8. The Door into the Holy Place

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8. The Door into the Holy Place - for Notes

As we put the Lord Jesus Christ upon ourselves a second time, we find ourselves inside the Holy Place. The difference of experience between this place inside of the knowledge of God and the outer court is extreme.

In this lesson we want to understand the first part of God’s intentions for the larger Holy Place experience inside our redemption, that is, our emergency rescue. Yet we want to understand the Holy Place only out from that Door which we have draped upon ourselves.

Once we have the larger picture, we will look more closely at the specific experiences and connections in the Spirit.

Two, Side by Side. First, look at this fact of God’s pattern. Typically, the progression from one piece of furniture to the next is a straight line towards the knowledge of God that is the pillar of fire.

Only as you step through the Door into full immersion into the Spirit, with the Holy Spirit now flooding through your own door into your soul, do you enter the experience of two pieces of furniture at the same time.

Word and Spirit are always together, side by side, entwined. It is the Spirit who gives life. …The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63).

The Holy Place. In our experience, the Lampstand and the Table of Showbread are always together, but in the classroom, we separate the parts to study them before bringing them back together again in the “practicum.”

More than that, we have entered “the Holy Place.” What does that mean? The truth is, we cannot know what the Holy Place really is until we come back out of the Holiest with Father into the Church.

But on our path into the Holiest, the Holy Place contains a Spirit-knowing of three things: the Word, now as living Bread, the light and anointing of the Spirit, and the penetration of the dealings of God into our inner man.

A Spirit-Knowing. I think that is the way to define the Holy Place as it serves as part of our emergency rescue into the knowledge of a Salvation already the only thing real – a Spirit-knowing. The outer court is a mental-knowing, but the Holy Place is a Spirit-knowing.

Consider the picture from the last lesson. Seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. – Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone should hear My voice and open the door, I will go in towards him (Luke 11:9 & Revelation 3:20).

These two knockings are the same.

Same Door. The knocking is the same. [Picture of a man knocking on a door side by side with Jesus knocking on the other side of the “same” door.]

Sharing the Same Form. You were never knocking on God’s Door except, in that same moment and to the same degree, Jesus was knocking on your door. This same reality is true at the Gate and the Veil, though we know it most here at the Door.

The Door opening to you and you opening the door are the same thing.

Symmorphy, sharing the same form with Jesus, is our only reality right from the start. Yet this picture God gives us makes it more personally real than I have ever known.

Sharing Desire. This is how I have understood full immersion into the Spirit, but God’s wondrous pattern gives us the picture for us to know just how true and important this principle is.

This path into God is God’s path into creation. As we go in, God is free to move out.

On God’s side of the equation, you and I are swimming inside His Spirit. On our side of the equation, the Holy Spirit floods out from our own spirit and into our soul, into our mind, our emotions, and our desire.

Jesus said, “Not My desire, but Yours be done” for us, for our sakes, but we also must speak those words as well.

Human Choice. At every step along this way, God is always more eager to show Himself through us than we could ever be eager to enter into all the knowledge of Father with us. If you desire, God desires far more. In fact, your desire to know God is but a tiny echo of God’s desire to be known through you.

What about human choice? Where, inside of us, do we find our “decision-making?”

Watchman Nee taught that our “will” is a part of our soul on the side of our spirit. Norman Grubb taught that our “will” is found inside our spirit, in that God chooses for us.

We Are Living Souls. But Watchman Nee was just twenty-one when he wrote The Spiritual Man; what would have been his thoughts later on? And Norman Grubb never entered into the Holy Place; his writing demonstrates an absence of Spirit-knowing.

Neither one knew symmorphy, that Jesus and us are involved together in all things.

We are not part spirit and part soul. God created us as a living soul, that’s what we are. And we possess a spiritual/physical body. Our emotions do relate more with the physical, and our choices with the spiritual. The mind, then, is the gate-keeper in-between.

Following My Heart. Look at the dividing line in front of me right now, as I am placing these two different arguments. I could present an “argument” as to which one was “correct,” Norman Grubb or Watchman Nee. Yet that path is barren and empty of life.

I will follow only my own heart.

In a church where you hear of “Jesus,” you also hear of “Father.” But where there is only “Christ,” so also, there is only “God.” Father is a Person, and so are we. – He calls His own sheep by name and they follow Him.

Faith Is Our Choice. My choice is my choice, and God requires me to choose. God never does anything separate from my own desire.

Faith is the simple human decision to believe that God is telling us the truth. Faith is our choice to place the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself in Person, upon all that we are, do, think, feel, and desire. We call Him by name, Jesus, just as He calls us by name.

You see, the important thing is always heart, and heart is the central organ of the physical body, heart is the central organ of the spiritual body, and heart is the central organ of our living souls.

Choice on Both Sides. I have always understood the Baptism in the Spirit in this same way, that is, two different things happening together. On the one hand, you and I are immersed utterly by Jesus into His Holy Spirit. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit floods out from our spirits into our souls.

In this picture, the Door is in the “wall” between our spirit and our soul. The choosing is taking place on our side as we open the door to His knocking. And the choosing is taking place on His side as He opens the Door to our knocking.

This is Jesus entering into our souls, into our bubble of self.

The Power of Symmorphy. But my soul is me, and I am one who thinks, who feels, and who chooses. I am neither spirit nor flesh; I am me. I operate inside of the heavens and communicate with heavenly beings through my spirit. I operate upon the earth and communicate with earthly beings though my body.

But I am a person, just like God is a Person. God never violates my person, and I never violate His.

This is the glorious power of symmorphy, the great mystery of Christ inside of you. Jesus, through the power and capacity of His own Person, makes God and me to be one Pperson together. – Jesus is Salvation.

Sharing Story Together. The Gate is sharing Sspirit with Jesus. The Veil is sharing Fflesh with Jesus. And the Door is sharing Ssoul with Jesus, the beginning of the intermingling of His story with ours.

The purpose of the outer court is for us to learn what Jesus is towards us. The purpose of the Holiest is to learn what Jesus is through us. And the purpose of the Holy Place is to learn what Jesus is inside of us.

We are learning to know what we are, fully of heaven and fully of earth, yet personal and real in ourselves.

Two Stories as One. God never removes your story from you, nor does He ever require you to “die” to your own story, that is, that it should cease.

Jesus’ own story of Self does not replace your story, nor does yours replace His. Your own story, full and complete, belongs utterly to Jesus, it is His. And Jesus’ own Story, full and complete, belongs utterly to you, it is yours.

Symmorphy is magical; it is pure and holy; it is glorious beyond measure; and it is wondrously ours. Two complete stories, shared together as one.

Junior High School. But we humans are ignorant of reality. And God moves us by slow steps into the knowledge of what is already true.

Thus in the Holy Place is where we first begin to know what is real by our new Spirit-knowing. Yet the Holy Place is also where we hold onto all kinds of things that are not true at all. And I am not talking about ideas only, but about ways of living and acting, thinking and doing.

This is like taking junior high kids into a woodshop. You want them to learn the tools without cutting themselves or each other. They, however, want to play.

An Educational Curriculum. To me, one of the most wonderful pieces of understanding I have written is found in Symmorphy V: Life, 18.2 The Tabernacle as the Church.

The Tabernacle is an educational curriculum, and our purpose is to graduate from each grade level and go on to the next. The task of ministry, then, is to expedite that movement, to be sure we have learned the truth in one piece of furniture and then to direct us on to the next.

In that lesson, I placed the Holy Place on our way in as junior high school, the in-between season, where we are first introduced to adult things, but where we are expected to make a mess of it.

The Importance of the Door. And this is why the connection of the Door is so important throughout the Holy Place time.

Those who find and connect with Jesus Himself in everything are guided with certainty into all things true. Those who seek their own anointing or their own “Christ within,” abuse their first grab at heavenly realities in every conceivable direction.

On the one hand you find, “Gift, gift, I’ve got the gift.” And on the other hand you find, “God has anointed me, so you better do what I say or be in rebellion against God.” Many use the Spirit to control others, foolish children running around with power tools, playing reckless games.

Truth inside of Jesus. You, however, have not learned this way in Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and inside of Him have been taught, just as truth is inside of Jesus… being already renewed in your spirit mind (Ephesians 4:20-23).

God is very clear – the Holy Place is Jesus, and there we are taught by Him the truth that is inside of Him. The Holy Place is a season of learning Jesus as the Truth.

And the truth inside of Jesus has three parts. We learn the Word as living Bread sustaining us. We learn the Spirit as anointing and light upon our way. And we learn ourselves transformed into that which enters into LIFE.