Loving Like God

What are some of the implications of what it is to be an ambassador, and especially an “ambassador of Christ”?  To begin with there is a governmental or kingdom implication to the word “ambassador.”  An ambassador embodies the border of the kingdom or government he or she represents. This is representation at the point of greatest contrast.

When we speak of diplomatic recognition, we are talking about the honor extended by one government to another.  When such recognition is withheld, it is an indication that there is enmity between the nations in question.  We extend recognition when we wish the other government to stand, and withhold recognition when we want it to fall.  Such is the way of governments.

Geographically, the place of an ambassador is an embassy compound.  The building is an embassy.  It is understood among nations that the territory occupied by a foreign government – the embassy compound is the territory of that foreign government. U.S. embassies occupy U.S. territory in remote locations. Whether small or large, the territory associated with an embassy has the same standing as the home territory of the nation that embassy represents.

The U.S. embassy compound in Moscow is U.S. territory. The U.S. embassy compound is in, but not of Moscow. An attack upon it is the same as an attack upon the United States.  So it is with ambassadors of heaven.

“And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven,” John 3:13

Quoted here from the King James Version of the Bible, we see an important truth pertaining to the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of man, “… the Son of man which is in heaven.” Jesus said this in His conversation with Nicodemus while he was here on earth.  Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world, but that, in Him, the kingdom of God had come near. Jesus himself is heavenly territory.  He was able to be in foreign territory, (this world) but still be in heaven. Jesus was God’s Ambassador of heaven. He was God’s embassy, and He was also the embassy compound of the kingdom of heaven. He was in a position, not only to extend diplomatic recognition, but provide political asylum. He is the hiding place and refuge for those who would flee, not only the trials of this world, but the wrath to come.

So it is with us with Joshua, (Jesus), by faith, The Lord has given us every place we set our foot so that we might represent the Kingdom of Light, the Kingdom of God’s Dear Son.  Jesus Himself is the Kingdom of God, and he is present both in the world, in our hearts, and at the same time present at the right hand of the Father at the throne of heaven.

That much I set to paper in 6/24/92

In the context of our last couple of posts, it came back to me at a time when the bloody message of the Benghazi atrocity is not yet fully dry in the ground.

From the muse of 1992, I would like to borrow the thought for present purposes that we, like Jesus are the embassies of The Kingdom of Heaven.  At the moment I want to apply this to the warfare surrounding the communication of the truth about intimate relationships that come from God.

What struck me in reference to what I need to say below is that in the beginning the first believers were appointed and anointed by The Spirit of God to be the Ambassadors, and even the traveling embassies of Christ. In the beginning, they had the endorsement and full support of the Kingdom of Heaven.  When they were attacked by religious extremism, Saul, for instance, Jesus took note, and struck Saul to the ground while he was heading out from Jerusalem, and on the attack.

Without getting into the many attacks on Christ’s embassies before and since that time, I would just like to make an application to our present realities.  The principality and power that supposedly stood behind, the U.S. Ambassador and Embassy in Benghazi looked the other way in the face of its being attacked.  As it happens, it too was an attack by religious extremism.

Application:

This is a GREAT challenge!  I know of few if any men who are walking in intimate relationships, relationships fueled by the Spirit in the passion of The Christ, gender neutral, or without regard to gender, (refusing to know one after the flesh).  Of those I do know I know of none that are willing to come out of the closet, to serve as ambassadors of this Truth.

There are many more women who aren’t afraid to serve in that capacity, and are even willing to talk about it – represent it. I suspect I have barely seen anything but the very icing on the cake in this connection, even where women are concerned.

The Problem with women is that they are so devalued by religion, that they have no standing to represent this truth, which they embrace so much more readily than men.  This seems to be common to all the religions, especially among religious extremists, including what is masquerading as “Christianity.”

In short there are very few ambassadors of this dimension of our inheritance in Christ. Those who dare to do so are either ignored – (the women) or attacked by the religious extremists. The situation really isn’t so different from what went down in Benghazi.  If Ambassadors of the Truth are not supported by The Truth, then they become the cannon fodder of religious principalities and powers.

When the ambassadors of Truth in our own day are sharing the Truth revealed to their hearts, the diverse systemic governments of what has been passing for “church” either stand by or take steps to have them eliminated.  This two is part of the warfare that surrounds the foxhole. Perhaps for those who have eyes to see, Benghazi might serve as a case in point.

I hope I have made myself clear concerning this level of the problem of foxholes.  And have done so in:

Love!

• By Jay Ferris, originally posted Dec 2012

In response to my last post, someone commented: “Absolutely fabulous! Speaks to me on multiple levels :)”

For me, “many levels” were part of the inspiration for that post as well.  Encouraged by this friend’s comment, I would like to touch on a few of them.

Perhaps the most fundamental level is the one touched on in my Christmas post: “What does God take for Pain?”

”But when the set time had fully come,
God sent his Son,
born of a woman,
born under the law,”
Galatians 4:4

It’s worth reading the full context! But for now perhaps it is enough to focus on the “set time that had fully come.”  This refers to a time when the object of God’s affection was under the law, and miserably unable to keep the law, making not only herself miserable, but God miserable as well.

While God’s love for us is so GREAT he could have kept on waiting, could have kept on going in His pain and ours, but enough time had gone by to make a point. Enough time had gone by to have the woman He had been waiting for – the desolate woman of Isaiah 54:1. This is the woman, who Paul goes on to explain is our mother.  This is the woman with whom God was intimate even in her desolation.  He took her to put her out of her misery.  He saw something that none of us had ever seen nor could ever have seen that one day she would be the wonder woman of heaven.

She was the most miserable of the Jews of her day.  She is all of us today.  She is you.  She is me.  She was the source of His pain, and he took her in her pain, and in His pain so that one day she might be the surpassing glory of the apple of His eye!

As for what it took to get rid of her pain, it took even more pain on God’s part. He sent his own Son into the slaughter of the innocents, a slaughter that was directed toward His very own son. Jesus, as John Eldridge has so beautifully pointed out in his book, Beautiful Outlaw, was a “wanted man” in every sense of the phrase, even before he arrived here on earth.

The worst of the pain, however would have to wait for the climax of the cross to be fully realized. This is the pain that He took to have you and me. This is the pain that he recalls for us in his New, only, and everlasting Commandment:

“As I have loved you, so ought you to love one another.”

Key word for present purposes, “As.”  We wants us to take one another for pain in the same way that He did – redemptively!  Of course that’s not going to happen if we remain clueless about how He has first loved us.

Perhaps that’s enough of a “level” for now.

Love!

• By Jay Ferris, originally published December, 2012.

Some time back, I shared some thoughts about our being one in and by the Spirit. At that time I used a pond as a word picture of the point I was wanting to make, contrasting the intimacy that is possible when we are immersed together in the Spirit, “the pond,” with what we are able to experience while remaining on the shore, dry land. See Post from June 6, 2012, “The Pond”.

On that occasion my hope was to describe Spiritual intimacy in something closer to its ultimate expression or place in the New Jerusalem. Today, I want to address the matter of Spiritual intimacy in another place and with another word picture, a “Foxhole.” I am not speaking of a fox hole in the way that Jesus referred to it, but spiritual intimacy surrounded by warfare.

A pond suggests a tranquil place where the war is over, and a foxhole suggests the reality of the war in and around intimate spiritual relationship. On the one hand we are surrounded by the war around the foxhole, and on the other, we become more and more aware of the inner war going on inside of each another. In the foxhole of intimate relationship there is a war going on against our staying in that place of intimacy. The war gets more intense the deeper into the hole we go.

The only way for the intimacy of relationship to survive in such an environment is to know God’s kind of love, the kind that is good for enemies, both perceived and real. The lovers in a foxhole have to rest in the knowledge that they are secure in one another’s love. This requires great confidence in the Love of God to survive all that knowledge. Perhaps this is a good place to point out that:

God’s kind of love is not delusional.
He knows exactly who we are!

The intimacy we are talking about is not delusional. It is made possible and energized by a Love that is so great it covers a multitude of sins.

This post has to do with sharing the lessons of Life, (He is The Life.) especially with those who are in the foxhole of love with us. Perhaps this is what Paul was thinking about when he prayed “… that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19

For a relationship to survive in a foxhole there must be a love that surpasses knowledge, in both a good and bad sense. This kind of love doesn’t come by teaching or even knowing in the carnal sense, but by revelation in the most Spiritual sense. Actually, it turns out that the most confined space in the flesh is the most infinitely spacious, in the Spirit.

“The Truth Hurts,” at least in the beginning. We need a love that can survive the hurt.

“No discipline seems good at the time…” Hebrews 12:11.

What is it that makes intimate conversation so difficult, even hurtful?

For one thing, it’s being known on a more intimate level, without my ‘coverings’ or ‘illusions.’  It is someone (other than the Lord) spiritually smelling me, when I have B.O. – Tasting me, when I am covered with sweat or worse – Seeing me, without my disguises.  It’s someone finally knowing me at a base level, not an illusionary level.  This kind of exposure  keeps people out of foxholes.  Not that we can go there with just anyone.

Another danger is that a hole is dark.  Raw emotions and passions arise.  And there’s no way of putting distance between you, except getting out of the hole entirely, in a sense  ‘gaining’ one’s life to only lose it.  This is why religion wants to keep people out of foxholes.  This is why religion abandons sex, even its spiritual equivalent, to the world.  Religion is in the fig leaf business – rather than being gender neutral, it concentrates on separating the genders.

In short there is warfare in and of the flesh surrounding the foxhole – surrounding the possibility of both spiritual relationship, and spiritual intimacy. This side of ultimate fulfillment, and complete oneness, (the oneness that Jesus prayed and died for, John 17:21) the line between the passion of the flesh and of the Spirit is a fine line.  This is a big part of the warfare down in the foxhole. This is the warfare between flesh and spirit, which must determine the line between the lust of the flesh, and the passion of The Christ at work in the parties to the conversation. It is impossible to win this war, except by the Grace of God.  Only by His Grace is it possible to stay in the foxhole long enough to become one spiritually, without any rise of the flesh to frustrate and hinder.

It is in our first exposure to the worst that is in each other that the truth is most hurtful. It is just here that we discover His love in us is sufficient to take us beyond that confusion – that hurt, and through it in unbroken intimacy.

“…  Afterwards it produces the peaceable fruit of righteousness,” Hebrews 12:11.

A pond is more heavenly than a foxhole – even more communal.  We may swim in the pond from time to time, but a foxhole is like a crucible where intimacy (like gold) is refined and tested.

“The LORD says, ‘Suppose you have run in a race with other men. And suppose they have worn you out. Then how would you be able to race against horses? Suppose you feel safe only in open country. Then how would you get along in the bushes near the Jordan River?” Jeremiah 12:5

A foxhole is not only a place to live together, also a place to die together. It is a burial place of sorts – a complete dying to self.  It is also the fertile ground out of which resurrection life is nurtured. With seeds of all kinds, something is accomplished in burial that cannot be accomplished anywhere else.

If that is so, then it remains that “surface relationships” do not bring forth life. About the best we can do on the surface is “news weather and sports.”  Though we can include all sorts of other ‘spiritual talk’ there, the surface is still too safe and sterile a place to bring us to the necessary depth where seed can be planted, and take root.

“The Disciples came to Him…” in private, Matthew 13:10-36

Love!

• By Jay Ferris, originally published December 2012

For more reading, see previous intimacy level post, “Motivations“