14.1 The Need to Belong

This section is titled “Proving and War.” The great issue of God from the beginning is the proving of Christ Jesus faithful and true – that what God speaks is true and good regardless of any outward or even contrary appearance.

This proving of the Word God speaks is challenged by the accusation of the evil one, thus it is also war. Inside all the realms that are God, there is no challenge, of course, for God is filled with faith. The setting of the conflict, the ground selected for battle, is the human heart of flesh. This is why Jesus presented His one tiny pathway to Victory in an almost desperate question.

When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith in the earth?

The Central Reality. We could rephrase Jesus’ question in this way. When the Word God speaks comes to you, will you believe that God is telling you the truth? Will you allow that Word to define your own human heart of flesh?

And thus the Word entering into union with the Faith given to us and written upon all the pathways of our hearts, that it might bring forth the knowledge of God into creation, truly is the center of the entire issue. It is also the central reality of our human design.

Then, as we sought to understand our symmorphic nature, we found five aspects of the human heart, each one of which is filled with the Lamb Slain and alive again as expressed through Galatians 2:20.

Jesus’ Need to Belong. We are tying this chapter, “The Proving of Christ,” together with the fourth aspect of the human heart, the need to belong. The need to belong is one of the most powerful drives in the psyche of all humans. We then conclude, since we are made like God, that the need to belong is also one of the most powerful drives in the Heart of God.

This deep ‘need’ or desire inside of God, then, is embodied and made visible to us in the Lord Jesus. Consider Jesus’ first request of the Father in His prayer just before Gethsemane. – Father, glorify Your Son, that the Son might glorify You… Now, glorify Me, Father, alongside of and in Your presence, with the glory that I possessed existing in Your presence… (John 17:2 & 5).

Two Places of Belonging. “Glorify Me,” whatever else it might mean, contains at its core a deep and vital place of belonging. “Father, I belong with You and inside of You. Father, You belong with Me and inside of Me.”

Yet Jesus is only ‘half’ with Father, we might say. Consider the absoluteness of these words. – Christ lives inside of your heart through faith. Whatever else these words mean, they contain at their core a deep and vital place of belonging. – Speak your own name. “ Daniel , I belong with you and inside of you.  Daniel , you belong with Me and inside of Me.”

Consider the depths of desire. – Father, I DESIRE that those whom You have given Me might be WITH Me (John 17).

An Equality of Belonging. Here is the picture John gives in his vision. – Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone should hear My voice and open the door, I will go in towards him and will dine with him and he with Me (Revelation 3:20).

Jesus BELONGS inside of us as every Word God speaks, good and true. The question He asks is, “Will you receive Me?” This need to live inside of us is as much for Jesus’ sake as it is for ours. God is fully reciprocal, an equality of belonging. That the love with which You loved Me, might be inside of them, and I inside of them (John 17:26).

“Dine with you and you with Me” means sharing everything of life together; it means married and at home with one another.

Where the Heart Is. As is said, home is where the heart is; home is where you belong. That being true, consider the implications of this line. – If anyone loves Me, My word he will keep, guard, and watch over, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him in intimate closeness (John 14:23).

God BELONGS inside of my heart. I am the Father’s home; I am where God’s heart is.

Then we see that the proving of Christ – My Word he will keep – and Father at Home are two sides of the same thing. And both are entirely under my control, whether I will receive that Word and believe that God BELONGS inside of me.

God’s Need to Belong. When we say that we are designed to contain all the fullness of God, that idea can sound kind of structural, like a garage made for a car. But when we realize that God means far more, that God means that His own need to belong is the very quality inside Himself by which He designed our makeup, then we find ourselves rooted and grounded inside of Love.

Yet here we see the emptiness of the Nicene definition of agape, that is, God-love, that God-love is that which loves us even though we don’t deserve it. Such a way of thinking has nothing to do with God. God loves us out from His need to belong inside of us; that is, God wins His Desire through sharing our lives.

Belonging and Reciprocity. It is the intense determination of God-All Carrying to share your life with you. Nothing can give Him greater satisfaction. Yet a shared life is fully reciprocal. Reciprocity is the topic of the next chapter, but belonging and reciprocity always work together. You can’t have one without the other. Belonging cannot exist apart from reciprocity, and reciprocity won’t happen except it come out from belonging. Yet as humans in this present world we know very little about either one except in their selfish and violent perversions.

All my life I have desired to belong, to be part of something bigger than me on the one hand, and to be a recognized and needed member of a small group of people on the other hand.

Forty-Five Years of Devotion. All my life I have sought to belong with good people, at great cost to myself and in faithful expectation of God, yet all my effort has not borne fruit. I have failed to find what I seek, at least thus far. That is, except in one arena, and that is the love I share with my precious wife. This new property we find ourselves taking possession of means home ONLY because Maureen shares it with me and I share it with her. It would mean nothing otherwise.

And I place my desire for community upon the altar by the direction of my Father and for the sake of others. – I lay my Isaac down. – Forty-five years of devotion. Yet I insist to Father that it cannot have been in vain.

The Action of One Man. Yet my sorrow and my tears are Father sharing Himself with me, for He has sought to belong, to be part of the lives of His people, these six thousand years and has failed as much as I.

It all hangs on the action of one man caught in the pangs of death, rejected and despised, ready to drive God far away from himself. “Father, no matter what I feel, You belong inside of me, You share even this agony with me. And Father, these whom You have given me, I welcome them inside myself with all my heart, regardless of all the hurt they cause.” And there, inside the heart of that man, you and Father come together, you and Father belong.

When You KNOW. And now we know the task of the Word God speaks, and how that Word proves Himself faithful and true. Jesus fulfills the purpose for which God sent Him ONLY when you KNOW that you belong inside of God and when you KNOW that God belongs inside of you, and when you KNOW that Jesus alone makes this connection happen every moment, and that He does so inside the cost of His own life. That’s what “Lamb-slain” means – inside the cost of His own life.

Nothing meaningful inside of the Church and inside of our experience with other people can happen except it come out from the certainty inside our own hearts of this BELONGING.

Three Phases of Belonging. A large part of my difficulty is that, as an Asperger’s man, I need others to give me a place, yet I am so very limited in the ability to extend that same sense of place to others. God made me this way for His purposes, however, that I might wait upon Him to show me His meaning.

There are three parts, or three phases in the fulfillment of Belonging as God intends it to be inside the experience of all creation. The first part is the Belonging between God and me as an individual, and between me and God. The second part, coming out from the first part fulfilled, is you belonging with me, something that takes place inside myself. The third and visible part, then, is me belonging with you.

With God First. You see, I (and all other humans with me) had the order of these three phases backward. That’s why we have to let it all go. Yet when I made covenant with God at 22 years of age that I would know God in this life and on this earth and that I would walk with a people who know God in this life and on this earth, that covenant in me came out from this great need to belong.

And so it is astonishing to me now to discover that the one verse in the Bible, John 14:23, that has been my great hope since age 19, is all about God belonging inside of me and that Jesus proven faithful and true happens when I know such belonging absolutely and without wavering. I have looked to other people for what God alone must be inside of me.

Sharing Hheart with God. We cannot know what it means to be human except we make our study personal to ourselves. As I have done that in this lesson, use that as an example that you also might make this central issue of belonging personal in your own life.

The next chapter, “How We Love One Another,” is all about the second and third phase of belonging, with the third phase also being the full practice of reciprocity.

But the next two lessons of this chapter are all about the first phase of belonging between the Father and each one of us as individuals. The next lesson is the reciprocity of fellowship between Father and me (personally – and you, personally) through Jesus, and the third lesson is a look at sharing Hheart with God in the context of Belonging and Reciprocity.