23.3 Father at Home

The Father is presently at Home in each one of our hearts, inside of Jesus, and we know Him intimately and for real. All of our present lives is an expression of Him. Each individual member of the body of Christ can say, in all truthfulness, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Yet we also understand the principle of scalability, that what is true of God and the human at the individual level is even more so at the level of togetherness. And there are aspects of the Father’s revelation that would be normal to Him and to us if we but knew them.

What God really wants, what we really want, is for God to be known through mature reciprocal love.

At Home in His Church. In this lesson, then, we are not speaking of God at Home in our hearts, as profoundly wondrous that reality is. Rather, we want to consider something we have never experienced, something we know nothing about, and that is God at Home in His Church.

God designed us as humans, in fact, every aspect of our being and nature, every particle of our humanity, every ongoing direction of the course of our entire daily living, such that He can reveal Himself as He is through our togetherness. I had said that our togetherness is for Father and Father at Home in our togetherness is for us, but the truth is, both are for both. Our togetherness gives God the desire of His heart and it gives us one another.

Mature Reciprocal Love. Yet Father at Home among us is something far, far more. After a thousand years of Father at Home among us, when we are accustomed to such normal human living, we will look back at this present time and, though we will give thanks, yet we will know that, in the year of our Lord 2022, we were poverty stricken, bereft, deficient, that apart from knowing mature reciprocal love, we knew practically nothing.

Father at Home among us is mature reciprocal love; mature reciprocal love is Father at Home among us. And this condition, knowing this reality in fulness inside our committed togetherness, will activate so many parts of our present humanity into such normality, that we will be quite astonished at what we have always been, but never knew.

Our Definition of God. When I consider my life in community at Blueberry and at Blair Valley, there is no question to me that if we had known the God whom I know now, inside that commitment of togetherness, leaving that fellowship would have never entered my mind.

And right now I am experiencing a deep sense of very great loss. Yet in all things we give thanks, for I know that such a commitment of togetherness as I knew there is returning to me and to those whom I love.

Only one thing prevented us from knowing such reciprocal love inside our walk together, and that was our definition of God. As we defined God, so we defined one another, and thus, in spite of a mature level of deep commitment to the togetherness, we kept both “God” and “each other” at arm’s length.

No Obligation – No Suspicion of Fault. Now, I know many people, including present readers of my letters, who experienced devastating wrongfulness inside of community settings. And I am glad to see in my own children the developed quality of refusal against religious shenanigans, in spite of the fact that it makes them obstinate at times.

The commitment of which I speak contains no obligation. And the maturity of which I speak is a readiness to go under in order to lift up and bless each little member of that togetherness. We know God only through the Lord Jesus Christ and we know one another only through the same Lord Jesus. Suspicion of fault never enters our minds, and when we see one another’s rough humanity, we turn all towards goodness and blessing.

Worship and Work. But let’s draw from both the past and the future and look at the meaning of Father at Home in the beginnings of our togetherness, a knowing of God that has not yet happened inside the human experience.

I want to look at two aspects of life together, God at Home inside our regular worship together and God at Home inside our daily work together, what such a knowing of God might mean for us in both of those critical parts of togetherness. And remember, every knowing of God inside of our togetherness is an ever greater knowing of ourselves. As we know God at Home in our midst, so we come ever closer to the true definition of the human. – This is me!!!

Do You Know What You Are? As John said, “You do NOT know what you are.” Let me introduce you to yourself, for as I know Jesus so I know you.

There are two inner aspects of our togetherness filled with God, and those are worshipping together and eating together. Then, there are two outer aspects of our togetherness filled with God, and those are working together in daily needs and engaging in battle and/or rule and/or connection with the outer world of heaven-earth together. We have picked one of each, worshipping together and working together. You have never met yourself, not really, until you know how God has made you for such a place.

An Open Heaven. The moment a believer in Jesus commits him or herself to life together, there is an entrance into a level of worship together that such a one has never known. And when I say “worship together,” my mind goes across a whole span of very different but wondrous experiences over 21 years in the move of God fellowship. Yet when I think of all my experience in other Christian fellowships, nothing is even close.

There is a rhythm in how God reveals Himself at Home in our worship together, but not a sameness, for God is as varied as we are. Yet my greatest experience in worship together was the opening of the heavens and the profound KNOWING of God among us coming through. Nothing in the human experience compares.

Blessing One Another. The thing is, however, that we got up the next morning after such wondrous experiences to – work together in our mundane daily tasks. At first I thought this was rather incongruous, or anti-climactic, but after I awhile I came to know God’s pattern.

Know God – work together. Know God – work together.

You see, when God reveals HIMSELF AS HE IS, He gathers little children in His arms and blesses them. When God reveals Himself as He is, He does through our hands those necessary daily things that bless one another. The mighty revelation of God – cleaning the Tabernacle toilets. Absolutely together. Both together reveal God.

Bringing Fruit to You. Without community, you cannot know God. Without God, you cannot know community. We had community, but we did not know the God of whom I presently speak, and so, as Caleb did, I am bringing to you wondrous fruit drawn out from brief memories over years.

Then I go to my experiences of working together with many different men and women over many years, both inside community as well as working with Jimmy Barkley and with Amos Stoltzfus for Warren Yoder. I have had many wondrous experiences of working together and of knowing one another in the work. What would such togetherness be if we knew the God whom I now know?

Our Faces Together. I look across my many good and meaningful relationships of working together with others and I think, what would it have been like if we had placed knowing one another’s hearts as our treasure in the work and if we had received one another’s ways as our Father coming to us?

I’m talking about real. – I’m talking about real.

Then I think about the faces of each member of the Blueberry community as we danced together in a great circle with radiant joy and laughter upon our faces, for that also is worship. I think of the young and the old, the fathers and the mothers, the elders of the community and the new students come to college, even Sister Charity being pushed by someone in her wheelchair so she could be part of the dance.

To Know Such Joy Again! We did not know what treasure we possessed; we did not know because we did not know a Father who lives as us and who laughs with overwhelming joy in our faces. To know such joy again together with believers in Jesus, even now in the face of the beast and in the face of death and all their defeat, to dance together, to laugh together, to shine forth the JOY of our Father together, what treasure, what indescribable wealth!

I go right from there to the sober gathering together in order to solve the knotty problems of our physical needs in our present daily lives. And I see the same faces laboring with concern over the smallest of needs, even in the face of victory over the beast and victory over death. My God, I’m talking about God Revealed.

Deep and Comfortable Togetherness. Then I think of the worship at Blair Valley and the comfortable togetherness of a small group of people knowing God and knowing one another.  And I include with that our times with the Annett’s and the Dickout’s in Fort St. John.

What would be the same comfortable togetherness in worship as we know the Father who rests in joy in our midst even now in the swallowing up of the age of human folly? The friendship. The deep conversation. The joining of our hearts in sweet singing of praises inside our God.

You see, when I place before our eyes the final PROOF of Christ, that is, “Oh look, did you see that? My, how those Christians love one another. Now I know that God is real.” When I say that, I’m talking, not about “revelation,” but about REAL.

I WILL Know God. What price would I pay to know my Father inside the gathering together, to know you and the wonder of God through you, and to know my true self, especially at the present time as we cast down all accusation out from the human experience? There is no price, for what else could compare. If I offered you a billion dollars in trade for the penny you hold in your grip, would you call your “loss” costly?

I am not constrained by God from returning to the full knowing of God inside the togetherness of Church; rather, I live inside the rest of God, knowing that He does all things well, and that His ordering of the seasons of my life are perfect.

Yet I stand in the covenant I entered into with God when I was but twenty-two years old. I WILL know God and I WILL walk with a people who know God – here upon this earth and in the closing out of this shattered and broken age and the birthing of an age of JOY-FILLED TOGETHERNESS.