alone who brings forth the commitment to Life.
A Direction Begins. I have only a vague idea of the circumstances of 1970 to 1972. In 1970, John and Bambi Hinson had gathered a number of young people to live with them in their home inside the word Sam Fife preached. Then, maybe in 1971, some brethren from the US, with Sam Fife’s counsel, moved to southern Columbia to start a community there. In between these two experiences, as he was involved with them, Sam Fife got really excited about the call to Christ Community. And so, from maybe the fall of 1970 to the spring of 1972, Sam Fife preached community, that Christ life is corporate life, that Christ as the revelation of God is a many-membered body of people, walking together in love.
To Gather Together. Then, through the phenomenal months of May through September, 1972, somewhere around 5,000 people sold their homes, left their businesses, said goodbye to friends and family, and MOVED far away to gather together into Christian communities scattered from Alaska to Peru and everywhere in-between.
You would have had to be in a service with Sam Fife to know the anointing moving through him upon your heart. I’m speaking of the heavens opening wide and God placing His hand upon you as His own. I’m speaking of your being caught in the FIERCE excitement and overwhelming glory of God manifest in the flesh.
A “Fly” in the Anointing. I wrote the last chapter, “As the Completion of God,” entirely out from my own knowledge of God and His word inside the present anointing. I do not think, “Let me copy Sam Fife.” Nonetheless, if Sam Fife were to hear the audio recordings of that chapter now, he would recognize it as coming out from the same word he preached into me in the 1970’s.
Sam Fife had the anointing to draw multitudes of people into the commitment of walking together as the Body of Christ, but he DID NOT HAVE the word of our precious union with Christ that would actually make that togetherness to be true and good. In its place, Sam Fife also preached that the “missing ingredient” was Constantine’s cross, hacking against the flesh, “Die, brother, die.” No life of God comes forth from such a core.
I Require Real. The missing ingredient everywhere I look throughout all the realms of Christianity in this world is the Lord Jesus in Person, alive inside the heart of each believer, causing His All-Salvation to be their human life in the present moment.
I am not the least bit interested in mighty revelations about “God manifest in the flesh.” I require REAL. And REAL is two or three, that’s all it takes, gathered together in His name, Jesus among us. And that gathering together is commitment at whatever cost, to walk together daily.
Three things: (1) Word – (2) the Power of the Anointing – (3) a People Committed to Walk Together. Spirit Word inside the Church.
The Word through Me. Because Sam Fife did not place the Word that is Jesus at the core of life together in the 1970’s, for the most part, the experiences of all those thousands of people became, shall we say, SAD.
After writing the last chapter, however, I am no longer able to claim that I write just because I want to. The flow of that Word through me was from God, for He has given me to know His Word.
Yet I am a word man only; God has made it clear to me that the power of the anointing is something He has reserved for someone else. And so I wait on those who will place their anointed power alongside my anointed Word, that we might walk together reciprocally.
Commitment Already Proven. I am speaking of the Ekenosis, the entrance of God through those who will humble themselves to walk together.
Through the rest of this chapter and the next three chapters, I want to look at how it is that God designed our humanity to fit together as His dwelling place, His Body, the channel of His revelation and entrance into His creation. Those chapters are (tentatively) “God’s Dwelling Place,” “One Body, One Spirit Together,” “A Woven Tapestry,” and “Our Rule Forever.” I intend, now, to write everything out from the seeing and doing of those who have already proven their commitment at any cost to walk together. This is something I know very well.
God Manifest in the Flesh. Then, the final chapter of this section before we attempt a second definition of the human, is titled “God Revealed.” It is my hope to weave the two concepts of the Ekenosis and the Apocalypse through everything going forward, nonetheless, I also hope to present those two realities in full in that chapter.
The Ekenosis is how God is manifest in the flesh; the Apocalypse, the revelation of Jesus Christ, is that moment when everyone sees that God is manifest in the flesh.
We are speaking of the completion of the Incarnation. We are speaking of God filling His House with His manifest presence. We are speaking of many walking together as one. We are speaking of believers in Jesus loving one another with pure hearts fervently.