Matthew Blewett - Heaven and Earth - Class 5 - Reality in Relationship

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   This is day five of the 2024 Idlewild Bible School. Our third period teacher is Brother Matthew Blewett. His general topic is Heaven and Earth. His topic for today is Reality in Relationship for the Matthew. Good morning, everyone. Just before we start, I know it’s a significant day hearing the loss of our brother Ken Somerville. Just wanted to share a little short memory. We came here first in 2001.

2. 0:31

   I was very young, not sure what I was doing here. And I did a series on David and I was just 31. So now you can work at our order now. And I remember the most terrifying thing about actually coming to our world, never mind having to do these talks, was the Q&A session, which you may remember used to have brother Ken. Ken at that time was running it and I guess the idea was that perhaps the speakers would be the font of all knowledge. And, and I was most terrified.

3. 1:04

   And when Brother Ken told me about it and I, you know, and just the way he, he dealt with me through that process, he would come and whisper in my ear, he’s collecting my questions and secretly giving them to me. And so it was just his manner of dealing with me that I still remember all these years later, his gentleness, even though he looked like he could be quite a question master.

4. 1:27

   There was underneath that an incredible gentleness. And it’s just a beautiful little memory I wanted to share that goes back a long time. And I’m sure you’ve got way more memories. And I think that’s a good introduction to to what we’re going to be talking about today. Because, you know, the real eternal thing, the real eternal connection we have with anybody is not them themselves, but the memory and the relationship that we have with someone.

5. 1:51

   That’s where the eternity lies. And we’re going to be talking this morning to bring everything I hope to to where it should be. The fact that true reality is found in relationship. We ended our talk or or yesterday. We focused on worship, we focused on the idea that really what worship is, is a journey, an intentional journey that we’re taking whenever we choose to worship.

6. 2:15

   And I just want to say that, you know, worship can happen anywhere. It doesn’t have to just be in, in, in an ecclesial environment on a Sunday or even in our routine at home. It could be anywhere where we can decide that we intentionally want to have a moment to, to, to bring heaven and earth together. And, and that’s something we should be awake to, as we’ve seen many examples in the scripture. And it’s that journey we’re taking that, that, that journey up the mountain towards heaven that we saw was the template of worship.

7. 2:46

   And we looked at the, at the, the, the way of worship that is established in the Tabernacle that prepare the sacrifice and offer the receive. And where we ended was the point of coming to the Holy of Holies, where ultimately we come to meet with our God to connect. The power of connection is really what the pattern of heaven and earth is all about.

8. 3:12

   And so I thought before we actually get into some of the detail of what we mean by relationship and connection, I thought we might go back to fractals, go back to part one and show you how patterns in fact and meaning is essentially all about connection. So I’m going to attempt to show you about a 1 1/2 two-minute video.

9. 3:35

   Hopefully you can see it well and try read the writing because it expresses, I think some beautiful ideas in relation to fractals. By the way, this is a piece of art. I didn’t develop it, but it’s developed in a, a, a software package called Mandol 3D. So it’s using Mandelbrot, Mandelbrot fractals in a 3D format. So let’s try and get that working. The

10. 5:11

    music? None music. I’m prone to hypnotism, so I always get a bit worried about that last scene. It just sort of does this to me. But I think I’m with you, all right. So I think we can, we can see this, this essential importance of connections and, and the stuff in between, the relationships between things. And that’s what we want to focus on. This is the end in the heaven and earth pattern. And as we said, this is what we have when we get to Exodus 25 and we enter into the holiest of all, we read. And there I will meet with you and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat from between the two Caribbean, which are on the ark of the testimony.

11. 8:11

    This idea that the two are made one, the two Caribbean, the place in between. That’s the the place where where God wants to meet. And the word of God establishes this as a pattern. You know, as we reading, we, we, we see over and over again, it’s all going to happen in the middle. It’s going to happen in between and this is a very powerful message.

12. 8:30

    I’m going to share a slide to try and summarise it so that I can do it quite fast. But in the end of the day, you might not be able to read it. So let me go through it. So just, and I’m sure you’ve got many, many more examples, when you start looking out for words like between, in the middle, in the midst, all over Scripture, we see this idea from the beginning. In the garden of Genesis, we have the tree of life. In the midst of the garden, something’s happening in the centre that’s really significant. And so the steam plays itself out. For example, when Genesis 15, when Abraham was beginning to make covenant with God, he set up all the altars and put the animals on the altars.

13. 9:09

    And the way that God’s presence was revealed is that the Spirit of God as a flaming fire came. It says in between the pieces, Genesis 15, verse 17. And then of course we know the story we’ve already spoken about when God revealed himself to Moses, not only was he the burning Bush, he was in the midst of the burning Bush, in the centre of the Bush.

14. 9:32

    God said when when he was going to dwell with the children of Israel, when they were going through the Exodus journey, that he would do that through the Tabernacle. And we read in, in, in Numbers that he says you will dwell in your camps and I will dwell in the midst in, in the camps, in the midst of which I dwell. So there’s another emphasis of the centre. We we’ve referred to Exodus 25.

15. 9:55

    And then in Deuteronomy, it also talks about the fact that when they were at Mount Sinai and God revealed himself, that he revealed himself, Moses says, spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. And so this theme, and there are many, many other examples. It’s grabbing our attention to. There’s that, that place in between in the centre where, where, where the significance is.

16. 10:18

    And of course, what’s so beautiful about it is we know, as we’ve already been saying all the time, that that and that joining that middle is, is, is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And so it’s not a coincidence that that in that pivotal scene that we can imagine in our minds where where the atonement is being realized, that Jesus is described as being in between. We read in John 19, there they crucified him and with him two others, one on each side and Jesus in the middle. And it’s later on that Paul is going to pull from that idea and we’ll, we’ll refer to the passage of it later on and show how Jesus is the one that is in the middle of the two. He’s the one that, that, that, that brings the two together. So that’s a beautiful example of that. But here’s a passage also that expresses the same idea. And we, we, we often quote this passage from Matthew chapter 18 for where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.

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    It’s interesting. I think we often misuse that passage, or perhaps we don’t use it to its highest intentional level of, of importance. In other words, we often quote that passage when we gather together to say that Jesus is here with us because there are two or three or more of us. But the problem with using it in that respect is that Jesus can be with you when you’re on your own.

18. 11:44

    Jesus doesn’t need to be with you because they’re two or three. So what? What is he really saying? He’s saying when there’s more than one of you and there’s two and there’s three and there’s four, there is a need for relationship. I am the connection. I am the one who’s in the midst.

19. 11:59

    I am the one that connects you to you, to you. I am the and for all of you, and I think that’s that’s another example of Jesus as the valve, Jesus as the nail, Jesus as the connector. And so all of these examples are just so powerful in bringing us to this point where where it doesn’t matter what conversation we have, I believe if it doesn’t bring us back to the Lord Jesus Christ.

20. 12:25

    As Jesus said, you study the Scriptures and you think they’re in his life, but they speak of me. And if we can’t bring our attention at the end to the one who provides life to us, our living Saviour, Christ in you the hope of glory. And so we do read in Ephesians, as I mentioned, two and at verse 14.

21. 12:45

    For he himself is our peace, He who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation. He’s the connector for all duality. And then that beautiful verse which we will just keep quoting so that we remember it, Ephesians one, verse 10, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times, he will gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth in him, Jesus Christ, the great connector. So this makes us think even more pragmatically about our own relationships and how we view things. Because do we view the world as a bunch of objects and things, a whole bunch of people sitting in this room, a whole bunch of objects out there?

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    Or is our focus on the relationship that we have with that object or the relationship that we have with that person? Because if that’s where the true reality is, then that is very significant. And the truth is, I think we do live in a world where actually we do focus a lot on objects.

23. 13:55

    It’s partly because it’s easy to do that the objects are the visible things. They are the things that we can use our senses to detect this, this place in between. It’s, it’s not tangible. It’s the heaven part of our world. And so it’s sometimes difficult for us to live life in that way. In a sense, the the part that connects us, the relationship is the eternal invisible that Paul refers to. Because all visible things eventually in that sense, especially in the old world and the old earth and the old heavens pass away, but the relationship is able to remain. But you know, even in the material world, it is true that actually we understand.

24. 14:38

    It’s the relationship that’s the reality. You know, when when a guy like Isaac Newton began to make a breakthrough in science, it was really his ability to see that the way that we need to understand objects is in relation to others. And I’m not going to give you a full science lesson, like a math lesson we had in part one.

25. 14:55

    But I know that you all learnt Newton’s first three laws. And Newton’s laws are trying to express how one object relates to another object, how an apple doesn’t exist on it’s own. It has a relationship to the Earth and we call that gravity. And once as, as as humans, we could understand that actually it’s the relationship between objects that’s really important.

26. 15:17

    Well, that’s when science began to really start developing. And even Isaac Newton hadn’t really understood how important relationships were because along came Albert Einstein. He said, my friend, you’ve only just scratched the tip of the iceberg. Because when we look at, at at the relationships between things at the universal scale and at the micro scale, we have relativity and impact at all levels. And so we have Einstein’s theory of relativity. So, so even within the material world, everything is laid up such that nothing is, is real in and of itself, but rather in terms of its relationship.

27. 15:57

    And you know, I think one of the great ways to also demonstrate this and get us thinking about it is with music. You know, you might think, well, music is a whole bunch of notes, each note in a way representing a thing. But we know that music well, we’re told by the the famous French composer that music is actually really made by the space between the notes and I would add the relationship between the notes and the chords, because it’s, it’s when those spaces and those, those relationships are correct that we get the kind of harmony and peace that really matters.

28. 16:36

    But when they’re not working well, then we get dissonance and we get noise. And that’s really the difference. The space between notes allow them to resonate, reverberate and reach their full measure of expression. Without the space, noise and cacophony would result. And I think there’s a lot of ideas just to think about there because it’s going to help us as we think about the spaces and the relationships that we have with everyone around us and indeed with the physical things of this world. Because we need to be focused on those spaces and and exactly what kind of space do we have between the things that we engage with in the world today?

29. 17:18

    You know, if the world was just about understanding an object as best and, and, and not worrying about the relationship. Well, that’s what the scientific world of today has really done a good job of doing. We, we study a particular object, we learn everything we can about it. We try and get the most we can out of it.

30. 17:33

    So we can use a metal to the best best of its ability. We can use any particular created item to the to the best of its ability, But we have gone nowhere in trying to understand how all of those things relate together. Because if we had, we would live in a world that has peace and happiness and contentment. And we’ve got no closer to that because we haven’t really naturally come to deal with the true reality where it is found in relationship.

31. 18:06

    So when we think about that space between US and another person, that relationship that’s so essential where where in fact the reality of the two of us is found, let’s just talk and we’re going to come back to the word of God. But let’s just think about how that operates in in our world.

32. 18:23

    And I want to think about our consciousness first of all. So Can you imagine that there’s the blue dot, which represents you and the orange dot, which represents another person. And a great way to think about it is that the space between you and the other person, which we’ll call your relationship, is like a big pup. That’s the opportunity of, of the information that can move between you and the other thing or person. The reality is at any point in time, you’re filtering out most of what can come from that object to yourself, from that person to yourself.

33. 18:57

    We talked about the importance of pattern matching. Right now, all of you are sitting there very passively, but hopefully you’re listening. Even though you are passive right now, your bodies are receiving millions of data points through your eyes, through your ears, through your touch, through your smell, and some people might be chewing gum through your taste. Millions of data points are coming into your body. The reality is what your brain has to do is immediately filter that.

34. 19:28

    It can’t deal. It doesn’t have the capacity, and so it immediately filters all of that information. And in addition to that, in respect of your consciousness, in order for you to make logical sense of what’s happening around you, which is a part of the way we understand your consciousness, It converts it into thoughts that are based on words. And most of you, if you’re like me, only have about 2000 words that you’re thinking.

35. 19:53

    So you’re taking millions of data points and you’re reducing it finally to 2000 words. And so we actually understand that we live in a world which is sometimes referred to as the user illusion. In other words, we construct reality. When we look, we construct reality, we construct reality. And obviously that works for us.

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    And we’ve spoken about how important it is to patent match, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to exist with millions of data points. But at the same time, we begin to understand that this can be a limitation. In terms of our relationship with other people and in terms of how we view things, we can be stuck in the wrong patterns.

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    We can not allow other people to reveal themselves completely to us because what we do is we go around categorising people. You know, I haven’t had the opportunity to really explore the part between the 300 or so other people here. We just unfortunately haven’t had the time. And so I can look around this room and just use my categorization to say, oh, I think I know what that person’s like. I think I know what that person’s like. I have no idea because there’s an opportunity of relationship between each and every one of us. We’re told that we probably filter out about 95% when we construct that conscious reality. And the second point is this of the 95% that’s ultimately filtered out into our conscious reality, and a lot of that still may remains present in our subconscious. And This is why we’ve also been stressing through these series of talks that our experience with the spiritual and with one another is not just the things we can reduce to words. It’s not just the things that we are consciously aware of. And that is why not becoming abstracted and disconnected from our body and virtual, that is the risk in our spiritual participation, in our discipleship. We need to become activated because all of that’s building up who we are.

38. 21:53

    And the same is true in our relationships. It’s a great risk for our young people. They’re living in a world that’s becoming more and more abstracted and virtual. They think friends are virtual people on Facebook and Twitter and TikTok. Those aren’t friends. They’re not spending time with that space. That pipeline between them can truly be developed. So these are the risks that we face in the, in the world that we’re living in today.

39. 22:18

    And The thing is this, when you understand that the space between you and the other person can be so much bigger that that, that you, you retrain yourself. And we’ve been talking about this to truly look clearly, try and try and reset your vision on something. Try and reframe it that the way you look at things changes the way those things present themselves to you. And this is particularly true of people we know well, like our wives and our husbands and our parents and our siblings and our brothers and friends we have in the meeting because they’re the ones we’ve put into a box, because we think we’ve worked them out.

40. 22:56

    And it’s difficult to to go back to that pub and say, you know, what is it that I can still explore about that person? What potential do they have that, that, that, that, that, that I can bring out of them and that they can bring out of me? And just as a demonstration of this, this is the second time I’ve done, I’m doing this in my life and it worked the first time. So we’re going to demonstrate to you why relationship is so important.

41. 23:20

    Why it is because at the end of the day, and I’ve, I’ve used this term over and over again, It’s in that, that the sense that there’s so much more to discover in the other person that surprise and beauty lies. And, and there seems to be this essential relationship with, between beauty and goodness, these things that we, we find so difficult to describe and surprise. So let, let, let me try and demonstrate this to you. We’re going to do 2 exercises here. Each is going to be 30 seconds long. I hope you can all be activated and participate. I’m getting my stopwatch ready.

42. 23:52

    So the first is very simple, where you are in your seats, no dancing required. You have 30 seconds to from when I say go to tickle yourself. Now you can tick yourself wherever you know you might be ticklish. Maybe it’s under your feet. Maybe it’s under your arms. Sometimes some people are ticky. My wife is.

43. 24:09

    She’s not chess. She’s ticklish by her ears. Only you. You must tickle yourself. Next 30 seconds. We’ve begun. Only yourself. No talking. Focus on your tickling. You’ve got 10 seconds more to go. I see some have given up tickling themselves. Try tickle yourself.

44. 24:39

    You’re obviously not very well practiced at this. I’m very disappointed in your tickling skills. Not very good. The alarm is up, so that’s finished now. Second phase, second, 30 seconds. Everybody must participate. Now you have 30 seconds to tickle the person next to you. Let’s start. Go. Tickle them wherever you can. Tickle them.

45. 25:05

    Under their feet, under their arms. Tickle them. Tickle. You still got 10 seconds left. Tickle. Look for someone not being tickled and tickle them

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    all, right? Time up, time up, time up, time up. Well, what’s the difference? The first time you all know your body so well, you had an opportunity to tickle yourself and you’re all sitting there stoically as if there was nothing to be happy about. Suddenly somebody else there is opportunity to tickle you.

47. 25:57

    And the whole room’s senses were lifted. They were shrinking and howling and happiness and some sadness perhaps. And you know, we laugh at this. This particular experiment has been conducted and psychiatrists have written academic papers trying to understand why this difference should exist. And, and one of the, the powerful conclusions that many of these psychiatrists have come to is that what’s going on is when the other person gets the opportunity to tickle you, it’s the surprise that’s really heartening your senses. It’s like, you know where you should be ticklish, but maybe they’re going to go somewhere else or maybe they’re going to go just to the spot where you will be ticklish. So all of that’s going through your mind and suddenly heightens your skin sense and everything gets heightened. And I think that’s just an incredibly beautiful analogy for us to realize that surprise and beauty is only possible because you can have relationship.

48. 26:52

    And how much will we invest in opening up that relationship? Just one last bit of of science before we bring it back to the scripture. I’m sure many of you have been exposed to the idea of left and right brain. And I think it’s kind of been overused. If you’re in in business like me, you’ll often get some sort of management consultant talking about how we need right brain people and left brain people. And the right brain people are creative and the left brain people are your accountants.

49. 27:19

    And look, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s definitely some indirect value in a lot of those comments. But I’ve I’ve been exposed. And I think some of you may have read the work of Ian Mcgilchrist to he’s probably one of the leading crossover psychologists, biologists in the field of understanding our brain. And he’s written a number of books, one called the Divided brain, another called the matter with things, the other called the Master and the emissary.

50. 27:44

    I encourage you to read them, but they about this thick, so I’ll summarise it. And one of the things that’s interesting is he says, you know, in many ways we’ve actually been quite crude in the way that we’ve actually understood the two hemispheres of the brain. There are indeed two hemispheres of the brain and they do indeed perform very different functions.

51. 28:04

    So the left hemisphere of the brain, as you can see in the picture over there, is the part of the brain that actually deals with what we’ve been talking a lot about now, pattern recognition at a small level, classifying objects, focusing on things. So it’s that part of our brain that really is able to see things, categorize them, keep things simple. And it’s a very important part of our living because our left brain is that part of our brain that acts quickly when we need to act quickly.

52. 28:34

    So it doesn’t ask any questions. It just sees, Oh my word, that looks like a line I’ve got to run. And that all happens quicker than I said it. So your left brain is very focused on things. The right brain is actually the part of our brain that is integrated. It looks at the big picture.

53. 28:53

    It tries to to understand how all the things relate to each other. It’s the part of our brain that actually deals with relationships, how things relate together. It’s interesting what Ian Mcgilchrist says is that if you look at culture and society over the last few 100 years, we’ve actually become a dominated left brain society. As a result, as we were saying of science, as a result of our obsession of things and the study of science, we’ve become a society who actually focuses primarily on things using our left brain.

54. 29:30

    We spend less time using our right brain and seeing how everything relates together, how things relate to each other, how the relationships operate together. I think that’s a very, very powerful idea. In fact, his book called The Master and the Mystery is basically saying we need both parts of our brain. God wouldn’t have designed us like that if it wasn’t true.

55. 29:53

    But in actual fact, we need our right brain to be our master. It’s the only part that can keep all things together for us so that we can see the full pattern as opposed to our left brain, which we need as a servant at the direction of our right brain. So all of these ideas are are hope helping you to see how important it is for us to focus on the reality of relationship and to put our energy into that space and our focus. So I want to now draw your attention to Genesis. We keep going back to this record of Genesis and, and seeing in this record of Genesis the pattern as we saw of heaven and earth and so many other ideas. And I just love going back to Genesis one and two because every time I go there with a different lens, I find something that I’ve never seen before.

56. 30:44

    And I want to show you that right back in the creation record of Genesis relationship is highlighted. So let me let me try and illustrate that to you. So you don’t need to turn up there. Here is the first creative act of Genesis. We’ve already spoken about it and we’ve seen that everything that God created started with words.

57. 31:04

    We call that heaven, the pattern of heaven. And so the first thing we noticed when we read the the creation record in Genesis is that it always starts with God saying something. For example, God said, let there be light. So that that is the heaven. That is the idea. And then there was light, the physical light that we can see and we can actually measure its speed and the photons, etcetera, etcetera.

58. 31:27

    And so that’s the earth, the material, and then there was light. But here’s the next interesting point because you’ve got to be curious. It could have just finished there and then he could have moved on to the next day and the next day. But it doesn’t. What does it say? It said and God saw the light that it was good.

59. 31:45

    And that word saw means to observe and perceive. So, so it’s like you, you, you, you make something, you speak, you design, you make it. You don’t just walk away, you come back and you perceive and you observe it. This is the concept, the, the original concept of relationship. And having observed having related to the thing that he has made, he then says it is good.

60. 32:10

    And so we learned two things. We learned that relationship is essentially in the creation, and secondly, that goodness, whatever that might be, this beautiful idea of to do good was one of the phrases that was emphasized by John in his talks. This idea of goodness is found in our relationship with the thing. And so I don’t need to go through the rest of the record. You’ll see that that pattern keeps flowing, but interestingly enough, it actually gets deeper, especially when he gets to creating the most important part of His creation, you and I. And so he says, let us make man in our image a special part of creation, a part of creation that I will be able to relate to in a way like no other part of creation. And what does he do?

61. 33:01

    He creates man, heaven, earth. And then not only does it say that he comes back and looks, but he enters into conversation because now he has a creation that has his image and that has the word and can understand. And so he says be fruitful and multiply and many other things. He enters into relationship.

62. 33:21

    And I always love the way that once that has happened, he turns around and says it was very good. It’s like there’s another layer of goodness now that this new relationship has been set up. And that is the first relationship involving man. It’s God and man, the key relationship of Genesis 1. And then what’s really interesting is that we get another relationship in Genesis 2. And at verse 18 God said it is not good that Adam should be alone.

63. 33:52

    I will make him a help meet for him. And so we now have the second relationship, Genesis 1, the relationship between God and Adam or man or human beings and Genesis 2, the relationship between man and woman. And I love the terminology. I will make him a help meet again, this idea of the connection, the help meet, the coming together. So we can see that relationship is at the centre. We’ve seen those passages.

64. 34:21

    We can see that it’s there in Genesis. And so it it cannot be a surprise to us that when all the clever men, the scribes and the Pharisees came to Jesus with essentially this question, if I might paraphrase, what is the most important thing in all creation? And they came because they were men and women that loved to focus on things. They loved to focus on specific commandments and how certain things looked and how they appeared. And they had their list of commandments and they wanted to trick Jesus to choose one of the objects over the other objects so that they could then tell him he was wrong. They said, Master tell us of all the myriad of commandments, which is the greatest and I want to show you how Jesus moves in on relationship.

65. 35:15

    We read if you want to go to it. You know the passage well, I guess Matthew chapter 22, Matthew 22. Jesus replied verse 34. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. By the way, if that isn’t an activated disciple, that’s whole worship. This is the first and greatest commandment and the 2nd is like it.

66. 35:39

    Love your neighbour as yourself. Love. Love is abundant relationship oriented to the good. That’s a great way of seeing it. Love is the Bible word for relationship. Relationship that is oriented towards God. We are developing those relationships this week. We developed them throughout our life and there are two vital ones says Jesus.

67. 36:06

    Your relationship essentially between earth and heaven and your relationship with one another. And Jesus is saying, not only is this actually what reality is, this is what I have come to do because he says in verse 40, all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. And every word in the Bible is always important.

68. 36:30

    So you always got to look with their curiosity and say, why didn’t he just say, well, that’s the summary of the law and the prophets or that’s it, or some other thing. No, he uses a very specific word. He says all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. We always think he had a coat hanger. No, he wasn’t talking about a coat hanger. Acts chapter 5, verse 30, The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead, whom you killed by Hainium on a cross. You see, the day is coming where you are going to see the reality of relationship in love, and you’ll see a man on a cross, and that man will demonstrate in that act the love of God and the love of neighbour.

69. 37:15

    He’ll look down upon all those people who are railing him, who are cursing him. We were beating him. And he will say, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And he will look up to his Father and say, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And so the Lord Jesus Christ is that perfect example of the relationship, the reality that we are cultivating.

70. 37:45

    And not only is he the example, He is the love that we seek. Jesus has opened the way and he is the way. He is the one who can develop that agape love in each and every one of us. And so as we look around this room and we bring our attention to the relationship that we have with each and every one of us, just just what does that connection look like? How can we make it more abundant? How is it that I can draw out the the potential of my neighbour?

71. 38:18

    How is it that I can make them be the best that they can be in orientation towards God? We get lots of advice from the word of God. Poor says in Philippians, Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in loneliness of mind. Let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look not only for your own interest but for the interests of others.

72. 38:43

    Imagine if we could truly walk around imagining these. I always imagine pup connections between people. And when we make connection with them, the first thing we do is we listen because we don’t want to fool the pup up with ourselves. And secondly, we don’t just make assumptions. We truly listen to what they’re saying. Is there some surprise that we haven’t heard before? Something new that we can help to cultivate, to make them as beautiful as they can be?

73. 39:09

    Paul says in Romans 12, don’t just pretend to love others. Verse nine Really. Love them, hate what is wrong, hold tightly to what is good. Love each other with genuine affection, taking delight in honouring each other. Husbands and wives, isn’t that something to work on? Find out that beauty in your partner and honour her for it.

74. 39:33

    Bring it out. That’s your job. It’s like the heaven and earth. You’re there to cultivate that potential out of them, to make them all that they can be. That’s what love is. That’s that abundant relationship opening our eyes to those spaces between. In Colossians 3, we read this beautiful passage. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another.

75. 40:06

    If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. We have come full circle. We have come to the vath, the nail, the thing that bonds heaven and earth together. Love. The perfect love as found in Jesus, The perfect love that we are asked to practice and develop in our discipleship.

76. 40:39

    And that is really what bonds heaven and earth together. If you’d bear with me, I thought I would just try and summarise some of the things I know that we have gone through so much in these classes. I really appreciate your patience. As I said, this has been quite difficult for me to try and share all these ideas.

77. 40:57

    And it’s a journey. Many people have given me feedback, which has been amazing. And so I thought I’d just try and summarise some of the the highlights and the points that I’d like to leave you with. It’ll be three or four slides, and then we’ll be at the end. Heaven and earth is the purpose and pattern of all reality.

78. 41:15

    Patterns help us make sense of that reality. The Bible and all creation reveals itself as a fractal pattern with microcosms and macrocosms. Patterns reveal purpose and connection. Pattern recognition helps us to manage the balance between order and chaos, simplicity and complexity. The patterns of heaven and earth are deeply connected. Be careful not to become too simplistic, either in your approach to the Bible, or laugh by just seeing things on a linear basis. Understanding the heaven and earth fractal encourages us to actually be activated disciples, not to be disconnected from our bodies, and to become abstracted and virtual. We must align our patterns to the heavenly patterns of truth, and we can discover those patterns by doing what we’ve done this week, by opening up the Word of God and looking for those patterns and then seeing them again in the world and earth around us.

79. 42:16

    Reality is, as we’ve said, revealed in duality. Heaven and earth is that foundational duality. The overall purpose is for heaven and earth to be joined with earth, for heaven to be joined with earth. That’s in the future, but it’s something that we need to be doing every day and looking for every opportunity to fulfil that purpose. Heaven gives purpose and meaning to earth. It anoints earth with purpose.

80. 42:42

    Heaven draws out the potential of earth. Earth multiplies and amplifies the truth of heaven, helps us to understand heaven. Earth allows us to experience heaven blessing, glory. Transformation takes place when heaven is divinely joined with earth and Jesus is the and the valve that binds all heaven and earth. Worship and natural symbols allow us to become activated.

81. 43:13

    Symbols are things, times, and practices, practices that connect heaven to earth. A symbol is not just a visual aid or a metaphor. It’s an opportunity that we have to participate and to have transformative connection. We activate symbols when we are intentional, present and curious. Sunsets, rainbows, mountains, heaven and earth patterns are everywhere.

82. 43:41

    Activated disciples open their eyes, open their ears to heaven and earth connections. We don’t miss Beth thou if we can, or the burning Bush. Be careful of thinking that the spiritual is only ideas, thoughts. The binding of heaven and earth is to experience the power of the spiritual. Worship practice is not a work but a love response to draw near to God.

83. 44:07

    We don’t worship to be saved, we worship to deepen our relationship with the Father and Jesus Christ, which I believe is faith. Worship is a journey up the mountain from earth to heaven. Whole worship is activated worship using all our soul, all our heart and our mind in worship. Symbols help to activate that worship. God has provided a way of worship, the Tabernacle template that we can follow.

84. 44:34

    Prepare, Empty yourself, sacrifice, humility, receive, meet. Worship begins with sacrifice, emptying ourselves so that we can receive. And finally, the true transformative power is in between, in the middle. Jesus is our middle, our between. He has opened the way and is the way. Only through him can the two be made one. All reality is in fact in the space between the relationship. If we see only the thing and on our relationship with it, we lose the opportunity for surprise and beauty. Your consciousness is limited.

85. 45:18

    Learn to open the space in between and draw out the potential of the other. See the whole and it’s relations, not just the parts. Love is the abundant relationship oriented toward heaven. So the summary, Love up, love towards God, and love across love towards man. The solution? Jesus, our bond of perfection.