35. God Among Us

© Daniel Yordy – 2019

God-among-us is something that takes place in one place only – in our knowing.

God Himself is already all everywhere. He fills all things with all of Himself and all things exist only inside of Him. It is impossible to move an inch without moving through God and by God.

God IS. – Age-unfolding life is KNOWING that God IS.

The Church IS the fullness of Christ, Jesus Himself filling everything in everyone. Age-unfolding life is KNOWING that Jesus IS Sent.

I have just discovered another wonderful New Testament truth that has been effectively hidden from us by the translators. English has three words for “to know,” that is, “to be aware,” to know,” and “to acknowledge.” To acknowledge means to make it personal for yourself. Greek has three words for “to know,” and those three words follow the same layout as the three English words.

But the translators have translated all three as the same “to know” or “knowledge.” That means that the “be aware” translation weakens the stronger “to know,” and “to acknowledge” or “acknowledgement” is pretty much hidden from our sight. Only in Philemon 1:6 did they allow us to seize hold of the meaning of acknowledgment, making the good things of Christ personal to us. I have tried to ensure that the Jesus Secret Version translates each of those three appropriately.

You see, speaking the truth ourselves, Jesus in our mouth, fills the New Testament much more than the translators have allowed us to know. Acknowledge – make it your own by declaration.

Acknowledgement is the exercise of  our faith. – We believe; therefore we speak (2 Corinthians 4).

As we acknowledge God among us, so our consciousness, our utter awareness that God fills our gathering together grows and grows.

BUT – before we go any further, we must set forth a mighty barrier.

WHO is among us? Who is it filling us full and enclothing us with Himself? Who gave us the authority to speak and to know? Whose Heart fills our hearts? What Word is written there?

You can’t bring the devil as the image of God into Tabernacles.

You can’t abuse God by using what you find here against Him.

Is this why I sensed the need to fly over a great chasm and flood in order to enter Tabernacles? Is this why the hillside was drenched with blood and littered with carcasses unnumbered as the Ark made its way into the Temple?

You cannot carry Satan or Constantine as the image of God into this place.

As I have finished Set My People Free, I find a fierceness growing in me. It would always be my heart to present the ten most important verses in the Bible to eager hearts as an invitation to life. But I am afraid now that my sharing of the invitation into LIFE will be accompanied by a severe and sharp barrier as well.

If the highest angel of heaven is the image of God, then worship him, but if a Man stumbling under a cross He cannot carry is the image of God, then receive Him.

Another thing that has emerged out from under the Calvinist translation is the view of a God who carries. We had no idea how much such a God is written through the symbols, words, and truths of the gospel.

The Ark of the Covenant was carried into its place; the four priests who bore it represented the Father Himself, just as Simon of Cyrene provided his sturdy legs and his willing heart as part of the embodiment of Father, carrying a stumbling Jesus carrying us all the way through.

I’m sorry. I don’t quite know how to place it, but working with the Jesus Secret Version of the Bible has made me angry. I have never been angry in this way. At the same time, seeing the seven seals as seven demons abusing God’s people has itself contributed to that anger. The super-Christ is not an idea only, but a demon. We do not give place to demons.

No demons will enter Tabernacles.

And so the act of sharing the invitation to LIFE through the ten most important verses in the Bible is, at the same time, a deliverance service. The two go hand in hand.

Either it is ALL the Father inside of Tabernacles or it is none of Father and no Tabernacles.

I am realizing that one of the most impactive lessons in Set My People Free is 5.2 Accusing God. Please take the time to read it again, especially the part that presents this question over and over – What kind of a “God” do we come up with, then, if we describe the Father through the image of the highest angel of heaven and through the force of Adam’s rebellion, a “God” who possesses thoughts of evil inside of His knowing? –

The problem of using the devil to define God is not that it remains a “sin” against God to do so, for God imputes no sin. The problem is that it is a SIN against one’s self, for any shadow of that image WILL mean that the person imagines themselves to be inside of Tabernacles, and yet, they have never been.

The Door into Tabernacles is the sharing of Hheart with God, a Hheart filled with the All-Carrying One.

Here is the God of Tabernacles.

Father suffers long and Father is kind. Father is not envious; Father is not boastful; Father is not puffed up. Father does not act improperly; Father does not seek His own interests at the expense of others; Father is not easily provoked. Father keeps no account of wrongs, for He knows no evil. Father does not rejoice at injustice, but Father 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 (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 – adapted).

This Father in our hearts is the place prepared for God’s people, the Feast of Tabernacles.
Then, let me bring in a jewel I discovered in Symmorphy III: Kingdom, one which I had forgotten to bring forward into present writing. – “God’s more-than-enough is always out from a lowly heart, through little acts of kindness, with no knowledge of evil, carrying each one inside Himself, and turning every action of evil towards the result of goodness.”

These five qualities of God, which we discovered here: 12.2 Father as Quality, are truly the essence of this God among us and what we also are like as we are just like Him. These five qualities show God in His Heart, in His Love, in His Holiness, in His Action and in His Expectation.

But as the One having called you is holy, so also yourselves be holy [devoted to God] in all your manner of life, as it has been written, Holy you will be for holy I am [Devoted you will be, for devoted I am] (1 Peter 1:15-16).

Holiness means first that God neither knows nor thinks nor does evil. And it means second a binding commitment God places upon Himself to do what He says and to carry those whom He has brought forth. Holiness is God’s absolute attention and fulfillment of Jesus’ command to Him to Forgive, to make Holy, to Keep, and to Glorify those who belong to Jesus.

Tabernacles means, not just our acceptance and faith in such a God, but much more than that, our participation with God in all that He is and does, matched fully with our confidence in God’s participation with us in all that we are and do, personally and together.

Let’s turn, now, and consider this wondrous place in which we find ourselves, walking together as the Church, the revelation of Father, God making Himself visible to all through our love for one another.

The truth is, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but we’ll give it a go anyhow, putting things out in front of our eyes to see what joys arise from the Word that is Jesus in our hearts.

The truth is, I’ve already written much of this letter in Chapter 2. Father at Home in Symmorphy V: Life. I could just copy and paste and I would have this letter. Here is one such bit.

“Here is the place where alone we know Father utterly together as one Pperson with us. Father and I together with you cover all for all; Father and I together with you believe all for all; Father and I together with you hope all for all; Father and I together with you carry all for all – for the sake of Ooour Church. It is here in this place that I am utterly at Home with Father and Father is utterly at Home with me.

“If you are at fault in any way, Father and I together take full responsibility for that fault, carrying it here, above the Blood, upon our shared Hheart. And through your difficulty, Father and I together set you free to sing Jesus with all your heart as the only song you know.”

I bring this in because this really is the essence of God among us.

Symmorphy in koinonia. – Koinonia in symmorphy.

Sharing the same form, sharing sweet fellowship. Each one of us with Father, most certainly, but that is not God AMONG us. God among us is sharing sweet fellowship with one another – as we are symmorphosed with [sharing the same form with] His entire glorious Body [the Church], down to the finest details of the Energeia, the mighty continuous and swirling action of His ability to cause ALL [by symmorphy] to be subject to Himself (Philippians 3:21).

In Lesson 2.3 Father in Fellowship in Symmorphy V: Life, I set forth the concept of an invisible Spirit Being showing Himself through the form of many little persons all flying together. On the one hand, people were seeing the fellowship of the many in integrity and honor, but on the other hand, people were seeing the form of the far greater Spirit Being and heard, through the voices of the many, the voice of the One.

This is God made visible in the flesh. This is what Tabernacles is all about.

There can be no God-made-visible without a Body. We are the Body of Christ.

You know, people look for “big things” when they consider God showing up. That’s why, to them, God never shows up.

God made visible in flesh is not an outward change, it is nothing other than humans being what they are, walking together in fellowship, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, carrying one another in their hearts in all favor.

You see that; you see God. There is no other God.

Those who don’t care for such a God are simply in full agreement with Adam and the serpent.

There is, of course, a hidden secret inside those words defining God made visible in flesh – humans being what they are. Do you know what you are? John claimed that you do not.

We have used the metaphor of a spark plug. A spark plug CANNOT know what its parts are for unless it finds itself embedded securely inside its place in the engine with power passing through it. Then those odd parts he does not understand leap into meaning and purpose. In just the same way, you and I cannot know what we are made of and what all our parts are for unless we find ourselves embedded securely inside our place in the Body of Christ, Christ Community, with the Energeia of God passing through our connections together. As we live in such a life, the odd parts of ourselves, some of which we do not presently know anything about, leap into meaning and purpose.

Forever, we know Father ONLY by Heart and ONLY through faith.

That means that we know Father only as we know ourselves personally AND ourselves together. And we know ourselves personally AND ourselves together only as we know Father.

Knowing Father by Heart is sharing the fellowship of love together and knowing Father through faith is our confidence that God IS sharing our lives with us together.

If you want to know the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in the life of the Church, read Symmorphy V: Life first, and then enter into such a walking together with those precious brothers and sisters God has appointed for you.

But this series is on “The River of Life.” That River in full is generated inside of Christ Community and flows out from Christ Community.

Now – if you were to give to most anyone the task of writing a description of what “God among us” looks like, you would get a mental definition of the super-Christ, zapping, outward power, control, subservience, external virtue, and so on.

But I cannot give you any mental definition of “what God should look like.” All I can do is present you and me walking together – for that is the only thing God looks like.

So, in order to know God among us, we must know what each of us is personally, and what we are walking together. – He that has seen Me has seen the Father.

Let me be plain. The Lord has brought to me a concept that I have touched on slightly in the past, but one which I see now belongs in this discussion of the River of Life flowing out from Tabernacles. That probably means adding a few more chapters to this text.

You and I as humans are living souls, and we will be living souls forever. Why would God create us as His image only to turn us into something else as so many imagine? Yet our existence as living souls, heart and mind together, generating desire, understanding, and enjoyment, takes place at the junction, the full marriage of heaven and earth, that is, our physical form merged fully in all ways with our spiritual form.

I am going to start using the word “spiritual” as the same thing as “physical,” that is, my use of the word “spiritual” will NOT mean “ethereal” or “wafting off into the ‘higher’ life” or any such rebellious rot. My use of the word “spiritual” will carry all the connotations of the word “physical,” except as heavenly elements and qualities in full union with earthly elements and qualities.

You and I are and have always been heavenly spirits joined in every way with earthly bodies. We know our bodies and we know our souls; what we have not known is our spirits. Yet that is not quite correct. We do know our spirits and heaven far more than we imagine, that is, by familiar intuition. But we do not know our spirits as a discipline.

Let me define a human. A human is a being of innumerable innate qualities that can become meaningful only through discipline, training, and practice. BUT – those innate qualities brought to full expression have meaning, then, only as our giving of ourselves to others.

You and I have three types of innate qualities. And we have spent years of our lives engaged with discipline, training, and practice in two of those types of innate qualities. And we make our living and connect with the people in our world around us by the giving to others of those developed skills. But the third type of innate qualities that we possess just as much, we do not develop at all and thus we are ignorant and basically useless in giving those qualities to others.

Let me give an example. I was born with an innate quality of being an effective classroom teacher. For 27 years, I was 100% ignorant of that quality, and for most of those years I would have rejected any idea that I might have that quality.

I discovered the existence of such a quality only when I stepped into the classroom of four eleventh-graders to teach them English Language Arts. Here is the reality of that moment – I knew I was a classroom teacher because everything inside of me sang for joy inside of every part of my new daily tasks; I knew, all through my soul – “This is me!”

That does not mean I was an effective teacher, regardless of whether my students then would disagree with that statement. After teaching for a year-and-a-half and loving every minute of it, I then went to a place where I could be trained in the discipline of classroom teaching.

I would give a rough estimate, then, of spending around 4-5000 hours in disciplined training in my original innate quality and double that number of hours in its practice BEFORE I could enter the college classroom as an effective master teacher.

That’s a huge part of what it means to be human. But look at the required necessity. Right now I am not making use of all that training and practice BECAUSE I have no present connections with students in a classroom. All of that vast investment in becoming what I am is on hold right now. If I did not live out from the power of an endless life, I would be in despair. I would imagine myself to be no longer a complete human, and the sense of loss would overwhelm me. Because I live out from the power of an endless life, I am fully confident that my day inside the classroom WILL come back around to me again. I can lose nothing.

Let me tell you something. As humans, you and I are vastly complex. You see, I can describe for you a similar level of training and practice in the kinetic skill and the knowledge and understanding of designing and building homes for people to live in. And again – that skill has NO meaning unless others are receiving its enjoyment. And I have a similar level of training and practice in what was once ONLY an innate quality of being a writer AND of having something to write about. But – if you did not read what I write, then I would certainly be spinning my wheels in empty uselessness.

All innate human qualities must first be trained and practiced, and then they find their meaning only when they are given to others. This is a large part of what it means to be human.

You see, those three big arenas of training, practice, and giving, do not exclude many lesser skills and practices that I also enjoy doing. And you are similar to me.

All humans, including you and me, have three types of innate qualities. One type is in the physical, called “kinetic” in education. A master piano player is an example of such a quality. A true master of the piano must begin with that innate quality inside of them. But, having and discovering that quality – “this is me” – must then extend into years of disciplined training and practice before it becomes that which can be truly enjoyed by many.

I watched a blind autistic boy on one of Simon Cowell’s “Got Talent” shows. He demonstrated an innate quality with music and with the piano from the time he was little. Certainly, his knowing inside made practice seem easy; nonetheless, he had spent years in such practice before he appeared on the stage before an audience. Before he sat down to play and to sing, he looked and moved and spoke like a blind autistic boy. But when he sat down to play he became what he really was. And what we saw this man become was someone who took our hearts and took the music and joined them together as one. His delight was far more than the music; his delight was giving the music to us.

This is what a human is; this is the revelation of Father.

The second type of innate human qualities is the qualities of the soul, that is, of heart determination, mental understanding, aesthetic pleasure, and human intention and desire. We spent most of our time in school in the training of these human abilities, particularly that of mental knowledge and understanding.

An accountant knows lots of stuff from years of training and practice. Nonetheless, the accountant can be what he or she is only as they practice their skill for others.

The third type of innate human qualities, then, are the qualities of the human spirit. We do NOT know what these qualities are because we have never practiced them nor been trained in their discipline. We do NOT know what we are.

There are spirit disciplines that you ARE and that you LOVE to do – except you have never done them and have no idea what they are. More than that, these spirit disciplines cannot be known by you all by yourself, for just as with the blind autistic boy, you will know what they are only inside the joy of giving them to others.

Now, I have one innate spirit quality that I have, in fact, spent years in the discipline of training and practice, in fact, giving as many hours of my life to its development, probably, as all my physical and mental skills put together. That innate spirit quality is knowing the Word, all that God speaks as He speaks it, but as Spirit Word alive inside my heart. As you can see, none of that training and practice has any meaning except inside of the joy of sharing my gift with you.

But think of all the thousands and thousands of kinetic skills, of which piano playing is but one. And think of all the thousands and thousands of mental skills, of which classroom teaching is but one. – Then think of all the thousands and thousands of spiritual skills, of which knowing the patterns of the Bible as a living Spirit Word is but one!

You could list a hundred physical skills developed over years by humans without hardly thinking about it.  And you could list a hundred mental skills developed over years by humans without hardly thinking about it. Why is it that you can list only a handful of spiritual skills, none of which you have been trained in to any meaningful extent.

Why such disconnect?

I intend to develop the meaning and practice of spiritual qualities that can become who and what we are ONLY as we first submit to disciplined training and only as we practice and practice, and then qualities that become “this is me,” only as we share them with others. But here I must bring this whole concept of being human back into God among us.

Look at the point of connection between the developed innate musical qualities of the blind autistic boy in the joy of giving and the audience in the rapture of receiving. That point of connection is God made visible. Look at the point of connection between a master teacher in the classroom and “the lights coming on” in a student’s understanding. That point of connection is God made visible. Look at the point of connection between my innate, developed, and practiced skill of knowing a living Spirit Word given to you in joy and your receiving what I have to give into your heart with all enthusiasm. That point of connection is God among us.

Now look at seventy-five humans at various stages of development, but with many fully developed in what and who they are by knowing their innate qualities, by being trained in them, and by practicing them, qualities of the physical, of the understanding, and of the spiritual. Look at those seventy-five humans sharing what they are with each other daily.

What are you SEEING? – You are seeing God as He is – God among us.

We are not talking about airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky. We are talking about REAL. Heaven, earth, and living soul married fully together, flowing in full and expressive fellowship together, and governed out from the heart of each one, otherwise known as Salvation.

Now we can define more fully – Such that the fellowship and sharing of your faith might be energeoing inside of the acknowledgment of every good thing that is inside of us, inside of Christ (Philemon 1:6).

What is acknowledgment? It means years of disciplined study, training, and practice of the good things of Christ inside of us. And it means sharing those fully developed skills of our human spirits with one another.

God among us.