26.2 Revealing God-Heart

In spite of all my lacks and inadequacies, I can say truly that I am a father. When I held my first son in my arms as an infant, his mother had gone to bed and I remained in my chair in the living room. I held my son up to God and, with tears streaming down my face, I said, “Oh God my Father, I do not know how to be what my son needs. Be Father to him in spite of all my inability.”

I am a prodigious and driven learner with years of formal education, and other years of productivity mostly self-taught. Yet of all I have ever learned and ever done, being a father stands above all to me.

A Mother’s Heart. My knowledge of the woman I married is informed by three events over the years. The first event was the birth of our firstborn son. The incredible strength displayed to bring forth our son was amazing to me. “Love” was a surface thing for me until that moment when it went to the core of my heart.

The second event was when our daughter was lost behind airport security. I watched my wife become a lioness, firm and insistent, until they yielded to her to go find her daughter and a seat on the plane the next day. And the third event was when we went to see Johanna after she was married. As all our children were together in the car for the first time in a while, I saw my wife’s face, glowing with the intense and radiant joy of an angel.

Intimate Watchcare. I am giving you a description of the Heart of God. Our rule forever is to show each created entity the meaning of this Heart of God through our kind words and gentle touch, personal and close. God is invisible and, apart from Jesus, unknowable. How can any finite creature know His Heart? Yet it was God’s intention from the start for every created thing to know His Heart through Christ Jesus inside of Adam and Eve’s hearts showing to all the intimate watchcare that is God.

Jesus said something very startling and profound. He said, “They hated Me without a cause.” Think of the absoluteness of those words “without a cause.”

Paul’s Description. I must bring in again Paul’s description of the Father’s Heart.

Father suffers long and is kind. Father is not envious; He is not boastful or puffed up. Father neither acts improperly, nor seeks His own, nor is easily provoked. Father keeps no account of wrongs; that is, God knows no evil. Father does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices together with the truth. Father covers all for all; Father believes all for all; Father hopes all for all; Father carries all for all. Father never fails.

I want to talk about how the meaning of these words comes to every living thing in heaven and earth through us, through our gentle touch and our kind words – the Heart of God Revealed. Nonetheless, every human at present HATES every one of these wondrous expressions of goodness and truth without a cause!

Longsuffering. It is against this hatred, then, that Father suffers long and is kind. It is hard to comprehend the hurt that God bears as, what, 30-50 billion sentient beings scream accusation against Him every moment, all of which is simply without cause. The truth is, God is always kind to each one, regardless of their outward circumstances. Yet He needs humans in this world who will be His actions of kindness to those who continue to abuse Him.

To share God’s Heart, we must first be fully aware of the Father’s hurt, and then act with kindness through the onslaught. This is what Jesus did upon the cross. His words, “Father, forgive them,” were moving into the headwinds of screaming accusation, swallowing the accusation up even while touching with kindness.

Encouraging Others. About half of Paul’s descriptions of love are stated in the negative and about half in the positive. For our purposes here, let’s turn the negative statements into their positive counterparts.

“Father is not envious” becomes “Father is thrilled when others can do things that He cannot.” God has no hands; He cannot touch people. It thrills Him to no end that we have the hands He does not possess and that we are capable of touching people in ways He cannot. “Not boastful or puffed up,” that is, the exaltation of self, becomes encouraging others and making them feel good about themselves. It means congratulating others in meaningful ways.

The Interests of Others. “Does not act improperly” means, of course, “acts properly,” but only as “properly” is defined inside the tree of life. We act in what is fitting, according to each one’s place and interests. “Nor seeks His own” simply means that Father sees others as better than Himself and always considers their interests. This is what I mean when I say, “going under with Father.”

You see, in all these things, we are speaking of God showing Himself through us, for God can’t show Himself any other way. God designed us specifically to make His Heart visible and known to all created things inside this cosmos of heaven-earth. That means that God designed us specifically to place the interests of others above our own; it is our nature.

A Different Side of Love. “Nor is easily provoked” shows a different side of Love. It is possible for a person to provoke Love, to make Love angry. Jesus warned us about the two ways people do that. Those who abuse little children with malevolent intent, including murdering them in the womb, and those who abuse God’s people to build their own kingdom (abusing the Spirit) can expect a full season of experiencing a provoked God.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the “childish” antics of junior high kids in my classroom – and they knew that I enjoyed them at a personal level. Nonetheless, if I saw bullying or disrespect, there was in me an instant provocation. I did not tolerate either, not even a little bit. This also is the revealing of Love.

Against Himself. Father keeps no account of wrongs. – This is a qualified statement which we must understand. God does keep account of every accusation spoken against His Word by each created being. This includes hating the moment because every moment is coming out from the Sustainer of all. Every accusation will be shown to be without cause.

What God does not “remember” is the hurt against Himself.

When we say that God does not “know” evil, we do not mean that He is not aware of evil and all its terrible hurt. It means He cannot comprehend evil, for it has no reference points inside Himself. Evil is always “without a cause.” But God never holds His own suffering against anyone; He loves to His own hurt.

Truth Cuts. Father does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices together with the truth. All humans pretend, that is, lie. You’re better at it than you think, dear reader.

“You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Truth is devastating, for it cuts through the lies. Truth requires you to be honest. God really gets excited when people finally become honest. For the first time, now, they can step out of “hating Him without a cause,” and into being His Heart revealed. But truth is a “slow burn,” and Love is patient until that moment when you stop lying about yourself.

Four Actions of Love. Then we come to the four great actions of the rule of our Love over all creation forever – to cover and protect – to believe for and to entrust – to hope or expect for – to carry, that is, to remain under as the one carrying the load. This is Love, which is always personal. That means that, in order to reveal the Father’s Heart to all creation, we reveal that heart to each one, one at a time.

Now, in this text, we are not defining the Kingdom, that is, the outward expression of our rule. Rather, we are defining the human, that is, what we are. What we ARE always works in this way. God loves us through Jesus, and then we turn and love one another out from that same love. We are designed specifically to reveal God-Love.

To Cover. “To cover” is the watchcare I have described in this chapter thus far. Paul used the Greek word stego, which means to place a roof cover over that keeps the weather out.

I finally understand covering as God intends. Of truth, the covering I knew in the move of God fellowship contained much that was God’s definition. There is no Church, no Christ Community, without covering. Without covering, we are all unrelated individuals flapping in the wind. Covering is that father-mother care that gives a place of belonging to every “child.”

To Believe and to Expect. To believe and to expect are the two steps of walking, just as Jesus walked. To believe is the first foot raised, that is, “Father, I give You all thanks inside of and for the sake of this next moment we are sharing together.” To expect is the second foot raised, that is, “Father, I know that You and I together are making this next moment to be utterly and intrinsically GOOD, our dwelling place together.” This is the action out from which the Kingdom of God flows in the life of each individual person and from all humans together.

The thing is, however, that, as the rule of Love, we are doing this for others who cannot do it yet for themselves. That is, we are imparting our own faith and expectation of God into the hearts of others.

To Expect and to Believe. As we expect that God is arising in each one, imparting that expectation to each, so we then entrust ourselves to the other person. To entrust ourselves into the expectation of God in another person is the essence of God-Love, for it is what God does towards us. God entrusts Himself and His Word to us.

Not only are we creating a dwelling for the other person inside our shared life with God, but we are also imparting to them that their shared life with God is also creating for us a dwelling place. Our home is also in intimate participation with that other person. The knowledge of His glory is not transmitted by “tacking on,” but by the impartation of our own souls.

To Carry. Carry one another’s great weight of value, and thus you shall complete the law of Christ to full measure (Galatians 6:2). This is a different Greek word than hupomene (remain under), but it means the same, to put ourselves beneath the value of this one, that we might carry that great value all the way through. Yet the goal of love, love’s completion, is always to reciprocity, always with the expectation of the same love coming back from each one.

This is a treating of each individual person in creation with the greatest of respect, regardless. And thus our impartation of giving thanks and expecting God is sandwiched between the extension of our protection and the undergirding of our carrying.

Our King. This is what the King does, our King. This is what He does through us. I believe that we will find that the rule of God is always utterly personal to each one. Jesus wins the heart of every single created being. That’s what “every knee bows” must mean.

To LOVE together with God is to RULE together with God. It is to bring all things into submission as the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is another word that means the same as “they hated Me without a cause.” It is the word contempt. There is no contempt inside of God, only honor. It is the King Himself who carries us, laughing with joy, all the way through.

Set-Forth. Now, God’s Heart is defined by something else besides “love.” God’s Heart is also “set-forth purpose.” Pro-Thesis is “set-forth purpose.” Tithemi psuche is “set-forth soul.” A thesis and a soul are both a story of words. What is unique is that they are “set-forth.”

The Pro-Thesis is the beginning of Word, Word by which everything is defined; the set-forth soul is the place of it’s Completion. “It is finished.”

In the next lesson, we want to consider the Rule of God forever, yet not as Kingdom, but rather as our human nature, our human souls that are become the place where all the Word God speaks is fulfilled and made complete.