TEF8 - From a Word to a Lamb by Daniel Yordy

© Daniel Yordy 2013
The original with all spoken formats and downloadable PDF is here

The Bible is like the human body. It is complex, with many differing parts great and small. Sometimes it's hard to tell how those differing parts are even part of the same thing. Yet in the end, just as the body is one, so the Bible is one seamless whole. However, just like the blind men of Hindustan, each trying to define the whole by the little part he stumbled upon, so most read the Bible.

The blind men of Hindustan never connected with the reality that the elephant is a living animal, thus all the parts can be known only in reference to that living animal. In the same way, most who read the Bible do not know that they are reading the Lord Jesus Christ and He revealed in us, His body. They do not know that the whole point of everything is the Word become a Lamb and living in us.

The whole point of everything, including the presence of the accuser, is the glory of the word God speaks, the Always-Speaking of God. The Word God is always speaking has a name, we call Him Jesus.

Now, in most people's minds, “glorifying Jesus” has a different meaning that that held in God's mind. Most people imagine a solitary image, high above all, before whom we peons bow. You can see that this image is Lucifer's image of himself. But most Christians know also that Jesus is something other than that image, yet they cannot lose the image, so they mix the Jesus they know with the self-image of a deluded angel.

Therefore, when John writes about the Lamb in his gospel, most see the Jesus we know, living in our hearts. But when John writes about the Lamb in his vision, most see the other thing, the exalted solitary image, high above all. Thus everything related to that image in Revelation, especially the “two witnesses,” must be of similar “deified” exaltation, high above us mere fleshy mortals.

They read the Word just like the blind men of Hindustan, as a series of chopped up and unrelated things. They do not have the key that unlocks to them the body of God.

I want to give, here, a series of verses, or even short statements, found through the Bible. I want you to consider them carefully, including the order in which they appear, as they are a seamless whole.

Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. Genesis 1 – the beginning of everything through the Speaking of God.

“Did God indeed say?” Genesis 3 – the entrance of the accuser.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear. Deuteronomy 18 – Moses, the only command the Old Covenant requires, the only word that counts.

You have magnified Your word above all Your name. Psalm 138 – The singing of David

Does not wisdom cry out, and understanding lift up her voice? . . .She cries out by the gates. . . “To you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. . . Blessed is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates. . . For whoever finds me finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord.” Proverbs 8 – the wisdom of Solomon

For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55 – the seeing of Isaiah

And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger. Luke 2 – the Word entering His creation in weakness.

The seed is the word of God. Luke 8 – Jesus, explaining one nature of the Word.

When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? Luke 18 – Jesus, asking the greatest question in God's heart.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God – And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory – Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! John 1 – John, showing us the Word from the beginning becoming the Lamb, a second nature of the Word.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. John 12 – Jesus, giving us the most staggering reality of the Word, that One becomes many, the Word itself births the faith that receives it.

I spoke openly to the world. – You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. John 18 – Jesus, before His accusers.

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. Acts 1 – Jesus, becoming the Word in many.

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. 1 Corinthians 12 – Paul, giving another picture of the Word becoming many.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. Hebrews 1 – the one Word of the Old, through which all the Old must pass.

And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne. . . stood a Lamb as though it had been slain. . . thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” Revelation 5 – John, seeing the same Lamb exalted.

And I will give to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. Revelation 11 – the Word that forms Christ in the many and that sets creation free.

And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Revelation 12 – the many having become one, birthed before the accuser.

These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. Revelation 14 – The many together as one.

These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful. Revelation 17 – the whole point of everything, the singularity, the triumph of Almighty God.

There is just something in God that gets a real kick out of defeating the accuser by His Word alone, revealed through weakness in many.

Do you see how the Great Story of God just ties everything together? The book of Revelation could not possibly be known any other way. It is an essential element in a seamless whole; it is the capstone, the climax of the story.

Now, the Word of Christ which we speak is this same Word woven through every one of these verses. You can see, then, the incredible importance to the entire purpose of God that is our speaking of Christ.

And I (the Word God speaks from the beginning having become the Lamb) give (that's everything, nothing in God or in the universe is withheld) to My two witnesses (that's us, the Word having become many), and they shall prophesy (that's us, birthing the new heavens and earth, setting creation free).

I have made this statement many times: The whole point of everything is the Word God speaks, a woman in travail, and the face of the serpent. Here is another way of saying that same thing: The whole point of everything is the Word God speaks, declared as many in weakness, defeating all opposition.

This is what God has always had up His sleeve.

Now, look at what John saw in Revelation 5. Remember that this is a vision, which is the symbolic language of God. Thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb.” This is a symbol of the most valuable thing to God in all creation except the Word that He speaks. Look at the phrase: “a woman in travail in the face of the serpent.” Look at the phrase: “declared as many in weakness defeating all opposition.”

There is one word in the Bible that these things define – faith.

The exaltation of the Lamb is the audacity of faith against all opposition. When John saw the Lamb exalted above all, he was seeing you and I, in utter weakness, in utter inability and impossibility, speaking Christ our only life with all confidence and joy.

There is no greater honor of the Lamb who fills our hearts than that.

Those who “honor” the Lamb by putting Him high above on a pedestal, do not honor Him at all, because they do not believe all that He speaks. They do not make Christ, the Word God is always speaking, personal in them.

When you and I make the Word God speaks, Christ, our very and only life, Christ as us, by the declaration of our mouth (witness) against all opposition, we ARE the firstfruits, we are the thousands, we are the body of Christ.

We are God revealed. We are human.

The Word is that which births; the Lamb is that which carries. The Word births Christ inside of us; the Lamb carries us through all things to the Father. By the Word, we are transformed into the image of Christ, by the Lamb, we no longer worry (unbelief) about “measuring up” or “getting it right.”

You know, I have seen this over and over in my own experience. The very thought of obligation or “making it” or “falling short” of God and “missing out,” produces only one thing in me; it causes me to pull back from confidence in God, to withdraw my heart from singing inside of Him. In complete contrast, my continual, utter sinking into the Lamb carrying me, Christ as me, has the opposite effect. As I live rejoicing in the expression of the Lord Jesus that I find myself to be, giving thanks for all things God allows against my way, the joy of His word transforming me billows up in continual expectation.

Notice that it is the Lamb who conquers the Beast, and that He does so through our testimony.

Now, I say that obligation produces “only one thing in me.” That's just me. Most people are quite zealous about obligation producing more than their heart drawing away from confidence in God. Most people insist on doing something about their “problem.”

ALL desire to “measure up” comes from a testimony as well, a witness, a claim. That claim is that the one who needs to “measure up” in fact does not. We must understand that claim and its true source. The idea that I, as I find myself to be right now, am not sufficient, do not “measure up,” have some lack, something wrong, some contrary propensity, that idea comes from ME. It is the rebellion of Adam, the cry of self. “I deserve better than what I am in my makeup, God. I don't like the way You made me.”

Here is an absolute law. I do not find my true self, as Jesus said, by getting rid of my false self. That approach is self-evidently false. The very act of “getting rid of a false self” establishes me as the prevailing self in my life. In complete contrast, as I sink utterly (surrender, repent) into the Lamb carrying all that I am, as I rejoice in the way God made me as I find myself to be right now, that I am simply an expression of Christ Himself, then I know my true self. And in knowing my true self, the false self just fades into oblivion, sort of like what happens to darkness when you flip on the light switch.

Now, I'm going back and forth in my own mind between two verses. Let me bring them in here.

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Revelation 12:11

For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Romans 10:3-4

Revelation 12:11 is the most important verse in Revelation; by understanding it, we expand it to include in itself everything else in John's vision. In my last letter I called Romans 10:3-4 the most important negative verse in the Bible.

But I also want to bring in a little blip by Fred Pruitt that came into my in-box yesterday, before I continue drawing my thoughts together.

~~~

So – Evil is the absence of God? By Fred Pruitt

What I had trouble with from the beginning reading that, was the "absence of God." I could not fathom it.

And yet the more I let it sit there, it began to occur to me that even though there can really never be, anywhere, anytime, any place, an absence of God, yet to a creature, in its own perception, there may be an absence of God by the will of the creature. Of course by creature I am meaning angels or human beings.

If I had to make such a definition, I would be more specific and say that evil is a denial of God, a refusal of God, and is involved in will. I mean really that the only place evil can occur is in the will of the creature that denies God by breaking off its will from God in order to have and assert that it has its "own will." THAT is evil. And from the state of that creature, God appears to be absent, and ultimately is absent to that will that continues in denial, even though we know He is All in all -- this creature that has broken itself off from Him cannot know it, however, because it is consumed with itself.

~~~

One could also say that “evil” that creates this false thing called “self” is the desire to improve on whatever the creature finds itself to be. To connect fully with God, to know Christ living as me, I must be joyfully content with the way I find myself to be. The primary reason both humans and angels pull their mind and will away from God is the birthing of an inherent dissatisfaction with self (sin), “God, You made me wrong.”

Now, being utterly content with self is 100% compatible with a deep thirst for an increased knowledge and revelation of God. In contrast, being dissatisfied with self squelches any thirst to know God more fully.

“For they being ignorant of God's righteousness.” What a statement! These are the Pharisees Paul is speaking of, and Paul knew the Pharisees, he had been one of the best. These people knew the law of Moses inside and out. They could quote it in its entirety. They knew every particle of what it meant and how it was to be applied to every aspect of life. And some of them, including the pre-Christ Paul, came pretty close to keeping that law to perfection.

So how does Paul claim that they are IGNORANT, that is they do not KNOW, God's righteousness.

I walked for many years with a people who held a mighty vision before their eyes of the victory of God over sin and death in our present lives. But because of the King James Bible and Augustine's prejudice, they determined that the enemy, the thing that can prevent an individual from experiencing full victory over both sin and death, was the human flesh, that is this human “nature” that carries in itself the propensity always to be stumbling and falling, always to be sleeping when it should be praying or crying out in fear when it should be sleeping.

Now, we were a Spirit-filled people; we knew the demonstration of God's power. We were not legalistic.

I know the full meaning of “seeking to establish their own righteousness” as it works itself out in many different personalities, good and Christ-loving all.

We KNEW that our human makeup was the “problem,” the thing keeping us from being part of the fulfillment of the great vision we carried. And thus our whole effort was getting God to help us fix our problem, this deficiency in our construction.

What we did not know was that this way of seeing was an interesting mixture of atheism and rebellion against God, both at the same time. Atheism says “God, You are absent,” rebellion says, “I should be better than what I am.”

Now, I know individual people who responded differently to this dilemma than I did. As I said, my belief that I was falling short of the vision caused me to draw back in discouragement. That reaction IS the only godly reaction; it is Romans 7. But I know very well a number of individuals who “took themselves in hand” to make their human self subject to the vision, subject to a God who yet remains separate from them in their own minds.

Every effort of the human to “make it” or “get right with God” or “get your flesh into submission” or even “hear and obey” results in one thing alone. It results in a religious ego, an iron barrier, that prevents that person from ever surrendering to Christ as their only life. Now, Jesus remains the Lamb, and He carries them. Thus these are good, kind, godly, and anointed people. Yet they count union with Christ to be the greatest evil (flesh cannot be okay, let alone filled with Christ) and the exaltation of the self they have produced to be what God desires.

Hatred of self is the greatest love of self that exists. For the hatred is coming from a self who is convinced he has been wronged by his Creator and, in fact, should be far superior to what he finds himself to be. Hatred of self is the fall of Lucifer; it is the sin of Adam. It is the supreme love and exaltation of self.

You see, when Jesus said, “the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” the Christian mind says, “Oh, that's my fault. If I were just a better person, my flesh would not be weak.” NO!!! Jesus was talking about the way God, in His incredible wisdom, designed us to be as His image and likeness.

Jesus spoke to two kinds of people: those who let their flesh run wild through all the lusts of this world and those who put their flesh under subjection to the clear requirements of a holy God. Of these two groups of people, which ones heard Him gladly, which ones received Him with all their hearts? And even those who had trained their hearts to “get their flesh underfoot” who did receive Christ as Savior, became Paul's nemesis, following him around, always speaking against Christ as our very and only life.

Here is the incredible thing. And it is exactly what Jesus said. When we no longer love ourselves, we discover with all joy that we love ourselves, precious and holy, our own personal expression of Christ Himself.

The tree of knowledge gives two options: let your flesh feed on all the lusts of the world OR get your flesh under control.

The tree of life gives only one option, an option that is not related to either option from the tree of knowledge: surrender your “self” utterly into the Lamb and allow Him to be your flesh. Be utterly content with the way God made you. Be complete in Christ.

In so doing you begin to delight in yourself as you find yourself to be, but also, when you remember how you once viewed “self,” you see with horror the power of self-love that sat behind your former “self-hatred.” But as we delight in ourselves as we find ourselves to be, we also discover the knowledge of God flowing out of our surrender into union with Christ and the expectation of God increases without end.

God made us the way we find ourselves to be BECAUSE that's how He wants His image to be. God cannot reveal Himself through us unless we delight in His workmanship.

Let's look more closely at Revelation 12:11. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.

Let's start with a grammar lesson. A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. It is an absolute law of human language that you cannot use a pronoun without first introducing the noun. For example: The dog barked; he barked at the cat. The pronoun “he” is clear, because it takes the place of the noun “dog.” We know exactly what the pronoun “he” refers to. In this sentence, the noun “dog” is called the antecedent of the pronoun “he.” “He” clearly refers to its antecedent, “dog.”

Descriptive (not prescriptive) grammar is vital to us in understanding any sentence. The verb always rules both sentence and meaning. Action verbs are always superior to linking verbs in conveying meaning and interest. The action of this sentence is “overcame.” Thus “overcome” rules both the sentence and all the meaning it conveys.

Notice the progression from “Let there be light” to “Did God indeed say.” What word stands between those two? “Subdue the earth.” The reality of overcoming came into the human understanding before any accusation against God appeared.

But the moment we know the action taking place, we must also know who is doing the action, that is, subject/verb.

“They.” Who are they? You see, this is wrong grammar. Now, in full contrast, the direct object, that is, the object receiving the full impact of the action, is “him.” “Him” has a clear antecedent in preceding verses, that is, the dragon, the original serpent, the accuser. But “they” has no antecedent. Three times, in Revelation only, the pronoun “they” is used with no antecedent. God simply does not say who “they” are.

I believe God uses incorrect grammar here in order to underline the reality of life, that it is by invitation only. “Of all the trees of the garden (including the tree of life) you may freely eat.” “Whosoever will may come and drink.” “If any man thirsts.”

It's easy to tell who “they” are. Consider these words: “Look at me, God. I belong to You. Let every Word you speak be fulfilled in my life in all of its fullness.” To “they,” these words are a continual joy and expectation, as normal as breathing. To “not they,” these words don't mean a thing.

“They” are those who say, “I AM one of 'them.'”

“They overcame him.”

We must understand this God who fills us full. He is bizarre, to put it mildly. He is meek and lowly of heart; He reveals Himself through weakness; when He shows up in the earth, He stoops to serve. But He sure does like to “kick butt,” I guess, is the only real way of saying it. Why is that? Why does God set this whole thing up as a really good, knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred fight?

Yes. When we have the answer to that question, we get to go to the head of the class!

Remember that “overcome the accuser” came into the picture BEFORE any human sin.

God created all things good, first. Then He placed the operative word into the mix, the action verb – conquer, overcome, subdue. Then, He brought the accuser into the picture, third. “They overcame him.” You see, those three words are the gist of Genesis 1 through Genesis 3:1. Everything from Genesis 3:2 until this present moment is the unfolding of the three prepositional phrases, the three “by's.” But the stage is set fully with “They (Christ revealed in weakness through many) overcame him.”

I do not want to go any further into “him,” in this letter except to say that the word “him” includes more than the serpent, it includes all of his expression among men, including human government, the Beast. And it especially includes all serpent-word spoken in Christianity.

“Overcome,” then, is the action of the human experience, the verb that gives meaning to everything, the tension that creates the Great Story of God.

Now, the rest of the sentence is really bad grammar as well. It should read “by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and by not loving their lives to the death.” It should be three equal “by's.” Oh well.

Look carefully at those three prepositional phrases. They are all three adverbs, that is, they speak of the verb, “overcame,” answering the question, “how.” Jesus said, “To those who overcome, I give to eat of the tree of life.” So, yes, every serious Christian asks the simple and very, very large question, “HOW?”

These three prepositional phrases answering the critical question “How? How, Lord, do we overcome,” are NOT three steps. We do not begin with the first, proceed to the second, and finally, arrive at the third. That concept does work in other things God speaks such as our walk through the Tabernacle of God, but it does not work here. Rather, those three phrases are one thing carried between two.

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, My burden is light.” We always thought that was a yoke and a weight we must bear. Not at all. It is the yoke He bears, the burden He carries. While writing the last couple of pages, I have had this image pressing upon my heart. Let's picture it together and see where it takes us.

Jesus carries the yoke.

A yoke is a wooden bar carved out to fit around the neck and across the shoulders. The bar is carved wide to fit the exact shape of the shoulders in order to spread the weight. From each end of that wooden bar hangs a rope and a hook to which a bucket is attached. I have many years of experience in wilderness community carrying full buckets of fresh water in and full buckets of used water out (every kind of used water). I believe I used a real yoke only once, early on at Graham River Farm. It is easier to carry two full buckets with a yoke than one full bucket with one hand, always off-balance. A yoke allows you to walk upright and comfortably. No yoke makes you twisted and out of joint. No yoke creates bad backs.

Now, picture Jesus, carrying the yoke, all the weight in perfect balance, striding forward lightly and easily. It's sort of like the cross, arms outstretched. In fact, it's easier when you place your hands out onto the bar of the yoke to balance it. Now, let's take the thought that we are looking upside down and inside out. Let's invert that picture.

What you have now is the picture of Much-Afraid. (If you have not read Hind's Feet on High Places, you really must.) There she is, stumbling along, hands out-stretched, reaching for her companions, Sorrow on one side and Suffering on the other, faithful and true. All the way along, it seems to her that it is they who lift her up, who dust her off, who carry her, step by stumbling step, all the way to the High Places. Remember what they said to her after they became Peace and Joy? I quoted them in “The Mercy Seat”; let me quote them again here.

~~~

“Since you brought us here with you, we are turned into Joy and Peace.”

“Brought you here!” gasped Grace and Glory (Much-Afraid transformed). “What an extraordinary way to express it! Why, from the first to last you dragged me here.”

Again they shook their heads and smiled as they answered, “No, we could never have come here alone, Grace and Glory. Suffering and Sorrow may not enter the Kingdom of Love, but each time you accepted us and put your hands in ours we began to change. Had you turned back or rejected us, we never could have come here.”

~~~

Remember what Isaiah said, that in a very real sense, Jesus cannot return to the Father, having completed all He was sent to do, except He find faith. As incredible as it sounds, in the end, it will be the Lord Jesus who says to us, “Thank you, My dear ones, you carried Me home. I could never have returned to My Father except you put your hands in Mine.”

Let's look at Suffering and Sorrow, one on each side of us. On the one hand, lifting us up and carrying us every step of the way is “the blood of the Lamb.” The Lamb always carries us, and when we stumble and fall, weak and hurting, all we can see is Blood. We never consider our mistakes ever again. On the other hand, lifting us up and carrying us every step of the way is “not loving their lives to the death.” The Cross always carries us; we have no self but Jesus. Christ Jesus is our only self. We are He living as us in this world. And thus we are utterly content in ourselves, in what we find ourselves to be, our true selves.

In between these two absolutes, then, is the task given by our Father to us.

“The word of their testimony.”

Speak Christ.

We never speak Christ “in order to.” We always speak Christ “because of.”

This is our task; this is our glory. And in the end, the Lord Jesus will say to us, “Thank you for bringing Me Home. I never could have set creation free if you had not put your hands in Mine.”

The prophetic word of Christ comes out ONLY from a very particular place. It is a place of intimacy and tears, of giving thanks for sorrow and for Joy, for suffering and for Peace.

It is a place of having abandoned all concern for sin and all concern for the sinner, the first utterly into the Lamb's Blood, the second utterly into the Lamb-Slain. And there, carried by the Lamb in all ways, we speak Christ our only life.

Speaking Christ is not saying things about Jesus; it is speaking Christ, the victorious Conqueror, revealed personally in all ways as me.

And in the end, the Lamb will conquer the serpent/beast BECAUSE those who are with Him are called and chosen and filled with faith.

Yes, I am saying that the day will come when the Lord Jesus will say to us before all the universe, “Thank you so much, it was your faith that carried Me home. Every time you spoke Me, all that I am, as your only life in the midst of all your weakness, in the face of all opposition, casting all of yourself utterly into Me, it was you who enabled Me to accomplish what the Father sent Me to do, to set all creation free. I could never have done it without you.”

And we will stand there in wonder feeling like wounded Frodo and bumbling Sam and left-behind Merry and silly Pippin as Lords and Kings and the great ones of the earth and of all the realms of heaven bow upon their knees in wonder and adoration before the One who fills our heart.

And thus we will discover that Revelation 4 & 5 were all about us. We are His glory.

I have shed many tears in writing this; I know it's the word the Lord Jesus wants to fill your heart with right now.

It begins as a Word and then the accuser. Then comes the Word in weakness, then comes the accuser again. Then comes the Lamb in sorrow, then the Word in many, the accuser's last gasp, and the Lamb again, in Glory.

That's God's story. That's the Bible. That's the book of Revelation, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ.

It's all about God finding faith.

What is a Wind of Doctrine?

The other day I had a Eureka. It went like this.
What is a wind of doctrine? It's something good or bad that a person "in separation" thinks that can act as a master key or Aladdin's Lamp to make the distant god work for them. Now some of those keys, may be real Spirit keys that God gives en route...like spiritual warfare....or fasting....or praise....or the prayer of Jabez. In the last 30 years as Fred (Pruitt) wrote, we have had so many.

 But while we are in "separation" consciousness we are missing the whole point of the Cross. The Cross is the master key, because I am literally celebrating the death of me and the replacement of Jesus as me. How can you have more of a master key than the torn veil and the altar of incense where every last vestige of "GOD AND" or "GOD PLUS" living goes up in smoke literally!!!!!!

The Pearl of Great Price by Fred Pruitt

From Fred Pruitt's Blogpost
One of the things I was looking for, back in my late-adolescence “God-searching” days, was a concept I ran into in my reading, embodied in the term, “authenticity.” I’m sure lots of authors had used the term or the idea in their writings, but it hit me when I read Stephen Gaskins’ little book, Monday Night Class. I got it, his point, or at least got a piece of it!
What it meant to me, was that one sought to become honestly and authentically who one was supposed to be, to become one’s “real self.” I didn’t know what that was at the time, but I knew that the demand of this idea I had in my head, to “find out the truth about spiritual things,” would not let me rest until I pursued it, and to pursue it, two things were paramount.
One, it must be serious and real. It could not be a quest to find out the most popular opinion and go with that, nor would anything less than the truth be satisfying. In some sense a resolution rose in me to mold myself around the truth, (whatever “It” was), rather than molding a truth built around my own liking. I knew, somehow, that it would have to be that way, if one wanted to truly know truth. We do not get to pick the “truth we like.” 2+2=4 is Truth, whether we like it or not.

And second, to turn the “serious and authentic mindset,” into earnestness and a real “effort” to establish disciplined practices, habits and new ways of thinking, all while maintaining an unending blitz on the doors of my mind and spirit to bring them into alignment and expanded understanding and clarity – to attain “enlightenment” is one way to put it!
Enlightenment or bust!
That idea was part of the framework in which Jesus found me. It was not a bad idea. Carrying that idea of authenticity with me into my beginning days in Jesus, though we can technically call it “self effort,” it was the highly “Divinely-winked-upon” self effort of our early days, and the concept stood me in good stead. The Spirit always works in who and where we are in the moment without condemnation, and He used that working concept in my thinking to set me up to be a student, to be a listener, an observer. (Something else I’d learned in those “eastern” days, the new student sat at the back of the class and just listened for a time, because the new student does not even know the questions, much less the answers.) So it emptied me as far as it could go in those days. Coming into Christ I knew I had come in with nothing – that nothing (spiritually) was as I had thought it to be before – and I became quite voracious, ravenously hungry for spiritual food, something with substance, that stuck to your ribs!
That whole concept was only reinforced in the first church body the Spirit put us in, when we were taught by the Prayer Minister to “storm heaven,” because, “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Matt 11:12) I took it to heart and began a several year assault on heaven’s gate. “Seek the Lord,” “Draw near to Him,” “Open your heart,” “Love Him,” “Praise Him,” and all the other admonitions from the scripture and the pulpit continually exhorted me (us) to press further, seek harder, to be “not weak in faith,” because we knew that we would reap, “in due season, if we faint not.” To do “my utmost for His highest.”

I have no regrets for my years in that. It was not wasted time – it was God’s perfect time and place. It always has been. As far as the difficulty of that time, the condemnation, whether self-inflicted or from some “ministerial” source, it was perfect. I had to give it a shot to do my “utmost” for Christ. I’m in good company. Peter thought the same way, when he said he would never deny Jesus. Peter found out his own resolve failed at its first real test. And eventually, like Peter, I found out my own resolve eventually got to a place where it could go no more, because it became confused and afraid. There is a period in most of our lives, for those who press into Christ, where we give it a good effort at becoming “more like Christ.”
We do not know we are about to fight a battle in which, if we come out the loser, we come out the winner. We don’t know that yet. In the beginning we are thinking about making the only “me” we know to be a better “me.” We’re looking to get a spiritual makeover, so to speak.

“Make ‘me’ pleasing to You, Lord!” we pray, not knowing we are praying for an impossibility, first, because it is already true that we are pleasing to Him, and second, we are actually in our mind’s understanding at the time, ignorantly asking for self-deification. Seeing God in separation, He up there, we down here, we are in a sense asking Him to make us a separate “god” who is “like” Him.
As I said, for a time in our ignorance God winks at our separation mindset. We operate out of it in relation to God, and when we “hear” God or see some “work” of is, and seeing it out of that separation, God honors it for a time. Even as God honored Saul’s anointing and still guided Saul by the Spirit until Saul could no longer fulfill God’s will because of fear and torment, which is when David came forth, a man after God’s heart who would fulfill all His will. Saul is the separated “flesh man,” and David the “inner Christ,” who grows up even while Saul is still running things. Finally Saul cannot go on. He cannot hold back the Philistines any longer. The Lord is not with him, and at the end in fear and desperation he falls on his sword and dies. Only then does David begin his reign, though for some time he has to put down the house of Saul.

Therefore, this difficulty so many of us experience in bouts with legalism, religion, or in anything else, is all for this Saul to finally give up and die (by realizing his own death in Christ’s death), that David (Christ in us) might come forth! It may have been a tough road, but the tears of joy flow when we observe ourselves and say, “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” (Song 8:5)
Other places I’ve told of how that all came unraveling, until I found myself reduced to that “nothing,” and out of that “nothing,” coming into a union, “I live, yet not I but Christ” conscious mindset, so there is no need to go over that again. I did, however, want to testify of that Seed born many years ago in me and which now, of Itself, has grown up into a great tree. This is not to magnify myself, but again, to testify to the faithfulness of the One Who Promised!
This is where this word, “authenticity,” comes in. When I first came upon and experienced the ecstatic joy of knowing oneness with Christ, for the second time I had found something in a field, a “Pearl of Great Price,” and had given all I had to get it. Only this time, this second time, (when I initially saw “union”), it became much more personal. Because the first time I found the Pearl of Great Price was in the very beginning, and I knew the Pearl was Jesus, but I didn’t know where the field was, and I didn’t know that the Pearl being “Jesus,” had an even greater meaning.
This second time I began to grasp the “greater” meaning. Because as I first began to discover these things by the Spirit, I had learned that the kingdom of God was within. So I realized first of all that the “field” was the field of my own life. But I was beginning to discover something greater, that yes, the “Treasure” was Jesus or Christ, but the “Jesus Christ” of my life was really, the “authentic” me!
Now this Pearl, something which previously I had known as separate and apart from me, something worshiped, acknowledged, believed in, outside of or separate from me, had moved into “me” in the most total sense possible! He had not just come into some nebulous “place” in me which I could not identify, as my understanding had been up until that time. Somehow the Pearl had moved so intimately into me, that the Pearl was me! Jesus moved in by His Spirit, but eventually what I get out of that, is not me being Jesus, but me being me. The “real me.” The one created in Jesus Christ “unto good works.”
It took a while to settle into that. You see, it is so incredulous at first, that the Christ child we seek has now become embodied in our very selves, that we are tempted to join with the accusers and say it could never be that mere man could say that. How dare we? Who are we, to dare to say, this Child is born, born in this manger, and now He has grown up to be the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth? Who could say such a thing? Surely pride must be the culprit!
For once the truth of Gal 2:20, 1 Cor 6:17, and many other similar words become alive in our understanding and consciousness, and we begin to see it, then dare to believe and confess it, there the battle is joined. It is won already, but we are not necessarily spared some of the fight. Because sometimes it will seem like heaven and earth and everyone in them are against us, testifying against us that we cannot possibly be this “Christ” person walking around.
We accuse ourselves most of all, or at least the voice accusing us sounds like our own voice, and we may take a dip or two in the pool of self-pity now and again, almost agreeing with the accuser because we are so weary from his continual rants. But victory is not up to us, and certainly not the accuser. Victory is in the hands of the One Who brought us there in the first place, Who promises to bring us through the valley of the shadow of death, Who causes us to lie down in green pastures and assures our dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. He is our victory!
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.

Much has been said of late among some of us about this “gap,” mentioned by Norman Grubb, between our taking something by our word of faith, and the Spirit’s confirmation of that “word” at some later time. I suppose what I am talking about ties in with this. It is during this “gap” time, that by this continual “testing” or “struggle for faith,” that the consciousness of Who we are comes forth. In other words, we start out with a “concept,” which by faith we take to be true about ourselves in Christ. We have been brought to that point by the revelation or drawing of the Spirit, and by this inner Word springing up, so that, like Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Christ of God, which he saw by a flash of light in his understanding, we have the same type of “flash” in getting our first glimpse of union. We see it and believe somehow that it must be true. As we are led by the Spirit, we move to “take” or “receive” it for ourselves, by our word of faith that Gal 2:20 is true not just generally, but true specifically for me! But we don’t have it yet in our possession. At that point we have the truth of it conceptually, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and it IS true, but our hold on it is nebulous, even as our hold on “salvation” was something nebulous in the beginning for many of us.
As Hebrews says, the Spirit exercises our “senses” and by that exercising brings us to maturity – rest in God through union with Christ. (Heb 5:14). Over and over and over we are exercised in this one thing: that we are Christ living in the world, and the life we are living in the flesh by His faith, is His life manifest! That is what the battle is about – to come into full possession of that which has already possessed us!
It has many facets to it, this final denouement. Those facets include things like detachment; contentment in darkness or light, abundance or need; reliance on “God only” in whatever context our lives dictate; an inner certainty given and received as a gift.
But the main facet, it matters not the personality nor what gift one may have, of total assumption of our oneness with Christ in God by the Spirit, is that we finally come upon the Pearl all grown up now, a beautiful Pearl that the Father sowed in our field, all resplendent and shining with luster and inner light. It has always been first and foremost Christ, and it still is, except now it is we who come forth. Jesus did not call Himself out of the tomb, but Lazarus. He called Him by name to awake from death.
Now in this third great way – the first being the day we began to know Him; the second the day we believed we were in union with Him and had cast ourselves away so that He might be All in all – this third time we find we have awakened to believe what we have believed, and by that “believing what we have believed,” we awaken to the fulness of God by awakening to the Christening of ourselves in the Spirit. The bands have been broken, chains ripped apart, bondage has been done away with, for what can withstand or hold prisoner the Christ of God? Not man nor devil!
Like the remnant who had seen the first temple razed by the Babylonians and lived to see the day its walls were reestablished wept at the sight of the goodness of the Lord, we find ourselves weeping at the grace, mercy and love of God, that He performs His promises. What we believed so long ago, has born the fruit of Promise, and the Promise was that God would have a Son, even as the Promise to Abraham was that he would have a son. Abraham’s promised son was Isaac, “Laughter.”
We are in the place of both the Son of God and the Son of Abraham, but for this moment I only want to speak of Abraham’s Promise. The Promise was Isaac, Laughter, and when we see it, this Pearl, this Treasure, this Living Water, and know that it has truly come into our possession even though it is in the imperceptibility of the Spirit, then we know we are God’s own gift to us, the fulness of ourselves for His glory. It is like the woman who has travailed for so long to bring forth the child, has given birth, and the child is here, and the child of promise is us. And that is laughter, laughter because it is a big and funny joke God has made that such as we could be the Promised One; laughter because we had always had hints of it but it seemed to good to be true and we were afraid to believe it fully; laughter because it is joy unspeakable and full of glory; laughter because at the heart of the universe, in the heart of love, in that light, everything, past, present and future, is transfigured (comprehend what I mean by “transfigured”) in the Light of God, and in that moment we realize God has taken away the tears, taken away the sorrow, taken away the wanton need and the temptation in the light of Transfiguration, and replaced it all with Laughter.
“Just be your real self,” Norman Grubb used to say. That’s the same thing as “authentic.” It just means, and I say this with authority – be yourself! Find out who you are in Christ, and be it. You be you! The “real” you – not one concocted from mimicry, or dogma, or fear – but of Christ!

What If Deliverance Never Comes? by Fred Pruitt

From Fred's Blog
(Someone wrote about a family member, who has known and believed, “Not I but Christ,” for some time, but has had a continuing serious bout with alcoholism at the same time. The question, paraphrased, was, “How can Christ be his life and Gal 2:20 be true for him and yet he cannot quit drinking and is bound by sin?)

Thank you for writing and sharing your life a little with me. I think we're all touched one way or another by alcoholism, drug addictions, etc. So I understand and am very familiar with your heart in this matter. Let’s just say it is close to me.

Interestingly, (just from my perspective), you are the second person in the immediate past who has written me about not being able to overcome something habitual, even though they had been to the Lord with it, believed, etc., but still could not escape. It is a very very common problem.

And I see by your history that you’ve run the gamut of “solutions.” Medical world, psych world, rehab world, Christian world, it looks like you’ve left no stone unturned. I'm not mentioning these past attempts at treatment of the problem as if they are wrong. People are helped medically, psychologically, and through rehab programs all the time. You mentioned the many times he's been “prayed over” and “anointed with oil,” words of faith, etc., among believers, and we do not discount that in any way. There are numerous testimonies of people being “instantly delivered” from things like that, and I have seen it myself. It is a fact that through all those ways, people are helped to escape substance abuse problems and many other things. But when you run down the list of the things tried during these years, it almost reminds me of the woman with the issue of blood, who had spent all her living on physicians but none had been able to heal her. Jesus was not slamming doctors (though they were pretty primitive back in those days!), but just noting her situation. She'd tried everything and nothing had worked. So without slamming any of those methods, we just note that none of them had “worked” for him.

And then after all that, you ask, “if Christ lives in and through him, why can’t he stop drinking?” And then your final comment, “but I don't understand how we as Christians who believe Gal. 2:20 with all their hearts can be bound by sin.”

Fair question! Especially since it is the Lord Who has made the promises! It seems to me, since we “have believed” His Word -- that whatever we ask we shall have, said in various ways throughout the gospels -- then as the Promise-receivers, we have something of a “right,” (maybe that’s part of coming “boldly” before the Throne of Grace), to question these things and desire to know “why” it seems like the opposite, that we do NOT have that for which we have asked, even though He has promised over and over that we would. Does God not keep His Promises?

It is easiest to take the low road, that it is something about us. After all, the normal thinking goes, if Christ truly were living this life, then we could do _______, or we would NOT do ____________ (fill in the blank). So we “let God off the hook” regarding unfulfilled promises (as it appears to us), by taking any failure on ourselves, that it’s me, not He. We admit to things like, “I must not have enough faith,” or, “I don’t want it enough,” or, “I must want it for selfish reasons,” and a whole host of other excuses for “God not coming through.”

First, let’s start here with this statement/question of yours: “I don't understand how we as Christians who believe Gal. 2:20 with all their hearts can be bound by sin.”

The immediate answer to that is that Christ cannot be bound by sin. And since He has come into the temple of our selves, and He and we have declared Him Lord of Lords and King of Kings in whatever way that has happened – since he grafted us into God’s Vine and we as branches on that True Vine – since in His death and burial He fulfilled the law of sacrifice as the “Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29) – since in His death and deliverance from the accumulated sins of all mankind from the beginning to the end, we also died to sin/Satan and died to the law (Rom 6 & 7) – since when He rose by the Spirit of the Father, we rose with Him into newness of Life by the same Spirit (Rom 6:4) – since we know that the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set ME free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2) – since we know that in Jesus Christ we are made one “person” with God (1 Cor 6:17) – since we know all that is true, then how can we say he is bound by sin? Christ has taken sin (Satan) out of him, and replaced sin with Himself, Who is righteousness, and he is the vessel of Christ Whose light shines out of darkness.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Cor 5:21).

Also,

By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins;

but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD,

waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET.

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying,

"THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM

AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD:

I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART,

AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,"

He then says,

"AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS

I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE."

Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

(Heb 10:10-18 NASB).

So then we toss out the issue of “bound by sin,” because it is not the truth. He is NOT bound by sin, because the Lamb of God has taken it away. But then, what about the evidence of our eyes, ears and mind, when he binges and gets into trouble on all fronts? What IS the truth? Do we bow to the devil who is teasing us and him with his taunts: “See, you’re not really dead to sin. Look at you. You are not committed to Christ. I’ve still got control over you!”?

Do we take that? Or do we declare that snake a liar because he speaks lies? He is the ultimate “spin doctor.” The “facts” of his problems are in plain evidence. There is no disputation of that. As the defense attorneys say in TV courtrooms, “We’ll stipulate to that, your Honor. Yes, those events occurred, and yes, it was my client who was a perpetrator, and he really did binge for a month and he really did drink all that alcohol, and the problems his behaviors have created are serious and real.”

Where do we go from there? I think first we have to see through the veil to who he really is.

Who is he? Since we know he is in Christ, then he is the righteousness of God in bodily form. He is a temple of the Holy Spirit by Whom he has fellowship with the Father and the Son. He is a chosen vessel of mercy. He is “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:10). He is the “elect” of God, as the Lord has declared. (Col 3:12; Is 42:1; Rom 8:33; 1 Thes 1:4; 1 Pet 1:1,2). That is the truth about him.

Or do we agree with those who observe and judge others' lives, when beholding others on their crosses, or in dire circumstances which to their minds must be the result of sin (as Job’s three friends took so much time to tell Job), and say, “There is no help for him in God.” (Ps 3:2)? (That is not just saying God will not help him. It is denying who he is in Christ, as the continual “accuser of the brethren,” he never lets up. “If he's the son of God, let's see him come down from the cross!” (Matt 27:40).

The accusing and condemning voices seem to proliferate day by day. “You are a sinner. You have no self-control, you don’t care what God says, if you really were who you say you are you could overcome this problem.”

On and on the voices accuse.

But as we referred to above, Romans 8:33, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?” And also Romans 14:4, “Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.”

So that is where we MUST* plant our feet. There is only one battle, and only one victory. It is the battle of faith. And the battle of faith is an inner struggle, in which the outcome has nothing to do with the outer appearances even though instigated by them, and yet it may drastically affect or change those appearances. No matter what some may say, the “appearances” are not the point or ultimate goal.

The victory is inner, because true reality is inner, what we call “the invisible.” We who are in Christ are well-schooled in living after the “invisible,” for who of us has ever seen the Object of our deepest affection, the Ultimate Hope and Anchor of our souls? And yet we believe and stake our whole lives on something we have never seen, nor have we any clear empirical evidence by which we may prove our “belief,” and thus we “appear” as fools in the world. Still, not seeing, we believe!

And that is what you are left with, and in truth all you have ever had from the beginning until now. The “invisible.” But of course I do not mean an invisible “nothing,” but rather the Living God Who is over all, “above all, through all and in you all.” There is no place where He is not, “above all, through all and in you all.” (Eph 4:6).

Here is the work and end of the Accuser:

“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” (Rev 12:10,11).

Now when he says, “I heard a loud voice … in heaven,” it is we, we who have been transported into the inner sanctuary, the throne of All Power, the Throne that decrees the only decrees that are decreed; it is we who hear this voice in that place. The voice announces that NOW IS come salvation, strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ. It is here, now, in the inmost place of all, so says the “loud voice.” Let's understand what it means by “loud voice.” It is a voice that demands to be HEARD! “Listen up,” it is saying. This is true in you! But that is not all.

How did they overcome him, who had continuously accused them before God day and night? Was it by great feats and demonstrations of greater power? Were they able to point to themselves and claim any right of defense? Were they able to point to themselves and contend with the accuser line upon line, precept upon precept, debating him while trying to justify themselves by the law? No, they cannot, because he is a skilled solicitor, knowing every twist, turn and loophole in the law, and he uses the Holy Law of God as his weapon, and daily he brings railing accusations against them out of the law.

But the accusations are cast out with him into outer darkness, because that “handwriting of ordinances which was against us,” (Col 2:14), was nailed to His Cross, and the reply to any and all of his lying accusations are answered, nullified and cast out by the Blood of the Lamb, through which none of his lies can penetrate.

That is the heavenly reality, the inner truth in this current moment for all who are His. And let it sink in, that this “inner truth, is “The Truth.” It is not just some mind-game we play with ourselves and comfort ourselves with as a way to cope with distressing circumstances. It is THE TRUTH. All his accusations fall to the ground at the Blood of the Lamb and have no worth, but are just puffs of smoke.

And that “overcoming” is enacted in us by “the word of [our] testimony,” that is, our word of agreement, of faith, of receiving, that we have no answer to the accuser except the blood of the Lamb, by which we are forever cleansed and delivered. And that word of our testimony becomes our “overcoming,” as John also says, “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn 5: 4,5).

And then it says, “and they loved not their lives unto the death,” which means they have freely recognized their position as “lambs of God,” that God might demonstrate His process of death and resurrection by “accounting us as sheep for the slaughter.” (Rom 8:36). That means that for those lambs, they recognize that they do not own themselves, but are bought with a price, and no longer serve themselves, but place their lives willingly on the altar of sacrifice for the benefit of the saints and the Lord's purposes, wherever that may lead.

As it is also true for us: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:10-12).

And that is what I am telling you, that, instead of seeing all the problems and the failures as evidence of his bondage to sin, which is Satan's lie, let us see and stand on the truth, that He is Christ in his human form, and testify from that place, both you and he, that you and he and Christ are one, and that even though it appears as if sin still reigns, it is instead the mighty power of intercession, whereby our lives are expended for the benefit of others in any way the Lord pleases.

Now of course, people are going to object with, “The Lord would not 'please' to manifest anyone as an alcoholic. The Lord would never do that.” But He put His own Son to death, and it says “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him,” (Isa 53:10), and He was made a curse and was “numbered among the trangressors.”

“Yes,” they may counter, “but the Lord went without sin, and certainly you cannot say that your 'intercession' is without sin!”

Show me the sin! Who here, with his will and heart, has turned against God and refuses to do His will?

Have they been acknowledged, the sins of the past? Of course they have!

Have they been provided for perfectly forever, so that there IS NO MORE NECCESITY for any further sacrifice for sin? If sin were still the issue, then what of this: “Having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, He SAT down …waiting until His enemies were made His footstool … For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified”? (Ref above). “One sacrifice for sins for all time?” YES!!

What about “willingness” as it regards “sin?” Has he said, “I want to sin.”? Of course not, he is in that place where he delights in the law of God after the inward man, though for a time he seems overcome and cannot escape. But all that is, is God's timing, nothing more, nothing less. “My times are in thy hand,” said the Psalmist! (Ps 31:15).

This is the part where Christ is seated in the place of authority over the entire universe, knowing, “All power in heaven and earth is given unto me,” (Matt 28:18), as established fact and truth which cannot be undone or resisted, and in that restful authority, He sits, “waiting” as the enemies, one by one, fall before Him and declare Him Lord of all – “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:10).

It's all done, and we can testify that it is. The enemy is defeated. The Lord has delivered!

Now, what of the problem with alcohol? Am I saying to go on and just accept the fact that he is an alcoholic, and always will be? Exactly the opposite! It is not permanent, but is instead the means to God's end, which is of course means “Good” to him, as we need not restate Rom 8:28.

God's “end” for him is something he may confess for himself: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.” (Ps 118:17-18). And we know this “chastening” is not something punitive, but rather how Jacob became Israel, and Joseph the dreamer became Joseph, Regent of Egypt, and deliverer of Israel.

And all of these, from start to finish, are the works of the only One Who says that “all things are worked after the counsel of His own will.” (Eph 1:11).

So let's see this new man, who is only the “new man,” despite the challenges and appearances of the flesh, trusting God to keep him as only God can do, and that whether the alcohol ever goes or does not go, nevertheless God will glorify Himself in, through, and as him, and he has that glory in himself even now!

Be not afraid, only believe!

(*If anyone who does not understand the difference between my usage of “the divine MUST,” and the “you should” of the law, it is simply the difference between our self-effort to “try” to do something to add to ourselves, and the inner unction of the Spirit which comes out as, “we MUST do this,” because we cannot help it. It is the “love drive” of the Spirit moving us.)

Why Union Is Not Embraced - More Follow-up by Fred Pruitt

Fresh from Fred's Blog
When I posted my most recent article, attempting to answer the question that many ask, “Why doesn’t everybody see this?,” as soon as I posted it I realized that some may take it in a way I did not mean it, and was considering writing a follow-up to that. Well, when I woke this morning I received my confirmation on that, having received this below from a person who is waking up to union with Christ. My “fears” were realized, but I am glad it has worked out this way, because it is by overcoming these negative situations in our own consciousness that we are taken from glory to glory in Christ. Here is the back and forth on that.

 Dear Fred:

 After reading yours (“Why Is Union Not Embraced More?”) and Norman Grubb’s (“Self Consciousness and Christ Consciousness” — recent post on christasus.com) articles, I became deeply depressed. I was having such joy reading all the articles until I realized I really do have only an intellectual, objective knowledge of union life with Christ. While I do believe whole-heartedly, as Norman put it, that I’ve been “one’d with Christ,” I cannot deny that my thinking is still predominately separated and self for self no matter how much I “choose” to focus on Christ as my only hope. If “some go on with God and some do not” and only God can fix that by giving one the faith to go on, then there is nothing left to do but twiddle one’s thumbs and wait to see whether God has chosen me to be one of the “blessed” ones. I do not really know how to “press on” and “not let go” until he “blesses” me, although all my life so far I have been one of those “Thinkers” (as opposed to “Doers”) who has sought to know Him more deeply (or believed I have), even if only in an intellectual way (which I can’t seem to help). I know you can see this is “separated thinking” however if only God can fix that, nothing really matters until He does, does it?

Dear dear ______,
I am SO SO SO SO sorry you got out of mine and Norman’s what you did. After I wrote it, I knew it might be interpreted that way by some, and had in mind to write something to go along with it. I am on the road as you may know, in Tyler Texas right now, and sometimes have time to write and sometimes not. But please please please do not end with the “conclusion” you have come up with.
You have NOT heard either me or Norman correctly! That LAST thing I was wanting to do was to give the “impression” you got.

through a glass darkly

The “proof” that you are “going on” is that you are delighting in all these things we are presenting. You DO see. You DO know. Regarding Norman’s “dual” consciousness while still in this life, all he was saying there is something akin to Paul’s “we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face,” (1 Cor 13:12). There was nothing to be taken as “negative” in what Norman wrote. What he was saying is that, though we live out of the Spirit and out of Eternal reality, we still also live in the temporal world and must have a temporal “mind” to live in that world. Only now, this “temporal” mind has the “mind of Christ” behind it, so that it is the instrument of the Spirit in this world. Before it had been the instrument of the spirit of error and separated understanding. But now it is the very necessary means whereby we are acquainted with the joys and sorrows of this world, in the world but not of it, and experience the pulls and feelings of “the flesh,” since we are still in flesh, but also not of it. An old writer from the 1600s said we look two ways always – We see by the Spirit in the eternal, and also we see by the Spirit, the temporal. Both are the perfection of God. We live the eternal in the temporal. This is not something we can readily see in an outward palpable sense, but it is exactly the reality we are living in right now, in this moment. And it is perfect in Christ. We are exactly where He wants us to be.
You ARE Christ in your form. I must clarify this for you, this “knowing” stuff. You have “inner knowing.” You ARE one in Spirit with God – 1 Cor 6:17. Norman always taught that faith is two part. There’s the part where we make our confession – “I am crucified with Christ …. yet not I but Christ ….” We do not come to that first confession if we have not been brought there by the Spirit. And the truth is everyone is brought there in some way.
How does one “get brought there?” How is one “chosen?” It’s something of a paradox, because God has chosen all of us. We “hook into” God’s choosing by simply agreeing with His choice – of us! You would not be delighted with what you had heard if the Spirit was not working in you to know Him in this way. When I said some “do not go on,” it is simply a fact that many believers are satisfied with the status quo of their lives and exhibit or have no desire for something else. And that is perfect for them, but that is not you!
Back to this faith confession. We make our confession of who we are in Christ. When we enter a new faith, it is from the side where it is not yet our experience. We believe it, because the Spirit has shown us. We desire it, because He is moving in us to desire it. But we see, of course, that faith starts out with something “unseen,” or something yet to manifest. But we believe it anyway, even as Abraham believed God’s promise to him regarding the birth of Isaac. He believed God when there was no evidence of it in any sense, and it seemed like it was not possible for him and Sarah to have a child.
Now what we are talking about is more intangible than the physical birth of a child. There is no kind of outer proof whatsoever that what we have believed and confessed with our mouths about who we are is true. It is from beginning to end an inner thing, inner spirit consciousness.
Now my point is this: from the first moment you see the truth of these things we have been saying, things which have caused you to be joyful and hopeful again about your life in Christ, it has been your inner truth! But for some time after we see and begin to “believe it” – the length of time does not matter – we walk our faith-understanding only in our own confession. It’s the “stand” we make, even though everything seems to come against it.
But what happens eventually, the time frame doesn’t matter because it is the TRUTH about you always, even when you do not know it, is that the Spirit comes up within us and floods us with His confirmation of Himself in us. There is no describing how or what that is for or in each individual, except that to say what we have rather gingerly “believed,” becomes “solid” in us.
Now not too much is to be made from that. We stick to our faith confession that the Spirit has led us to make and believe, and do not “judge” whether this has occurred or not, this “inner confirmation,” but just walk always in faith that we are exactly who the scriptures and the Holy Spirit has revealed that we are – Christ walking around in our bodies, souls and spirits!
The ones I was speaking of who do not “go on” are the ones who stay in their churches, happy with the scraps and mixtures of law and grace, and for some reason do not ever press beyond that. I have no explanation for that. But, those folks are as much Christ in their form as someone who has seen it and confessed it, and they are living Christ, but they do not know it. And when we don’t know it, we can’t live from it in our consciousness, even though God is still manifesting Himself in the world by us.
Now I have no criticism for them, because God is still the source of their identity. Let’s imagine Christ is like a bank account (He isn’t but bear with me). Let’s say someone opens an account for us and puts in $500 million dollars. When we hear that we think that could not be true, and we only believe we have $500 in our account. So we only live from the $500 because that’s all we think we have. But we actually have $500 MILLION, we just don’t know it.
Now you have one of these $500 million dollar accounts, and by the Spirit you are beginning to see and believe it. So keep on! I am only encouraging you to believe who you already are! This reality, Christ in you, IS YOU, and IS FUNCTIONING right now in this current moment! How it works, for me and for many others, is that we increasingly see how much our account has in it and begin to live on more and more of our inexhaustible inner supply. That is where you are right this moment. You are He living in you, and just trust Him to take you from glory to glory in this, as He has your whole life. The truth which you learned, “As He is so are you in this world,” holds true!
If anything for the moment, toss mine out and Norman’s, too. Go back to what you were excited about before, because it is certainly your total reality! You are Christ living out in your human life! There is no going back on that, only a pressing ahead!
Please keep in touch. You come behind in no good thing. You ARE complete and perfect in Christ. You ARE Christ living because Gal 2:20 is just as true for you as for me or anyone else. If I have given you the impression that this somehow depends on “you” to make it work, then disregard that impression. He is your Life, Identity, Power, Love, Wisdom, Righteousness, Holiness, etc., in totality and completion right now – TODAY! He is the “author and FINISHER of your faith.” (Heb 12:2) It is He who is in you “both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13) “Faithful is He who has called you, who will also DO IT!” (1 Thess 5:24).
And even Paul said, “If we believe not, He abideth faithful, because he cannot deny Himself.”(2 Tim 2:13). All our agreement or “faith” does is hook us into what already IS, and strangely, even when we do not believe it (because we do not yet know it), He still manifests Himself to the world in and AS you and me!
All my love,
fred

Exclusivamente por los que pueden hablar en espagnol

Christ’s Mass By Fred Pruitt

Christ’s Mass

By Fred Pruitt

Israel was not allowed to make images of God because God is not out there where we can look at Him.

Jesus came so that we would all come into the image of God in which we were created. We are the only image of God. God is the Only One Person Who is all of us. There is no other person. The same One Image in each.

Although I suppose it is necessary, I tire of even my own constant effort to make sure that, theologically, a distinction is always clearly made between the “created” and the “Creator.”

Let everything I have written heretofore on the subject stand as witness that I have ever held this “distinction,” and still do.

Nevertheless, there is only one image of God — the Christ of God reflected in you and me. No other image of God, no other likeness, can I find. The life of resurrection is the resurrected Life of Christ in our normal selves.

For a time God has winked at our ignorance. He allowed, no purposed, that the Church of Christ in her infancy and growing up would only know Him in an outer sense. He allowed, no purposed, that a priesthood would arise (“Catholic” or “Protestant” — same difference), an earthly priesthood, that still in a dim way reflected, and still today reflects heavenly mysteries. That the people, the “laity,” (“Catholic” or “Protestant” — same difference), would be much as the children of Israel, dependent on the the priesthood to intercede with God for them, and dependent on rituals (“Catholic” or “Protestant” — same difference), to feel close to God or forgiven. And always, with God separate and apart from the people.

But the call of today is the prayer of Moses: “Would God that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Num 11:29). And of course this is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, Who by His sacrifice not only delivered us from sin and sins, but has also made us, in this present moment, a holy royal priesthood, kings and priests unto God – everyone of us who is in Christ. We are now “Emmanuel.”

The concept of “laity” apart from the “priesthood” is henceforth declared null and void. Thus saith the Lord.

This doesn’t mean that everybody now walks off their jobs and leave their spouses and children and buy tents and take up the sawdust trail. It means that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, in the present moment, you are the outpouring of the Grace of God.

You are the image of God that shines in your world. God enters the world by you. You are His opening to the world of Himself as He really is.

It has nothing to do with how well you behave according to the appearances of the flesh, or how many scriptures you know, or if you have all your doctrines lined up. He is Love. John says if we love our brother, we are in Him, for God is love.

“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:12)

No man has ever seen God. John says this to our ears in plain English. But then “what” is God?

He is You and Me loving each other.

We will never take it any farther than that.

There will never be a more “objective God” than the love you live in that flows from you out of your belly.

When it says it flows out of your belly it means that it is a natural outflow of the life you live. The individual members of the Church grow up in their consciousness into the Head, which is Christ, and become organically One Person. To be organically One Person means that we spontaneously bear the fruit of the Vine in the relaxation of simply being ourselves, having trusted the Invisible One to manifest Himself into visibility by the spontaneous flow of the Sap from the Vine into the Branches which we are.

It means that you forget yourself. The scriptures say that, “when my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” (Ps 27:10). This has more than a fleshly meaning. Our “father and mother” are our earthly dependence. We rely on them to support our earthly life, to insure our survival. But only until adulthood. When we are adults in this world, we are expected to go out into the world and leave the dependence on our mother and father and make our own lives.

To be an adult means that the focus of our lives, in maturity, becomes focused not primarily on our own survival but on giving life to and sustaining life for others. You become secondary to yourself and those to whom you are given are primary. You live to insure their lives. That is human life in maturity.

Spiritually, it means that our “father and mother” are whatever supports of self-will or repositories of self-reliance that we might have thought we’d reserved for our own welfare are gone, that there is nothing in this world or the next, that can hold us up, except the Invisible God, Who is our very Own Self.

“Whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:33-35) The ONLY “thing” we have is what we take to be “ourselves.”

To forsake “all” therefore is to forsake everything there is, everything we see, everything we know, everything we are, everything we’d like to see, to forsake EVERYTHING that we perceive or possibly could perceive, for the Invisible One Who is Nothing to our senses or perception or human minds.

It is to be “crucified,” to see that “we are dead.”

Our lives are hidden in Christ in God, and when we see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Oh my goodness.

It means that He is not “lo here or lo there.” It means that “it” is “within you,” which means that God has no geographical location, except as manifested in You.

You cannot look around and catch any glimpse of Him.

And it means that EVERYWHERE you look He is all you see.

You are Him. You are you. The Same person.

Bingo.

This is the true “Christ’s Mass.”

Merry Christmas to all, and God bless us everyone!

Son Day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as Son Day

  God spoke this into my heart this week....(Facebook status)

"The Lord's Day was never Sunday. It's the devil who mixes Sun worship with Son worship. Like pyramids with In God We trust. And Santa with Christmas.Oh no Chris has gone Seventh Day Adventist! No, Jesus, being Jesus and just above it all, said this week,that although Sabbath truly began on the eightth day, we are not allowed to celebrate it on the 8th day, because it hasn't ended yet!It's just Sabbath, period!"

 

http://www.andykazie.com/Landscapes/Spring-to-Life-1/15754831_3W8rrR/1/1181237779_X78c6#1181237779_X78c6

 

 

The Sabbath

by Ole Henrik Skjelstad on Friday, 16 December 2011 at 10:05

The gospels abound with examples of Jesus repeatedly breaking the Sabbath hence provoking the religious elite of His day. Jesus’ extensive ministry on the Sabbath is parables showing that the Sabbath merely is a shadow pointing to Him. He is the Sabbath, and since the Sabbath is Him, that is, His own life, He can in freedom do whatever pleases Him in regards to it. And by so doing His actions testify to the goodness of the Father flying in the face of human traditions built on the letter and not the Spirit.

Jesus did many of His healing miracles on the Sabbath. They prefigure how He as the Sabbath would heal and restore mankind by His death and resurrection. Every healing success demonstrating the efficacy of the cross. By one of the many wonders of the Spirit the Sabbath comes alive in Christ so that we relax into a person and not a specific day.

Another pertinent question in this context is why the Jews performed circumcision on the Sabbath. This tradition plainly foreshadows that in Jesus the old man is cut off. Circumcision also denotes our nothingness and impotence, that is, without Him we can do nothing. It is at this juncture we face a two way temptation. “A temptation "up," to see "this thing" as God and in God and at work for Divine purposes out of our inner oneness; or a temptation "down" in which our sight is locked into the temporal appearance as something in itself and "we" as "something in our selves" (separation) responding to this "thing" as if it is outside God, along with us outside God, too. Alone” (Fred Pruitt).

It was Sabbath when Jesus formed clay and put on the blind man's eyes so that He became seeing. Clay in this context equals union because it was His saliva mixed with dust (we are made from dust) that constituted the mixture. The dust and the saliva become one. He in us and we in Him. Both components giving definition to the clay. It is impossible to know where dust begins and saliva leaves off. The amazing thing is that it is the dust we see, but in a new transformed version in oneness. The dust has become the Sabbath in which it rests from its own works.

It is worth noting that it is Jesus who molds and fashions the clay so that it becomes a unique expression of Christ. We are not responsible to form ourselves. We are safe in His loving hands to become exactly what we are meant to be according to His Divine purposes perfectly manifesting the Father in all things. The dust hasn’t lost anything when it is mixed with Christ. It doesn’t either appear as merely an improved version of itself. No, it has become something new, something never seen before.

"AT THAT particular time Jesus went through the fields of standing grain on the Sabbath; and His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick off the spikes of grain and to eat." The plain truth is that Jesus is our food. He is the One who satisfies our hunger. He comes and calls us not in accordance with human traditions and assumptions, but most often contrary to reason and the natural mind. Those paths He takes us along have to contradict appearances and circumstances or else faith would be void and of no meaning.

“And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It can't be said much clearer than this. God lives wholly for his creation and gives himself unrestricted to it so that it in all things can be restored to its original paradisaical state. He is like the sun which rays of light and warmth can only bless and which gives itself wholly to those it shines upon.

It was Friday when Jesus took His last breath. It was Sunday when the Spirit breathed His life into Him again. But death reigned the entire Sabbath. The shadow died so that the substance by faith could enter into human consciousnesses.

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• Margaret Wakeford Schutte, Cheryl Lowry, Cathy Rheeder and 15 others like this.
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    Craig Castleman Tremendous insights, truth and parallels conveyed here so beautifully Ole, thanks so much. Consequently, I am a little freer for having read it! Blessings.

    16 hours ago · · 1
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    Ole Henrik Skjelstad Wow! Thank you dear friend! You are a perpetual source of encouragement. Blessings!

    15 hours ago ·
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    Vicki Leventhal-Highet Frydrych

    Yes! On the first sabbath the Lord completed all His work which He had done (Gen 2). The sabbath - the rest that remains (Heb 4) - is for each believer in Christ today. It is the time where the work He did in us becomes complete - it is finished (Jn 19) - and we get to rest in Him, who is also at rest. God looks at the heart (1 Sam 16) and when we accept the cross - our sin paid for AND - us, the sinner killed receiving His life within us (Gal 2, Rom 6) - the life we live by - we are finished.

    14 hours ago · · 3
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    Craig Castleman ‎'we are finished'. Yes, love it!

    14 hours ago · · 1
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    Ole Henrik Skjelstad Thanks Vicki! You perfectly add to the note!

    14 hours ago ·
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    Ole Henrik Skjelstad I read Ez 37 yesterday, and it became very clear to me how finished we were until God made us alive again.

    14 hours ago ·
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    Craig Castleman I wish I had known the glorious truth that 'I was finished' years ago, would have saved me (and some other folks, ha) lots of trouble! ha.

    14 hours ago · · 1
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    Ole Henrik Skjelstad Sure thing, but it seems like all of us need a period of conditioning in the wilderness, taken there by the Spirit - we have all been stuck in Romans 7 until we surrendered.

    14 hours ago · · 3
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    Craig Castleman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrrIO_rXNO8

    

    Jethro Tull- God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

    www.youtube.com

    From The Jethro Tull Christmas Album

    13 hours ago ·
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    Craig Castleman God 'Rest' Ye Merry Gentlemen...Sabbath!

    13 hours ago ·
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    Elaine Fitzpatrick Sneed

    ‎"AT THAT particular time Jesus went through the fields of standing grain on the Sabbath; and His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick off the spikes of grain and to eat." The plain truth is that Jesus is our food. He is the One who satisfies our hunger. He comes and calls us not in accordance with human traditions and assumptions, but most often contrary to reason and the natural mind. Those paths He takes us along have to contradict appearances and circumstances or else faith would be void and of no meaning.
    " love this Ole...so true...it has to be different to us not the copying of someone else.

    13 hours ago · · 2
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    Craig Castleman Yes, Elaine, Jesus is our very food for 'He would feed us with the finest of the Wheat' (Ps 81:16 & 147:14)

    13 hours ago · · 2
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    Ole Henrik Skjelstad I love your conclusion, Elaine! Thanks!

    13 hours ago ·
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    Elaine Fitzpatrick Sneed I wrote a short about the need to make bread for yourself not instead of buying from a bakery but in the intimacy of it as a metaphor for relationship with my Jesus. You have to try Him for yourself! Taste and see.....you won't regret.

    13 hours ago · · 1
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    Elaine Fitzpatrick Sneed I know you already have...just carrying on the metaphor.... =)

    13 hours ago · · 1
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    Jean Rittenberg You are truly blessed dear brother such insight THANKS!!!!

    11 hours ago ·
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    Jamie Fields Right on Bro!!!!!!!!!!!!

    11 hours ago ·
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    Cathy Rheeder Oh how i love the bread of life! Thanx ole for always giving us the bread of life.mmmmm i love it.