The Birth of the new Church

Facebook toing and froing yesterday
Chris Welch
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UK pastor/apostle - How're you right now doing church, Chris ?· Like
Chris Welch Failing on every level of your score sheet...just like Jesus at the cross
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Chris Welch As I said...now is exactly like it was in 1973- 4 in Amersham when my Dad was asking me the same question.
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Chris Welch Although it seems weird talking like this...anybody remember 1975 and 6? The Kansas City Shepherd's Conference, the Lakes and the Dales Bible Weeks...and the angels? And the reports of angels in the Yorkshire Press? I tell you I don't mind failing at all!!!! LOL

I was recalling 1973 and 4. Marcus Roberts had had a significant encounter with USA Christians from Gene Edwards' Galeta fellowship.  I think he met some in Falmer University Brighton, then he exhuberantly shared some of Watchman Nee's material with us.  I have shared the effect of Graham Pulkingham on Amersham Baptist Church in what was quite a wry encounter of two species.
Graham Pulkingham grabbed our attention because the Fisherfolk came almost direct from Houston to do a week at our school, Dr Challoner's Grammar School Amersham.
But also Graham's talk to the church really got our notice. It was the anointing with which he stated the Church is the Body of Christ.  It had the same cutting edge that Jesus did when He stated to Nazareth Synagogue: " Today is this scripture fulfilled in your midst."

 I have shared of the 1970s origins of the church Marcus and I eventually ended up in. Long before we arrived Jorge Pradas had challenged the charismatic prayer fellowship that met once a month in Emsworth: "Are you a fellowship or are you the Church?"

It's specificity of believing.

So yesterday I was recalling the same kind of lull that we are in now, but 40 years ago. Then it seemed things changed like a whirlwind two years later. The Dales Bible Week pinned some of us
to the wall. It was in a cow's shed in Harrogate Showground The irony wasn't lost on us as Ern Baxter led several thousand of us in the prayer of Mary....Lord I don't understand but be it unto me according to your Word.

Now we can articulate what we were doing.
It was specificity.
It was believing in our heart and confssing with our mouth that Jesus Christ, the same awesome Jesus Christ was being born in us. We were believing ON HIS LIFE.

In genesis 3 Adam believed OFF his life in a titanic act that still affects us.
He began believing in the lie of the independent self.

By being specific and nailing our colours...we are in fact reversing history,
History is being reversed on the fulcrum of the New Creation in Christ.

Therefore if any man is in Christ he is become a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come. Our active believing on everything Christ did IS THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMES THE WORLD.
If we become passive, if we like Peter on the waves, start to consider for a moment what on earth am I doing?  we will sink. This is not the victory.

THIS IS THE VICTORY even our faith. But we can pray, Lord help my unbelief.

Adam and Eve's little movement of reaching for fruit was VAST.
The Jesus Move taking their first corporate steps to nail their specificity to the mast was VAST.


And this is our believing.
STILL.
And now more defined through Norman Grubb after the book Yes I am.

I am Jesus Christ in his Chris Welch vinebranch form going on.
I don't build stone churches.
I don't seek to continue any tradition of man
I don't owe any man that task.
I am a free man in Christ.
But it IS the faith of Jesus Christ operating in me.

And now, as we have received the eyesalve of Revelation
we see God as the source of the ONLY LIFE in the Universe.
We can perceive a corporate derived life....since the devil
himself lives by God's life as well, but has twisted it in on itself
as a self for self life....so yes we see a derived life....

but now we keep our single eye open for what God is doing
with me, with everyone.
Willing and working for His good pleasure.

This is the New church.
Life itself.

We are not building oldstyle churches, oldstyle meetings.
We are telling you how you can live God's Life, the only real life
today in you. Sure we will gather as we eventually did in great numbers
40 years ago.....and when we gather it will be more specific than at any time since Adam. For now we are at last grasping what gathering in His Name means.

(Original Facebook post)

It took three whole generations for God to get His package of stuff into Abraham Isaac and Jacob and then this was rolled out into a "Family" Nation. But this in itself was still quite an outer form of what He was going for.
As I wrote this morning, on a huge scale, the Jews were used to bring in the Outer Court ministry. That God existed. That God wanted to bless and heal. That God was Father and wanted a relationship with a people. But it was Jesus whose job it was to introduce the next big stage. As we can see in history the last 2000 years has been a very mixed affair. Church has been incredibly like the Jews knowledge of God, with people more caught up with Law than relationship.

God is continually replanting and pruning His work. One way to think of Church history is as a "transition" between Law and Spirit. it began free , but even in Acts we can see seeds of religion wanting to take the church captive. The church itself has gone into the ground and died.....the first fruits of resurrection have happened with Luther's rediscovery of salvation by faith....and gradually more and more has been restored. Having done Holy Place Christianity for 100 years God is taking the whole of His church into the most radical transition yet. We enter individually into a crisis that is like Romans 7 crashing in on us. Everything that we knew, thought, felt we owned is going up in smoke in an experience of the altar of incense.
If you like the forerunners were the 12 apostles who had to learn they couldn't do Christianity. It's a horrible time for our flesh, but we start to get our new identity.
Now if we thought charismatic churches were an improvement on evangelical churches....well that's nothing to the difference between what's coming now.
I went through this type of transition 40 years ago in Amersham. We knew we had more light, but everywhere was just denominational churches. So we withdrew for a few years refusing to play the Christian game and sure enough the Spirit sent in amazing men , mainly from America, who raised up the last generation of churches.
These are now wearing thin, and the Spirit is currently brooding to bring forth something completely new. Probably like Jesus and the disciples, it won't even look like church...it'll be more like living together.

Saints, Not Sinners No Condemnation: Romans 8:1 By Fred Pruitt

 Fred's Blog can be found here.
In Romans 8:1 Paul reaches critical mass. This little, innocuous, so well-used term, “no condemnation,” is like the great flash of light that precedes everything else in a nuclear detonation.

“No condemnation” is pure light out of heaven, exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. Each one of us in some degree knows this condemnation. This is far more than putting ourselves under a guilt trip, or a sort of “Christian” negative self image. 

This condemnation is from deeper sources than our own psychology or past behaviors.

It has nothing to do with anything about ourselves as we might think. 

It has nothing to do, for instance, with whether we are self-confident or self-doubting.

A confident person knows this condemnation as much as a timid person. We are not more condemned if we have made many more bad choices than others who have not made the same choices. Likewise, if we have made very few so called bad choices, we are not spared any measure of this condemnation. All of us share it in common measure. It is the inheritance we have been born into.  

“Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation…” Rom 5:18a  

The choice in the Garden was not about good and evil, or right and wrong. That is what the whole world lives in, but good and evil was not what the choice was about. It was about life and death. 

When they took the fruit, which was something to make them “wise as gods,” they chose death (having been warned beforehand), and immediately there appeared on the scene the precursor and continual reminder of death – condemnation, which has hounded all our heels ever since.

It is like a sense of impending doom, that I must hide, protect, hunker down, make boundaries, declare territories, to ward off certain death as long as is possible. Now it is very common in the beginning to get the gospel mixed up with right and wrong actions and thoughts, morals, world viewpoints, etc. 

We even get it mixed up with our up and down feelings, all of which ultimately become the wrong track. But it’s a wrong track which brings us here to this brink where great light is beginning to flood in as we stand ready to go into God's rest.

Now this condemnation, which means a continual sentence of death hanging over our heads, is the natural outcome of living by the law, of living by “knowing good and evil.” 

The law as outer precepts is impersonal. It has no mercy or grace. That is what happened with Adam and Eve. As soon as they partook of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, seeking something they saw outside themselves, which they were tricked into taking into themselves in order to become wise as gods, they instead instantly knew death and fear – condemnation! But we have been learning that now in the Cross we have been delivered from the law. 

Romans seven is about finding out that we cannot approach God by that path. The reason we cannot approach God down this road is because the law, though both inwardly and outwardly representative of Him, still is, in a sense, “one step removed” from God. It is not He Himself. 

The Law expresses the nature of God, yet it is not God. There simply is no set of standards that could be written, much less applied and obeyed, that could possibly equalize the created with the Creator. Paul said the law, “was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.” (Gal 3:19, 20) In other words, the law is separation. 

Under the law we are one step removed from God and always remain so. 

Who is sufficient for these things? 

The vast majority of the Church of Christ through the centuries has been stuck right here in this limbo. 

We cannot keep ourselves from sin,

and cannot propel ourselves into the fullness of spiritual life.

The veil that divides us (condemnation – Gen 3:6-10) continually remains. The veil is there because of the law and the flesh which tries to keep the law. The law presupposes the separate self to obey it. And that self, which in its false separateness can only hear the law as if it is coming from outside itself, is bound to both the demands of the law and to the separateness in which to do them. The law demands that the person fulfill precepts which are descriptions of God’s own life as He is. In order to do that one would have to either be like God, or else be God. 

The first, to be “like Him,” is impossible, even if we were to have, as we say, “His help.” One cannot recreate or imitate the Eternal. It’s the most absurd thought that ever came into the temporal universe. We’ve all tried that. 

The second, to “Be Him” is likewise impossible, but still the only recourse left after we exhaust the first. Here we find our final answer. We have found to the uttermost we cannot be like Him, and we certainly know we cannot BE Him, but now we see that Christ has come into us to be US! Not to make me be “like” Him, but He has come to live in “me” to be “me,” and in “you” to be “you.”He and I, one person together. 

And this is where our NO condemnation takes form in us. We’ve grown up all our lives knowing nothing but this condemnation. If others didn’t put it on us then we put it on ourselves. We know our guilt and we know what we deserve and now this Romans seven has brought it all sharply into focus. But here we find Paul at the end of Romans seven, finally coming to the resolution of his struggle, like a slow train, steadily getting there.

He has now taken us to the final hump, where he sees two operations, one the law of sin and death, or the law of the flesh, and the other the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This is an important juncture here, and the absolute crux of the matter. On one hand Paul seems to be saying that he is operating both laws simultaneously, walking in his flesh according to the flesh, and at the same time in his spirit walking according to the spirit. 

This seems a weak solution, since it still leaves him very much a double person all his days. 

Or on the other hand, Paul seems to be saying that he walks one way one moment – when he minds the flesh he walks according to the flesh – and another way another moment – when he minds the spirit he walks according to the Spirit. But how do we do that? I thought we’d gotten out of that whole “effort” thing. 

And we seem to be left there holding just that bag as we close out Romans seven. The problem seems to be at this point, if we were left just here, is that the solution is a sort of limbo, and the limbo is because we don’t really know which way this is going to go. But this “limbo” is really the final nail in the coffin of this self that thinks it is something in itself and has some capability to now operate the life of the Spirit. 

Who is sufficient for these things? The vast majority of the Church of Christ through the centuries has been stuck right here in this limbo. We cannot keep ourselves from sin, and cannot propel ourselves into the fullness of spiritual life. 

We seem perpetually to be “two,” not just between ourselves and God, but between our “flesh” self and our “spirit” self, or sin nature and righteousness nature, or however anyone describes it. The limbo is, now that we have realized this world-destroying truth about ourselves, we have not yet come to know fully the One with Whom we have to do, and having not yet come to know Him as He is, we have no framework from which to say or believe that we will ever be anything but this two-sided person.

There must be a rescue from outside ourselves to solve this. It is a scale-dropping revelation to see we are nothing in ourselves, and to see from an observer’s point of view, opening in our consciousness by the Spirit, how with the flesh we walk in the law of sin and death, and with the “mind” we walk according to the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

O how wonderful! Praise God, that’s how it is, and now we see it. 

But wait! What’s next? There must be more to this than knowing that fact, glorious as that is. Unless something further comes, in which this continual inescapable twoness (between God and myself and between myself and myself) is supplanted by a certain wholeness and eternal (continuous) oneness, I’m still stuck, because what I’ve learned through this valley of self-effort the Lord has taken me through, is that I can do nothing of myself. 

If that is so, then I likewise cannot operate the life of the Spirit, or by anything I know to do or say, keep myself in it. No, not ever! 

The conscious life of the Spirit begins when the Spirit opens our consciousness to the fact that it is forever, “Not I, but He,” and, “the Son can do nothing of Himself … the Father that dwells in me, He does the works!” The life of the Spirit is always operated by the Spirit, so that we are forever in weakness as the lambs of God. And it is only through this final hump here, which on one side perpetually appears as if we are two, sometimes flesh and sometimes spirit, and through this revelation which comes first as this blinding flash of NO CONDEMNATION that blots out everything else, we come through this portal onto the other side, where we know Christ and ourselves joined as one spirit, so that the life we are now living is Christ, and that He has now appeared here in our form to be in us our All, in all. 

We have gone finally now from the law, i.e., knowing “about” God, as if God is an object we could study and analyze, but now having gone over this hump, we come into knowing God, not as an “over there” person we can look at and touch, but as being mixed in union and oneness in that union through Jesus, so that inwardly we now know that we living is He living. One person. 

All our lives God has spoken to us and in us in various ways, drawing us to Himself in order to reveal the Son in us. Every moment God’s true heart has been saying to us, “You are my beloved son,” even if for years of our lives we could not hear the voice. But all that time He has unfailingly, little by little, in every circumstance and event of our lives, been perfectly drawing us into Himself in order to reveal in us His love. 

And now here, as we are coming into this life that is Christ’s LIFE being lived out and expressed in the world through and AS our humanity, the greatest shockwave ever hits our mortality, swallowing it up into life, as we for the first time hear in ourselves, the Word which God has eternally been saying of us, 

“You are released from death, 

and have passed forever into my Life. 

You may rest from your labors in Me, 

knowing that I will only be in you life everlasting.”

Suddenly everything in the universe turns around and changes. The music changes keys. You have found favor! There is One Who sees you and delights in you! How could that be for one such as I? Only God knows, but here you are, now delivered from the law, now delivered from the self-efforts of a falsely independent self and all its tricks and foibles, now delivered by great wonders out of darkness into light, here right now you are, called and chosen of God, to bear His name and light in fear and trembling into the world.

The handwriting of ordinances, which was against us, has been removed, nailed to His cross, and with it the condemnation it brought us all our lives has likewise gone back into the pit from which it came. 

And the word of NO condemnation is the portal, the announcement, of that which is to come, because condemnation is that last little bit that has been about “me,” and from now on we move away from “me” in the life of the Spirit. As we become settled in who we are – Christ living as us – we move into an entirely “for others” life, out of the spontaneity of the Spirit who keeps all these things happening. We no longer accept any such thing as "condemnation" because we are He living as us, who is always the "beloved Son," in whom the Father is always pleased. Next: We try to make it to Romans 8:2 and maybe beyond in our next discussion of “Saints, Not Sinners

Christ Living As Us by Sylvia Pearce

Let our hearts “be comforted being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2-3).
Copyright © Sylvia D. Pearce November 2009
All rights reserved
Published by:
Christ, Our Life Ministries Inc.
PO Box 43268
Louisville, Ky. 40299
502-245-4581
www.theliberatingsecret.org
www.spiritbroadcasting.net

Christ Living As Us

Sylvia Pearce

…”Behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
(II Corinthians 3:18)

Does this phrase, “Christ as us” sound like an elite club with a mantra in which we constantly chant “It is Christ, as us”, as some would say? Or, is this simply the Christian’s “obedience of faith” where by we agree with God’s Word and leap into His precious promises and inherit what is rightfully our as sons of God? Which one is it? Each person has to decide for himself. To the skeptic it seems like arrogant pride for anyone to proclaim such a rash statement; to the self-righteous it seems like an excuse to sin flagrantly; but to the weary and desperate ones who have tried with all their hearts yet failed to live the Christian life, it is fresh air.

We have finally inhaled the truth that has set us free from the treadmill of living our own lives. “Christ living as us.” How can that be?

Christians know the scripture that says, “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you the hope of glory” but Christ, as you??? Where is that in the bible? That is a fair question to ask, therefore, I intend to jump in and answer it.

Let me start by quoting some familiar verses. Before the Apostle Paul was saved he was on the road to Damascus when a blinding light from heaven shone down on him, and throwing him off his horse. He heard the voice of Jesus saying to him, “Saul, Saul why persecute thou me?” Why did Jesus say that Saul was persecuting him? Wasn’t he persecuting the church? Yet Jesus identified Himself as us, that is His body. Jesus didn’t just say it one time, He was constantly saying it. In Luke 10:16 He said, “He that hears you hears me; and he that despises you despises me; and he that despises me despises him that sent me;” He said in Matthew 10:40, “He that receives you receives me, and he that receives me receives him that sent me;” He also said in John 13:20, “He that receives whomsoever I send receives me; and he that receives me receives him that sent me;” And when Jesus prophesied of His coming in glory in Matthew 25:35-40 He said, “For I was an hungry, and you gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you clothed me: I was sick, and you visited me:

I was in prison, and you came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed [thee]? Or thirsty, and gave [thee] drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took [thee] in? or naked, and clothed [thee]? Or when saw thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto ME.”
Let me reiterate what Jesus is saying:
· Whoever persecute the brethren, persecute ME;
· Whoever hears you, hears ME;
· Whoever despises you, despises ME;
· Whoever receives you, receives ME;
· Whoever takes in strangers, takes in ME;
· Whoever feed you, feeds ME;
· Whoever gives you drink, gives it to ME;
· Whoever clothes you, clothes ME;
· Whoever was sick, nurses ME;
· Whoever visits you in prison, visits ME in prison.

Is it presumptuous thinking, or simple faith that causes us to believe Jesus when He declared such radical identity statements about us, the redeemed? For me, it was simple faith.

How can I not believe it when again and again Jesus identifies Himself as me. Some verses that really clinched it for me are in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 20-23, it says “…..He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places...And has put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him, that fills all in all.” Do we really see what this is saying? We, the body, are the fullness of Christ. I knew that He was our fullness, but this is actually saying that we, the body, are His fullness. Wow, that is too big to comprehend. Yet, how can a body not be its head, and how can a head not be its body? This scripture is saying that we, the body complete Christ! Stands to reason, a body can’t be complete without a head and a head can’t be complete without a body. It seems simple when you think of it like that.

Lets think about this for a minute….We had Satan (Eph. 2:1-3) living in us, and he was living his life out as us in our unsaved days. Of course we were all blinded to it, yet it was the human me who had to repent for my sins. Why did I have to repent for my sins when it was really Satan producing the sins as me? It was because I was yielding myself as an instrument of sin while all along it was Satan manifesting his sin nature through me as if it were me.

Even as a Christian, Paul says in Romans 7:17 that when he sins, it is not him doing the sinning, but sin/Satan dwelling in his bodily members. So, it is either Satan in our unsaved days living as us, and now in our saved days it is Christ living as us,[1] but we have never been a just me living as me.

How can we believe that Christ lives as us, when we see things that don’t look like Christ as us? Yet focusing on our behavior makes us crazy and certainly leads us away from believing what Christ says about us. Heb. 12:2 says “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Looking “unto” means to look away from something, and “looking unto” must mean to keep our inner eye on Christ and not on the circumstances, the appearances or on our behavior. Then, you might ask, doesn’t that justify our bad behavior? No earnest Christian wants to justify his bad behavior, we just want to be changed into the image of Christ and not do the bad behavior. The way not to sin is certainly not by trying hard not to sin, that doesn’t ever work. Then how can it be? Romans 8:29 says that “we are predestined to be conformed into the image of His Son”. How?? It is simply by beholding your reflection in a mirror, although, it has to be the right image in the mirror.
THE MIRRORING PROCESS
This painting by Caravaggio called “Narcissus” was painted in 1599. It depicts "narcissism" which is derived from a Greek myth. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of a nymph. As punishment, he was doomed to gaze at himself in a pool of water, and eventually he fell in love with his own reflection. Today’s psychologists have used his name to coin the term, “Narcissistic personality disorder.”
However this infatuation with oneself is termed, it is basically an extreme form of being self-absorbed. The Greek lad was so enamored with his own reflection that he, as the story goes, was turned into a flower, which today bears his name. This myth, like most, is pretty wearied, yet ironically the bible says that either Spirit transformation or discouragement and defeat depends entirely on how we image ourselves in a mirror.
Let us see what the Apostle James and the Apostle Paul both say about looking into the mirror. “If any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass; For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:23-25). And also here is what Paul says in II Corinthians 3:18, “We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Both James and Paul say that if we look into our own personal identity mirror and see just ourselves, like Narcissus, we will either have false hope in ourselves, or be discouraged and walk away because we have forgotten who we really are. But if we look into our own personal identity mirror and see Christ, who is the perfect principal of liberation, or behold, as Paul says, the glory of the Lord, then we will be transformed from glory to glory.
James says that if we want to be doers of the word we have to simply “look” into a mirror and see Christ as our perfect liberation and remain therein. While Paul says if we want to be transformed into the image of Christ, we have to be a “beholder” of the Lord’s glory in the looking glass. “Looking” and “beholding” is simple faith, however regrettably most stumble over the simplicity of it all.
I am reminded of how God dealt with the complaining children of Israel in Numbers 21:5-9. He sent fiery serpents among the people and many died. They cried out for help from Moses. Moses went to God for a solution. The Lord said to Moses, “Make you a fiery (brazen) serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looks upon it, shall live.” Of course the serpent represented Satan who was judged on the Cross (John 3:14; John 12:31). So, all the Israelites had to do was look and live, but some rebelliously would not look and died needlessly.
So it seems to me what these two Apostles are saying is that you have to behold Christ “face to face” in the mirror. Although, if you instead see just your own face, you will walk away defeated and unprofitable. But if you look into your mirror and not see yourself as just flesh, but instead by faith see Christ as you then you will see Christ “face to face.”
Paul also said in I Corinthians 13, the love chapter, that when spiritual adulthood comes we will see Christ “face to face.” Until then we will see in part and know in part, but when we see Christ “face to face” we will know even as we are known. The Lord already knows who we really are, but it is never good enough for God to know it, and we not know it (I Cor. 13:11-12). And we won’t know it until we see Christ in our mirror “face to face.” It is by a declaration of faith that we are transformed. Christ reveals Himself as the “inner man” who presses His glorious face out through our outer face of clay thereby actually living day by day, as us.
It is then that we walk as He walks, talks as He talks, live as He lives. I John 2: 6 says, “He that says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk, even as He walked.” And I John 4:17 says, “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because AS He is, so ARE we in this world.” The only way to be as Him in this world is for Christ, to manifest Himself as us.
There it is, we were an instrument of sin as Satan manifested his sins through us as if it were us, and now through the Cross we are joined to Christ and He is manifesting His righteous nature through us, as if it were us, when all along it is really He the Head as us, the body. Where else is Christ going to manifest Himself, if He lives in us? Can’t it only be as me and you! The scripture in Eph. 5:30 reveals a great mystery: “We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” Sounds like “as us” to me!

What About All My Doubts?
You might ask yourself, if I can’t believe these biblical evidences then what is the alternative? Isn’t it, Christ and a separate performing me? If that is true, then wouldn’t we be slipping back to works again? It is either He as me, or a performing me as me.

I believe that we need a “re-defined I,” that is, Christ/I (the real I is Christ expressing Himself as the human me). If we think that we are “JUST US,” then we are still under the delusion of an Independent-Self; and where there is an independent-self there is self effort; and where there is self-effort there is law; and where there is law there is sin, for “the strength of sin is the law” (I Cor. 15:56b).

If we still believe the lie of independent-self the outer law will shout at us, and if we respond to the shouts of the law, we are acting as if we have a life of our own with the human power to fulfill it. Functioning from the lie of independent-self is the root of all sin which gives Satan power over you[2]. Why would we respond to the outer law when we know that we have Christ who fulfills the law perfectly in us? Faith is simply recognizing that fact which activates the Holy Spirit’s power in us.

My good friend, Sharon Roy commented saying that she couldn’t take a leap of faith and say that it was Christ living as her, because she didn’t yet know that she was “dead”. She was still identifying herself as an independent self, instead of seeing herself as a unified dependent-self. She falsely thought that she was her temptations, fears, and insecurities. She didn’t know that it was Satan manifesting fear in her bodily members. Once she discovered that it was Satan and not her, then she could take a leap of faith and proclaim that Christ lives as Sharon, and stand on it when she was tempted otherwise. Sharon knows it today, and counsels and teaches it to others. God has to make us pretty helpless before we can know that we are “dead” and Christ is our life (Col. 3:3-4).

So which will it be? “Christ as you,” or “you as you”? I’m glad you chose “Christ as you,[3] because it is impossible for you to be “you as you.” There never has been an independent self in the whole universe except for God Himself, that is. All created forms are dependent beings, depending on the One who is all powerful, all knowing, and all sufficient. You know that the human you isn’t God, so doesn’t it stand to reason for you to be a surrendered dependent-self joined to Christ who lives His life as you?

You have never been a “YOU AS YOU”! Even the Apostle Paul and Bob Dylan, the singer/song writer, are singing the same song. Bob sings, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” and Paul writes, “You were slaves to sin,” and now “you are slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). You have always been a slave to somebody, and never been free to be “just you.”

Why would we want the defeat of a powerless sinful false self when we can have the power and the wisdom of the resurrected Christ being our life? Could it be that we don’t want to lose ourselves, that is, THE ONLY SELF WE HAVE EVER KNOWN? Yet didn’t Jesus say that unless you lose yourself, you can’t find your life (Matt. 16:25)? Is it fear? Does it take you out of your comfort zone? Do you wonder what will keep you from being your own New Age guru? The New Age teaches that we can trust ourselves…Christ is not telling you to have confidence in yourself (II Cor. 3:8). He is bidding you to trust Him as you. Maybe you think that since you are “just you” then you can keep yourself? Don’t you know that left to yourselves we will commit any sin,[4] but we are not left to ourselves, are we? We are left to the mighty keeping power of “Christ who is our life” (Col. 3:4). Isn’t He big enough?

Maybe you are thinking that this “Christ as you” revelation violates who God is to you. Maybe you think…“I have a personal relationship with the Lord and I can’t give that up…” Or, maybe this kind of, “Christ as me” thinking, makes you think that there is no transcendent Lord to pray to. These honest apprehensions are pretty common when we don’t yet understand our union with Christ.

Let us take our answers from our Lord who was the only union man who qualifies as our true prototype… Think about this---Jesus knew His union with His Father and He didn’t give up knowing that His Father was transcendent; or did He give up his prayer life (see John 17); nor did He give up His personal relationship with His Father. So, we don’t give up our relationship with Christ, how absurd, although, we do give up the childish idea that we are His servants when as mature sons, He calls us His friends (John 15:15). Therefore what we do gain is a greater, fuller, grander, yet mature relationship with Him. Who wouldn’t want that?

Knowing that Christ is joined to you, forming the new you, is the basis of the gospel (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:4-11; II Cor. 5:21). Jesus came to die as you, so that you can be joined to Him and He might live His life by you, through you, and as you.

Maybe you think it sounds like the New Age error that says “the human is God”. The Pharisee’s thought that Jesus was saying that too (John 10:33). Jesus never said that He the Son was the Father, however He did proclaim that “the Father and I are one” (John 10:19), and “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). He functions by faith the very same way that we function. Jesus proclaimed that, “Of my human self I can do nothing” (John 5:19 & 30), and so do we because we know that it is really Christ living in us, and as us. Christ is the power, He is the peace, He is the wisdom, He is the life, He is the courage, He is the patience, He is even our very faith (Gal. 5:22; Gal. 2:20b).

Responding Faith
How does that work? We put our faith in Him and He comes back and does the faith-ing through us. You might say to yourself, “I believe, but help thou my unbelief.” Then I recommend that you tell the Lord, I can’t be willing, but “I am willing to be made willing.”[5] The Lord will take you up on that.

Why can’t we agree with Him and identify ourselves as forms of Him? Do you think that the bible is saying that you become Christ? No, it is not saying that. The body can’t say that it becomes the head and neither does the head become the body; however the head can say that it expresses itself as the body, and the body can respond by faith and agree.

Is it unbelief that keeps us Christians from identifying ourselves as a form of Christ? I hope not, because it was unbelief that stopped the Israelites from entering into the promise land, and it could be the same deadly unbelief that causes us not to inherit the precious promises given freely to us by our Lord.

This life is meant to be easy. Like my good friend Brian Coatney says, “it is excruciating at times, but it is easy to walk in the Spirit.” But you might think, “I am full of doubts”…Good, because faith is built on doubt. Plenty of good doubt and wavering apprehensions are usually the prelude to responding faith.

Think about it, believing the gospel in the first place was a leap of faith. I bet you wondered how you could live up to being a good Christian when you first heard the gospel? And maybe people mocked you saying that you were now “Holier than Thou.” I’m sure all these misconceptions crossed their and your mind. Yet your spirit cried out to God and He met you. You had to leave all the wonderings and reasoning behind and simply believed God. By faith you took Christ and He took you and saved you.

Knowing Christ as you is another huge leap of faith. You can’t prove it, you can’t reason it all out, and you can’t fully understand how it could be, yet deep cries out to deep and faith calls you into the unknown. You don’t live any longer; it is Christ living as you! “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Behold Him in your mirror, say it, drink it, and eat Him who is the Truth, and this “Pearl of Great Price,” will set you free.

It is Christ as you, or Christ living as if it were you, if that makes you more comfortable!


Published by:
Christ, Our Life Ministries Inc.
PO Box 43268
Louisville, Ky. 40299
502-245-4581
502-417-2110
sylviap@theliberatingsecret.org
http://www.theliberatingsecret.org/
http://www.spiritbroadcasting.net/

P.S.
If you want to keep in touch with us at Christ, Our Life Ministries, you can sign up for our Newsletter on “The Liberating Secret” website. Click the Newsletter link on http://www.theliberatingsecret.org/ and fill out the information. To complete the process you will have to confirm it.
[1] The exception to, Christ living daily “as us”, is when we occasionally slip into sin. Sin is an expression of Satan and not Christ. As we confess it, the blood quickly cleanses us from sin and we continue on the road of faith believing that Christ lives as us.
[2] Read my booklet “There is No Such Thing as an Independent-self”. This booklet will further explain this liberating key.

[3] Unfortunately, if you chose “you as you,” you chose Satan as you.
[4] “The Keepers Creed”” “I will commit any sin left to myself, but I am not left to myself, by faith, Christ is keeping me ( Brian Coatney and Jude 24).
[5] From “Rees Howells Intercessor”, by Norman Grubb

This layout and all photos were put together by AC Welch for this blog

Alphabet Soup - Part One

One Woman’s Answer: What To Do When Your Life Resembles Alphabet Soup!
By Page Prewitt
Foreword by Norman Grubb
The obvious meaning of such a title for this booklet as “Alphabet Soup” is that our lives are in some form or other a proper mix-up. Some things you can “spot and select”; lots you can’t. Is there such a thing as a life which is a clear, straight line? Don’t all lives appear to be a mix-up? Is there really the possibility of a straight line?
This is why I think this booklet is a rarity. I like it being totally personal, not a preachment, but the secret of knots tied and untied, and how to have them untied. And Page Prewitt takes us straight through from A to Z in sharing how the knots were unraveled in her own life, and then how to lay the finger on the many knots in every life until they are untied. Page so unmixes the mixed-up soup that we too are enabled to lay our fingers straight on those mix-ups, the reasons for them and the way to unmix them. She keeps it plain by concentrating on her own answer to the secret, showing how others can do the same.
She starts with a page or two on personal salvation and how she herself came clear in receiving Christ as what we call a sinner saved by grace. So the booklet is based on the new birth experience as a given fact, and it is from there onwards that Page handles the mix-up of the soup’s ingredients and comes out with the “straight line” which all of us hunger to have and know as the straightness of our own lives. The rest of the booklet then deals with these mix-ups which in various ways tear our lives to pieces and in plain honesty are in capital letters in all lives, which are just as much knotted in those who call themselves Christians as those who do not.
The answer is plain enough in Bible terms, though not so often referred to, and still less often so thoroughly untied. To get that answer we have to unravel what we might call the “self knots” in each of us. The whole weight and value of the booklet is in showing what the knots are and how they get untied, so that we may boldly then lay a forger on those same knots in our brother Christians.
So thoroughly does Page handle this, and with certain simple diagrams, that it would be a tautology for me to take up details in a foreword. Very simply, she focuses on the exact meaning, right interpretation and right uses of the subdivision of the human self which is lightly mentioned in Hebrews 4:12 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in three words: spirit, soul and body. What is the self, how do these three parts interact, and how do I get them rightly and fixedly “tied up” so that I can be bold in pointing to that same problem and its solution in nearly all my brethren?
This booklet tells about some of the quite desperate wrestlings Page herself experienced before coming to where, with unhesitating boldness, she can lay a finger on that same knot in you. And just because that takes us to the depths of the depths and drastically uncovers hidden areas which the god of the false misuse of self has so cleverly covered over, it is lamentably the fact that the vast majority of declared and born-again believers turn back at that spot. There is the same major Cross in it for us as there was for Jesus himself.
Alphabet Soup puts the most profound truth on this whole vital “spirit, soul and body” problem and its solution in simple terms. And here it is important to take note that there are quite a lot of folks these days who will use a correct term for what we are talking about and yet still not know what that really means. This included Page herself, which forced her to find the right and ultimate answer. And you’ll find that this little booklet does give that answer. And it is then that at last the soup sort of “unmixes itself,” and each item can be both edible and enjoyed.
We have really come to where Page Prewitt probably is the leader over all of us in a thoroughgoing explanation of what is meant by these three terms— what each is and how they properly mingle—so that I can boldly say I am Christ in my form. How that subtle self of ours has at last been torn out of Satan’s hold on it since the Fall, and in its place we find what a self in focus is. As James says, “Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
This account shows precisely the opening of that “secret of secrets” to Page and explains her God-given ability to use her Spirit rapier to pierce camouflages in others, which has caused many to turn away just as they did with Christ, The Self. Page shows our human selves in their ultimate purpose— the eternal relationship for which we were created, then fell from, and now to which we have been redeemed.
So I greatly recommend this booklet to every hungry reader who does want to get the soup unmixed and enjoy each particle in its right proportion, and be able boldly to point that fact out to his fellow Christians. If you really want to know the true meaning of who you are as a self—and that’s the only final meaning to our life’s search—this booklet can bring great light to you.
Norman Grubb
Part One
Life for me had become a hopeless search for a reason to live. My search was rewarded when Norman Grubb, a retired 80-year-old missionary from England, began to share with me what the Bible said about me. I was thrilled and shocked by what I saw and heard. My dilemma, liking what I heard but not daring to believe it to be true, plunged me into a search to check out Norman’s teaching. As a result of that search, I became convinced that what Norman taught was what the Scripture taught—that real life was God living out through His children.
Knowing this to be true did not make it a reality in my life. I was desperate for Christ to take over my mess of a life and live it for me. My focus was always on “me” and how terrible I was. Then one evening, while standing at the stove in my kitchen, the Lord said to me, “Dare to say about yourself what I say about you.”
It was at that moment that I first said I am Jesus Christ in His Page Prewitt form. As I said that, I appeared to myself anything but what I thought Christ would look like. I had been waiting and waiting to look and feel differently before I would declare myself to be the Page form of Christ. God’s word came and I obeyed (the obedience of faith— our only requirement—Rom. 1:5).
I said it and believed it. I don’t know why—desperation, I guess—but I took it “hook, line and sinker.” Since that day I have never doubted the truth of it. God has been faithful and has never let me down.
God in His precious love for me knew I was desperate and sent Norman with His truth in the nick of time. I believe, had I not caught on when I did, I would have eventually killed myself or would be in a mental institution today.
Knowing that there was another here (Christ) to do for me what I had proved I could not do for myself (live life) began to put me at ease. The pressure, the condemnation and the selfhate began to lift. I began to experience a freedom and a poise that I had never known. It was now up to Him to live and be how and what He wanted to be through me. I had failed miserably, so I had nothing to lose.
My outer circumstances didn’t suddenly become wonderful. Life as a wife and mother remained hard. My husband continued to dislike me and felt free to say so. Dealing with my four children was still very difficult, but I began to see it all in a new way. I started to see that things were exactly how God wanted them to be. Life was not a nightmare that had trapped me; it was God’s situation for me. He was in my circumstances and was in me to handle whatever circumstances He sent my way. I was Christ in my form, not because I said so, but because the Bible said so.
I also knew there was a time, before I became a Christian, when I wasn’t that and that I became “Christ in my form” at the time of my conversion. But before that day in my kitchen, I had only been aware that I had been born again, that I was saved. When I made my statement it was the first time that I acknowledged aloud—to myself and to God—that as a Christian, this is who I am.
So let me go back to the “beginning.”
How I Came to Christ
From my early childhood, I had a desire to know God and a desire to be a right person. I knew I didn’t know God, and I wanted so to know Him and to go to Heaven. I knew I wasn’t “right” and wanted so badly to be right. My mother would say to me: “Little girl, you had better change your ways.” I wanted to change my ways—but how?
I finally concluded that probably only priests, missionaries, ministers and nuns (and possibly my saintly grandmother) did right, knew God and were going to Heaven. There didn’t seem to be much hope for my becoming a nun, but I thought that maybe one day when I was old, I would be like my grandmother—wear my hair in a bun and sit pleasantly doing needlework.
One time as a teenager, spending the night with a friend, she asked me, “Page, are you saved?” Too embarrassed to ask what she meant, I vaguely nodded assent. Whatever did being “saved” mean?
When I was seventeen years old, living in Coral Gables, Florida, I found out. I was invited to a Youth for Christ meeting and heard Ephesians 2:8-9 quoted: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
There was that word again— ”saved”!
The result of hearing that was that I soon received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior and was “born again.” I was saved!!
But until I found that being saved meant more than just “going to Heaven” and that who I had become when I was born again was Jesus Christ in my form, my salvation did little for me but assure me of Heaven. Life for me was as if I had written the seventh chapter of Romans. What I didn’t want to do, I did; what I hoped I would do, I didn’t. The bondage of being a Christian was as bad as the misery I had in my search for God.
College,Marriage and a Family
After I had moved away from Florida, gone through college in North Carolina, married an attorney, moved to Mississippi and borne four children, I finally discovered the living truth of Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.” And I myself began to really live.
It was not so much that my life situation got better (for actually it got worse!), but that I experienced a total change in my way of seeing myself and life around me. And even though there was much that brought me to near desperation, there is nothing about those years I would want to have been changed. I see it all as God’s perfect purpose and plan.
Some time after I first said that I was the Page form of Jesus Christ (who I am), the day came when I needed an explanation for how—although I knew I was an expression of Christ—sin and failure played such a mammoth part in my experience.
I had found the basic answer concerning my life years before when I saw the truth of who I really am. Now, God was getting ready to show me the next step: what to do when knowing and saying who you are is not enough.
I have found the key to living this Christian life as Paul said it could be lived. Taught from the Scripture, and with the help of Norman Grubb and countless friends, I have, by positive and negative “pulls,” come to see the missing explanation.
No Independent Human Self
In a word, for me, it has been finding out there is no such person as an “independent self.” Today I not only affirm who I am, but I have been privileged by the Spirit to lead many other believers into this same acknowledgment. Bill Bright, of Campus Crusade for Christ, used to say that until you see those you introduce into the Kingdom bring in others, you haven’t experienced real in-depth fruitbearing. I even have “grandchildren” in the faith of knowing that they are expressions of the Living Christ.
Now, after years of experience in real-life situations, I can say I know how to fully operate as a “knower.” I “know” who I am and I now know how to operate as who I am.
The term “independent self,” as such, is not found in the Bible. The idea, however, pervades the Scriptures in the lives of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament believers. We find it in the teachings of Paul and in the words of Jesus. Jesus said it, Paul explained it, John confirmed it. And I dug until I found the hidden treasure.
This truth has been available for all believers, and there have always been those who saw it. In our age, however, there is a resounding emphasis on the self. We can say that since Freud in more modern times, and even as far back as Aristotle, attention has been drawn to the self. But today’s quest is almost a hallmark of our times.
So it seems appropriate that the Holy Spirit is giving to God’s people the true answer to “know thyself.”
This is what I have found for myself. I already knew God and had found Him always complete. What a joy (what a relief!) to finally know myself, and to find that I, too, am complete. As Peter says, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life” (2 Pet. 1:3). And James adds that we are “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).
At a recent conference in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, I was asked to speak and began by saying, “I want to talk about when saying ‘who you are’ is not enough.” Over the last few days there, I had talked to individuals whose lives were not working out to their own satisfaction. They told me, and I knew it to be true: “I know and say who I am. What is the problem?”
I could see there were problems in their lives, and they would proceed to relate them in depth. There seemed to be a dilemma over life, even when they could see and know and say that they are Christ in their forms. In fact, the longer their experience in this was, the more frustration they had when life just was not “working out.”
As you read this, if you are someone who has been saying, “I know who I am and I know what it is to be a believer,” but somewhere you have a “sticky wicket” that you can’t work out—in your interpersonal relationships or in some situation that you are part of—then, as a friend of mine often quips: “LISTEN UP!”
We Are Body, Soul and Spirit
Knowing I was Christ in my form and at the same time feeling all kinds of negative feelings was very confusing to me. How could fear, anger, hate, etc., and Christ all be fit together in this person I called “me”? It began to come clear to me when I saw a simple illustration in a Watchman Nee book. I have added to his illustration.
The circles give a picture of us as persons (Figure 1). We are tripartite— made in three parts: body, soul and spirit. The body is the house for soul and spirit. The soul is where we experience feelings and thoughts—emotions and reason. Our spirit is the part of us that is created in God’s image and is the seat of desiring, willing and knowing.
Before we can appreciate who we are in Christ, we need to understand who we were before Christ became our personal Savior -in other words, before we became born again.
In our non-Christian state, we were joined at our spirit center with the spirit of Satan (Figure 2). You probably don’t think this can be true, because when you think about Satan, you immediately think extreme evil. Satan is not necessarily always some killing, stealing, horrible person. The evil that he is (really, all the evil there is—period) all boils down to one simple thing: self for self. All the evil there is originates here: self for self.
How Evil Began
Satan, originally Lucifer, was created to be God’s light bearer. He would proclaim God. God did not make Lucifer into Satan. Satan did this by his own choice. In effect, he said “I will be equal to God, I will be like God, I will be God unto myself.” (Compare references from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28.)
There is no truth in the belief that a created being can ever be equal to his Creator. Lucifer came out of God, and in his original form he came out as a self-giving self because he was “bearing” God’s light. But by his own choice of believing wrongly about himself and rejecting that “light,” he became a fallen form of God. He became a misused form of the self giving, all-loving being of God. He became Satan, a self-forself, an “I’ll be for myself” distorted form of God. God himself had eternally said “no” to being that, and in this God cannot deny Himself or lie. His eternal, fixed choice was to be forever the God of outpoured love. Lucifer chose the opposite.
Sometime after Satan’s fall, the Bible tells us that Adam fell and that all persons come into this world in the form of fallen Adam. So, as the circle represents, at their spirit center, all persons are joined to the spirit of Satan from birth.
Now to you, the reader. Before you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your spirit was in a “hook up” with Satan. Everyone you know who is not a Christian still is. The characteristic in all non-born-again people is self....self -for- self—an “I’m for myself” attitude. Even in their good deeds, the root is self. They are expecting to get something back for themselves.
If this is an unacceptable view to you, just begin to watch them, and sooner or later you will see this. For example, you will hear the whine of “I was so nice to her, and do you know what she did?...”
People do not like to hear this about those who are not Christians, and I don’t particularly like to mention it. I mention it, however, for two reasons. First, so you will realize who these people really are by nature. Second, because your heart and mind needs to be broken for others. You need to be more concerned. This concern includes (if they have not received Christ) your husband’s best friend, your golf buddy, the friend you lunch with, your precious sister or just “good ole Mary Sue” who waits on you at the drugstore.
Now let’s look at the circle that represents the “born-again” person (Figure 3).
We notice that the body of the Christian contains a soul, and a spirit that is now hooked up with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. How did this hookup occur? The Bible says it happened through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. You ask, “What has that got to do with me...Jesus Christ, in history, dying on a cross?” You might add, “I know that the blood of Jesus washed away my sins, but how does it work that it gets a switch going and gets my spirit ‘unhooked’ from the spirit of Satan and now ‘hooked up’ (united) with the Holy Spirit? How does that work?”
“One Died for All, Therefore All Died”
The Bible says we “died with Him” (Rom. 6:6) and “in Him we are dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). What does that mean? What does that mean to you? When I used to think about it, all I knew were those words. They made no sense, and I had no understanding of what they truly meant. Even though the Bible talked about me being dead, I knew that I was very much alive. One of the reasons it meant nothing much to me was that I was also ignorant then of the fact that before my conversion I was joined to this other spirit—this wrong spirit—and needed to get rid of that spirit.
The way spirit gets out of a person is through death—which is not annihilation or ceasing to be. When you die, the spirit goes out of your body. So when Jesus Christ took us to the cross in Himself, what he did for us was take on this sin nature. In some mysterious way—don’t ask me to explain it to you—for our sake “He made Him to be sin, [He] who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). He became sin for me! And He became sin for us so that “we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (also 2 Cor. 5:21).
Jesus Christ took on that sin spirit and He died, so the sin spirit went out. And when we take Him as our Savior, His death works the same thing in us. The way to get a spirit out of a person is for that person to die. So Jesus took that spirit of sin, died on the cross, and that spirit went out. But did it go out of me when Jesus Christ went to the cross? NO. It went out of me when I, by faith, took the work He did on Calvary to be my own.
So he died on the cross, and I died in Him. In some mysterious way—I don’t understand how—the Bible just says in Him I died and in Him you died too. In that death, the old spirit of sin went out. And death is only the means to life.
The body of Jesus lay in the grave for three days. There was no spirit in it, being dead. Then the Bible says that God’s own Spirit quickened Jesus’ body and resurrected Him. The Bible also says that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now therefore lives in you. That very same Spirit quickened you and brought you back to life. This is the new birth of John 3.
So that is how you, at your spirit center, became joined to the Spirit of God. Your spirit becomes joined to the Spirit of Christ through this work of Christ. In I Corinthians 6:17 we are told that he that is joined to the Lord is “one spirit with Him.” End of Part One...(details at around 2001)Page Prewitt lives in Boone, NC, where she is a full-time Teacher/Sharer at our Total Living Center. She has dedicated most of her adult life to bringing to others the pure message of Christ in you as you as taught to her firsthand by her mentor, Norman Grubb. She has been a true example of the “hope of glory” that comes as a result of allowing Christ to live one’s life. Page is the mother of four adult children and the grandmother of eight young grandchildren, all of who live on her same street.