23. I Am Rooted and Grounded inside of Love

As I reworked the JS2 for Ephesians, I ended up with a blank page. I gave that page to the second ruling verse, for I had left out a key part of it – rooted and grounded inside of Love. At the same time, a second chapter in Our Glorious Salvation that needs improvement is “8. Knowing the Father.” It is as if God gave me this page for Ephesians that I might work on both together.

Jesus is the expression of Love towards us, but God is the Source and meaning of Love. We put the Lord Jesus Christ upon ourselves, but we do so KNOWING that we are already rooted and grounded in Love, inside the Father.

Earth as Soil and Rock. Now, “rooted” and “grounded” are both earth concepts, but with very different connotations. At the same time, we see that the expression of God through Christ Jesus, Spirit and Word always together, are described in the Bible with water and air terminology. Whereas earth and fire are used to speak of the Father Himself, as in “God is a consuming Fire,” and “God is a Rock.” Christ Jesus does express those things, but always as coming out from God Himself.

“Rooted,” then, has to do with earth as soil. And “grounded” has to do with earth as rock. These two metaphors, as ways of thinking about everything, must become the knowing of God inside every part of our consciousness.

The Second Ruling Verse. The Second Ruling Verse of the Bible, Ephesians 3:17-19, has five distinct parts. I now realize that the progression of these parts creates a pattern we must know.

(1) Christ lives inside of your hearts through faith, (2) you, being rooted and grounded inside of love, (3) comprehend, seize hold of in your knowing, with all devoted ones as one body together, the full extent and meaning that is God, (4) you together then know the surpassing love of Christ as reciprocating among you, (5) and you, personally and together, are filled with all the fulness of God.

Christ living in our hearts through faith is the beginning of everything. But then Paul is about to catapult us into a crazy wild ride together into God, and so he positions our feet first.

Critical Missing Parts. As I look closely at what I already had in the JS2, three pages worth, I see that nothing of parts 2, 3, and 4 are addressed, just parts 1 and 5 of this huge and critical verse. Our new page will have four boxes. The first two will be a bit larger, “Rooted inside of Love” and “Grounded inside of Love.” Then we will have “Comprehending God Together,” and “Knowing the Love of Jesus.”

However, I also have a box to complete for Philemon, titled “The Sharing of My Faith Energeoes.” And so I will include that box right after “Comprehending God Together,” thus setting the stage for knowing the love of Jesus. We are realizing that God orders our steps more beautifully than we have ever known.

From the Soil. “Rooted” means soil, that God-Love is as the earth in which we are rooted. The soil is the source of two things for the plant, water and nutrients. However, carbon, the building block of life, comes primarily from the air, and fire as sunlight comes through the air.

The water, then, is the flow of Word being spoken as us out from God’s thoughts. The water carries the nutrients from the minerals of the soil into the plant to be joined by fire with the carbon. Yet those nutrients cannot be joined to the carbon except they be transformed first by the life that is in the soil. It is Jesus, coming out from Love, that makes the Word inside of God compatible with our human form.

Flesh and God-Love. God-Love is close and available on the one hand and deep and vast on the other. Everything we are as humans comes by Word out from that close and available, deep and vast Love. This is the Word that has already been made flesh. Flesh and God-Love are intrinsically tied together. It is our flesh that comes out from Love. Yet carbon is also Word, coming by Spirit, Spirit through which comes Fire, the Energeia of our lives.

Then, the roots in the soil are also the anchor of the plant, holding it firm and upright, no matter what storms might come. The movement of our roots ever further into God-Love is a movement downwards. Although we “grow” into God-Spirit (Kingdom), we “sink” into God-Love (Covenant).

What Is God-Love? But what is God-Love? God Love is – “I want to be with you,” yet inside the deepest of respect for you. God-Love says, “Let Me be with you in everything you are experiencing. I am already part of you, sharing Myself with you, but you can KNOW Me only by your willingness to include me as sharing with you all of your difficulty.” God-Love says, “We are utterly together sharing everything, sink your roots into My Devotion to you.”

When I look inside Jesus’ soul in Psalm 22, I find nothing in my own distress that was not already there. Jesus was trying to get rid of God, but He failed, as I always have. Jesus was trying to despise me, but He could not do that either. When Jesus joined God and me together inside the agony of His own soul, that joining was absolute! – This is Love.

Blood Covenant. God-Love is Blood Covenant. The joining that happened between God and you inside Jesus’ torn-open soul was Blood Covenant. Blood Covenant is unchangeable; it is irrevocable. Blood Covenant makes you, in all your human weakness, equal with God in heart and in respect. It gives you everything that is God, now your own; it gives God everything you are, including your sin and your shame, as His own, even your mistakes, even your stupidity. God owns you as His own; you own God as your own. This is Love. – By this we KNOW Love. – Love thinks no evil.

First we KNOW that Jesus lives inside our hearts because we agree with God that He does. And then, immediately, we send our roots deep, deep into God-Love, into Blood Covenant.

Rooted inside of Love. Because Christ lives inside my heart of flesh through my confidence that He does, I send my roots deep into God-Love as a plant sends its roots deep into the soil. My own flesh was formed by God out from the deep soil of His Love. God-Love is God's great Desire to be with me, to share my life together with me and I to share His. I sink my roots into God's Devotion to me. God-Love is Blood Covenant; I sink my roots deep and wide into the Blood Covenant God has entered into with me.

The Bond of that Covenant is the Lord Jesus written all through the pathways of my heart of flesh. By that Bond, God shares my life with me, and I share God's Life with Him. By that Bond, my Father and I are always and utterly together inside of Love. Jesus gives to me His own faith so that by the faith of the Son of God, I can draw Life out from God, the knowing that my present life is already God sharing all with me, the knowing that all the fulness of God fills, and is about to fill me full.

Upon Firm We Stand. The word “grounded” requires rock rather than soil. Technically, a house sits upon a rock foundation, rather than “inside of,” but we will use both “upon the Rock” and “inside of the Rock” in our description. Grounded must come after rooted, just as Kingdom must come after and out from Covenant. Grounded means “upon firm we stand” (Hebrews 4:6 & 14). But to stand upon firm in all our going forth, our roots must first be penetrating ever deeper into Blood Covenant, into union with Christ, into God as “soil” out from which comes our very flesh.

This is profound, that God formed man “out of the – soil (not dust) – of the earth,” and that Paul is equating that “soil” as God Himself as Love, into which our roots now penetrate.

The Construction of God’s House. The word “grounded,” then, refers directly back to the end of Ephesians 2, “Being built together as a dwelling place of God inside all the sphere of Spirit.” Grounded means the construction of God’s House, our life together as the dwelling place of God.

Paul is giving us a direct connection to acknowledge and to be fully aware of in all our interactions together as believers in Jesus. 1. Christ lives in each one of our hearts through faith à 2. We together are grounded and built together upon the Love of God, even as our roots penetrate ever deeper into Blood Covenant à 3. We interact together as believers in Jesus, in the direct and all-encompassing PURPOSE of being together the dwelling place of ALL the Fulness of God.

Foundation Comes First. My construction experience has taught me, in every instance, that the foundation is the most important part of any building. I will always overdo a foundation; I will always make it more substantial than is required. It matters not what you build on top of a foundation that is even just a little bit inadequate. That foundation will shift, and all you have built will be marred and will not endure.

Every single interaction happening among believers in Jesus must be built consciously and firmly on top of and inside of God-Love, the Father Himself as Love, God-Rock. I certainly knew the love of God in my Christian community experience, but God was perceived as “above us” looking down, never the bedrock carrying us, never beneath our feet.

Placing Firstfruits. Here is where we find the interplay between “inside of” the Rock and “built upon” the Rock. Those who are firstfruits, the core of any local Church, will place themselves with Father beneath of their brothers and sisters as the foundation upon which their lives can interact. That is, we deliberately and actively cause our brothers and sisters to KNOW that they are deeply Loved and highly Regarded, not just by God, but by us. When we look at their flesh, we see the God out from whom each one comes.

This is amazing, for I have never before explored these in-between parts of the Second Ruling Verse of the Bible. A whole new vista of the practical experience of God has opened to us, with much to explore.

Grounded upon and inside of Love. God is a Rock, the Rock of my Salvation. Out from Jesus alive in my heart, out from my roots penetrating deep into God-Love as soil, I build every particle of my life upon God-Love as Rock. This foundation of Love upon which I am built is far more than I would ever need, far more than all believers together would ever need. Yet this House being built is God's House, that He might fill it with all of His fulness. I am one member of that House built on the Rock of God-Love.

I place every interaction I have with my brethren upon the Rock of God-Love; everything we do together is found only there, built upon Love. Everything we build together will endure. Yet I am also built inside of the Rock of God-Love. Inside of that Rock, I join with my Father. We together deliberately and actively cause my brothers and sisters to KNOW that they are deeply Loved and highly regarded, not just by God, but through me. When I see the humanity of my brethren, I see the God-Love out from which they come.

A Job to Do. That you, being rooted and grounded inside of love, 18 might be fully able to seize hold of, to comprehend together with all the devoted ones, what is the breadth and length and height and depth [the full extent of God]. We are now considering the entirety of verse 18. The extent of meaning that is God is something we must comprehend as one body together. God is far bigger than our individual capacity to know Him.

We have a job to do, and that is to comprehend God. You see, just ahead of us is the wildly improbable suggestion that God fills us, individually and together, with all of His fulness. Our job is to expand our knowing together that we might be “fully able” to comprehend the incomprehensible.

The Veil Stripped Away. I have never known any gathering of Christians to take this task seriously. Almost all would think it foolish. Yet almost none think of it at all. In the move fellowship, “being filled with all of God,” was a goal to be achieved, but not meaningful or real in the present. I have heard only one preacher present “being filled with all the fulness of God” as something real for us, and that was Victoria Osteen, in faith, yes, but only once.

We can paraphrase 2 Corinthians 3:15-16 in this way. But unto this day, when the big verses of the Tree of Life are read, a veil is set upon their heart. However, whenever anyone turns towards the Lord, the veil is stripped away.

Rooms of God. And where is the Lord, to whom we must turn? – Christ lives in your hearts through faith – reflecting the same image to one another. When I see your entire existence, your humanity, even your flesh, as coming out from God-Love, when I am quick to place my every interaction with you as built upon God-Love, and you me in return, then we are able to hear and to see together the BIG verses of the Tree of Life.

In the patterns of home, this verse is equated with the patterns of “rooms inside and out.” As we know the breadth and length and height and depth of the rooms God fills with all of Himself, that is, one another, so we are made able to seize hold of the overwhelming FLOOD of God filling His House and flowing through us into our world. This is the Feast of Tabernacles, comprehending together.

Comprehending God Together. Our job as devoted members of each local Church is to comprehend together the vast extent that is God. Being filled with all of God is already true; life means to believe and to know that God is. Yet God is vast, and He shows Himself through many. Thus we must work together inside of Love to comprehend the full meaning that is God. I see each of my brethren as coming always out from God love; I see them as being filled with all the Love of God towards me. As we comprehend this God together, so God fills our knowing with His own Person and flows forth from us as the fulfillment of Tabernacles.

Bringing in Philemon 1:6. This present need to finish a box for Philemon has brought Philemon 1:6 into its clearly intended place as an essential companion verse to the Second Ruling Verse. In fact, this key verse from Philemon comes in after all the root penetration and house construction, in order to bring in another direct connection between two things in the Ruling Verse.

Here is the progression. 1. Christ lives inside of each of your hearts through faith. à 2. The fellowship and sharing of your faith energeoes inside of the acknowledgment of every good thing that is inside of us, inside of Christ. à 3. And to know even more, individually and together, the surpassing, beyond-all knowledge of the love of Christ.

Koinonia. Philemon 1:6 and Ephesians 3:18 are the same thing. Philemon 1:6 is how we go about this great task of seizing hold of the knowledge of just how much God fills one another. This is also the same thing as Ephesians 4:16, the energeia inside the sharing from every part, causes growth of the body – into its full capacity to be filled with all of God. This is why the ruling verses rule, in order to give us the Purpose of everything else. Everything is about God filling His fully prepared House with all of His Person and fulness.

The word is koinonia, our continual sharing and fellowship together inside of and out from God-Love, beginning with knowing Christ Jesus written as every Big Word God speaks all through one another’s hearts.

Being Made Ready. Knowing Christ Jesus Sent into each of us and into our togetherness, knowing every Word God speaks fulfilled by the Spirit in our lives, causes us to “be fully able” to seize hold of the meaning of ALL OF GOD filling our togetherness. We have to be ready; being filled with all the fulness of God made visible is a SHOCKER of immense proportions. We call it to be so now, but we have zero idea of its meaning.

It is sharing our faith together, in acknowledging the good things of Christ Jesus inside one another, flowing back and forth, a Jesus of our size, known by our own humanity, yet as every Word of this immense Being we are told to call Father, this sharing readies us for the full EXTENT of – so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God (2 Chronicles 5:14).

Bridging the Gap. I finally now look at the JS2 page for Philemon and realize that I had never read Philemon 1:6 precisely. I cannot bring in the box “The Sharing of My Faith Energeoes” without bridging a gap of understanding. For that reason, I added a box titled “Our Task Together.”

Our Task Together. Philemon 1:6, Ephesians 3:18, and Ephesians 4:16 are speaking of the same thing together. Our task as believers in Jesus is to comprehend together the full extent of God so that we might be built together as the dwelling place of God, so that we might know that God fills us full, both personally and as our gathering together. This task begins with Christ Jesus inside of us and we inside of Him – through faith.

As we acknowledge the good things of Christ in ourselves and in one another, that sharing together of our faith in Jesus energeoes mightily, causing us to be built together as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. As we know the Love of Christ reciprocating among us, so we know that we are filled with all the fulness of God. Our fellowship together is the cause of God being known.

A Large Declaration. This box is followed on the page with a large declaration.

My fellowship with my brethren inside of Christ Jesus causes God-Love to be known by all.

Now we can bring in the original box, which is moved to the next page, a page that had extra space. I have also titled this last page as “My Faith inside Acknowledgement.” That wording also effects what will go in the box.

The Sharing of My Faith Energeoes. I share my faith inside of Jesus, the faith of the Son of God with my brethren, even as they share their same faith with me in deep and continual fellowship. As we share with one another in the profound acknowledgement of the good things of Christ in each, so our faith energeoes together mightily, working in our life together the preparation for a God who fills us with all of His fulness. This fellowship, this acknowledgement of Christ Jesus having come into union with each of us, works effectively to build us up as the very House of God inside of the Spirit. I know that God fills our life together.

Carried into God. Finally, we have the most critical progression. 1. And to know even more, individually and together, the surpassing, beyond-all knowledge of the love of Christ. à 2. That you might be filled with all the fulness of God. There is no way that we could ever grapple with “all the fulness of God” except we be carried there inside the beyond-all knowledge of the Love that Jesus has for each one of us and from us to one another.

This is identical to the in-between of the Sixth Ruling Verse, that is, à Inside the blood of Jesus consecrating for us a newly sacrificed as well as a living way through the veil, that is, through His flesh. And – By this we KNOW Love. We KNOW Love only as we are just like the Lord Jesus.

For One Another. “The surpassing, beyond-all knowledge of the love of Christ” – is much more than how much Jesus loves me or how much He loves you. It is how much Jesus in me loves you and how much Jesus in you loves me. This is My full completion, that you love one another in exactly the same way that I love you. KNOWING this Love for one another is the only thing that can prepare us for the GLORY that is about to fill the Church upon this earth, a hundred million or more believers in Jesus across every portion of the planet.

There is nothing more blasphemous to Nicene Christianity than my “interpretation” of 1 John 3:16, and nothing that would be more disdained if they heard it.

Opening the Door. It is only as we set forth our souls for one another, as resolution, as going under with Father for one another’s sake, as travail helped by the Spirit in unutterable groaning, joining each one with God inside the agony and confusion of our own souls, just like Jesus, only here do we KNOW the Love of Christ that passes all knowing.

It is here, standing together upon the bedrock that is God-Love at the very bottom of the Jordan, for the sake of every little one who longs to know Jesus, that the opening of our DOOR COMPELS God to reveal Himself. As God spoke to Zerubbabel, “Do not despise the day of small things, but shout ‘Grace, Grace’ upon My entire House, that I might become visible.”

Knowing the Love of Jesus. I know just how much Jesus inside of me loves you. I know just how much Jesus inside of you loves me. I know this Love even as I give myself to the Father for your sake, in all costliness, that you might be free to know Him, even as you are doing the same towards Father for my sake. I suffer all loss, willingly and with all joy, that you might be joined with the Father. I know that it is this beyond-all Love that is the very bowels of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving us with Himself for one another's sake that carries us into knowing the full reality of being filled, personally and together, with all the fulness of God made visible. This is God-Love, that we love one another in daily life together, the surpassing Love of Jesus.

Reading for Next Time. The next Zoom session will be the final lesson in “Studies in Paul.” When I removed the JSV from the JS2, I ended up with an entire page in Hebrews that is blank. I have titled that page, now, as “The New Covenant.” In fact, as I think about that page, I do not want headings, but just a smooth flow of explanation, and I think I will just write it without the layout I give in these lessons. It is time to have an ever clearer split between “The Two Covenants.”

I will share the final result with you next time, but then I will also be able to work on the introduction to the JSV and thus bring that into our Zoom meeting and closer to completion. I am still working on the JSV, even if its just occasionally. It’s completion is well within sight.

Let’s Pray Together. “God, our Father, Your Love for us is so great, so inconceivable. You have brought us forth out from Your Love, even our very flesh, that we might love You in return. And we know, Father, that our love for You, returning to You, is that we would prepare Your House, that You might come Home, that You might win all the Desire of Your Heart.

“Father, we are very little, but our hearts are very big, for You share Hheart with us. And though we are small, we give ourselves to You inside the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we would be Your House together, Your dwelling place. We would be that firstfruits of the Lamb around which You can gather Your people together.

“Father, we ask You, inside of the name of Jesus, to gather Your people, all across the earth and throughout the heavens, together into Christ, into the glory of Jesus made visible. Let us be that channel, that ‘lightning rod,’ through which the power of Your Spirit might flow as Life and as Love, confronting all, carrying all, bringing all into Your House. Father, we are entering the showdown, the ‘Elijah moment,’ and we expect to see millions who belong to Jesus to choose Salvation Revealed.

“Father, we know that You are doing this very thing, and that You have Graced us to be part of Yourself inside the Apocalypse of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we know that You always answer us.”