19.3 One Incredible Heart

Up until this moment, all our pondering of this wondrous treasure we have been given, to share Hheart with the All-Carrying One, has been in terms of the redemption of others.

But let’s consider a quality of God. God is not some of this and some of that; rather, God is all this and all that. Whatever God is, one hundred percent of God is that. We know that God is All-Redemption, that is, God is always wanting to bless others, to meet their needs, to lift them up, to win their love, to heal their sorrows. And God shares this Heart of infinite Redemption with us. Yet God is ALL of everything else God might be, just as much.

Exploring God’s Heart. I want to enlarge our understanding of God’s Heart, to consider all of its many facets of completeness along with redemption.

We have three things, joined together, to guide us into such a venture, for, of truth, there is no greater adventure in the universe than to explore the Heart of God in all its capacities, yet, not only to explore, but also to become, at our deepest center, and thus to excel in sharing that very Heart. Those three things are the example of Jesus in the gospels, the words of God in the Bible, and our own human hearts of flesh. And we must have all three together, for just one or two of these cannot give us an accurate picture.

We are looking at one incredible Heart!

Acknowledging Father. I am undergoing a slow transformation inside this whole idea that God my Father just wants to be part of my life, and that He gets to enjoy all things with me as I acknowledge Him. I normally just go out and do. It is a new way of thinking for me, to think, “God, You are doing this with me.” And to think, “Father, You and I together are blessing this thing we are working with, bringing joy and goodness into it.”

We have kept God out of our world by the simple expedience of ignoring Him. There is a Bible word for such a thing – Death. We bring God into our world by the simple joy of acknowledging Him, which is another Bible word – Life! 

Approach All with Boldness. In this study, then, we are gaining a deeper understanding of the sixth ruling verse, to approach everything that we find inside the Holiest and to seize it as our own. The Holiest is the Father’s Heart. And God has invited us to explore, to discover, to take for ourselves, and to become part of, that is, to dwell in, every aspect of His Heart we can find. This is age-unfolding life, to KNOW the One true God, the Father.

And we explore the Father’s Heart by bringing the Father into the knowing of our everyday living and doing. Heart is personal intimacy; to know is personal intimacy. We are speaking of the same thing.

A Discovery of Treasure. What do we find when we explore the Father’s Heart by looking at Jesus? What do we find when we explore the Father’s Heart by the words of Scripture? What do we find when we explore the Father’s Heart by knowing our own hearts? And we know we have found treasure at the joining points of all three of our points of exploration. Living inside Father’s Heart, that is, knowing God, is a continual discovery of treasure, all of which belongs to us in the finding. – Finders-keepers, we might say.

Consider, then, that every step into Father’s Heart is a step into Home and Rest, AND – every step into Father’s Heart is a step into the opening of adventures untold, of treasures without limit, of joy unspeakable and filled with glory. And consider also that we share this very Heart with our Father.

Five Aspects of Heart. Now, we have also established five aspects of the human heart, ambition, definition, person, fellowship, and devotion. We know these things as the Father’s Heart inside of which we run, seizing all that we find as our own.

The first thing we find inside of Father’s Heart, then, is the authority to rule through Love, that is, the Kingdom. This is the place of adventure. The second thing we find is the Lord Jesus as every wondrous word God speaks. The third thing we find is the Person of Father, private and intimate and close. The fourth thing we find is a sharing of the Fellowship between Father and Son, and the fifth thing we find is our HOME, the place where we BELONG!

Happiness and Excitement. Actually, we must start at the center, with the intimate and private Person of our Father. And as we do, I want you to think about your own heart.

Close your eyes and call to mind two or three times in your life when you were utterly and truly happy, with no shadow at all. Then call to mind a time or two when you laughed so hard you could hardly breathe. Place yourself back into these moments and consider what and why. Then, with your eyes still closed, consider three or four times when you were absolutely excited inside of the most fun ADVENTURES of your life. What was it and why?

We assert that these things are a Personal Father sharing Himself with you.

Sorrow and Love. Then call to mind two times when you knew the depths of sorrow for someone else. Then again, a time or two when you knew the depths of loss in yourself. Consider the stretching of your heart. Why was there so much agony? Gethsemane was the Father’s Heart first made visible; how then could we know its meaning except we shared the same grief?

Consider, then, two or three times in your life when you loved, when you truly and deeply knew that you loved someone, not romantic love, but rock-bottom love. In all of these things, you are considering the Heart of your Father, Personal and close, sharing Himself with you.

Things You Possess. Consider three or four material things that you have valued the most in your life. I suspect these will not be “expensive” things, but rather, things of heritage and belonging. I have little things that were my own father’s, very precious to me. Of all the larger things I have owned, my blue van was the most precious and the greatest personal loss when I sold it. Of truth, it was one of my mother’s many gifts to me.

If you want to know my wife and me personally, part of that knowing would have to come from your spending time in our home and observing our material possessions, what they are and how we have arranged them. Knowing our Father, Personal and close, requires the same.

The Stretching of Heart. I have had you ‘re-live’ these various things for they are the widest your own heart has been stretched, both towards joy and towards sorrow, towards gain and towards loss. Even so has your Father stretched His Heart over you.

Yet not one of the other moments and experiences of your life is left out, for even the most boring and ‘pointless,’ your Father has also shared with you. You know the Father’s Heart in knowing your own, and you know your own heart in knowing the Father’s. And at the center of both is Jesus, the Lamb-slain just for you, stretched wide and torn between heaven and earth, taking every step in the utter expectation of hilarious JOY!

The Treasures of Word. We are looking at the Father’s Heart, in our bold and rampant exploration of it, seizing everything we find as our own. We are considering one incredible Heart filled with an infinite number of treasures large and small. We are talking about supreme adventure.

Let’s consider the next two aspects of heart together, definition and fellowship. Indeed, word written is the center of definition and word spoken is the center of fellowship. We are speaking of “all the treasures that are Christ Jesus.” The more I teach the Bible, the larger and more beautiful it becomes to me. The ten ruling verses, which I have taken apart in great depth, have become larger to me than the universe. I have hardly begun to know them.

Out of Breath! I am continually amazed at how people devote their lives to explaining the least important things in Scripture. I have ventured just a few steps into FILLED WITH ALL THE FULNESS OF GOD and I am so out of breath as I consider the infinity into which I have stumbled.

I never understood people who dream about the biggest house on the block. I have always thought in terms of God giving me solar systems, so that I might design one planet after the next, at least for starters, just getting warmed up. Rivers of living water flowing out from my belly, – my God, to be defined by such a word, that such a word, rooted in the wealth of Scripture and filled with an infinity of meaning, is the definition of me!

The Reflection of Fellowship. Does it surprise you, then, that I wish to know what I am, for in doing so, I wish to know all of God and all that the Bible means. Fellowship, then, is in two directions at the same time, a full reflection of each other, the fellowship I enjoy in-between the Father and the Son, and the fellowship of knowing you even as you know me.

You know, the thing I must realize concerning each individual word that my Father spoke to me over the years is that each one is all here now, the present fellowship of Father with me. This is why I must have the same fellowship I experienced with Father when I was twenty-one be the same fellowship I know today – a God who is all here now.

Knowing God and Knowing One Another. And this is why I have revisited the fellowship I once had with each individual person throughout my life story, that I might turn all of it together with Father into unending goodness. I do this because I want to know my Father, that I might seize hold of His heart as my own.

The fellowship I share with Maureen is also a mirror image of the fellowship I share among the Father and the Son, and that fellowship there is a mirror image of the fellowship I share with Maureen. Knowing the treasure that is my wife is knowing the treasure that is my Father. Knowing the treasure that is my Father is knowing the treasure that is my wife. To know God is to know one another; to know one another is to know God.

Your Dearest and Closest Friends. Running everywhere inside the Father’s heart that I might seize hold of the treasure of fellowship with you, of knowing you and you knowing me, this is treasure beyond all measure.

This is why God’s answer to all hurt caused and all things stolen in the darkness is pure and holy justice, for He requires of each one to win the friendship of the one they hurt until they never want to be separated again. To make the ones who hurt you the most your dearest and closest friends.

Think of three or four people who have hurt you the most in your life. Think of each one of them as your dearest and closest friend. Think of the excitement of treasure yet ahead of you.

Ambition and Belonging. Next, let’s look at the two outer aspects of heart together, ambition and belonging, the need to rule and the love of home. Indeed, it is these two together that are our larger definition of ADVENTURE.

Think of the largest thing you have done in your life, something you accomplished with distinction, that is, think of your own experiences of glory. In doing so, however, do not compare yourself with anyone else. Measure your own glory by yourself, by that which was an achievement to you separate from anyone else’s expectation. My problem is that I love doing so many different things, and I have found adventure in each.

Made Personal to You. Please understand, we are talking about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is real only when it is personal to you.

In my own life, I think of the Crossin house two-day job and the first part of raising the Graham River Tabernacle. These two were my greatest adventures inside of construction, that is, glory. Inside of teaching is the development of my writing course to what it became in the college setting. Inside of living is the memory of four children growing up with their hands holding to mine. And inside of writing is the crafting of these several Symmorphy textbooks, what I hope to be my greatest accomplishment. But that is for a very specific and defined reason.

My Greatest Hope. Let me take you back to a twenty-year-old boy on his knees beside his cot in the cold north far away from home, with tears streaming down his face in confusion and hurt, longing to know the living God. Let me show you, if you dare to look, the covenant this boy made with God that somehow, somewhere, someone would KNOW the Father because of all this pain and sorrow. That others would find a wide-open door, a highway made clear, a straight path into the Father and the Father into them, if so, then, somehow, all these decades of weeping before my God would be JOY and TREASURE beyond all measurement.

This is the purpose of my Symmorphy texts, and I doubt that anyone alive today has embarked on a greater adventure.

The Community of My Heart. But I am not satisfied. Yes, I have “laid my Isaac down.” I have surrendered to my Father the tight grip in which I have held the community of my heart so closely before Him all these years. But I live inside the power of an endless life and I KNOW that all that belongs to me will return to me again.

I KNOW that just as Abraham brought Isaac back with him, so God will place me inside the greatest adventure for which He designed me, the building of a Community of Christ together with those who belong to me in that Community. We are speaking of the Kingdom of God, of Father just being Himself, of the authority to Love One Another.

What Makes You Sing? We are speaking of ambition and adventure. We are speaking of HOME, of that place where I BELONG!

Now, I have couched this last bit in terms of myself, but as your own person, set all this concerning me aside and think again of your own life experience. What were the greatest adventures in your life? What things do you most love to do? Where does your own heart dwell? What makes you sing? What makes you come alive into joy? For these things are your kingdom inside of God, and your dwelling place. This is where you rule; this is where you love.

And, in fact, this is your assignment for this chapter.

Your Assignment. In the assignment for this chapter you will write out in detail your answers to many of these questions raised in this lesson. Then you will find a significant Bible verse, Old Testament or New, that best speaks of this quality of glory as you have known it in your own personal loves and sorrows. For instance, if you have known the deepest of sorrows, you might find the verse, “Jesus wept,” and discover a fellowship with Jesus you had not known before.

Finally, you will engage directly with your Father at the intersection of the thing you have loved and the Word that He speaks, that you might know His Heart inside of which you run with all eager enthusiasm. And there, inside this incredible Heart, you find your home, the place where you belong. We are speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Greatest Adventure of All. Let’s consider, finally, the greatest adventure of all, an adventure we share together and with the Lord Jesus, the adventure that the Bible calls the unveiling of Jesus Christ.

Yet we know that the unveiling of Jesus Christ through many together as one is, in reality, the unveiling of the Father, seen and known inside His creation. Thus we know that we are speaking of the Father’s greatest adventure, the most excitement He knows inside Himself, for Father finally gets to come home. Father at home in our hearts and through us, Father at home inside His creation. Indeed, this is a far greater adventure for our Father than creation ever could be.

The Exhilaration of Love. For you and me, however, there is no greater thrill that could be experienced by humans than the thrill of revealing Father, that is, of loving one another with pure hearts fervently. The revealing of such love will be the achievement of our greatest glory. The revealing of such Love will be the achievement of our Father’s greatest glory.

Our glory and Father’s glory are one.

And so I know that, inside of all the infinite treasures inside my Father’s heart, there is none more valued, none more precious beyond all measure, than you. For you are my glory and my joy. I am a wealthy, wealthy man.

The Apocalypse. Our greatest adventure is our dearest home, possessing this Heart that is our God’s, possessing all of its treasure, dwelling in all of its comfort. Taking everything apart and putting it all back together again inside of absolute hilarity and all out-poured love.

I guess my purpose in this lesson is to get us excited, to get us into that edge-of-your seat, out-of-breath sensation that anticipates the greatest adventure any human has ever known, an adventure that is, even now, at the door. I am speaking of the APOCALYPSE, of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the revelation of the Father’s Heart through us, the most personal, the most fantastic, the most incredible Heart in the universe.