7.3 Sharing Fellowship of Soul

Now is come the Salvation, the Power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the Authority of His Christ (Revelation 12:10). Salvation is substance, God as Source, God acknowledged; Kingdom is appearance, God visible and known by all as Christians loving one another with pure hearts fervently. The passage from God-Substance to God-Appearance is Power, Power that flows through the Authority of Christ Jesus, the One who lives inside each of our hearts.

We know our union with Christ Jesus in the same way. We are one with Jesus in Spirit and in flesh, but in-between, the power that takes Source to Appearance, Jesus in our hearts to Jesus on our face, is our Fellowship with Him in the sharing of our souls.

The Science of Symmorphy. Before we continue with this wondrous fellowship, let’s rehearse the last lesson. Another word for “sharing life with Jesus” is symmorphy. Life is a form containing movement and flow. Symmorphy is the science of two persons, Jesus and us, sharing the same form.

Science is the study of what is, through evidence. God is; His evidence (Hebrews 11:1) comes through our acknowledgment of God-All and by Word and the demonstration of His Spirit. The concept of “theology,” the study of God, is a misnomer. We study only what is evident. Those who share life with God as humans, through sharing life with Jesus, are the ones who are the evidence of God, thus the true study is Symmorphy.

The Nature of Our Existence. Having written six college textbooks on the study of Symmorphy and being half-way through the seventh, I am beginning to approach some understanding of what it is. Romans 8:29 is Paul’s rendition of symmorphy and John 14:20 is John’s. The two verses are equal in importance. Paul places symmorphy into the larger picture of the purposes of God, but John makes it utterly Personal with Jesus.

In all we are speaking of the nature of our existence as humans, sharing form with Jesus as individuals, and sharing form with God as Communities of Christ. The last lesson was a simple overview of the complexities of the personal side of sharing form with Jesus as expressed by John 14:20. The larger study, however, is as big as God.

Fellowship at the Center. Fellowship is the center of God, the meaning of His Heart, and the purpose out from which He lives. Fellowship is the core quality that makes us humans in the likeness of God. Active fellowship is the heart and purpose of Symmorphy. Our fellowship with Jesus in Person inside our own hearts, then, is our human existence. All other fellowship, whether with God inside of Jesus, with one another, or with God inside of His Church, all of it comes only out from the sweet and continuous fellowship each one of us enjoys with Jesus within.

Fellowship itself is a complex topic, for there are several kinds of fellowship and several different manners in which it occurs.

Marriage. Human marriage inside the Love and Spirit of God is a picture to us of our marriage union with the Lord Jesus. In human marriage there are two essential outward forms of fellowship, fellowship of spirit and fellowship of physic. The first is the sharing of purpose and outlook; the second is romance, the intimate sharing of the marriage bed.

As important as those two arenas of fellowship are for a God-filled and wholesome marriage, they are not the true fellowship at the core of any marriage, the fellowship of soul with soul. My wife and I like one another, soul with soul, and we enjoy doing many things together, particularly home and family, though we also regard each other’s separate enjoyments.

Jesus Is Real. This lesson is a look at our Fellowship with Jesus, soul with soul. I will draw from my personal knowledge of fellowship, not only with my wife, but also inside of Christ Community, but I will apply those things only to this Fellowship. Fellowship happens only in the presence of two or several persons who are real and substantial, visible in proximity to each other.

Jesus inside my heart is far more REAL than any person on the outside of me, full stop. I fellowship with Him because He is REAL and always with me. Jesus says to me, “Learn of Me,” “Dine with Me.” I actively teach myself of His REAL-ness inside of and with me.

An Intimate Conversation. The Fellowship I enjoy with Jesus is Soul with soul. Jesus and I share the same mental thinking together (1 Corinthians 2). Jesus and I share the same heart-gut thinking together (Philippians 2). Jesus and I share the same desires together. Jesus and I share the same emotions together.

Yet, in a sense, those remain “forms.” Fellowship is the action, the energeia, the life, taking place inside of the form. Fellowship is an intimate conversation between two or among many, conversing about the doings of life, about knowing the Father, about desires and interests, about concerns and delights regarding others. Fellowship with Jesus is sharing our two stories together.

Kept Pure and Devoted. When we say, “Jesus and I share fellowship of soul together,” we are always placing that Fellowship into the purity of God, assuming the absence of all that is not of that purity. It is God who keeps us pure and makes us devoted to Himself inside of these things, the value of the Blood, the protection of the Cross, the bright light of honesty, no sufficiency in ourselves but all of God, the humility of Christ, and the knowing of the Father carrying all, lifting all others up.

Inside of the Mighty Devotion that is God, our Fellowship with Jesus inside our own souls, knowing Him in knowing ourselves, knowing ourselves in knowing Him, is kept utterly safe and pure. Sharing Spirit with Jesus and sharing flesh with Him, causes us to know His Soul and ours.

Doing Things Together. But fellowship is much more than conversation. The deeper meaning of fellowship is found inside the things we do together with Jesus. We do all things together with Him.

You really get to know people when you eat meals together with them, when you worship God together with them, when you work at the labor of the day together with them, when you fight for one another in the Spirit, together. Through the doing of these different types of things together over time, so the knowing of one another becomes ever deeper and more real. Jesus and I have been living together, sharing life and fellowship and the doing of things together, for 61 years now. I’m starting to know Him, just a bit.

Seeing Jesus. Yet it is only across the last 16 years that I have had any idea that Jesus and I share every part of my life and His together. Whom, not having seen, you love, into whom now you believe, though you do not see outwardly; moreover you exult with joy inexpressible and filled with glory, receiving the full completion of your faith, the wholeness of your souls [your self-story now shared with Jesus] (1 Peter 1:8-9).

Jesus exists now, still fully human, but in the form of a life-giving Spirit, all here now and personal inside of those whose hearts are given to Him. The issue is not Jesus here and real inside of us, but rather the seeing of the eyes. Our eyes are single; we see Jesus for real.

Faith Is Acknowledgement. The more we acknowledge Jesus sharing our lives with us in all ways, the more real He becomes to us. And the more we acknowledge the sharing of intimate conversation with Jesus through the doing of every next step forward, so the more real our fellowship of soul with Him becomes. It is always through our faith that Jesus becomes to us in our knowing what He already is. Faith is acknowledgement, speaking, calling it to be so, thinking in all things that it is.

The evidence that we share soul with Jesus, in fellowship together in the doing of all things together, is our faith. Faith is the very substance of our sharing all with Him. Yet sharing soul together with Jesus is much more personal than sharing life together.

Entwined Together. What is my soul? What is Jesus’ Soul? How do we share soul together, both in essence and in fellowship? To know the answer to this question in my experience has been the drive of all my writing.

I acknowledge that everything taking place inside of me is Jesus sharing with me His own soul, His own thoughts and feelings and desires. I acknowledge that everything I feel and think and desire is carried by Jesus inside Himself as part of His own soul, His own thoughts and feelings and desires. I acknowledge that every word of my story of self and every word of His Story of Self are constantly entwined together.

The Work of God. I know Jesus, I am conscious of Him always inside of me, by the Spirit we share together. I see Jesus when I look in the mirror, even in the middle of the night, for my face is His, part of the flesh we share together. But to fellowship with Jesus as He and I together face every next step forward, not knowing what it might bring, but receiving God in it together, that takes work.

This is the work of God, that you should believe into Jesus (John 6:29). To place ourselves into Jesus and Jesus into us, in all our knowing and acknowledgement, sharing fellowship together, is the WORK of God, the very thing God is doing.

Speak His Words. I would like to refer you now to The Jesus Secret II as a sourcebook for your fellowship with Jesus. The completed volume should be available in a few months, by God’s grace. Get the printed copy for yourself. We know the Jesus who lives inside our hearts by speaking the same Word He speaks concerning Himself, but now the same Word becomes who and what we are.

There is no other way to know Jesus than by His Word flowing through our souls inside of His Spirit. Speak these words, shout them out loud, until you KNOW this Jesus whom God has SENT into you. As you do that, Jesus Himself will show you something EXCITING. Jesus will show you the Father, Himself utterly with you.

Reading for Next Time. The next portion of the first chapter of The Open Scroll will be on translation itself, and my “credentials” to be able to do something so audacious as to translate God’s Words myself. The truth is, I do it, not because I know what I am doing, but because I LOVE what I am doing. I love nothing more than the flow of what God actually says through my heart and soul, something I have been doing since I was nineteen.

The next chapter in Our Glorious Salvation is “Knowing the Father.” The first lesson is titled, “Our Father,” a God out from whom we come.. You could read “Father Makes His Home in Me,” Chapter 23 in Studies in John. The purpose of knowing this Jesus Sent into us is that we might KNOW the Father through Him.

Let’s Pray Together. “Lord Jesus, You are the fellowship of our souls. We fellowship with You in return, for we KNOW that You are actively enveloping us with Your fellowship of Soul with us in every ongoing moment. Lord Jesus, You are the One who has come into us as we have received every Word God speaks, eye to Eye with the Father. You are the One who is already every Word fulfilled all through our hearts.

“Yet even as Word sustaining us, Lord Jesus, You remain always Personal, personally loving us, personally sharing all the vicissitudes of our souls with us, all our ups and downs, our triumphs and failures, our delights and sorrows.
 
“At the same time, Lord Jesus, You also share Your own Soul with us, Your own thoughts, Your own desires and emotions. And as You share Your Soul with us, we are captured by the immense DESIRE You bear towards your Church, that all who belong to You might know You. We know, Lord Jesus, that Your DESIRE is always ours, for we are one in Spirit and in flesh, and our souls are always entwined together in sweet fellowship.

“Lord Jesus, we are in Your hand, we give ourselves utterly to You, BE the fulfillment of Your DESIRE through us to all who belong to You all across the earth. Set Your people free, Lord Jesus, that they also might know You together with us. We ask this in Your name, Lord Jesus, knowing that RIVERS of LIFE and JOY flow now out from us.”