I’m Brent Snyder. I write letters and essays about learning to live from Christ, who is already our life. These writings began in friendship with Ray and continue in the ordinary questions of prayer and life together.
Read my story · Why Gaining Electrum?
A Little of My Story
When I was young, I spent time among believers in Isla Vista and Santa Barbara. I remember waking to roommates singing. I remember meals with families, prayer before practical conversations, and fellowship that continued in kitchens, cars, parks, and along the beach. The meetings mattered, but life together was happening before anyone arrived at a meeting. Those memories have stayed with me. I know memory can soften the difficult parts of the past, yet I still recognize something real in what we shared.
I have also spent decades hearing and learning about God’s purpose, Christ as life, and the church. Much of that teaching helped me. I am grateful for the people who gave themselves to it. At the same time, I have become troubled by how easily we can speak accurately about a life we are no longer living. I know that danger in myself. I can explain abiding and still find that my mind has taken over the work of my spirit.
These letters began because I needed to speak honestly to Ray, a brother and friend. Writing to one person makes it harder for me to hide inside an argument. I have to remember his face, our history, and the affection between us. I have to leave room for him to disagree with me. Some of what I write is sharp because the loss I feel is sharp. I hope the affection remains visible even then.
I write during the ordinary hours of my life, often in the pauses of a working day. An idea will return while I am driving or sitting quietly, and I will try to follow it. Sometimes it is a memory. Sometimes it is a question about prayer, a familiar phrase, or a meeting where everyone spoke about Christ and I left hungry for Him. I do not always know where the thought will lead. That is one reason these are letters.
You will find questions here about ministry, authority, Christian vocabulary, prayer, and the ways we gather. Beneath them is one concern: whether we are living from Christ, who is already our life. I want to know Him inwardly, in the quiet where there is nothing to perform, and among people who can be honest and available to one another. I want the church to have room for that life to grow.
I am still learning. I have my own habits, loyalties, and reactions to bring into the light. If you read these letters, I hope you will hear a man learning, with an old friend, to live from the Source already within us. Perhaps some of the questions will help you recognize what you, too, have been hungry for.
Brent
My simple desire…
To know my Lord Jesus Christ in His depths. To walk according to the Spirit and to grow as a branch from the true vine, being filled with His glory and expressing the One New Man in all things. To live in the oneness already ours in Christ, sharing His life and nature, and bearing fruit that declares in a visible way God’s unsurpassed resurrection life.
Why Gaining Electrum?
“…and from the midst of it there was something like the sight of electrum, from the midst of the fire.”
— Ezekiel 1:4, Recovery Version
Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver. In biblical typology, gold can picture the divine nature and silver redemption. Together they give me a picture of the God who has redeemed us and given us Himself. Gaining Him means learning to live from the One already within us.
We can spend our lives speaking about God while scarcely living from the divine life, Zoe, already ours in Christ. We learn His attributes, explain His purpose, and defend what we believe. We attend meetings and develop a vocabulary. Yet beneath all this, the same independent person may still be supplying the living.
I know how easily this happens. I can write about Christ while living from my own mind. I can speak about surrender while protecting the very place He wants to touch. I can become occupied with whether my writing succeeds and lose the inward turning that gave it any life.
He already dwells within me, yet I can live as though I were independent of Him. In the place where my thoughts begin, where my reactions rise, and where I decide what matters, I can still rely upon myself. I may offer Him my activities while treating Him as someone outside me whose help I need. But that picture obscures our union.
When I speak of God becoming us, I mean His life finding expression through our humanity. We remain ourselves; we do not become the source of divinity. Yet His genuine life is already ours by birth, and we are learning to live from what He has given.
His patience rises where my patience has ended. His love reaches someone I would have avoided. A quietness comes that my arguments could never produce. I am still the person standing there, yet something of Christ is finding expression through me.
This is astonishing to me.
And this is why the fire in Ezekiel matters. Electrum appears within it. God’s presence searches beneath what I present to others. He reaches my need to be right, my desire to be recognized, and my confidence in what I understand. Even spiritual knowledge can become something I clutch because it gives me an identity.
The burning can feel like losing myself. But there is a discovery within that loss. I begin to live from Christ where I had previously depended upon myself.
Gaining Electrum expresses this longing. I want to live fully from the divine life already ours in Christ. I want this treasure to find expression in ordinary moments, when there is no meeting, no audience, and nothing impressive to say.
Can I rest in the union already ours? Can I release my determination to supply everything?
These writings return to that question. My hope is that we will yield more deeply to the One already within us, until what another person touches in our humanity is something of God.
