12.1 Out from Peace

Here we have the fundamental quality of symmorphy, God’s personal Person and our personal person together. And here is the incredible verse that establishes and describes the fundamental nature of this togetherness.

Having been made just and innocent out from faith, therefore, we possess peace towards and together with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access or entrance through faith into this grace [that is, God Himself] in which we stand; and we boast upon hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:1-2). – The words “towards” and “through” refer to a Jesus always connecting us with Father.

One Word Only. The relationship between God and me inside myself can be described by no better word than PEACE. And as such, that word ‘peace’ is all-encompassing and total. Should any question ever arise, there is only one answer, and that answer is, “Peace.”

In all the years of my desperation, longing to know God as well as longing to write, when I did have pen in hand, I would write one word, often and in tears, over many years. I would write, “Peace.” The greatest blow of the evil one against me came at the end of my college years at Blueberry, in 1990. I was taught, and I knew no better than to believe, that my will and God’s will were “always opposed, always at war with one another.”

My Knowing. It was this anti-Word planted inside of me as anti-Seed that set the course for that dark and cold abyss of hopelessness that I knew in February of 1998. What I did not know was that none of it was ever true. When God spoke to me in that hopeless place, “Give My people hope,” that was already the only true description of me.

The war we have fought against God has never had any but one meaning – “God, I don’t want You as part of my life.” But my knowing now of Father with me, sharing all that I am and giving Himself to me that I might share all that He is, this knowing only increases daily and will increase forever. This knowing is peace.

No Aloneness. Jesus saves me out from my desperate and blind self through His cross, and then places me, the personal me found deep inside of all the other stuff that I am, Jesus places ME into Father and Father into ME, and I KNOW peace. There is no aloneness in this peace, but utter togetherness.

When Jesus cried upon the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me,” He was teetering on the edge of the precipice. God had in no way forsaken Jesus, but the human Jesus, bearing all our awfulness inside Himself, was desperately considering driving God far away from Himself in His imagination, very like the picture Ezekiel saw of God being driven from His temple. This is why we must have Psalm 22 to know the full picture.

No Longer Hurting God. It has been the human at war with God inside, never the other way around. Certainly, God stands opposed to humans hurting others for self gain, but even the one doing such evil is sustained every moment by the good-speaking of Jesus.

If God were at war with us, we would cease instantly. Indeed, we would never have been inside His thoughts in the first place. If God were at war with us, He would be at war with His thoughts concerning us, and that is a ridiculous idea.

For eight years now, since May of 2013, I have refused any personal thought that my Father was not sharing all things with me. For eight years, I have not hurt God with the wicked and wrong accusation that I have driven Him out of togetherness with me and must therefore “get back with God.”

The Person Deep Inside. Now this is so important. You see, we are not talking about ambition and the cross, we are not talking about Covenant and our hearts, we are not talking about reciprocity and fellowship, and we are not talking about belonging to something larger than ourselves. We are talking about me, the little me, the personal person deep inside of all that other stuff. And we are talking about God All-Carrying, just as personal, just as real, right in here in Person, utterly together with ME.

This is much more than “God loves me.” This is, “God can’t think of anything He would rather do than to be a part of my life, to be part with me of all my troubles.”

Side by Side. I just finished for a second time a romance novel by Georgette Heyer, Sprig Muslin. The first time I read it, I wrote about it in “Side by Side” found in The Great Story of God. Here is my conclusion then of what the Lord spoke to me.

“Jesus will not marry a woman who honors and respects Him, who is grateful to Him for His great kindness. Nor even more will He marry a woman who fears Him and who does what He says because she believes she is under obligation to do so. Nor will He marry a woman who chooses Him because of His great power and wealth and how honored He is before all creation.

“Jesus wants to marry a woman who sits by His side on a “garden bench,” who is equal to Him in heart and mind, who walks through the difficult places together with Him, leaning upon His shoulder, who knows that her union with Him is because she loves Him and He loves her.

“Jesus will marry only a woman who knows Him in the deepest and most intimate of friendships. Jesus will marry only a woman who knows that He has conformed Himself to her, that He loves what she loves, enjoys what she enjoys.

“It is not up to the woman to conform herself to the man; it is up to the man to conform Himself to His beloved. This was the sacrifice that Jesus embraced in Gethsemane – for the joy set before Him – you and me. So long as I think that I must change to please Him, my heart is not comfortable side by side with His.”

Heart with Heart. We know now that Jesus’ whole purpose is to join us together in that way with the Father. It will always be Jesus, and it will always be the Father through Jesus. Yet here alone is the place of peace, the certainty of our fixed identity as a person, seated side by side with the Father on the throne of our hearts, knowing Him with all quiet certainty, sharing every moment of life together as equals.

This fellowship, this reciprocity of respect, this beating of heart with Heart, does not come when there is contention or pretending, but comes only in the deep quietness of knowing. I want to be with my Father, sharing sweet communion, because I know that my Father wants to be with me.

This Is Me. All humans search for a personal identity, knowing their hold upon themselves is utterly fragile. Yet in seeking a knowing of themselves, they search in all the wrong places. And then we have Christians who are mostly the same.

The human person in the center, the ME deep inside, is real only inside of peace, and peace is only this fellowship of equals seated together upon a garden bench. I become a real human being only when I know “Father with me, sharing all things with me for the sake of others.” I no longer have to turn to such knowing when I awake in the night, for the knowing of Father never leaves me alone. – This is me.

The Issue. I am a man of peace, raised by a man of peace, and my sons are men of peace. Yet, to my continual amazement, I am drawn to study war. You see, I am not one to be sidetracked into fighting the wrong battle. More than that, when I “rise up from that garden bench,” Father never leaves me, but continues in perfect union with me inside of me. – This is me.

Because we are created symmorphic, the issue of the human is and will always be identity. Who am I? And when I look around me, I see humans everywhere, and especially my Christian brethren, under attack by every false identity imaginable. And I rise up out from peace and into WAR!

Hearing Made Full. We do walk inside of the flesh, but we do not wage war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are God-able towards the tearing down of fortresses, overthrowing arguments, and every high thing or barrier lifting itself up against the knowledge of God and taking captive every thought into submission to hearing Christ, inside of your possession of readiness to dispense justice to all who hear amiss, even when your own submission to hearing has been made full (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

I woke up this morning hearing the song of Amos. – A famine is coming upon the earth… That of hearing the Word of the Lord. This “hearing made full” is the opposite of master/slave; it is heart with Heart in full equality and regard.

A Captain of War. Yet hearing made full always turns for others. “Father, this joy, this sorrow, that we share together, although our fellowship will always be here in this secret place, yet we turn it always towards others, that they also might know You.”

This is our identity – this is me. And out from this identity of peace, we rise up to war. Jesus and I grip the same sword together. Jesus and I speak the same words together.

You see, false identity in whatever form it takes will ALWAYS result in the wrong battle fought, battle that brings ruin to all. Yet just as surely as God made me, the person at the center, for peace with Him, so He also made me a Captain of War.