The Rightness of Our Souls - DeeDeeWinter to Ole Henrik Skjelstad

 

 

The Rightness of Our Souls – A Dialog Between DeeDee Winter and Ole Henrik

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Ole Henrik

Ole Henrik: Sometimes I find it hard to trust my soul and my emotions and how both push me in different directions.
DeeDee: Ole, the only thing to do is say, “Here You are, Lord, now what does this mean…what are You up to?” You will ever so gradually sift through to your direction. Actually your soul and your emotions are one and the same…moving together in sync. Your reason will be the thing that pushes you in a different direction saying that this cannot be. These are the two things we have to ‘sort through’ and find the Lord’s purpose and direction. Soul expresses what your spirit/Spirit is doing.
Ole Henrik: Without a soul it would be impossible to express our spirits in their union with the Spirit. Right? Without our souls it would impossible to know when God embraces us in a special way. Right? Our souls are God’s means of expressing Himself to the world. Right? And directing our steps….
DeeDee: Right…right…right!
Ole Henrik: Many speak about “letting” Him. “Let God be free in you.” What does that mean? Can we somehow bind God? In that case, it is unbelief that somehow causes Him to be “unfree” in us?
DeeDee: When I came out from under the law and living life as though I was separated from God and had to “do” the Christian life to please God, I began to redefine words that seemed like I had to or  could do anything to accomplish living the Christian life. We will redefine “let” as “recognize” or “agree with God” and go joyously with the flow of Christ, our life. In saying we must “let God” we are usually speaking from a point of view that somehow we (our actions and reactions) are more powerful than God (although folks would never admit that, but it is the natural outcome from having a separated mindset) and must ‘let’ or ‘allow’ the Creator of the universe freedom within their great hold on themselves and life. What a joke!!!
But I suppose in some small way that our unbelief and non-cooperation limits (I use that instead of bind) us as we constantly check ourselves against our false image/idea of Jesus and how He was on a daily basis. We have a very ‘sterilized’ idea of Him…blond, white and almost floating around Israel in a calm and  angelic way…disturbed a couple of times in His life, but for the most part calm. At least that is how I once pictured Him…and it was SO far from how I behaved on a daily basis! The joke was on me when I discovered the fully human side of Jesus.
Ole Henrik: I was thinking about bitterness yesterday. The Bible admonishes us to not allow any bitter root to grow in us. Why is that? Could it be that because of bitterness we are less receptive concerning the things God wants to give us?
DeeDee: Isn’t bitterness due to our refusal to find/see God in a person or situation?
Ole Henrik: Never thought about it like that before, but you are right.
DeeDee: Yes, and the longer we refuse the deeper the root grows entangling us in ways we never dreamed. Our only answer is “The cup my Father gives me” and “In everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning me”.
Ole Henrik: Which means suffering…….and it means to be taken on faith journeys that devastates reason and which are unique for every one of us….
DeeDee: Absolutely! And what does suffering produce but glory. God sees to that! It is His natural outcome from death to resurrection.
Ole Henrik: Do you mind elaborating on this: “entangling us in ways we never dreamed”
DeeDee: What was once a hurtful thing in our lives can turn into a much greater and more far-reaching hurt to us…poisoning our relationship and even other relationships…when we stand our ground and do not try to resolve or accept our hurt as “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” We become entangled in our ‘being right’ or justified…affecting many of our relationships.
Ole Henrik: For many it is difficult to accept the fact that also their souls are now reconciled to God and are perfected in Him and are for His use. Why is that?
DeeDee: The answer is so simple and yet difficult to resolve. It is not our souls that are “reconciled to God” but our spirits are when we receive Christ as our Savior. It takes some unlearning and training by the Holy Spirit to settle us. Our souls only express spirit/Spirit….either the Spirit of Error (before we are born-again) or the Spirit of Truth (after we receive Christ and are joined to HIm spirit to Spirit).
The real issue is simply that we live in the illusion that we have ‘life’ in us apart from God…that we can do good/be better or do bad/sin. Life is Spirit. We know this because what is death, but when our spirit leaves our body. Spirit IS life. What is expressed through/by our soul IS spirit/Spirit. Our soul has NO ability/life in itself apart from our spirit to express one thing!.
Ole Henrik: In what ways do our souls express faith?
DeeDee: In any word or belief that we utter in agreeance with God. This can be with His word through the Bible or by what stirs in us by the Holy Spirit to believe. Because we are accustomed to think that these stirrings are ‘just’ us we miss the glory that they are His life bursting forth from us.
It is imperative that we come to understand the simple basics of our human makeup. Man is tri-part…spirit, soul and body. Our spirit is our “created in the image of God” part of us and it is where we are joined to the Lord…”He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” This is pictured in a human marriage when the two become one. Spirit contains mind (We have the mind of Christ) knowing, will, choice. Spirit is ego…I am. Our souls contain reason, emotion, mind (“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind). Our body is our physical make-up.
Ole Henrik: Seems to me that all this adds up to that we are safe in our new marriage/union. I have one last question. I notice how my soul also is impacted by outer stimuli. I get nervous, sometimes I have slight anxiety attacks, I get fearful etc and all these reactions or responses are triggered by what I encounter in the outside world. Any thoughts?
DeeDee: If our bottom line is that our soul has no ability in us but to express Spirit/spirit then we must say that the anxiety is Spirit being expressed….but for a much different purpose than I have ever realised in the past. These ‘attacks’ are simply there to produce faith.
It is our spirit that is impacted, but we are so used to knowing ourselves only on a feeling level…soul or body feelings…that we misinterpret our souls. We immediately think there is something wrong coming against me from an outer source….when in truth it is Spirit/Christ/God expressing Himself for an upward purpose when I move into faith about what I am feeling.
I learned this some years ago when jealousy rose in me like a flash toward a long-time and much beloved friend of mine. I had known my union with Christ and freedom from the law for several years, but I did not yet have any understanding of the all-encompassing rightness of my feelings and reactions. All I knew was to say, “I am not jealous of her, I am Christ in my form.”
The words that came back to me forever changed my life. I heard as clearly as I have ever heard anything…”You are not jealous OF her, but jealous FOR her. It is My jealousy in you FOR her to know Me as you do.” All I could do was humbly say with the Lord that she would know Christ as her life also.
My mind reeled as I began to realise the totalness of what I had just ‘heard’. ALL of my feelings were made right by His life within me…His Spirit joined to my spirit and being expressed through my soul. I looked at Scripture and realised the hard things to understand that God says about Himself. Three emotions that I had always thought that God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) could never express, He says about HImself….hate, jealousy and anger! If they are right in Him then they must be right in the born-again person…because Christ IS our life!
Each of us have a part of our personality/soul that we have feared and fought all of our life because we have seen it as some thing WRONG (with a capital W) about us, when in fact it is the MAJOR thing right about us. It is THE vehicle for the cross of Christ to operate in us…Him laying down His life BY/IN US and taking it up again for those whom WE are given.
Jesus tells us of this work of the cross in Matt. 16:24-26. “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it: and whoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what has a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
This passage comes after Peter has declared Jesus The Christ and Jesus says that flesh and blood did not reveal this. Jesus declares  this response is the rock/FAITH (the Person of Christ Himself)  on which He will build His church.  He then gives us the keys to bind or loose by OUR word…which comes out of the desires, pressures and agonies of OUR SOUL.
The next happening in this most interesting exchange is that Jesus tells them he must suffer, die and be raised. Peter rebukes this and Jesus calls him Satan…by not wanting God’s way of the cross.  Jesus then tells us that our way to FOLLOW (to come or go after; to move behind in the same direction) Him is through the cross.
What does “take up OUR cross…lose OUR life…forfeit OUR soul ” mean? The real key here is OUR; not cross, nor life, nor soul.
It is the very nature of God to lay down His life for His creation. That is Who love is…a Life laid down. That is what HE WILL BE in and AS US…the cross of Christ constantly operative. To lose OUR life is to lose any consciousness we have of a SEPARATE or INDEPENDENT life that we THINK we have. In reality there is NOTHING in us apart from Christ…our spirit joined to His Spirit expressed through OUR body and SOUL. There it is…OUR soul. What possible way do we have of expressing Him if we want our soul flat-lined, inoperative, placid…thereby giving it up!!!! To lose the FULL expression of our soul is to lose the only way His Life and cross can bring about life for others. This is truly finding OUR life…right and hidden in Christ Jesus.
THIS is what we have to give to the Body of Christ…THE FULL, TOTAL, RIGHTNESS AND RIGHT USE OF OUR HUMANITY…ALL about US made right in the death, burial and resurrection of our beloved God and Lord, Jesus Christ…who has come again a second time  by His Holy Spirit to live IN and AS His most beloved creation…US!!! Christ FULLY alive and expressed in every aspect and nuance of our souls. “So Christ was was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for Him shall He appear a second time WITHOUT SIN unto salvation”…Heb. 9:28  I believe this second appearance is when we KNOW no sin/wrongness/separation in whatever way the Spirit comes through us.
Only the FINAL battle…our personal Armageddon…of losing OUR life will bring us to complete rest…me loving my God-created-in-His-own-image-and-called-very-good-ME…
my depression, fear, jealousy, anger… I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…in my soul and body.  Our souls are our glory…revealing our Treasure in earthen vessels…Christ in us.

Our Most Valuable Soul……part II

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Ole Henrik

By DeeDee Winter
I awoke this morning thinking of our exchange on the soul. Until the Holy Spirit gets this part of us settled in its rightness, we can never fully “be about our Father’s business”, because every time a negative emotion hits us we will either ask what is wrong with us, taking condemnation, OR confess it as sin. Imagine confessing the LIFE OF CHRIST within ourselves as sin!!!
We were created to bear Him and bring life to our ‘world’. His way of bringing mankind out of slavery to Sin was to die on the Cross, rise again, ascend into heaven and then send us His Holy Spirit. He will be the same dynamic IN US of death and resurrection and in doing so, bring those whom He gives us into light and freedom!
But we MUST first get settled about the purity of our souls…purely expressing Him!
After the Lord said to me “You are not jealous of her, but for her; it is My jealousy in you for her to know Me as you do” I began to search the Scriptures for what there was about our souls, because I knew if God spoke that word to me that it would be backed up by His Scriptures. What I found so far surpassed what I had hoped for! I began with a word search and found Matt 16:26…”What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
I was riveted and began to read back through that passage. The Spirit directed me as far as Matt 16:15. I will loosely paraphrase it all…
Matt 16:15 begins with Jesus asking His disciples “Who do you say that I am?” Peter replies that He is the Christ and Jesus tells him flesh and blood did not tell Peter this, but it was revealed by His Father in heaven and upon this rock (of revelation and faith) He shall build His church. Jesus continues…with these ‘rock principles’ in place He says (19) He will give us the keys to the kingdom…that whatsoever we bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever we loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This means that we have the power by our word to set folks free!
Jesus then says He must go to the Cross…to which Peter replies that he does not want Him to suffer (23) and Jesus calls him Satan! It is Satan that does not want the Cross…death to resurrection which is the very nature of God (giving Himself for others) and this truth will become part of every believer when we receive Christ Jesus as our Savior…which is receiving His LIFE! This LIFE is not just when we ‘go to heaven’ but also for every day we live on this earth in time and space. It is His nature, and now ours, to bear conflict in our soul and by our word, bring life to/in the object of our conflict…binding and loosing. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice…our reasonable service” as Ro 12:1 says.
Then comes the resounding climax (24 – 26) of this passage! “If any man will come after Me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” This denying ourselves is to deny that we have ANY ability in ourselves apart from Him…NO independent self that is able to act on our own…nothing in our branch form apart from The Vine (Christ by the Holy Spirit) who IS our life! It is the clarion call to fully BE Who you are!
“For whosoever shall save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it.” I used to think the emphasis of this passage was on lose and life…but no longer.
I see the emphasis to be totally on “his”…again speaking of the illusion of an independent life apart from Christ…an independent ability to sin or do good. Lose THAT illusion!
And now to the verse that wraps up this exchange. “For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Losing our soul…and ALL it is meant to be…is to be suspicious of our emotions and trying to get them under ‘control’. When we do not trust them, fear them or hate them we give up the ‘way’ the Holy Spirit is coming through us for those around us. It is Satan’s gospel that tells the Christian that his emotions are wrong and not to be trusted…and anyone telling us that is preaching Satan’s gospel!
It takes a ‘season’ for the Spirit to settle and train us in the right use of ourselves. We have been so used to fearing our anger, jealousy, hate love…yes, even love. Begin to say the truth about yourself…”Lord, here You are”. At first we will have to simply take these truths by faith, but ever so quietly the Holy Spirit will make them ours. Everything about me has been made right and God is living His life as me…for “In Him we live and move and have our being.” When we begin to see these truths about ourselves ALL of Scripture screams them at us. God will gradually expand our understanding to see that what we want is never for ourselves, but always for the other person’s highest good.
The last few words of these verses “…in exchange for our soul” are vital for us to comprehend. Most of the Christian world wants their souls to be flat-lined with no ups or downs…oh maybe the ups are OK, but God help them if there is anything negative! God MEANS for us to have a fully alive and extremely active soul. It is through the activity of our soul that God calls our attention to a person or situation we “bind and lose” as we saw in v.19. We move into FAITH!
As we stated earlier…God’s nature/being is always to give His life for the other. He did this before the foundation of the world when The Lamb was slain. God chose then to be for more than Himself. He chose to be for us and His creation. He will be nothing less/do nothing less than He did before we existed. He will always lay down His life and take it up again. This is His life and is to be our life in Christ. His final commandment to us was “Love as I have loved you.” (Jn 15:12).
It is imperative that these deep realities are settled in us and about us, in order that we can fully be about our Father’s business…in oneness/union with Christ redeeming those He brings to us.

Greater Love Hath No Man - Daniel Yordy

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. John 15:12-14

These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. John 16:25

This is the first of a series of letters called The Kingdom of God. I have not completed the series The Gathering Together, and thus hope to complete that series also, as the Lord leads. The truth is, my topic has slowly shifted, and in fact, over the last few letters, I have seen the foundation of the very thing I devoted my life to at the age of twenty-one - the birthing of the Kingdom of God upon this earth.

Neither I nor Jesus offer you a "key" to "figure out" the deep, hidden truth. We offer you, simply, God Himself, revealing Himself as you - His image, the branch through which the Life of the vine shows Himself. Right after these words in John 16, Jesus said: "This is eternal life, to know You, the only true God."

I have long been interested in the nature of this kingdom, what it is and how it operates. Yet God has kept it at arm's length from me, and rightly so. There is no way I could have known the nature of God's kingdom when I did not know His nature. Worse than that, I interpreted the kingdom of God by the hierarchy and order of the kingdoms of this world. And in so doing I would have (as most who teach on the kingdom do) twisted and perverted that kingdom, taking Bible verses and concepts and tacking them onto a "God" created in the likeness and image of man.

My article "God is Beneath Your Feet" is a revolutionary understanding of God, that is, an understanding that turns everything "upside down." (Please understand that I gave a very specific definition for the phrase "beneath your feet," that is, we are upside down. When we are right side up, that is, when we know God as He really is, all that God speaks about our enemies being "under our feet" becomes our reality.)

http://youtu.be/ngwAn-V0bDQ

 

We cannot know the kingdom of God until we first know the King. Knowing the King begins with these words:

I am meek and lowly of heart.

Consider Jesus' words in John 16:25. He said that everything He had spoken until then, not only John 14-16, but everything else in all the gospels was spoken in a "figurative" language. That is, the words and symbols that He used mean something far beyond their surface meaning or, rather, far beyond normal human knowledge of these things. Then Jesus says, "I will tell you plainly about," - another figurative statement.

The phrase, "I will tell you plainly about," is figurative.

Now, I received an email that is sent occasionally by a group - I did not sign up for it. This email made the claim that they had discovered the "key" that unlocks the gospels. The problem, of course, is that this "key" was mental, to be used by the human mind to "figure out" the hidden secrets.

Neither I nor Jesus offer you a "key" to "figure out" the deep, hidden truth. We offer you, simply, God Himself, revealing Himself as you - His image, the branch through which the Life of the vine shows Himself. Right after these words in John 16, Jesus said: "This is eternal life, to know You, the only true God."

If Jesus' words, "I will tell you plainly about," were literal and not figurative, then He "talks," we listen, and then we learn some things "about" God, who remains, then, a mental construct. Ideas "about" God cannot ever be anything other than "God" created in the image and likeness of man. God is not ideas; God is Spirit. Spirit is pervasive and personal, ideas are definitive: two very different things. We can know Spirit; we can talk about ideas. We cannot talk about Spirit, and we cannot know ideas intimately and personally.

Those who would argue in great protestation for the definition of God found in the Nicene Creed are really, deeply, desperately concerned about human ideas only. God Himself they would despise if they saw Him. When God shows up in the earth, He looks nothing like the Nicene Creed.

"Know God" is the only thing not found inside the matrix of human ideas and nonsense.

We cannot know the "God" of historical Christianity because the definition given to that "God" is not just inaccurate, but, rather, in certain crucial ways, the opposite of God as He really is.

It is impossible to define God by human ideas and definitions. This is God's problem from the beginning. God cannot be defined, He can only be known. Thus the only thing that could possibly show us God is the Man, Christ Jesus, particularly in His passage from Gethsemane to the Ascension. And the only way we ourselves could know God is to be just like Jesus, that is, God showing Himself as us - His image, the branch and fruit that are the Life of God made visible.

The only thing that can "define" God is story; the only words we could use are action verbs.

Greater love hath no man than this,

that a man lay down his life for his friends.

This IS God.

Let me repeat the "definition" of God I gave in my letter, "The Weakness of God."

- God always reveals Himself through weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and we in Him. - 

Thus the Man, Christ Jesus, is God revealed.

If we have miss-defined God all our Christian lives, then we must also have miss-defined Christ and Spirit and power and holiness and salvation and man and everything else. There is only one thing I know that we cannot miss-define under the vanity of separation from God: a man laying down His life for His friends.

Anyone who can successfully divert our eyes from this only knowing of God onto the human arguments of God the Father - God the Son - God the Holy Spirit, co-equal in substance, etc., etc., etc., has successfully separated us from ever knowing God.

God did not present to us the conundrum, the mystery, of the "Trinity" etc., etc., as any mystery that reveals Him. He presented us with a Man laying down His life for His friends as the mystery that reveals Him. The moment you insert human argument into that picture, God Himself vanishes and all that's left is a "God" created in the image and likeness of man. God is completely other than human argument and definition.

When we know God, then we know Jesus Christ whom He has sent, that we are just like Him, and we know the Spirit who reveals Christ as us.

In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:9-11

Notice the words, "that we might live through Him." Notice the words, "in this is love - that He sent His Son to be the propitiation," that is, to become us in our weakness, then to ascend and we in Him. Notice the words, "we also."

The kingdom of God in all reality is found first in these two words: "we also." It is found nowhere else. Yes, the kingdom of God grows from these two words to include all the works of God's hands, but everything found in that larger picture is rooted entirely in "we also."

God is revealed, the mystery of Christ is known, the fullness of the Spirit is found only out from these two words: "we also."

By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 1 John 3:16

John confirms this definition of God. God is Love - by this we know Love - Jesus laying down His life for us - AND we also. There is no other way to know God.

You see, as humans, we are able to hold mutually opposing views in our minds all at the same time. We can switch from arguing for one to arguing for its opposite without missing a beat or even knowing what we're doing. In this way, American Christians can worship Jesus as the One who laid down His life for them and then hiss and boo when a politician suggests that American foreign policy should be based on doing unto others what we would have them do unto us.

In a similar fashion, we can talk all about Christ living as us, about the grace and love of God, but then, in an instant, revert back to definitions of God and Christian theology without even realizing that we cannot have both. We can say, over and over, that we know love because He laid down His life for us - and we also, and then turn and say that we "know" that God is Three in One, Omnipresent Spirit, Eternal, Infinite, etc., etc.

I am actually very serious. The "God" of historic Christianity is a God we know all kinds of things about, a God we can define - and to define is to control. We receive revelation about this "God" concerning His life and grace and love, but always, we must revert back to the "God" of definition whenever argument comes our way.

Knowing about God is the opposite of knowing God. To the extent that we know about God, to that same extent we do not know God. To know God we must stop, that is, turn from, that is, repent of knowing definitions about Him.

And thus, God can speak through us by the words He says, first in the revelation of Christ spoken by Paul and John - Christ in you the hope of glory / As He is so are we in this world, and then out from that revelation to all things God Himself says.

A sister recently asked me a series of questions which I answered. She replied with more questions, all of which I was also happy to answer. But in her second email to me she said these words, "As I've said I know the Christian side and what God's word says, but I don't have a lot of answers to continue inspiring my son to be 'more like Jesus' (although we never will on this earth, but He expects us to strive for.....)"

I answered the sister's questions, but when I got to the words in parenthesis, I said, "Whoa there. Look at your words. Nowhere does God say anything like what you say here, on either side of the comma." I do not speak to criticize this sister; we are all coming out of darkness and miss-conception.

There are no words in human expression or the history of man upon this earth that are more anti-Christ, more contrary to knowing God, more offensive to the heart of God than these words: "to be more like Jesus, (although we never will on this earth, but He expects us to strive for it.)" These are not this sister's words, they are words she has heard inside "Christianity" all her life; she is simply repeating them. These words began in the garden, "Did God really say that? You shall be like Him for you shall see Him as He is? What a joke! Not here, not now, no way."

The words "never will on this earth," permeate Christianity and are anti-Christ. Not only are they a denial of the One who reveals God in the flesh, but they are a denial of the nature and being of God Himself.

The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us only by the picture of Christ, the One who lays down His life for His friends, is the God of the Bible. The definitions of God in Christian theology are a human construct, attempting to create a "lofty" God who is thus unknowable by lowly man. - NOT ON THIS EARTH!

Now, the kingdom of God is found on the contention of this point. God defines the kingdom all the way through the New Testament as the opposite of the kingdoms of this world. God shows who and what He is by contrast. Consider these words of Jesus.

The thief comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; I am come that you might have life and that more abundantly.

Jesus positions Himself as the opposite of the evil one. In a similar way, God's kingdom is shown all through the New Testament by first pointing us to its opposite. "The Gentiles - - -, but it shall not be so among you."

"We never will on this earth." I cannot tell you how horrifically anti-Christ, opposed to everything that is God, these words are. Yet it is here, by the purpose of God, that God births His kingdom in the earth.

Here are God's words: "And we also."

What, then, do we do with the word "ought?" It is there in the Greek words penned by John. We simply believe it. It is not a performance word; it is a creative word of the Father. In the same way that God said, "Let there be light," and there was light, that is, Christ shining forth, making the Father visible, in that same way, God speaks into our hearts, "And you also ought to love one another in the same way that Christ loved you." Thus there is love, always abounding in our hearts, that is, Christ shining forth through us, making the Father visible.

You see, God forbade us the tree of knowledge, which is the tree of performance. To "perform" a word like this is to eat of that tree, "I can do what God says." In complete contrast, we believe that Christ is our life and that He fulfills the love of God through us.

Here is the point of everything. If Jesus filling our hearts with Himself is not real, then how can we imagine that the Bible and God and salvation could possibly be real? But Christ does fill our hearts and as He reveals Himself through us, we are His image. This love is real and by it we lay down our lives for our brethren.

This "and we also" is part of the "just as" commandments of the New Testament: "Be just like God."

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Ephesians 5:1-2

Wow!

One of the great arguments of Christianity is that we cannot be just like Christ because that would be robbery. We would be "stealing" what belongs to Him alone. But they are unable to cut verses like this out of the Bible, so they say, "Well, God just means 'try.' But He also wants you to know that you can't really be what He says. The moment you think a word like this can be fulfilled in your life, then we know you have departed from God."

It is an amazing thing that a theology that would call God a liar in this way would be capable, at the same time, of giving us an accurate definition of God!

How did Christ give Himself for us? By taking us into Himself, that is, by becoming us. When did that happen? It is clear to me that the moment of time when Jesus took us into Himself as the atonement was the completion of His prayer in John 17. That prayer of faith must have been fulfilled in the moment of His speaking it. As Jesus walked down the steps from the upper room on His way to the garden, from that moment we were in Him.

More than that, Jesus took us into Himself by a deliberate act of His will specifically by speaking the words of John chapter 17. These are words of faith; thus they are God.

When Jesus crossed the brook Kidron, I crossed the brook Kidron. When He said, "Not My will but Thine be done," I said, "Not my will but Thine be done." That word was sealed forever in me in that moment. When He stood on trial, I stood on trial. When He was beaten and mocked, I was beaten and mocked. When He stumbled under my cross, I stumbled under His. When He was crucified, I was crucified. When He said, "Father, forgive them," I said, "Father forgive all who have offended me." When He died, I died. When He was buried, I was buried. When He descended into Hades, I descended into Hades. When He arose from the dead, I arose from the dead. When He ascended on high, I ascended on high.

None of this was symbolic or figurative. All of it was real and absolute. Look again at Jesus' words! These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. John 16:25

He spoke the words, "the time is coming when I will tell you plainly about the Father" just five minutes before His inclusionary work of atonement began. In other words, from John 17 on, for the first time on this earth, we saw the Father's face openly and plainly. AND we were inside of Him!!!

Now, if this is how Christ loved us and gave Himself for us, then how did He do it? Simply this. God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. The fullness of who and what God is dwelt in Christ bodily. Thus the Man, Christ Jesus, was God revealed. More than that, it is the essence and nature of God through all the fabric of His being to take even His enemies into Himself, to become them, to carry them, stumbling and falling into death, and to arise with them in Him into life ascending on high. If God was in Christ, then this nature and being was operating in fullness inside of every step Jesus took.

Here is the point at which the kingdom of God begins: "And we also - just as Christ - as I have loved you."

I am a man in the same way that Jesus was a Man, that is, I am God revealed. When I believe that, when I know that, then I know that every part of my life is God showing Himself as He is. That means that every part of my life is God becoming others, carrying them inside Himself, stumbling into death, and then arising with these precious dear ones inside Himself and ascending on High.

If God is in me, then God is Himself in me.

How could it be otherwise?

Thus we know that being just like Jesus, walking as He walked, is the only thing that makes sense; it is the only thing real.

And thus I know God, and in knowing God, all I wish to do is place my face on the floor in worship, for I know that He is meek and lowly of heart. I know that He is gentle and tender and kind.

In my series on Our Union with Christ, I stated that, although the life of Christ from His conception in Mary's womb to His seating at the right hand of the Father is the pattern of our lives, that is, Christ living as us, there is one part of His walk that is not ours, but rather, He carries us inside Himself through those steps. That part of His walk I referred to was the passage of the atonement, from Gethsemane to the Resurrection.

Now, it is most certainly true that He carries us inside Himself through that passage, and thus we know God by the only way God can be known. But then I am confronted here with the words, "and we also," and the words, "just as," and I am brought up short. Now I realize that something I had inherited from "Christianity" was working in my heart when I first made that distinction between us and Christ, a distinction God clearly does not make.

Christianity has instilled inside of us the idea that for us to be really like Jesus in all respects before God would be robbery; it would be "stealing" something that belongs to Jesus alone and is, thus, not ours to experience or to be. However, the very act of seeing Jesus as He is dispels from our hearts that false measurement. At the same time, a number of verses in the New Covenant come crowding into our minds confirming that it was, indeed, a false measurement.

"The Father has not left Me alone - I and the children whom You have given Me."

"That the glory I had with You might be in them, and I in them."

"Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus our Lord, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God."

"He is not ashamed to call us, 'Brethren.'"

The kingdom of God birthed into this earth begins here. It begins with knowing the face of God revealed by Christ Jesus. That is: - God always reveals Himself through weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and we in Him. - 

And thus God is always becoming Himself in us.

Let me place the three verses together again here, and I defy any person in Christendom to argue that God does not mean what He says. Better for those to be silent who do not know Him.

In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:9-11

By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 1 John 3:16

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. Ephesians 5:1-2

The "we also," the "just as" in these verses clearly points directly to the nature and being of God in the atonement. This is no "outward act," it is no "figurative language," it is simply God being Himself.

Do you understand what is taking place here? God is giving to us the key, the door, the power, the knowing to break the curse from off this earth and to see the fulfillment of rivers of living water bringing all creation into glorious liberty.

The key always was God Himself, revealing Himself as us in this world. We just did not know who He is.

"And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

"And we also - God."

You see, when we did not know God, we saw these words as referring to some outward act, something that the noblest and the best among us Christians might, on occasion, do. And we saw that "doing" as that person's following the "example" given to us by Jesus.

Certainly, the Love that is God Himself acts through us in this earth by outward doings of kindness and compassion for others, even to instances of actually dying in another's stead. And I also am convinced that Revelation Chapter 11 means that the fullness of times in the dispensation of God will see a second defeat of death in the same outward demonstration shown by Jesus 2000 years ago. That is, defeating death by swallowing up death and then rising again on high.

But now we know that both of those outer demonstrations of Love inside the realms of time and space and matter come only out of God as He is, in reality, in fabric and being, in His core and periphery, by His face - God, revealed by us, His image - man.

Remember, God revealed is not, never was, and never will be "Superman." God revealed is a man laying down his life for his friends.

God is the Reconciler, God is the Savior, God is the Becomer. God is the One who takes into Himself all sorrow and loss, all pain and grief, all sin and rebellion, taking it all into death, and then arising into life and ascending on high, and we in Him. This is God in His nature and being. God is and cannot be anything else.

We say that God is "all-powerful," and He is, but how? Take a plot of ground filled with plants and bushes and grasses and plow it, plow it, plow it, until not one shred of vegetative matter is left upon its surface. Then leave for two years and come back. What will you see on your return? Life sprung forth abundantly, greater, even, than before. That is the power of God, the power of resurrection.

God does not know force or compulsion.

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself; the same God fills us with all of His fullness. It is God who reconciles; it is God who saves. What did Jesus do? He laid down His life; He revealed God.

You see, this incredible relationship we enjoy with the person of God inside of us and our persons inside of Him is the heart of the Father and His purpose in all creation. But God, though He fills us, though He lives as us, swallowing up all that we are inside Himself, yet God never ever violates our person, but highly respects and regards us at every step along the way. God counts us as His equal in person and in heart. And thus God will never ever act through us except within the confines of His mutual relationship with us. That mutual relationship the Bible calls faith. This faith is not the "faith" of human effort, "Oh, I forgot, I am bad"; it is the faith of Christ Himself. But that faith is our permission.

We let God be Himself through us; we allow God to show Himself outwardly as us in this world. We do that by the words of faith which we speak.

Look again at Jesus' words in John Chapter 17. Read it with this thought, that Jesus is speaking these words specifically as an act of faith, allowing God to be Himself through Christ during the next few days; that is, allowing God to gather us into Himself, and to carry us inside Himself inside of Jesus all the way into life.

This is the nature and being of God. He is no different now than He was then. He is the same in us as He was in Christ. You see, when we see Christ as He is, it's a no-brainer -- we are just like Him.

And so it is much more than our doing kind things for others, giving a tender touch, a cup of cold water to one who is thirsty. It is much more than our laying down our physical lives for our friends.

By the release our faith gives to the Father, through the words that we speak, God is free to be Himself in us. (Put your name on the line in place of mine.)

- God always reveals Himself through   Daniel Yordy , swallowing up into Himself the grief's and fears of others, including their sin and rebellion, becoming them in their present state. Thus, carrying them inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and they in Him. - 

It's not us, it's Him. He's just being Himself.

But by our words of faith, by kindness and tenderness and love, we draw all those whom God brings across our path into the dynamo, into the whirlwind, into the power and being of this God who fills us full.

By the nature of God inside of us, our whole life is laid down for our brethren, just as Jesus laid down His life for us.

This is the kingdom; this is its birthing in power upon the earth.

By this means the accuser is cast down; he has nothing more to say.

"And they loved not their lives unto the death."