Showing posts with label John17. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John17. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 June 2026
Monday, 20 August 2012
KOG4 Gethsemane by Daniel Yordy
The Kingdom of God series has just been published by Amazon as a book entitled "The Kingdom Rising". Here is your chance to read it for free, and if you like it to buy copies for your your friends. Daniel's other book "the Jesus Secret" has just come out too.
In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you. Jesus' words - one hour earlier.
When Jesus said, "In that day," He did not mean that someday we would be in Him and He in us; He meant that at a certain DAY in our lives, we would discover and thus know something that is true. "That day," in the gospel, is always today. "Today is THE day of salvation." "Today, if you will hear His voice."
Look back at the words of Gethsemane. When Jesus says, "You in Me," I believe what He says. Should we do anything else with what He says? I was not in Him, as He traversed this dark passage, figuratively, but literally. I was not in Jesus in a metaphorical sense, but actually. Notice that He said "You IN Me and I IN you."
I sit here groaning over this word, IN, as Jesus used it here, in great perplexity and agony of spirit. Do we dare to limit God; does anyone in Christendom dare to say, "Well, it certainly does NOT mean A, B, or C; it means only what my limited box-knowledge of God allows it to mean"?
I am inside of every word, every moment, every action of Jesus in Gethsemane, and every word, moment and action of Gethsemane is inside of me. The words God uses to define "IN" is "FILLED with ALL the FULLNESS."
Gethsemane is the beginning of the Covenant. We begin the Blood Covenant with God inside of Jesus in Gethsemane. Gethsemane inside of Jesus inside of us is the beginning of full Covenant Union between us and God. We "begin" full Covenant union with God by discovering - in that day you shall KNOW - that our union with Him in Gethsemane is already true.
I want to insert this understanding here. I am using the tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness as a metaphor of our entering into full covenant relationship with God. God gave us that picture because it helps us to speak meaningfully about the various aspects of God's work in our lives. This metaphor, however, we apply at two different levels, always both at the same time. We see all things as finished and complete; we see that by faith. By faith I know that I already sit upon the Mercy Seat at the right hand of the Father inside of Jesus. As I see anything that crosses my path, I know that I am looking out from the throne of God; I see all things from that throne.
At the same time, God applies this same metaphor to our walk into the fullness of God made visible and complete - the manifestation of the sons of God in full glory upon this earth. We will know without question when that walk is complete - our bodies will be transformed into immortality, visibly and openly. There's no faking that, nor any doubt when it happens.
Thus the tabernacle shows us what we already are, and it shows us how we become what we already are.
In my last letter, I stated that I do not understand why those who dwell in all the experience of the Holy Spirit will not enter into the Holy of Holies. I now understand. Outwardly, I have been saying why all along, but I understand it now for the first time. Most Christians, including those with much experience and knowledge of God, looking at the things God says about life in the Holy of Holies, are absolutely convinced that those things are speaking of "heaven." And so they have reduced grace and the gospel down to the non-Biblical idea that God has promised us that we will experience Holy-of-Holies life, that is, third-level life, in heaven. They don't mean heaven right now, as God means, they mean "go to" heaven at some future time. And that "grace" means only that we don't "earn" this "going to" heaven. So right now we are just happy and later, someday, "going to heaven" is entering the Holiest of All.
Now, this much I understood. What I did not fully see is this. Paul says that we are in heaven right now - seated with Christ in the "epouranios." He says that, since we live in the Spirit, that is, in heaven, let's walk in the Spirit, that is walk in heaven, as well. What does that mean?
It takes tremendous faith to walk in heaven right now, a bold and daring heart of faith and absolute confidence in our union with the Lord Jesus Christ - that what He says, all that He says, is actually true. The reason it takes tremendous faith is that we are blind; God has not yet opened our spirit-eyes to see the obvious. Therefore, every step is a step in darkness, trusting absolutely that what our Guide, the Lord Jesus, speaks, is absolutely true and trustworthy.
And so again, the reason most Christians who live in the light and experience of the Holy Place, refuse to walk in the Holy of Holies right now, is that they simply do not trust Jesus. They are convinced He is speaking nonsense, and that they will know what He means and can then TRUST Him ONLY after their eyes see and they can confidently maneuver heaven on their own.
In other words, they want the same self-reliance in heaven that they walk in upon the earth. Thus they have concocted the "go to" heaven fantasy, rejecting the idea that they are already there in fullness, as God says. And when they hear us speaking about the salvation of heaven revealed in all fullness through us right now in this earth, they imagine we are speaking something other than the gospel; their gospel being reduced to a full rejection of Hebrews 10:19, that we enter into the Holiest, all the life of heaven, right now in boldness and by the blood of Jesus.
They are convinced that if they do not see reality, then reality cannot be real. Thus they walk by sight, having reduced faith to silly talk about happiness "in heaven," all the while refusing a heaven they live in, but cannot see right now.
And so, I must say something about all the "union with Christ" teaching across the entire spectrum, and many are rejoicing in many different expressions of our discovery of union with Christ. I must say what I see, not because I want to elevate myself or put anyone down, but simply - how can I be found faithful if I do not share in the gentleness of the Lord Jesus what I see?
I see so many speaking union with Christ at the door, and then speaking separation, separation, separation regarding everything of Christ beyond the door. WHY? Because they are absolutely convinced that REAL union with Christ can be known only after we "go to" heaven. And thus they draw a line through everything God says in the gospel concerning the reality of the Holy of Holies fulfilled now in and through us into this earth, convinced that we CANNOT know such union with God, not until AFTER we die and "go to" heaven.
And that is why God has promised to shatter heaven. Because all of these precious dear ones can never know union with Christ in full reality as God says it in the New Testament until their white-knuckled grip on "go to" heaven fantasies is broken. And so, in the travail of the Holy Spirit in groanings inside of me, I give myself to the Lord Jesus as He shatters heaven through me, here, in Gethsemane.
Many may rejoice in their present knowledge of union with Christ, and that is wonderful, I in no way speak against their joy. But they cannot walk this path of the Atonement inside of Jesus because this is an unseen path. As long as they insist the heaven they live in right now is real only when they can SEE it, then they cannot know full union with God.
Why can't they know it? Unbelief, as the gospel says. Thus God must shatter our heaven fantasies before we can continue in the Atonement of Jesus revealed through us.
We must place Gethsemane into context.
Jesus spoke the Kingdom of God, the new creation, into existence in John chapter 17. From that moment until He sat down at the right hand of the Throne, He walked through every step of the birthing of that Kingdom. In John chapter 17, Jesus took you and me into Himself, thus establishing the gospel revealed through Paul, that Jesus did not do these things for us, as the earlier apostles had thought, but that we were in Him and He in us through every step of that path - literally and actually.
The Atonement begins in Gethsemane and is finished in the Throne. The revelation of God to all creation as who and what He really is begins in Gethsemane and is made complete in the Throne. The birthing of the Kingdom begins in Gethsemane and is revealed in the Throne. Our full union with God in a Blood Covenant relationship, complete and made manifest, begins in Gethsemane and finishes in the Throne.
Rebellion and the darkening of the present creation began in Adam's will. Obedience and the light of the new creation begins in Jesus' will.
Just as it was the will of the human that spoke the words that opened the Gate into the knowledge of Jesus as Savior, and just as it was the will of the human that spoke the words that opened the Door into the knowledge of Jesus as Baptizer, so it is the will of the human that speaks the words that opens the Veil into the knowledge of Jesus as our very and only Life.
Yet it is not our human will by which we spoke those words, but His. Jesus said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you." Thus, for us, Gethsemane is NOT, "Obey God, loser, do His will and not your own." Gethsemane is not something we "copy" in an outward way, though God gives us the words to speak. In complete contrast, Gethsemane is a complete surrender into Jesus AS our will, having already, Himself, chosen God and thus, WE ALSO.
When Jesus said, three times, "Not My will, but Thine be done," I said three times, "Not my will, but Thine be done." His agony is my agony; His choice is my choice; His words are my words. My surrender is to accept my place inside of Him and the place of that surrendered One inside of me.
This point is the turning of the Covenant. Everything that comes after, the trial, the crucifixion, even the resurrection, all of it flows out of this moment.
We entered the Outer Court by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we entered into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Savior - the Way - was found in us.
We entered the Holy Place by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we entered into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Baptizer - the Truth - was found in us.
In just the same way, we enter the Holy of Holies by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we enter into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Fulfiller - the Life - is found in us.
Gethsemane is the Gate, the Door, the Veil. Three times Jesus said, "Not My will, but Thine be done." Three times we said those words inside of Him. Three times we enter into a deeper place of knowing God.
Jesus said, "Take this cup away from Me."
What is that cup?
We dare not fall short of the glory of God in our answer to that question; we are speaking of the Becoming One.
Paul's gospel is radical and most Christians have never known it. Yes, many Christians can mouth the concepts of Paul's gospel - Jesus became our sin that we might be the righteousness of God. Dead in Christ, buried with Christ, risen with Christ, seated in heaven now in Christ. Yet these things are little more than theological talking points.
Why? Because Paul's gospel is too radical to actually believe, that is, to make it personal and here and now.
And so for most, the sacrifice of Jesus is something God did for us - that's how the other disciples understood it before Paul preached his revelation of Christ, and that's how most of the church sees it. Then, in the latter rain outpouring, came a vision of our place in that same Atonement, only it was seen in this way, that Jesus is our Pattern, and that we ourselves must follow the same path, we must choose God, we must enter full crucifixion ourselves, and so on, and that God will "help" us follow Jesus' pattern. Yet this view remained entirely inside the rebellion and separation of Adam.
Let me give a different view of the path of the Atonement beginning here in Gethsemane. Let me give a view of the cup Jesus drank, a view that comes out from the Holy of Holies, a third feast view, a third level view.
In the upper room, in Jesus' prayer in John 17, Jesus did something radical, something God. Jesus reached forward and back, He extended Himself out to all things, and He drew all things, that is, you and me, into Himself, literally and actually. It does no good for us to contemplate the "all things" part, what we must know is, the "you and me" part.
But including you and me into Himself was only one side of the equation. You see, Jesus said we would know three things. We would know that He is in the Father. We would know that we are in Him - that's the first side of the equation. But He said also that we would know that He is in us.
We became the Jesus who walked through the Atonement, and the Jesus who walked through the Atonement became us as we walk through our appointed times in this present age.
Jesus took His shattered creation into Himself, that He might carry it all the way to the Father, AND Jesus became His shattered creation that He might walk it all the way to the Father.
Jesus had already taken us into Himself before He entered Gethsemane and wept over the cup His Father asked Him to drink. It was His joy to take us into Himself. Yet the transition must be complete - God would complete it upon the cross. Jesus must become us.
Jesus must become all the darkness and difficulty of our path. He became our sin and took it into death upon the cross; He must become us that He might take us into life upon the throne.
Jesus was not drinking three twenty-four-hour days of difficulty; He drank three one-thousand-year days of difficulty.
Jesus agreed to become me.
And He asks me to accept Him as myself.
He asks me to stop "choosing" between "His way" and "my way" - that is the rebellion of Adam. He asks me to sink utterly into Him and to see Him alone in all things I find in me. He asks me for the most complete surrender I have ever known.
Let's do that here. Let's follow the pattern. We know how we passed through the Gate into the Outer Court. We know how we passed through the Door into the Holy Place. The Veil into the Holy of Holies is no different. Let's ask.
"Lord Jesus, I ask You to be my life, to be all that I am, all that I find myself to be in this world. I ask You to be the end of whatever "I" of me that once existed before I knew You. I will never look at or consider that former "I" again. Lord Jesus, I ask you to be me, the present me, walking through all the difficulties and ineptitude of my life in this world. I ask you to be all of my failures, all of my short-comings, all of my down-fallings. I cannot carry myself, Lord Jesus. I have tried and I have failed. Forgive me, Lord, for trying to be Christ-like. I give You my permission, Lord Jesus, to be me, to be all of me as myself.
"And, Lord Jesus, I ask You to be me as Yourself. I ask You to be me, to be my life as the King of Glory, as the Risen and Ascended Christ, as the Living and Ever-Coming Son of God.
"Lord Jesus, forgive me for ever saying, "Maybe someday, I'd like to be"; forgive me, Lord. From this moment on, I will say only, "I am." I am the firstfruits unto God. I am the manifestation of the sons of God. I am the manchild caught up to God's throne. I am the second witness of Christ. I am the Mercy-Seat. I am the throne of heaven. I am the revelation of God.
"Lord Jesus, I am just like You, for You and I are one. All that I am in this present world, You are, and all that You are, the Son of God, I am. You are my breath, You are my life, You are my every moment.
"And Lord Jesus, having asked You to be me, to be my very life, I believe that I receive all that I ask for. I walk forward expecting that I am filled with all the fullness of God. I walk forward expecting that rivers of living water flow out of my belly. I walk forward expecting that kingdoms of darkness are falling into ruin all around me. I walk forward KNOWING that in my weakness, in all of my glorious weakness, Your strength is proven, Your strength is MADE perfect. For You, Lord Jesus, are strong enough to drink the Cup, the precious Cup, Your Father gave You. You are strong enough to become me."
If you have prayed this prayer, not necessarily my words, but yours, in your own intimate knowing of Jesus inside of you, if you have prayed this prayer in sincerity of heart before God, in the Spirit who alone gives you power to believe what God says, then turn around. Your way into the Father is complete. You are now seated upon the Mercy Seat. You are the Ark, the carrier, the embodiment of the Covenant.
As you look out upon an entirely different-looking world, you see through the Veil you just passed. To your astonishment, it was always wide open. And now you are looking out, first you see your precious brethren in the Holy Place, then you see your precious brethren in the outer court, then you see all the people of this world, then you see all creation, heaven and earth.
God is in you reconciling the world to Himself.
And every moment of your life, all your joys and sorrows, all your triumphs and failures, all your doing well and doing badly, all of it is the Intercession of God, the Lord Jesus, inside of you, reconciling all creation to Himself.
From this moment on, not one moment of your life is your "redemption." It is finished. Every moment of your life now is mission, it is sending; it is Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Every moment of your life is now the revelation of God into this world. Every moment of your life is God Himself proving Himself through you to His creation.
But, in spite of our unlimited view of all things out from God's throne, what is it we see first? What part of God's reality is closest to our eyes?
The Altar of Incense, and all of our precious brethren, close to our hearts, who labor there.
And suddenly we know that, having passed through Gethsemane inside of Jesus, now, Gethsemane passes through us.
For there, right in front of us, is the precious Woman of God, caught in the jaws of the dragon.
And now we must KNOW this Atoning One, this Becoming One who is our very life. Let us look upon Him, this Revelation of the Person and Nature and Being of the Father as He walks the Path of Revelation.
The upper room is not far from the east side of the city of Jerusalem. It is a short walk from there down to the bottom of the sharp cleft below the eastern wall of the city in which runs the brook Kidron. It is April, so the brook is running water, though small. Jesus and the disciples cross over the brook and immediately begin climbing the steep slope of the Mount of Olives, higher than Jerusalem to the east. Gethsemane is a little garden in a flat and sheltered spot among the olive trees part way up that slope. By the time they reach the garden, Jesus is already laboring under unfathomable pain.
From the moment Jesus steps across the Brook Kidron, all demonic realms assault Him with all the fury of their madness. Remember, in the midst of the storm, Jesus slept. When they tried to stone Him to death, He just walked through their midst and they did not even notice. He is the unflappable One.
Yet here, He is unflappable no more. Sorrow deeper than anything known by man before or since grips His soul. Death mocks Him, and He stumbles under its terror. Two-and-a-half hours of praying, three times of surrendering Himself to God, and still, it gets worse. An angel shows himself, a cherub of the throne, putting his arm around this very broken Man. Yet the agony only increases until blood flows out of His pores.
Jesus did not do this "for us." We were there, utterly and actually, inside of Him.
Yet the darkest moment of internal torment, of unmitigated demonic assault inside of Jesus, comes shortly before it ends. After three hours, the internal assault simply ceases. Now the external assault begins, a demonic fury never manifested through men before or since as it shows itself through the next few hours.
As Jesus rises from prayer, the first thing He sees is His friend, his brother, this one who has walked with Him, laughed with Him, eaten with Him, now filled with Satan - possessed by the person of Satan, not by his demons. Jesus rises from Gethsemane into the jaws of the dragon.
Jesus' friend kisses Him on the cheek. And all of His other friends run in terror as far and as fast as they can in the darkness. Mark is there, following from a distance; he runs away stark naked.
Jesus is alone. And the beating begins.
At first it's just the soldiers of the High Priest. But all the demons of the Abyss are there as well, and so the men who mock Jesus, mock Him at the core and center of Christ, the revelation of God. "Prophesy! Who hit you? Aren't you the Christ?"
Why did they hate Him? They hate Him because He is weak. They hate Him because He is only a Man. They hate Him because there is no "Super-Christ." They hate Him because He is the opposite of everything they lust after.
He stands before Israel in the place of Moses, the priests of God inspecting the Passover Lamb. Again, the hard, cold fury centers on the issue of Christ. They reject utterly a Christ of flesh, a Lamb who lays down His life, who becomes them. They will not have a God of weakness. They inspect Him and find Him guilty of being one with a God whom they despise.
Peter screams and curses, "Damn you; I do NOT know Him." His words pierce the center of Jesus' heart.
They bind Jesus with ropes. They do not have the authority to kill Him; the Romans tore that authority away from them and they dare not challenge the Romans who are more than willing to bloody all Jerusalem and to desecrate the temple if they have to. Pilate's citadel is on the north side of the temple wall, higher than the temple and thus looking down into it. The Jews will not enter that citadel; therefore Pilate must come out to them.
But it is some distance from the court of the Sanhedrin to Pilate's court. While they push Jesus before them, Judas, empty now, and horrifically alone, comes weeping back to the remaining priests. They laugh at him; he goes out in black despair and hangs himself.
Jesus knows.
Pilate comes out and looks down at the Jews. Suddenly he knows that there is something terribly wrong with the universe. They bring Jesus up to Him. "I find no fault with this man," he says. But he wants nothing to do with the hellish fury he sees before him, so he sends Jesus to Herod.
Herod is a playboy. Herod is the life of the party. Herod makes everyone laugh. "Oh, goodie, do a miracle for me. I'd just love to see a miracle." Everyone laughs. Jesus is silent.
Back to Pilate.
Let me give you what are supposedly Pilate's own words as written in the government accounts required by all Roman governors. Whether this is actually Pilate's writing, as I read it now, I doubt. Facts of Christian knowledge and ideas gathered over centuries are all cobbled together in this account. However, it does give the picture I want to draw and so I will include a portion here.
By this time the marble stair groaned under the weight of the multitude. The Nazarene was brought back to me. I proceeded to the halls of justice, followed by my guard, and asked the people in a severe tone what they demanded. . .
"Crucify him! Crucify Him!" cried the relentless rabble. The vociferations of the infuriated mob shook the palace to its foundations.
I then ordered Jesus to be scourged, hoping this might satisfy them; but it only increased their fury. I then called for a basin, and washed my hands in the presence of the clamorous multitude, thus testifying that in my judgment Jesus of Nazareth had done nothing deserving of death; but in vain. It was his life these wretches thirsted for.
Often in our civil commotions have I witnessed the furious anger of the multitude, but nothing could be compared to what I witnessed on this occasion. It might have been truly said that all the phantoms of the infernal regions had assembled at Jerusalem. The crowd appeared not to walk, but to be borne off and whirled as a vortex, rolling along in living waves from the portals of the praetorium even unto Mount Zion, with howling screams, shrieks, and vociferations such as were never heard in the seditions of the (Pandemonium), or in the tumults of the forum. (The Archko Volume, 138-141)
Man and Satan together scream, "Crucify him!"
Then the physical pain begins again. They strip Jesus, scourging Him until his back is strips of flesh and visible bones. They press a crown of thorns upon Him and pluck out His beard until His face is a bloody and mangled pulp.
They mock Him. They drive Him forward, placing a cross upon His back.
Passing through the crowds of people lining the way, screaming their fury at Him, He stumbles and falls.
This Jesus, this One who is weak, He is no Christ for us. We will not have a God revealed through weakness. Give us power; give us miracles; give us thunderbolts; but the very last God we will accept is a Man who lays down His life, who does not fight back.
It is not my purpose to replicate The Passion of the Christ, and so I will go no further. It is my purpose to unveil for us Man as God revealed.
This is the One whom we are in, and this is the One who is in us.
Christianity would teach us that it was our sin that "did this" to Jesus, that we were "there inside that crowd." NO WE WERE NOT!!! But we were there, all right; we were there inside of Him.
Let's return to the Covenant.
In the Covenant, God's concern is ours and our concern is His. God looks out for our concern while we look out for His concern. We give no thought to our concerns, not because they are unimportant - but because God holds every tiny concern we have inside His heart and He meets each concern more wondrously than we can think or even imagine. At the same time, the One who is our Life - He carries in Himself God's concerns, and in us, He expresses those concerns. That is, He is our embracing of all the concerns and interests of God.
KNOWING that God utterly has our back, we take up God's back. And when we say, "WE," we mean Jesus, for we never separate ourselves from Him nor He from us.
And here, sitting upon the throne of God, looking out as the expression of the Heart and Concern of God, we see the woman filling the Holy Place, a woman clothed with the sun, a woman in travail.
Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Revelation 12:13-17
These words are not for "figuring out" in any way, shape, or form. These words are Spirit and they are Life.
Think - sitting upon the Mercy Seat, looking out with the eyes of God - the first thing we see is our precious brethren in the Altar of Incense, in the Holy Place, who have not yet entered into the Holy of Holies. The angel told John that the Outer Court is not now being measured by the measurement of Christ, only the Holy Place. That is not a put-down; each one will come in his or her season.
The King James says, "And they shall nourish her there."
We are the "THEY." The Bowels of God long over the Bride of Christ, right now upon this earth in the year of our Lord, 2012. He longs over her as she enters her hour of trial, not understanding a thing about what is happening to her. This is the God who fills us, who has made Covenant with us to accomplish His purposes in creation.
Let me fix our eyes on this one point. The God of the Covenant will nourish His woman through you and through me and He will do it in the face of the serpent.
It is here, at the point of the Word God speaks, of a woman in travail, and the face of the serpent that God shows Himself as He really is.
– Through us.
Believe in Jesus!
The Kingdom of God series is just being finalised ready for publishing as a book in the next few weeks. Here is your chance to read it for free, and if you like it buy copies for your your friends.
The PDF and audio versions are available here
I have read nothing quite like it. AC Welch
The PDF and audio versions are available here
I have read nothing quite like it. AC Welch
© Daniel Yordy - 2012 - Our Path Home
Part 4. Gethsemane
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane . . . and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me." He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will." Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done." And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. So He left them, went away again - And He knelt down and prayed - the third time - saying, "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. Matthew 26:36-43 and Luke 22:41-44 combinedIn that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you. Jesus' words - one hour earlier.
When Jesus said, "In that day," He did not mean that someday we would be in Him and He in us; He meant that at a certain DAY in our lives, we would discover and thus know something that is true. "That day," in the gospel, is always today. "Today is THE day of salvation." "Today, if you will hear His voice."
Look back at the words of Gethsemane. When Jesus says, "You in Me," I believe what He says. Should we do anything else with what He says? I was not in Him, as He traversed this dark passage, figuratively, but literally. I was not in Jesus in a metaphorical sense, but actually. Notice that He said "You IN Me and I IN you."
I sit here groaning over this word, IN, as Jesus used it here, in great perplexity and agony of spirit. Do we dare to limit God; does anyone in Christendom dare to say, "Well, it certainly does NOT mean A, B, or C; it means only what my limited box-knowledge of God allows it to mean"?
I am inside of every word, every moment, every action of Jesus in Gethsemane, and every word, moment and action of Gethsemane is inside of me. The words God uses to define "IN" is "FILLED with ALL the FULLNESS."
Gethsemane is the beginning of the Covenant. We begin the Blood Covenant with God inside of Jesus in Gethsemane. Gethsemane inside of Jesus inside of us is the beginning of full Covenant Union between us and God. We "begin" full Covenant union with God by discovering - in that day you shall KNOW - that our union with Him in Gethsemane is already true.
I want to insert this understanding here. I am using the tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness as a metaphor of our entering into full covenant relationship with God. God gave us that picture because it helps us to speak meaningfully about the various aspects of God's work in our lives. This metaphor, however, we apply at two different levels, always both at the same time. We see all things as finished and complete; we see that by faith. By faith I know that I already sit upon the Mercy Seat at the right hand of the Father inside of Jesus. As I see anything that crosses my path, I know that I am looking out from the throne of God; I see all things from that throne.
At the same time, God applies this same metaphor to our walk into the fullness of God made visible and complete - the manifestation of the sons of God in full glory upon this earth. We will know without question when that walk is complete - our bodies will be transformed into immortality, visibly and openly. There's no faking that, nor any doubt when it happens.
Thus the tabernacle shows us what we already are, and it shows us how we become what we already are.
In my last letter, I stated that I do not understand why those who dwell in all the experience of the Holy Spirit will not enter into the Holy of Holies. I now understand. Outwardly, I have been saying why all along, but I understand it now for the first time. Most Christians, including those with much experience and knowledge of God, looking at the things God says about life in the Holy of Holies, are absolutely convinced that those things are speaking of "heaven." And so they have reduced grace and the gospel down to the non-Biblical idea that God has promised us that we will experience Holy-of-Holies life, that is, third-level life, in heaven. They don't mean heaven right now, as God means, they mean "go to" heaven at some future time. And that "grace" means only that we don't "earn" this "going to" heaven. So right now we are just happy and later, someday, "going to heaven" is entering the Holiest of All.
Now, this much I understood. What I did not fully see is this. Paul says that we are in heaven right now - seated with Christ in the "epouranios." He says that, since we live in the Spirit, that is, in heaven, let's walk in the Spirit, that is walk in heaven, as well. What does that mean?
It takes tremendous faith to walk in heaven right now, a bold and daring heart of faith and absolute confidence in our union with the Lord Jesus Christ - that what He says, all that He says, is actually true. The reason it takes tremendous faith is that we are blind; God has not yet opened our spirit-eyes to see the obvious. Therefore, every step is a step in darkness, trusting absolutely that what our Guide, the Lord Jesus, speaks, is absolutely true and trustworthy.
And so again, the reason most Christians who live in the light and experience of the Holy Place, refuse to walk in the Holy of Holies right now, is that they simply do not trust Jesus. They are convinced He is speaking nonsense, and that they will know what He means and can then TRUST Him ONLY after their eyes see and they can confidently maneuver heaven on their own.
In other words, they want the same self-reliance in heaven that they walk in upon the earth. Thus they have concocted the "go to" heaven fantasy, rejecting the idea that they are already there in fullness, as God says. And when they hear us speaking about the salvation of heaven revealed in all fullness through us right now in this earth, they imagine we are speaking something other than the gospel; their gospel being reduced to a full rejection of Hebrews 10:19, that we enter into the Holiest, all the life of heaven, right now in boldness and by the blood of Jesus.
They are convinced that if they do not see reality, then reality cannot be real. Thus they walk by sight, having reduced faith to silly talk about happiness "in heaven," all the while refusing a heaven they live in, but cannot see right now.
And so, I must say something about all the "union with Christ" teaching across the entire spectrum, and many are rejoicing in many different expressions of our discovery of union with Christ. I must say what I see, not because I want to elevate myself or put anyone down, but simply - how can I be found faithful if I do not share in the gentleness of the Lord Jesus what I see?
I see so many speaking union with Christ at the door, and then speaking separation, separation, separation regarding everything of Christ beyond the door. WHY? Because they are absolutely convinced that REAL union with Christ can be known only after we "go to" heaven. And thus they draw a line through everything God says in the gospel concerning the reality of the Holy of Holies fulfilled now in and through us into this earth, convinced that we CANNOT know such union with God, not until AFTER we die and "go to" heaven.
And that is why God has promised to shatter heaven. Because all of these precious dear ones can never know union with Christ in full reality as God says it in the New Testament until their white-knuckled grip on "go to" heaven fantasies is broken. And so, in the travail of the Holy Spirit in groanings inside of me, I give myself to the Lord Jesus as He shatters heaven through me, here, in Gethsemane.
Many may rejoice in their present knowledge of union with Christ, and that is wonderful, I in no way speak against their joy. But they cannot walk this path of the Atonement inside of Jesus because this is an unseen path. As long as they insist the heaven they live in right now is real only when they can SEE it, then they cannot know full union with God.
Why can't they know it? Unbelief, as the gospel says. Thus God must shatter our heaven fantasies before we can continue in the Atonement of Jesus revealed through us.
Jesus spoke the Kingdom of God, the new creation, into existence in John chapter 17. From that moment until He sat down at the right hand of the Throne, He walked through every step of the birthing of that Kingdom. In John chapter 17, Jesus took you and me into Himself, thus establishing the gospel revealed through Paul, that Jesus did not do these things for us, as the earlier apostles had thought, but that we were in Him and He in us through every step of that path - literally and actually.
The Atonement begins in Gethsemane and is finished in the Throne. The revelation of God to all creation as who and what He really is begins in Gethsemane and is made complete in the Throne. The birthing of the Kingdom begins in Gethsemane and is revealed in the Throne. Our full union with God in a Blood Covenant relationship, complete and made manifest, begins in Gethsemane and finishes in the Throne.
Rebellion and the darkening of the present creation began in Adam's will. Obedience and the light of the new creation begins in Jesus' will.
Just as it was the will of the human that spoke the words that opened the Gate into the knowledge of Jesus as Savior, and just as it was the will of the human that spoke the words that opened the Door into the knowledge of Jesus as Baptizer, so it is the will of the human that speaks the words that opens the Veil into the knowledge of Jesus as our very and only Life.
Yet it is not our human will by which we spoke those words, but His. Jesus said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you." Thus, for us, Gethsemane is NOT, "Obey God, loser, do His will and not your own." Gethsemane is not something we "copy" in an outward way, though God gives us the words to speak. In complete contrast, Gethsemane is a complete surrender into Jesus AS our will, having already, Himself, chosen God and thus, WE ALSO.
When Jesus said, three times, "Not My will, but Thine be done," I said three times, "Not my will, but Thine be done." His agony is my agony; His choice is my choice; His words are my words. My surrender is to accept my place inside of Him and the place of that surrendered One inside of me.
This point is the turning of the Covenant. Everything that comes after, the trial, the crucifixion, even the resurrection, all of it flows out of this moment.
We entered the Outer Court by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we entered into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Savior - the Way - was found in us.
We entered the Holy Place by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we entered into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Baptizer - the Truth - was found in us.
In just the same way, we enter the Holy of Holies by faith, by asking, by receiving, and by believing that we have received. In so doing we enter into that level of the knowledge of God freely, and all that is found in Jesus the Fulfiller - the Life - is found in us.
Gethsemane is the Gate, the Door, the Veil. Three times Jesus said, "Not My will, but Thine be done." Three times we said those words inside of Him. Three times we enter into a deeper place of knowing God.
Jesus said, "Take this cup away from Me."
What is that cup?
We dare not fall short of the glory of God in our answer to that question; we are speaking of the Becoming One.
Paul's gospel is radical and most Christians have never known it. Yes, many Christians can mouth the concepts of Paul's gospel - Jesus became our sin that we might be the righteousness of God. Dead in Christ, buried with Christ, risen with Christ, seated in heaven now in Christ. Yet these things are little more than theological talking points.
Why? Because Paul's gospel is too radical to actually believe, that is, to make it personal and here and now.
And so for most, the sacrifice of Jesus is something God did for us - that's how the other disciples understood it before Paul preached his revelation of Christ, and that's how most of the church sees it. Then, in the latter rain outpouring, came a vision of our place in that same Atonement, only it was seen in this way, that Jesus is our Pattern, and that we ourselves must follow the same path, we must choose God, we must enter full crucifixion ourselves, and so on, and that God will "help" us follow Jesus' pattern. Yet this view remained entirely inside the rebellion and separation of Adam.
Let me give a different view of the path of the Atonement beginning here in Gethsemane. Let me give a view of the cup Jesus drank, a view that comes out from the Holy of Holies, a third feast view, a third level view.
In the upper room, in Jesus' prayer in John 17, Jesus did something radical, something God. Jesus reached forward and back, He extended Himself out to all things, and He drew all things, that is, you and me, into Himself, literally and actually. It does no good for us to contemplate the "all things" part, what we must know is, the "you and me" part.
But including you and me into Himself was only one side of the equation. You see, Jesus said we would know three things. We would know that He is in the Father. We would know that we are in Him - that's the first side of the equation. But He said also that we would know that He is in us.
We became the Jesus who walked through the Atonement, and the Jesus who walked through the Atonement became us as we walk through our appointed times in this present age.
Jesus took His shattered creation into Himself, that He might carry it all the way to the Father, AND Jesus became His shattered creation that He might walk it all the way to the Father.
Jesus had already taken us into Himself before He entered Gethsemane and wept over the cup His Father asked Him to drink. It was His joy to take us into Himself. Yet the transition must be complete - God would complete it upon the cross. Jesus must become us.
Jesus must become all the darkness and difficulty of our path. He became our sin and took it into death upon the cross; He must become us that He might take us into life upon the throne.
Jesus was not drinking three twenty-four-hour days of difficulty; He drank three one-thousand-year days of difficulty.
Jesus agreed to become me.
And He asks me to accept Him as myself.
He asks me to stop "choosing" between "His way" and "my way" - that is the rebellion of Adam. He asks me to sink utterly into Him and to see Him alone in all things I find in me. He asks me for the most complete surrender I have ever known.
Let's do that here. Let's follow the pattern. We know how we passed through the Gate into the Outer Court. We know how we passed through the Door into the Holy Place. The Veil into the Holy of Holies is no different. Let's ask.
"Lord Jesus, I ask You to be my life, to be all that I am, all that I find myself to be in this world. I ask You to be the end of whatever "I" of me that once existed before I knew You. I will never look at or consider that former "I" again. Lord Jesus, I ask you to be me, the present me, walking through all the difficulties and ineptitude of my life in this world. I ask you to be all of my failures, all of my short-comings, all of my down-fallings. I cannot carry myself, Lord Jesus. I have tried and I have failed. Forgive me, Lord, for trying to be Christ-like. I give You my permission, Lord Jesus, to be me, to be all of me as myself.
"And, Lord Jesus, I ask You to be me as Yourself. I ask You to be me, to be my life as the King of Glory, as the Risen and Ascended Christ, as the Living and Ever-Coming Son of God.
"Lord Jesus, forgive me for ever saying, "Maybe someday, I'd like to be"; forgive me, Lord. From this moment on, I will say only, "I am." I am the firstfruits unto God. I am the manifestation of the sons of God. I am the manchild caught up to God's throne. I am the second witness of Christ. I am the Mercy-Seat. I am the throne of heaven. I am the revelation of God.
"Lord Jesus, I am just like You, for You and I are one. All that I am in this present world, You are, and all that You are, the Son of God, I am. You are my breath, You are my life, You are my every moment.
"And Lord Jesus, having asked You to be me, to be my very life, I believe that I receive all that I ask for. I walk forward expecting that I am filled with all the fullness of God. I walk forward expecting that rivers of living water flow out of my belly. I walk forward expecting that kingdoms of darkness are falling into ruin all around me. I walk forward KNOWING that in my weakness, in all of my glorious weakness, Your strength is proven, Your strength is MADE perfect. For You, Lord Jesus, are strong enough to drink the Cup, the precious Cup, Your Father gave You. You are strong enough to become me."
If you have prayed this prayer, not necessarily my words, but yours, in your own intimate knowing of Jesus inside of you, if you have prayed this prayer in sincerity of heart before God, in the Spirit who alone gives you power to believe what God says, then turn around. Your way into the Father is complete. You are now seated upon the Mercy Seat. You are the Ark, the carrier, the embodiment of the Covenant.
As you look out upon an entirely different-looking world, you see through the Veil you just passed. To your astonishment, it was always wide open. And now you are looking out, first you see your precious brethren in the Holy Place, then you see your precious brethren in the outer court, then you see all the people of this world, then you see all creation, heaven and earth.
God is in you reconciling the world to Himself.
And every moment of your life, all your joys and sorrows, all your triumphs and failures, all your doing well and doing badly, all of it is the Intercession of God, the Lord Jesus, inside of you, reconciling all creation to Himself.
From this moment on, not one moment of your life is your "redemption." It is finished. Every moment of your life now is mission, it is sending; it is Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Every moment of your life is now the revelation of God into this world. Every moment of your life is God Himself proving Himself through you to His creation.
But, in spite of our unlimited view of all things out from God's throne, what is it we see first? What part of God's reality is closest to our eyes?
The Altar of Incense, and all of our precious brethren, close to our hearts, who labor there.
And suddenly we know that, having passed through Gethsemane inside of Jesus, now, Gethsemane passes through us.
For there, right in front of us, is the precious Woman of God, caught in the jaws of the dragon.
And now we must KNOW this Atoning One, this Becoming One who is our very life. Let us look upon Him, this Revelation of the Person and Nature and Being of the Father as He walks the Path of Revelation.
The upper room is not far from the east side of the city of Jerusalem. It is a short walk from there down to the bottom of the sharp cleft below the eastern wall of the city in which runs the brook Kidron. It is April, so the brook is running water, though small. Jesus and the disciples cross over the brook and immediately begin climbing the steep slope of the Mount of Olives, higher than Jerusalem to the east. Gethsemane is a little garden in a flat and sheltered spot among the olive trees part way up that slope. By the time they reach the garden, Jesus is already laboring under unfathomable pain.
From the moment Jesus steps across the Brook Kidron, all demonic realms assault Him with all the fury of their madness. Remember, in the midst of the storm, Jesus slept. When they tried to stone Him to death, He just walked through their midst and they did not even notice. He is the unflappable One.
Yet here, He is unflappable no more. Sorrow deeper than anything known by man before or since grips His soul. Death mocks Him, and He stumbles under its terror. Two-and-a-half hours of praying, three times of surrendering Himself to God, and still, it gets worse. An angel shows himself, a cherub of the throne, putting his arm around this very broken Man. Yet the agony only increases until blood flows out of His pores.
Jesus did not do this "for us." We were there, utterly and actually, inside of Him.
Yet the darkest moment of internal torment, of unmitigated demonic assault inside of Jesus, comes shortly before it ends. After three hours, the internal assault simply ceases. Now the external assault begins, a demonic fury never manifested through men before or since as it shows itself through the next few hours.
As Jesus rises from prayer, the first thing He sees is His friend, his brother, this one who has walked with Him, laughed with Him, eaten with Him, now filled with Satan - possessed by the person of Satan, not by his demons. Jesus rises from Gethsemane into the jaws of the dragon.
Jesus' friend kisses Him on the cheek. And all of His other friends run in terror as far and as fast as they can in the darkness. Mark is there, following from a distance; he runs away stark naked.
Jesus is alone. And the beating begins.
At first it's just the soldiers of the High Priest. But all the demons of the Abyss are there as well, and so the men who mock Jesus, mock Him at the core and center of Christ, the revelation of God. "Prophesy! Who hit you? Aren't you the Christ?"
Why did they hate Him? They hate Him because He is weak. They hate Him because He is only a Man. They hate Him because there is no "Super-Christ." They hate Him because He is the opposite of everything they lust after.
He stands before Israel in the place of Moses, the priests of God inspecting the Passover Lamb. Again, the hard, cold fury centers on the issue of Christ. They reject utterly a Christ of flesh, a Lamb who lays down His life, who becomes them. They will not have a God of weakness. They inspect Him and find Him guilty of being one with a God whom they despise.
Peter screams and curses, "Damn you; I do NOT know Him." His words pierce the center of Jesus' heart.
They bind Jesus with ropes. They do not have the authority to kill Him; the Romans tore that authority away from them and they dare not challenge the Romans who are more than willing to bloody all Jerusalem and to desecrate the temple if they have to. Pilate's citadel is on the north side of the temple wall, higher than the temple and thus looking down into it. The Jews will not enter that citadel; therefore Pilate must come out to them.
But it is some distance from the court of the Sanhedrin to Pilate's court. While they push Jesus before them, Judas, empty now, and horrifically alone, comes weeping back to the remaining priests. They laugh at him; he goes out in black despair and hangs himself.
Jesus knows.
Pilate comes out and looks down at the Jews. Suddenly he knows that there is something terribly wrong with the universe. They bring Jesus up to Him. "I find no fault with this man," he says. But he wants nothing to do with the hellish fury he sees before him, so he sends Jesus to Herod.
Herod is a playboy. Herod is the life of the party. Herod makes everyone laugh. "Oh, goodie, do a miracle for me. I'd just love to see a miracle." Everyone laughs. Jesus is silent.
Back to Pilate.
Let me give you what are supposedly Pilate's own words as written in the government accounts required by all Roman governors. Whether this is actually Pilate's writing, as I read it now, I doubt. Facts of Christian knowledge and ideas gathered over centuries are all cobbled together in this account. However, it does give the picture I want to draw and so I will include a portion here.
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Jesus was dragged before the High Priest and condemned to death . . . Caiaphas . . . sent his prisoner to me to confirm his condemnation and secure his execution . . . Soon my palace assumed the aspect of a besieged citadel. Every moment increased the number of malcontents. . . All Judea appeared to be pouring into the city . . .By this time the marble stair groaned under the weight of the multitude. The Nazarene was brought back to me. I proceeded to the halls of justice, followed by my guard, and asked the people in a severe tone what they demanded. . .
"Crucify him! Crucify Him!" cried the relentless rabble. The vociferations of the infuriated mob shook the palace to its foundations.
I then ordered Jesus to be scourged, hoping this might satisfy them; but it only increased their fury. I then called for a basin, and washed my hands in the presence of the clamorous multitude, thus testifying that in my judgment Jesus of Nazareth had done nothing deserving of death; but in vain. It was his life these wretches thirsted for.
Often in our civil commotions have I witnessed the furious anger of the multitude, but nothing could be compared to what I witnessed on this occasion. It might have been truly said that all the phantoms of the infernal regions had assembled at Jerusalem. The crowd appeared not to walk, but to be borne off and whirled as a vortex, rolling along in living waves from the portals of the praetorium even unto Mount Zion, with howling screams, shrieks, and vociferations such as were never heard in the seditions of the (Pandemonium), or in the tumults of the forum. (The Archko Volume, 138-141)
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In the garden, only Satan himself appeared to Eve as a serpent, a solitary and fairly quiet creature in the beauty of Paradise. In Jerusalem, Satan appeared in Jesus' friend, and all the angels fallen from heaven possessed all the people Jesus came to save, His people, possessed them with all the fury of rebellion and separation from God, all the vomit of the abyss.Man and Satan together scream, "Crucify him!"
Then the physical pain begins again. They strip Jesus, scourging Him until his back is strips of flesh and visible bones. They press a crown of thorns upon Him and pluck out His beard until His face is a bloody and mangled pulp.
They mock Him. They drive Him forward, placing a cross upon His back.
Passing through the crowds of people lining the way, screaming their fury at Him, He stumbles and falls.
This Jesus, this One who is weak, He is no Christ for us. We will not have a God revealed through weakness. Give us power; give us miracles; give us thunderbolts; but the very last God we will accept is a Man who lays down His life, who does not fight back.
It is not my purpose to replicate The Passion of the Christ, and so I will go no further. It is my purpose to unveil for us Man as God revealed.
This is the One whom we are in, and this is the One who is in us.
Christianity would teach us that it was our sin that "did this" to Jesus, that we were "there inside that crowd." NO WE WERE NOT!!! But we were there, all right; we were there inside of Him.
Let's return to the Covenant.
In the Covenant, God's concern is ours and our concern is His. God looks out for our concern while we look out for His concern. We give no thought to our concerns, not because they are unimportant - but because God holds every tiny concern we have inside His heart and He meets each concern more wondrously than we can think or even imagine. At the same time, the One who is our Life - He carries in Himself God's concerns, and in us, He expresses those concerns. That is, He is our embracing of all the concerns and interests of God.
KNOWING that God utterly has our back, we take up God's back. And when we say, "WE," we mean Jesus, for we never separate ourselves from Him nor He from us.
And here, sitting upon the throne of God, looking out as the expression of the Heart and Concern of God, we see the woman filling the Holy Place, a woman clothed with the sun, a woman in travail.
Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Revelation 12:13-17
These words are not for "figuring out" in any way, shape, or form. These words are Spirit and they are Life.
Think - sitting upon the Mercy Seat, looking out with the eyes of God - the first thing we see is our precious brethren in the Altar of Incense, in the Holy Place, who have not yet entered into the Holy of Holies. The angel told John that the Outer Court is not now being measured by the measurement of Christ, only the Holy Place. That is not a put-down; each one will come in his or her season.
The King James says, "And they shall nourish her there."
We are the "THEY." The Bowels of God long over the Bride of Christ, right now upon this earth in the year of our Lord, 2012. He longs over her as she enters her hour of trial, not understanding a thing about what is happening to her. This is the God who fills us, who has made Covenant with us to accomplish His purposes in creation.
Let me fix our eyes on this one point. The God of the Covenant will nourish His woman through you and through me and He will do it in the face of the serpent.
It is here, at the point of the Word God speaks, of a woman in travail, and the face of the serpent that God shows Himself as He really is.
– Through us.
Believe in Jesus!
Thursday, 10 June 2010
To Know the Father - Daniel Yordy
To Know the Father
"Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: 'Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give [the life of the age to come] to as many as You have given Him. And this is [the life of the age to come], that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.'" John 17: 1-3
Many times I have discussed the knowledge of God as it is found in the life of this present age. Most Christians know instinctively that to know God is much more than knowing about God. Most Christians understand that this is an intimate and personal knowledge of the One who lives on the inside, in our hearts, and that knowledge "about" God is not sufficient.
Yet we know that for many years we continued to see God separate from ourselves; we continued to believe that we had a life separate from God and that "knowing Him" meant hearing His voice and doing what He says.
And so a chart showing the viewpoint of the life of this present age, Christianized, versus the life of the age to come - revealed in us now, could look something like this.
The Life of the Present Age
Knowing God
God is distinct and separate from His creation. He can be known only as one knows someone completely separate from one's self. In that knowledge of God, God speaks to us, either by His Spirit, or in His word, or by the law, and we, even with His help, do the best we can do to please Him and thus to be known by Him.
The Life of the Age to Come
To know God is to know one's true self, for the knowledge of God is the only life we have. In our certainty that God alone fills our hearts, we know that we are the Word that He speaks. All that we do comes out of who He is and we not only please Him, but we know Him even as He knows us. Our union with Him is intimate, personal, and without limit. God reveals Himself through us.
But Jesus says in His prayer to His Father in John 17 that eternal life, that is, the life of the age to come, is to know the Father and to know His Son. John adds in his first epistle that we already have the life of the age to come for that life is in the Son and the Son is in us.
Now, may I suggest this possibility, that our present knowledge of God is much more the knowledge that is common to the life of this present age than the knowledge that is central to the life of the age to come. Even though most Christians know instinctively that this knowledge of God is not a knowledge "about" God, but an intimate and personal knowledge of Him, yet 99.99 percent of our "knowledge" of God is completely in the "about" category.
In other words, our present knowledge of God that is truly out of the life of the age to come, is but a taste, just enough to excite us and to persuade us to pursue the knowledge of God that is without limit.
That is what we must place in front of ourselves. This knowledge of God that Jesus refers to here in John 17:3 is a knowledge and a personal intimacy that absolutely has no limit.
I know this, the only entrance into this knowledge, to pass from a "taste" to the entire inheritance that is ours, begins with believing Jesus' words in John 14, "In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you are in Me and I am in you." The entrance into this knowledge is the acceptance of the cross of Jesus Christ as being sufficient and complete, not just for God, but also for us, on the one hand, and the acknowledgment and proclamation that Christ is our life, the only life we know, on the other hand.
As I have shared in past letters, this knowing that I am in Jesus and that Jesus is in me means that I know He carries every part of me inside of Himself and that He reveals Himself in every part of the human me. My flesh is His flesh, as Paul says in Ephesians 5. And not only do I know this in all certainty, but I proclaim it with my voice box with all boldness.
Yet, I have read a number of people over the last while who are rejoicing in the wonderful truth that we walk and live utterly in the grace of God, and that Christ is our life, we have no other life, who having passed through the door into the knowledge of Christ, then begin to express the idea that what we presently know, our little old life in this world, is all, really, that God has for us now. And once again, you see the reversion back to the pagan idea that we will know things as they really are only in "heaven."
And so some have removed the idea that we are in any kind of a fight. Some have removed the idea that we are involved with God in the proving of anything - since everything is by "grace," then everything ends up being automatic for everyone. And for many, just walking through this life as themselves, believing that they, in themselves, are all the revelation of Christ that God has for them now in this present age. I have read them say that if there is anything more, it is reserved entirely for the next age, after life in this age is over.
To know that the cross is sufficient for me and that my life, as I am right now in this present age, is the expression of Christ in me, is the doorway into knowing the life of the age to come, into knowing the Father as He really is.
However, holding to such a limited view of God in us, to such a confined view of the life of Christ revealed through us right now upon this earth, is something that has no appeal to me whatsoever for two reasons. The first is that it denies so much of the life and power, the arena of warfare and the reality of triumph, revealed to us in the New Testament, and the second reason is that I cannot accept or be satisfied with the idea that my present knowledge of God and myself is all there is.
Balderdash!
The knowledge of God that is ours inside the life of the age to come that is ours because Christ is our life, we have no other life, that knowledge of God is without limit.
And right now, I know Him only a tiny little bit, only a taste.
To know Him begins with knowing Him as myself, that I am in my weakness an expression of Him. But that is only how it begins.
We cannot know God as He is if we see Him as One separate from ourselves. Yet all that God is in all of His power, wisdom, and divine nature, becomes all that we are in a glorious unfolding inside the reality of that which our eyes see and our hands touch.
We cannot be the image of God without being an expression of Him without limit.
Let's turn Jesus' statement here in John 17 into a confession of faith.
"I know God."
"I know God without limit and without restraint."
"I know God in all that He is in all of His eternal and infinite being."
Now, obviously, I am speaking prophetically of that which I am before Him right now. I am calling those things that "be not" as though they are.
My calling is to bring that knowledge of God that God says I possess right now, into the full experience of life on this planet.
Yet all I really know of that knowledge is a tiny, tiny taste.
-----------------------
Now, may I suggest this possibility, that our present knowledge of God is much more the knowledge that is common to the life of this present age than the knowledge that is central to the life of the age to come. Even though most Christians know instinctively that this knowledge of God is not a knowledge "about" God, but an intimate and personal knowledge of Him, yet 99.99 percent of our "knowledge" of God is completely in the "about" category.
------------------------
I must acknowledge to you that I do not know what I am talking about. Having stepped through the door into the life of the age to come, I am looking at a vast panorama of reality through blinded eyes, through a glass darkly. I have never been upon the path that is before me. I can hardly describe it to you. I do not know where I am going and I certainly cannot indicate to you what is the next step forward for me, for you, or for anyone.
But I can assure you that my Savior, Jesus, the One who fills my heart, does know the path, in fact, He is the path. It is He who holds my hand, who fills my feet and guides them and yours as well.
However, even though I am ignorant of the way forward, I must probe, I must reach, I must seek to know this glorious Being who claims He is my life. I can do nothing else.
We do have three things that help us in our venturing out into the unlimited treasure of the life and power of this God who is our life, to know God in the same way that He knows us.
The brother who first birthed into my heart the vision of the revelation of Christ shared a principle. In looking at where God has us now, I am firmly convinced that this principle holds. He stated that God has given us the patterns in His word, both in the history of Israel and in the life of Christ, as well as the patterns of the natural realms, for us to use in the same way that a dressmaker uses the patterns to make a dress. Anytime you hear a "truth," you lay it up against the patterns. What fits the patterns you keep, what does not fit you cut away.
The idea that, now that we know that Christ is our life and that we stand in all the grace of God, we no longer are engaged in any form of battle, there is no more "fight," or victory or winning or overcoming yet to be brought into our experience in this age and in this life, that idea, laid up against the patterns, does not fit. Therefore we cut it away.
My God, the children of Israel, though they fought in the wilderness, did not really know war until they had fully entered into the promised land and had begun to eat solely from its life. After that, the battle began.
A butterfly, encased in a cocoon, is fully a butterfly. It is and has within itself all that it will ever be. What that butterfly does not know is either the full extent of the life that is in it or the reality of the heavens in which it was created to live. It cannot obtain the knowledge of either one unless it struggles with everything that is in it against the cocoon that binds it up. Only by casting off that cocoon does the butterfly enter into life as it was meant to be.
The second thing that God gives us in this journey upon which we have never been, is other brethren who, like us, are standing just inside the life of the age to come and who see that there is so very much more and that God has ordained this incredible passage, this transition, this birth canal experience, this casting off of the curse and all that it means, who see, with us, that this is God's determination, and are reaching forward to the same thing we reach forward too. These brethren are a confirmation to us and we are a confirmation to them that God is doing this thing.
I am greatly encouraged by all those who write to me saying how the things I share are such a blessing to them. However, if that encouragement was all that I had, I would have long since quit in despair.
Far more important is the confirmation of those who are hearing the same word and reaching for the same goal. Let me share one such confirmation that was sent to me, short, maybe, but essential to my strength. This is in response to my last letter, "The Great Story of God - Revelation 11," that ventured into a reality that may well scare off many dear ones who love Jesus and want to be with Him.
Hi Daniel.
Good reading this morning. I have often said, and it is my bold proclamation, that Jesus is our example...but, just how far does that go? God spoke to me 3 times some time ago and said: "Jesus is the example," each time speaking it more forcefully into my heart. You have tapped into this same thing and I am thrilled.
Love, Bonnie
There are others, besides Bonnie, who are reaching for the same knowledge of God revealed through us into this age and upon this earth that I am reaching for out of the same word from God birthed in them that is birthed in me. There is in me, when I read or hear them speak, such a leaping of joy and expectation that God really is doing this thing, in my heart, in the same way that the babe in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy at the approach of the Babe in Mary's womb.
You and I need this level of prophetic confirmation as much as Mary needed it.
The third thing that we have to guide us is almost a negative thing. It is when we read or hear good Christian teaching, precious brethren sharing from their present revelation and we know that we know that we know, deep inside, that they have found a way to limit God. We know that, though there is good truth in what they share, what you and I must have has to be so much more.
I must know God without limit, now upon this earth. I must know Him or perish.
I have those who write to me assuring me that, although I am sharing some good things, they have the truth, the revelation, that I am missing, and if I would just read their stuff and subscribe to their theology, I will have what I am reaching for. Then I could sit back (or so I suppose) and be happy and not need anything more from God, not need that which God has never yet released upon this earth.
If they would tell me they don't know what they're talking about, that they have never been upon the road ahead, I would believe them. But when I do read their stuff, it may or may not be good, it may or may not be something I agree with or even witness to.
But seldom is there a leaping in my spirit, a witness of confirmation, that this also is the revelation of Jesus Christ out of the age to come and into this present age. Too often, all they have done is find another way to limit God, to keep all the fullness of His glory and power out of the blood and the dirt and the physical reality of life on this present earth.
But there are enough who are hearing the same word I am hearing, who are reaching for the same fullness of all that God is, revealed through us, that I am reaching for, who understand that these last moments of the birth canal in which we find ourselves are the time of greatest pain, of greatest jeopardy, and of greatest battle. There are enough of these that God has brought me in contact with for me to know that the thing that fills my heart to overflowing is of God and to give me the boldness and the confidence I need to place myself utterly in the middle of His revelation.
God is tearing Himself open, right now, as He has never done before. He is taking His very heart, the reality of all that He is in power and in love, and He is placing that revelation of Himself inside of and out from you and me, right here inside the realms of time and the limitations of the physical earth.
To know the Father is the apocalypse. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
And there is no clearer pattern to show us where and how we find that knowledge of God than the butterfly, enclosed and held tightly within the chrysalis, limited in every way by that which does not know God.
For many years we lived as a caterpillar inside God's plan for us. Our job at that time was to eat His word, to take into ourselves everything God is speaking both through the preaching of the word, through walking together with other brethren, and through our own study of the Bible. And we did that, we ate and ate and ate and grew and grew and grew.
Then came the time when God drew us aside into a quiet place, a place set aside, a lonely place. There He bound us up tight. We could no longer minister, we were in one way or another cut off from our brethren. The power we had once tasted seemed to lift away from us.
And in that tight and lonely place, God took us all apart. Oh the tearing, the pain, the tears, as He took apart everything that we were, everything that we thought was Him, threw it all up into the air into a confused mess until we did not know what was truth and what was nonsense, what was ourselves and what was gobbledygook.
Then, wonder of wonders, God spoke a word into that confused mess He had made us to be inside that confined and restricted place. He said, "Christ is your life; you have no other life." Then we watched in wonder and amazement as God brought everything we are back together again, only this time, all of it was Christ and all of His ways concerning us were perfect. And now we acknowledge nothing except Christ, and we see nothing inside of us or when we gaze into the mirror except Him. We know that we are in Him and that He is in us and there is absolutely nothing else.
Yet we are still facing the grave. The condemnation of death is still circling us and all whom we love with all of its torture and cruelty. We are confined and limited by the curse that remains upon this earth and upon our bodies. We are restrained by the life of this present age. Demons and evil men continue to wreck havoc upon this earth, destroying our inheritance and claiming it as their own.
We know that we are, right now, all that we will ever be in His glory, but we also know that right now, we do NOT know God, not as we must. We know that we have only tasted that knowledge and that we are yet blind and ignorant and so very, very limited. The life that is inside of us has not yet worked its way out into every part of our being.
Do not tell me that you have more knowledge of the truth than I do. Until you are immortal, incorruptible, moving in all the power and unlimited revelation of Almighty God, raising people from the dead, driving demons off of this planet, bringing many into all the fullness of Christ, until then, you are in the same place I am, limited, blind, and ignorant of the life and power of the mighty One who fills your heart.
But in the simple picture of a butterfly, God gives us the path forward, the way He has ordained by which we will KNOW GOD, the life of the age to come.
That butterfly is constrained by a shell that is not itself. Yet that shell keeps it from moving in the full confidence of all that it is. And God has ordained that the butterfly MUST fight against that shell and cast it off. We know what happens when that beautifully formed butterfly presses against the limitation of that outer shell. We know that the life deep inside it moves out into every part of that butterfly. Each time it presses, stronger and stronger, more life flows, and the more that life flows, the stronger the butterfly presses. Until the shell rips open, and the butterfly forces its way out. Then it sits there, momentarily, upon that cast off shell, gathering the awareness that it is forever free, before it flies into all the reality of God.
God will never remove our shell for us.
God will never remove our shell for us.
Those who die and go to heaven discover that the shell remains. God has put Himself inside of us inside that shell because that is the only way that we can ever know Him.
We know Him by casting off the restraint and limitation of the curse that remains still upon our bodies, upon this earth, and upon the life of this present age. We know Him only through the battle, through the travail, through proclaiming the victory in the midst of despair, seeing that which is not seen, declaring that what He is in us as the only reality there is.
But those who say there is no battle - just relax and enjoy grace. God has already done everything. There is no more for you to know and experience, no veil to cast off, no darkness to overthrow, no enemy to cast down, no victory to win, no beast to overcome, no death to cast aside. Those who seem to be indicating that incredible nonsense in this hour - well, I will say no more.
To remove the shell from the butterfly so that it no longer must cast if off in order to live is to condemn that butterfly to a slow and horrifying death.
This truth has nothing to do with "achieving" something, or "winning God's favor" or any such nonsense. All of that is forever gone from us, removed by the cross of Christ.
This truth is to know the unlimited life and power of the God who fills us with all of His fullness, right here upon this earth, in this present age, out from these bodies of mortal flesh until they are swallowed up in the life of the One whose revelation we are.
All that I do now is God in me doing it.
To know the Father is the life of the age to come, revealed through us, bringing to an end this present age.
Be blessed in the Lord,
Daniel Yordy
for more of Daniel's great material or to subscribe to his regular newsletter - www.dyordy.com
"Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: 'Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give [the life of the age to come] to as many as You have given Him. And this is [the life of the age to come], that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.'" John 17: 1-3
Many times I have discussed the knowledge of God as it is found in the life of this present age. Most Christians know instinctively that to know God is much more than knowing about God. Most Christians understand that this is an intimate and personal knowledge of the One who lives on the inside, in our hearts, and that knowledge "about" God is not sufficient.
Yet we know that for many years we continued to see God separate from ourselves; we continued to believe that we had a life separate from God and that "knowing Him" meant hearing His voice and doing what He says.
And so a chart showing the viewpoint of the life of this present age, Christianized, versus the life of the age to come - revealed in us now, could look something like this.
The Life of the Present Age
Knowing God
God is distinct and separate from His creation. He can be known only as one knows someone completely separate from one's self. In that knowledge of God, God speaks to us, either by His Spirit, or in His word, or by the law, and we, even with His help, do the best we can do to please Him and thus to be known by Him.
The Life of the Age to Come
To know God is to know one's true self, for the knowledge of God is the only life we have. In our certainty that God alone fills our hearts, we know that we are the Word that He speaks. All that we do comes out of who He is and we not only please Him, but we know Him even as He knows us. Our union with Him is intimate, personal, and without limit. God reveals Himself through us.
But Jesus says in His prayer to His Father in John 17 that eternal life, that is, the life of the age to come, is to know the Father and to know His Son. John adds in his first epistle that we already have the life of the age to come for that life is in the Son and the Son is in us.
Now, may I suggest this possibility, that our present knowledge of God is much more the knowledge that is common to the life of this present age than the knowledge that is central to the life of the age to come. Even though most Christians know instinctively that this knowledge of God is not a knowledge "about" God, but an intimate and personal knowledge of Him, yet 99.99 percent of our "knowledge" of God is completely in the "about" category.
In other words, our present knowledge of God that is truly out of the life of the age to come, is but a taste, just enough to excite us and to persuade us to pursue the knowledge of God that is without limit.
That is what we must place in front of ourselves. This knowledge of God that Jesus refers to here in John 17:3 is a knowledge and a personal intimacy that absolutely has no limit.
I know this, the only entrance into this knowledge, to pass from a "taste" to the entire inheritance that is ours, begins with believing Jesus' words in John 14, "In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you are in Me and I am in you." The entrance into this knowledge is the acceptance of the cross of Jesus Christ as being sufficient and complete, not just for God, but also for us, on the one hand, and the acknowledgment and proclamation that Christ is our life, the only life we know, on the other hand.
As I have shared in past letters, this knowing that I am in Jesus and that Jesus is in me means that I know He carries every part of me inside of Himself and that He reveals Himself in every part of the human me. My flesh is His flesh, as Paul says in Ephesians 5. And not only do I know this in all certainty, but I proclaim it with my voice box with all boldness.
Yet, I have read a number of people over the last while who are rejoicing in the wonderful truth that we walk and live utterly in the grace of God, and that Christ is our life, we have no other life, who having passed through the door into the knowledge of Christ, then begin to express the idea that what we presently know, our little old life in this world, is all, really, that God has for us now. And once again, you see the reversion back to the pagan idea that we will know things as they really are only in "heaven."
And so some have removed the idea that we are in any kind of a fight. Some have removed the idea that we are involved with God in the proving of anything - since everything is by "grace," then everything ends up being automatic for everyone. And for many, just walking through this life as themselves, believing that they, in themselves, are all the revelation of Christ that God has for them now in this present age. I have read them say that if there is anything more, it is reserved entirely for the next age, after life in this age is over.
To know that the cross is sufficient for me and that my life, as I am right now in this present age, is the expression of Christ in me, is the doorway into knowing the life of the age to come, into knowing the Father as He really is.
However, holding to such a limited view of God in us, to such a confined view of the life of Christ revealed through us right now upon this earth, is something that has no appeal to me whatsoever for two reasons. The first is that it denies so much of the life and power, the arena of warfare and the reality of triumph, revealed to us in the New Testament, and the second reason is that I cannot accept or be satisfied with the idea that my present knowledge of God and myself is all there is.
Balderdash!
The knowledge of God that is ours inside the life of the age to come that is ours because Christ is our life, we have no other life, that knowledge of God is without limit.
And right now, I know Him only a tiny little bit, only a taste.
To know Him begins with knowing Him as myself, that I am in my weakness an expression of Him. But that is only how it begins.
We cannot know God as He is if we see Him as One separate from ourselves. Yet all that God is in all of His power, wisdom, and divine nature, becomes all that we are in a glorious unfolding inside the reality of that which our eyes see and our hands touch.
We cannot be the image of God without being an expression of Him without limit.
Let's turn Jesus' statement here in John 17 into a confession of faith.
"I know God."
"I know God without limit and without restraint."
"I know God in all that He is in all of His eternal and infinite being."
Now, obviously, I am speaking prophetically of that which I am before Him right now. I am calling those things that "be not" as though they are.
My calling is to bring that knowledge of God that God says I possess right now, into the full experience of life on this planet.
Yet all I really know of that knowledge is a tiny, tiny taste.
-----------------------
Now, may I suggest this possibility, that our present knowledge of God is much more the knowledge that is common to the life of this present age than the knowledge that is central to the life of the age to come. Even though most Christians know instinctively that this knowledge of God is not a knowledge "about" God, but an intimate and personal knowledge of Him, yet 99.99 percent of our "knowledge" of God is completely in the "about" category.
------------------------
I must acknowledge to you that I do not know what I am talking about. Having stepped through the door into the life of the age to come, I am looking at a vast panorama of reality through blinded eyes, through a glass darkly. I have never been upon the path that is before me. I can hardly describe it to you. I do not know where I am going and I certainly cannot indicate to you what is the next step forward for me, for you, or for anyone.
But I can assure you that my Savior, Jesus, the One who fills my heart, does know the path, in fact, He is the path. It is He who holds my hand, who fills my feet and guides them and yours as well.
However, even though I am ignorant of the way forward, I must probe, I must reach, I must seek to know this glorious Being who claims He is my life. I can do nothing else.
We do have three things that help us in our venturing out into the unlimited treasure of the life and power of this God who is our life, to know God in the same way that He knows us.
The brother who first birthed into my heart the vision of the revelation of Christ shared a principle. In looking at where God has us now, I am firmly convinced that this principle holds. He stated that God has given us the patterns in His word, both in the history of Israel and in the life of Christ, as well as the patterns of the natural realms, for us to use in the same way that a dressmaker uses the patterns to make a dress. Anytime you hear a "truth," you lay it up against the patterns. What fits the patterns you keep, what does not fit you cut away.
The idea that, now that we know that Christ is our life and that we stand in all the grace of God, we no longer are engaged in any form of battle, there is no more "fight," or victory or winning or overcoming yet to be brought into our experience in this age and in this life, that idea, laid up against the patterns, does not fit. Therefore we cut it away.
My God, the children of Israel, though they fought in the wilderness, did not really know war until they had fully entered into the promised land and had begun to eat solely from its life. After that, the battle began.
A butterfly, encased in a cocoon, is fully a butterfly. It is and has within itself all that it will ever be. What that butterfly does not know is either the full extent of the life that is in it or the reality of the heavens in which it was created to live. It cannot obtain the knowledge of either one unless it struggles with everything that is in it against the cocoon that binds it up. Only by casting off that cocoon does the butterfly enter into life as it was meant to be.
The second thing that God gives us in this journey upon which we have never been, is other brethren who, like us, are standing just inside the life of the age to come and who see that there is so very much more and that God has ordained this incredible passage, this transition, this birth canal experience, this casting off of the curse and all that it means, who see, with us, that this is God's determination, and are reaching forward to the same thing we reach forward too. These brethren are a confirmation to us and we are a confirmation to them that God is doing this thing.
I am greatly encouraged by all those who write to me saying how the things I share are such a blessing to them. However, if that encouragement was all that I had, I would have long since quit in despair.
Far more important is the confirmation of those who are hearing the same word and reaching for the same goal. Let me share one such confirmation that was sent to me, short, maybe, but essential to my strength. This is in response to my last letter, "The Great Story of God - Revelation 11," that ventured into a reality that may well scare off many dear ones who love Jesus and want to be with Him.
Hi Daniel.
Good reading this morning. I have often said, and it is my bold proclamation, that Jesus is our example...but, just how far does that go? God spoke to me 3 times some time ago and said: "Jesus is the example," each time speaking it more forcefully into my heart. You have tapped into this same thing and I am thrilled.
Love, Bonnie
There are others, besides Bonnie, who are reaching for the same knowledge of God revealed through us into this age and upon this earth that I am reaching for out of the same word from God birthed in them that is birthed in me. There is in me, when I read or hear them speak, such a leaping of joy and expectation that God really is doing this thing, in my heart, in the same way that the babe in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy at the approach of the Babe in Mary's womb.
You and I need this level of prophetic confirmation as much as Mary needed it.
The third thing that we have to guide us is almost a negative thing. It is when we read or hear good Christian teaching, precious brethren sharing from their present revelation and we know that we know that we know, deep inside, that they have found a way to limit God. We know that, though there is good truth in what they share, what you and I must have has to be so much more.
I must know God without limit, now upon this earth. I must know Him or perish.
I have those who write to me assuring me that, although I am sharing some good things, they have the truth, the revelation, that I am missing, and if I would just read their stuff and subscribe to their theology, I will have what I am reaching for. Then I could sit back (or so I suppose) and be happy and not need anything more from God, not need that which God has never yet released upon this earth.
If they would tell me they don't know what they're talking about, that they have never been upon the road ahead, I would believe them. But when I do read their stuff, it may or may not be good, it may or may not be something I agree with or even witness to.
But seldom is there a leaping in my spirit, a witness of confirmation, that this also is the revelation of Jesus Christ out of the age to come and into this present age. Too often, all they have done is find another way to limit God, to keep all the fullness of His glory and power out of the blood and the dirt and the physical reality of life on this present earth.
But there are enough who are hearing the same word I am hearing, who are reaching for the same fullness of all that God is, revealed through us, that I am reaching for, who understand that these last moments of the birth canal in which we find ourselves are the time of greatest pain, of greatest jeopardy, and of greatest battle. There are enough of these that God has brought me in contact with for me to know that the thing that fills my heart to overflowing is of God and to give me the boldness and the confidence I need to place myself utterly in the middle of His revelation.
God is tearing Himself open, right now, as He has never done before. He is taking His very heart, the reality of all that He is in power and in love, and He is placing that revelation of Himself inside of and out from you and me, right here inside the realms of time and the limitations of the physical earth.
To know the Father is the apocalypse. It is the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
And there is no clearer pattern to show us where and how we find that knowledge of God than the butterfly, enclosed and held tightly within the chrysalis, limited in every way by that which does not know God.
For many years we lived as a caterpillar inside God's plan for us. Our job at that time was to eat His word, to take into ourselves everything God is speaking both through the preaching of the word, through walking together with other brethren, and through our own study of the Bible. And we did that, we ate and ate and ate and grew and grew and grew.
Then came the time when God drew us aside into a quiet place, a place set aside, a lonely place. There He bound us up tight. We could no longer minister, we were in one way or another cut off from our brethren. The power we had once tasted seemed to lift away from us.
And in that tight and lonely place, God took us all apart. Oh the tearing, the pain, the tears, as He took apart everything that we were, everything that we thought was Him, threw it all up into the air into a confused mess until we did not know what was truth and what was nonsense, what was ourselves and what was gobbledygook.
Then, wonder of wonders, God spoke a word into that confused mess He had made us to be inside that confined and restricted place. He said, "Christ is your life; you have no other life." Then we watched in wonder and amazement as God brought everything we are back together again, only this time, all of it was Christ and all of His ways concerning us were perfect. And now we acknowledge nothing except Christ, and we see nothing inside of us or when we gaze into the mirror except Him. We know that we are in Him and that He is in us and there is absolutely nothing else.
Yet we are still facing the grave. The condemnation of death is still circling us and all whom we love with all of its torture and cruelty. We are confined and limited by the curse that remains upon this earth and upon our bodies. We are restrained by the life of this present age. Demons and evil men continue to wreck havoc upon this earth, destroying our inheritance and claiming it as their own.
We know that we are, right now, all that we will ever be in His glory, but we also know that right now, we do NOT know God, not as we must. We know that we have only tasted that knowledge and that we are yet blind and ignorant and so very, very limited. The life that is inside of us has not yet worked its way out into every part of our being.
Do not tell me that you have more knowledge of the truth than I do. Until you are immortal, incorruptible, moving in all the power and unlimited revelation of Almighty God, raising people from the dead, driving demons off of this planet, bringing many into all the fullness of Christ, until then, you are in the same place I am, limited, blind, and ignorant of the life and power of the mighty One who fills your heart.
But in the simple picture of a butterfly, God gives us the path forward, the way He has ordained by which we will KNOW GOD, the life of the age to come.
That butterfly is constrained by a shell that is not itself. Yet that shell keeps it from moving in the full confidence of all that it is. And God has ordained that the butterfly MUST fight against that shell and cast it off. We know what happens when that beautifully formed butterfly presses against the limitation of that outer shell. We know that the life deep inside it moves out into every part of that butterfly. Each time it presses, stronger and stronger, more life flows, and the more that life flows, the stronger the butterfly presses. Until the shell rips open, and the butterfly forces its way out. Then it sits there, momentarily, upon that cast off shell, gathering the awareness that it is forever free, before it flies into all the reality of God.
God will never remove our shell for us.
God will never remove our shell for us.
Those who die and go to heaven discover that the shell remains. God has put Himself inside of us inside that shell because that is the only way that we can ever know Him.
We know Him by casting off the restraint and limitation of the curse that remains still upon our bodies, upon this earth, and upon the life of this present age. We know Him only through the battle, through the travail, through proclaiming the victory in the midst of despair, seeing that which is not seen, declaring that what He is in us as the only reality there is.
But those who say there is no battle - just relax and enjoy grace. God has already done everything. There is no more for you to know and experience, no veil to cast off, no darkness to overthrow, no enemy to cast down, no victory to win, no beast to overcome, no death to cast aside. Those who seem to be indicating that incredible nonsense in this hour - well, I will say no more.
To remove the shell from the butterfly so that it no longer must cast if off in order to live is to condemn that butterfly to a slow and horrifying death.
This truth has nothing to do with "achieving" something, or "winning God's favor" or any such nonsense. All of that is forever gone from us, removed by the cross of Christ.
This truth is to know the unlimited life and power of the God who fills us with all of His fullness, right here upon this earth, in this present age, out from these bodies of mortal flesh until they are swallowed up in the life of the One whose revelation we are.
All that I do now is God in me doing it.
To know the Father is the life of the age to come, revealed through us, bringing to an end this present age.
Be blessed in the Lord,
Daniel Yordy
for more of Daniel's great material or to subscribe to his regular newsletter - www.dyordy.com
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