The Bride At War

The Bride At War by breadforthebride

Friends,

You will find this post lengthier than the usual Bread for the Bride post. It is the result of several months of waiting before the Lord and I believe is a timely word for the Bride of Christ. I would request you not to just skim this one, but to take time to read thoroughly and consider it carefully and with an open heart. This is not something I normally do, but I am also requesting you pass this along to any leaders, prayer groups, intercessors and anyone involved in spiritual warfare you may have contact with, for their prayerful consideration. The season we are now entering is both sobering and unprecedented. The best of times, the worst of times as they say. "Be strong and of good courage, do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." (Josh. 1:9) As always, your comments and discussion are welcome.

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Step back in time for a moment and imagine being tasked with conquering a new land, a land promised as your inheritance, in which the enemy lurks menacingly behind fortified strongholds surrounded by towering walls several feet thick. Having just emerged from forty years of wilderness living you are familiar with desert warfare and its weapons such as spears, bows and arrows, and swords. Battering rams and moveable towers for scaling walls and breaking gates are not your style.

Your previous battles have been fought on the plains as kings came out from their fortified cities to halt your advance through their territory. Those former battles were fought from a ‘passing through’ mentality as you advanced towards your final goal. Now things have shifted dramatically and it is you and your people who are on the offensive with ultimate victory in sight. A new and final stage of warfare lies before you. This is no longer a time of passage, it is now a time of possessing, demanding a totally new mindset.

Your new leader, Joshua, is one of only two Israelites remaining from the original generation who began this long and arduous journey. All the old warriors who might have trained you have died. You and every other member of your company have been ‘born in the wilderness’ (Josh. 5:5). The wilderness-dwelling years have now come to an end and you find yourself on the plains of Jericho facing a massive walled stronghold that is ‘securely shut” against you (Josh. 6:1).

Now, fast forward to the twenty first century:

So much has been taught, written, conferenced, sung and preached about spiritual warfare over recent years it’s hard to imagine there could be anything new to add.

But I am convinced in my spirit we have yet to arrive at God’s best for us in our understanding of effective spiritual warfare. I believe the methods many believers have been utilising in spiritual warfare, (some of which have been highly questionable), are quickly becoming obsolete and will not be adequate for the level of warfare now upon us.

The Bride of Christ is emerging from her wilderness experience appearing ‘fearsome as an army with banners’ to every spiritual enemy who opposes her. Her eyes do not wander, her heart is undivided. Her life is hid in her Beloved and she is barely recognizable as the one who was led down into the wilderness to meet her God (SOS 8:5). And that’s just the point. During her wilderness journey the old ways of carnal religion, and of compromise with the world, have been stripped from her and are becoming nothing more than a memory. This emerging Bride has been ‘born (spiritually birthed and prepared) in the wilderness’.

Most of us have read the book and know that Israel had an amazing victory at Jericho. Under God’s specific direction and Joshua’s leadership Israel marched around the city for seven days, on the final day releasing a great shout, at which the great walls collapsed and the city was taken.

The story of Israel’s victory at Jericho provides a prophetic parallel for the Bride of Christ that, if understood and received, will help us wage effective spiritual warfare in the season now before us. Consider the following:

A New Kind of Warrior, Born in the Wilderness

It was a new generation of warriors who took Jericho, a generation of those who knew nothing of Egypt except the shared memories they had heard from the older ones while growing up in the wilderness. Unlike the previous generation, Egypt was simply not in them.

It has often been said that when the Israelites left Egypt, they went out of Egypt but Egypt did not go out of them. This generation, born in the wilderness, didn’t wrestle with the desire for Egypt’s worldly goods as the previous generation had done. Neither did they carry with them any slave mentality. Their experience of God was of One who was able to provide their most basic needs through daily manna and water from the rock. To them He was continually manifest as a cloud to follow in the day and a fire in the sky to reassure them in the night. Consequently they lived under the constant Presence of God. The supernatural was not supernatural to them. It was a lifestyle and an expectation. In the wilderness they had been taught by God Himself that He was their total sufficiency. They had been trained to know nothing but Him.

Application for the Bride: Please understand this is not about physical, natural generations, defined by either age or youth. Age becomes irrelevant because the Bride is comprised of a spiritual generation defined by heart attitude. The multi-generational, overcoming Bride now emerging from the wilderness has abandoned the world (Egypt) behind her. The world system has no claim on her heart. She has proven God’s ability to keep her and His supernatural activities are not strange and unfamiliar to her but essential to her knowledge of Him. Above all, she seeks to live constantly in His Presence. Those of the old unbelieving slave mentality who continue their compromise with the world will end their days in the wilderness and not possess the Promised Land.

Unconventional Warfare and A New Kind of Leader

God’s battle plan against Jericho was entirely unconventional. Israel had never known anything like it; nor had Jericho. Even Joshua, an experienced general, had never experienced this type of warfare. It was new, it was radical. When Joshua fought and defeated the Amalekites Moses had interceded and Joshua had used his considerable military skills (Ex. 17:8-13). At Jericho, however, Joshua’s former battle experience became redundant. Prior to the battle he had experienced a dramatic personal encounter with the Commander of the Lord’s army¹ that had left him profoundly changed (Joshua 5:13-15).

Joshua’s leadership, however, remained critical for Israel. His path to leadership had been very different to that of his great predecessor, Moses. Moses was revered by the people as one who had been sent by God, but was not really like them. He had spent his youth separated from Israel among the royalty of Egypt. Joshua on the other hand had been born and raised up from among the common people. He knew what it was like to be enslaved by a foreign power and, as one of only two left who had been born in Egypt, he knew what it was like to wander in the wilderness for forty years and still remain faithful to God. He had learned much from Moses, but his style was not Moses’ style.

Application for the Bride: The warfare methods many believers have become used to in the season passing away have an element of religious work in them. They mix faith with something we must do: shout, march, fast, challenge, tear down, intercede, travail, praise etc. The new warfare will reveal not what we can do, but who we are. The old warfare has been largely self-focused. The new is entirely Christ focused.

God is raising up leaders in this warfare, but they will not be elevated charismatic personalities drawing their own band of followers. Instead they will be true apostolic/servant leaders, who have been trained in relative obscurity and humbled as Joshua was humbled (Joshua 5:14). These are mostly unknown leaders who have had their own encounter with the Commander of the Lord’s Army¹ and who have willingly laid down their leadership callings on the alter that He may increase and they might decrease. They have walked with God through their own costly wilderness time and allowed Him to crucify their flesh. They will lead by the Spirit, from a place of deep humility and love for the Lord and His Bride.

New Priorities: Rest and Kingdom

The battle for Jericho was waged from a place of rest in God. There was nothing of man’s prideful flesh in it. As they circled the city on foot, the Israelite warriors did not speak or make any sound. Only the marching of their feet could be heard. Imagine, no boasting, no shouts of bravado, no blood curdling threats, nothing! This could only be undertaken by a disciplined people who had learned to live waiting on God. They believed God’s promise that He Himself would go before and ‘drive out’ their enemies (Josh 3:10).

Notice Israel also fought as one nation, not as twelve tribes. They marched as one, they remained silent as one, and finally they shouted as one. They carried out their instructions not as Israelites, but as Israel. And when the inhabitants of Jericho finally heard that formidable shout they didn’t say “there are all those noisy tribes of Israel”; they said “Run for cover, it’s Israel!”

Application for the Bride: The emerging Bride comes up from the wilderness having entered the rest of God (Heb. 4:10). She has found rest from the law-focused, flesh-centred religion that so often goes under the guise of Christianity. She comes up from the wilderness different to when she went down, leaning entirely on her Beloved and His ability to sustain her. There is no compulsion within her to act of her own volition. She has no desire to prove herself. She does only what she sees her Lord doing and until she sees it she waits in restfulness beside Him. She has learned it is the Commander of the Lord’s army, Christ Himself, who chooses the time and manner of battle. She does not react to the enemy, rather she responds to the Commander.

Furthermore this warfaring corporate Bride functions in Kingdom mode. Self-focus has been crucified. Her primary sense of identity lies no longer with the clans and tribes of denominationalism but has transferred to Christ and His Kingdom.

Covenant Awareness

Prior to the battle some important events took place. Firstly, at God’s command Joshua had all the males born in the wilderness circumcised (Joshua 5:2). These had never undergone circumcision as their fathers had, but now God required them to be circumcised before allowing them into battle. Circumcision was both a sign of God’s covenant with Israel and an outward manifestation of their separation to God. In the wilderness years Israel had been physically separated from the heathen nations who had their own gods and unholy practices. Now Israel would be invading and conquering idolatrous strongholds, their circumcision would serve as a reminder to themselves and their natural enemies of who they belonged to.

Secondly, God directed that they should celebrate Passover for only the third time in their history. After leaving Egypt, Israel had marked Passover only once during the wilderness years (Num. 9:5). Before the battle for Jericho, however, the Blood of an unblemished lamb must be shed as a sign to both Israel and their spiritual enemies that they, unlike the other nations, were God’s own called out, covenant people.

Application for the Bride: No human military leader would incapacitate His armed forces immediately prior to a battle, but once again God proves His ways are not ours. If those warriors had gone into battle without the legal sign of their covenant with Yahweh upon their bodies I believe they would have failed. Covenant is higher in God’s priority than warfare is. Holiness, being set apart to Him, is more important than winning battles. The warrior Bride has submitted her heart willingly for circumcision, and bears the seal of Christ (Col. 2:11, 2 Cor. 1:22).






The Bride is Blood bought. Interestingly, Islam recognises Muslims, Jews and Christians as ‘people of the Book” but we who belong to Christ are more than that, we are “people of the Blood”. The emerging Bride drinks from the same cup as the Bridegroom. She is no stranger to the Cross and the fellowship of His sufferings. She deeply values her Blood-bought communion with Him above life itself. Her priority is always her relationship with Christ her Bridegroom and warfare, like other ministry, rightfully takes a secondary place.

A New Revelation of Warfare

When Jericho’s walls came down each one ‘went up into the city, every man straight before him” (Josh. 6:20). Each knew what to do and how to do it. There was no jockeying for position. Each one had their portion of the victory and advanced to take the enemy ground right before him.

Application for the Bride: Hierarchy has no place in the new spiritual warfare. The battle is the responsibility of each one, not just a few. In the same way the victory also belongs to each one, not just a few.

The Bride’s authority and influence will be defined atmospherically, not geographically. In recent years the intercessory and spiritual warfare movements have largely focused on groups of believers gathering at specific geographical locations to engage and pull down local and regional demonic principalities. A shift is coming towards a more mature understanding of spiritual warfare wherein Bridal warfare will be initiated, led and maintained entirely in and by the Spirit of God. Any man-directed requirement for assembling at a geographically specified battlefield to deal with territorial entities will become irrelevant. The battle is now Kingdom to kingdom, it is global, and it is coming to us.

Summary

God is leading the Bride into a new style of warfare. The warfare that the previous generation has waged has had limited success at best. It has been a learning curve, but now comes the real thing. This warfare can only be waged successfully by a Bride who has entered into the rest of God. The Bride wars from this spiritual base, and does not leave it.

Be still. The Lord is about to do something new and utterly beyond our experience.


¹ I believe the Commander of the Lord’s army who met Joshua outside the walls of Jericho was the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Others believe this may have been a high ranking angel. However, the fact that Joshua’s worship was accepted suggests strongly this was the Lord Himself. This article is therefore written from that viewpoint.

Cheryl McGrath, Bread for the Bride, 2013 —

Yes I Am 40 - A Faith Illustration

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 40

A FAITH ILLUSTRATION

I learned the speaking of the word of faith as a regular principle of life through my friend Rees Howells. I listened to him in his daily talks on how the men of God in the Bible came to the point of speaking that word of faith. It gradually soaked into me that this was not some occasional, rather exotic way of handling life’s challenges, but the normal one. I saw it in the men of the Bible, and supremely in the life of Jesus Himself. Moses announced the ten plagues to Pharaoh one by one, crossed the Red Sea, got water from the rock, assured the people of daily manna... each by some specific word, such as "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord which He will show you today; for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace" - when the Israelites were terrified by the chariots of Pharaoh pursuing them. Joshua, when the priests blew the trumpet, commanded the army around Jericho: "Shout, for the Lord hath given you the city"; David declared to Goliath, "This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand"; Elijah told Ahab, "There shall not be dew nor rain these years but according to my word."

Those great Bible examples could seem out of reach to us ordinary twentieth-century folk. But I observed Rees Howells at his Bible College put faith into present-day action. And I have since seen multitudes of instances of this during my years in the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

I had, as a young man, joined C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa, after my army years in World War I and a time at Cambridge. I had been attracted by his new venture, then called the Heart of Africa Mission, because it was founded on the principle that God alone would be the supplier of all needs... according to His promises, with no appeals made to man, and no needs mentioned except to God. The Crusade has remained wholly faithful to this principle these sixty-eight years of its existence. Pauline and I lived like this with C. T. Studd and our fellow workers in the Belgian Congo, and experienced God’s faithfulness.

Meanwhile, back in Britain I had become a close friend of Rees Howells, and the first link between us was his sense of oneness in spirit with C. T. Studd, whom he had never met. From Rees Howells I learned not just an almost unnoticed walk of faith regarding the daily supplies coming from God, but a principle of faith to be definitely applied to every challenging circumstance of life, the way Jesus plainly acted in meeting every variety of need.

My Waterloo came when C. T. Studd in the heart of Africa was "glorified" (the way we always speak of the "death" of God’s servants), going to the Lord in 1931 with "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" as his last words. He had commissioned Pauline and me to return to the home base in England and carry on the Crusade with the thirty-five workers in the Congo, and just we two at home. That first month at home we received $500 for those workers for a month! And it was precisely then, at the bottom of a dry well, as it were, that I looked up to the glimmer of light at the top and was challenged to put into practice on my own what I had learned from others.

I am writing this not from any special interest in the incident, but because it illustrates what we are talking about how to use the word of faith. The way we then did it is the way I and so many others still do it today. Not one iota of difference. That is why I mention it in detail: as an example of practicing the faith way as the only way - the only workable way - of living, applicable to every detail of our lives. For though learned, perhaps, in a crisis, it is then to be practiced in all our daily situations.

There were four of us together one day at the house which was our London headquarters in 1931. There was Pauline and I, one missionary recruit, and one missionary on furlough. What did we do? First we faced our negatives. Things were at the collapsing point: Trouble had arisen and many had left us. The Depression had hit and money was practically nonexistent. We had plenty of advice to "give up" - close the small mission, or offer it to others. (This situation was of the same kind that we are all confronted with at times, with pressing, even disastrous negatives: What shall I do about this mountain, this hopeless situation, this impossible person?)

Well, I had learned the first step from Rees Howells. Not calling on God and asking Him for deliverance; nor listening to man - but listening to God. In other words, not what we think about it, but what has He to say to us about it. "What’s up, God?" This is revolutionary (and has remained so) because it reverses prayer. It is not we talking to Him and bringing Him our needs, but giving Him the chance to talk to us.

For us at that time it certainly was the difference between collapse and continuing. We listened. But how does God talk to us, or we hear His voice? We have already gone into that: by knowing our inner spirit-union, then catching on to what comes to our minds as what He is saying to us. On that occasion, a thought came to us fully suitable to our special calling. We remembered that our founder, when he first went alone as a pioneer to the heart of Africa, wrote that God had spoken to him on board ship "in strange fashion" and said to him, "This journey is not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." He had added, when he wrote this home to his wife, "To human reason it sounds ridiculous, but faith laughs at impossibilities and cries, ‘It shall be done!’"

Well, that was certainly absurd to us. Our thirty-five in the Congo were almost at starving level, and here God was coming back to us through our founder and saying, "Not only for the heart of Africa but for the whole unevangelized world." But we knew it was the word of the Lord in all this impossibility, and we accepted it. For C. T. Studd had said specifically: "Faith laughs at impossibilities," and this was where he and Rees Howells talked the same language - faith!

So the next thought that came to us - His mind in our mind (We were not doing any official praying, not on our knees. We were sitting talking, and this was our prayer!) - was, What does "faith" mean when it comes to a matter not of theory but of action? That led us to the Bible, which was always our foundation - the Bible interpreted to us by the Spirit. It seemed practical to us to turn to the experience of Joshua, for he was Moses’ successor… and in a minute way we were successors to our Moses, C. T. Studd. So we read Joshua chapter one, and that was where God’s mind speaking through our minds put us right into focus, put us right along the lines Rees Howells had always talked about and showed us in his own life. We read how God spoke to Joshua and told him to pick up the torch that Moses had laid down and go forward into the promised land, crossing the Jordan River.

Well, that was still theory to us. Exhortation wasn’t what we needed. It was how to get into action. So we read further. That interview with God closed with verse 9. Then the paragraph mark: change of subject. And here was our key illumination - a lifelong one to me. We read that Joshua called together the officers of his army and told them to make practical preparations - commissariat, food, etc. - for Joshua said, "Within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan." That was what struck us. By what authority did Joshua name "three days" and then say with total confidence that they would then cross the flooded river? God had not said that to him.

.....calling on God as though at a distance and He not too willing to help 

 Then we saw. We got into focus how Joshua and all such men spoke their words of faith. They named their needs. They, not God. "What things soever ye desire." This was the secret. The hidden key. This life is not to be we men pathetically depending on God, calling on God as though at a distance and not too willing to help. It is God’s marvelous plan of entrusting Himself to man, joining Himself to man as man. It is man speaking as God. It is union in action, just like with Moses, Elijah, and the rest. It was Joshua who, as a military commander, calculated the days needed for preparation and then fixed a timetable by the word of faith. He had got it! He understood that God had entrusted His own plans and the power for their fulfillment to His anointed agents - which we all are. You define what you need and how much you need. Then you say so. That’s all. You say it is coming. That it is there already in your sight. "Within three days ye shall pass over."

It is always our speaking our word of faith which puts a person into action. But this is not human action. It is God-action, Spirit-action, and the river will dry up and the people cross. So we see that all hangs on this spoken word of faith, and that’s all; because it really is God the Father speaking His word by His son or daughter, through whom the Spirit then moves into manifestation. Do we see this?

We did that morning. We sat together and spoke that word. We calculated our "three days" to be that God would start sending new recruits, the first of a great army, to fill gaps in the Congo as well as going to other lands. (We took no note of the needs of the existing workers, for we knew that was God’s normal business.) We named "ten," and that as the first token of a world-wide advance to begin in the Congo. They would come in a year, by the first anniversary of C. T.’s glorification. We said it, named the number, and the day - July 16, 1932 - and used that scripture we have already quoted in Mark 11:24. We believed we had received, as it says.

Next day as we gathered, one of us asked the Lord to remember and send the ten. The Spirit rebuked us. Do you ask for what you’ve got? If you got it yesterday, shouldn’t you give thanks? So for the rest of that year - no man knowing what was happening - we thanked, watched, and often laughed, as the ten came: called (with Bible-school training), financed, and commissioned to the Congo where they all went. The last one, Ivor Davies, was given the name Kumi in Africa, which means "ten." The last £200 needed for his passage there came three days before the anniversary. We were in Belfast, in a prayer conference which began five days before, watching each mail, and the telegram came from Pauline in London: "200 pounds for the ten, Hallelujah." We heard later that it had come from two old ladies whom we had never met. So thank God for old ladies!

The next year we moved on to fifteen, the next twenty-five, the next fifty, the next seventy-five - and they came. There would be no point in giving further details, for we are looking at principles. But I thank God that the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, coupled with the Christian Literature Crusade (which was born out of it), together have some 1500 workers, establishing the gospel in over forty fields. Thank God, today thousands around the world have confessed Christ and are themselves now forming national churches, spreading the gospel witness. The whole company of Crusaders are still living with enthusiasm on the promises of God, applying these same principles of faith to all kinds of advances. Millions of dollars now come in annually... when it was but five thousand that first year. I do not mean to disregard the fact that there have been failures en route. And trials. For some there has been the glory of martyrdom, as they have laid down their lives for Christ. There are objectives of faith not yet in the visible; but on the whole, we have seen overwhelming evidences of the truth of God’s word-that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

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Yes I Am 20 - It Is The Second Crisis

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 20

IT IS THE SECOND CRISIS

Now let us face it. We have seen plainly, from Paul’s detailed explanation in his Roman letter, that Christ, our last Adam, completed a total redemption for us, the first Adam’s family, in His death, resurrection, and ascension. But it can only become a living fact in our lives by us having a personal inner experience of Him. First there has to be a new birth of the Spirit, and then the Spirit bears witness to our human spirits that we are now the children of God. This witness is vital because we become operative persons in our spirit-selves only by an inner recognition of fact as fact. This is also why Christ’s resurrection and ascension had to be confirmed inwardly to His disciples by the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost: it gave them an unshakeable inward confirmation regarding the One whom they’d outwardly seen and touched, but who had now disappeared from their sight. From then on no questions arose, even to the point of their dying for Him whom they knew. For faith was now knowledge. They knew what they knew! Outer facts had inner confirmation, and only by the inner was the outer established.

So now, by our new birth experience, we know what we know of our salvation and Savior. But we have gone on to recognize that knowing Christ as Savior from past sins must he accompanied by an equally certain knowing of Him as our personal sufficiency for our daily living, and for our sharing of such knowledge with others. Here is a second stage of knowing! We have seen in Romans how Paul had to go into great detail, as he moved from chapters 3-5 on to 6-8, to complete for us, as for himself, this second stage of inner knowing. He has made it plain that there are travailings, searchings, negative condemnings and failures to condition us for this second, equally certain, knowing. We have to go through our Romans 7 experience. There’s no shortcut for us on our "wilderness way," any more than there was for the children of Israel in their painful sojourn in that "waste and howling wilderness."

So we are now confronting this together. Let’s not fool ourselves. We shan’t get there any more quickly and easily than Paul (although we may have more head knowledge because of the pioneering route-map he has drawn for us). Any close look at the great biographies of the Bible presents us with the same fact.

Abraham, our father of faith, that total follower of the God of glory who had appeared to him, had many achievements of faith en route. But he did not reach his fixed inner knowing until he had been through many years of frustration with Hagar and Sarah and the flesh birth of Ishmael... for he was not yet able to discern between the mind of the flesh and the pure word of the Spirit. His fixed inner knowing came by the crisis of faith - faith in the impossible - at the birth of Isaac. After that he could hear ever so plainly, even when later called by God to the further impossible and most ridiculous offering of his son as a burnt sacrifice.

Moses, that dedicated servant of God, had to go beyond his initial commitment, even through a hard forty years at the backside of the desert, before he was fixed in his inner total sufficiency and adequacy at the burning bush. And from then on he inwardly knew the One with whom the children of Israel had only an outer relationship of faith.

Jacob, during his years of frustrating service with Laban, had become true-hearted and intense in his pursuit of the living God. But it was only through a final night of struggle (Gen 32:24-32), in which the angel of the Lord brought him to a physically broken place, with his thigh out of joint, so there could be no running away from his threatening meeting with Esau - only through that experience did he know himself by inner revelation as "a prince who has power with God and man."

Joshua, splendidly gifted as a military leader, had to reach the desperate end of his self-confidence by a near collapse into cowardice, by being one of the twelve spies who brought back such a defeatist report to Moses. That night Joshua "inwardly died" and rose the next morning to side with Moses and Caleb and risk the stoning that threatened them. From then onward he became a man "in whom is the Spirit of God," and Moses’ trusted successor.

David, after his youthful nation-stirring triumph of faith over Goliath, and his shepherd years as the sweet psalmist of Israel, had to spend eight years as a fugitive from Saul. While living in caves, he and his band of "the disappointed and disgruntled" were being trained together as God’s men, until, at the fiery trial at Ziklag, even his loved men turned on him. There he took a personal stand of faith which brought him into his inner knowing, when he "encouraged himself in the Lord his God" (1 Sam. 30:6).

Elisha, the wealthy young farmer who gladly sold all to follow the Lord with Elijah, spent eight years "pouring water" on the hands of his tough old leader; and even then he had to follow him in persistent pursuit to the moment of his ascent to heaven in a whirlwind, until he could himself inwardly receive and know that double portion of the Spirit which made him the successor of that mighty prophet.

Even the Savior Himself, the Son of God, taking flesh as Son of man, was intently studying the Scriptures all those years in the carpenter’s shop, knowing from the Scriptures who He was. But only at His baptism, by the dove and the word of His Father from heaven, did He have the total inner confirmation, which established Him as the one who could declare with Isaiah’s prophetic words, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me," and "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."

So also Paul did not "know" until his three years in Arabia; and even Peter, though the leader at Pentecost, until confronted by Paul in Antioch (which we shall refer to later in more detail).

Bible biographies give plenty of evidence that we move on from a relationship-knowing at our new birth to a total inner knowing. Paul gives us the transforming details in Romans 7 and 8, as we follow him on from his penetrating understanding of the true facts about himself to his agonized cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and to his glorious liberated shout of inner recognition in 8:1-2, "Now I see! There is no more self-condemnation, no more beating my head against the brick wall of failure and defeat! I am set free! I know I am, and am free forever!" In his own written words, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death" (RSV) - has, not might, may or will. The Spirit was inwardly confirming what Paul had believed as a fact of history - that by Christ’s body-death on Calvary, indwelling Satan was out and indwelling Christ was in; and Paul was underlining for us in this shout of victory that he was a liberated person, not only because Jesus had died and risen in history, but also because the Spirit inwardly confirmed it to him. It was the inner confirmation of the Spirit that set him free. No hearing of given facts, not even a reckoning on them, could do this for him; only the actual confirmation within him had finally "fixed him" in who he really was. I am free! I am free! Yes, I am! I am! I am!

So whether by sudden crisis - as it was for those Bible men and has been for most of us - or by some other means, no matter what - we do know. And we are now going to find out how we can know.

Knowing is not mental understanding, or external believing, or reckoning. It is something beyond words, because it is spirit; it is the reality of the spirit realm, beyond natural reasoning. We recognize this already on the new-birth level: How did we come to know we were born of the Spirit? Can you say? Can I? We cannot. Likewise now: we simply say to the outer, inquiring world - and indeed to thousands of church believers, who so often want to know but have never been shown this Biblical way of faith - that we just inwardly know.

We can use an example from the human level - that we become competent in our profession only by an inner knowing of it. First we give ourselves to training and study, which is our first step of faith into acquiring this body of knowledge wholly outside us. As we persist in our strivings to attain, somewhere along the line what was beyond our reach just becomes part of us. We know it! We know our stuff, and have moved over from learning to being, and we boldly call ourselves by the name of our competency - doctor, cook, teacher. And we operate not by the outer tools of our trade, but by our inner know-how.

In the same way, in our new birth the Spirit has made us inner-knowers of the outer historic facts of our salvation. Actually, on our new-birth level, the confirmation of the Spirit is usually immediate, or appears so - though in actual fact it was not. We first had our gestation period. It went on maybe for years - the work of the law bringing conviction, honest facing of sin and guilt, repentance, and finally a crisis moment of faith and open confession. But all that could not establish us as confident Christians, who know and love to share what we know. The inner knowing did that.

So now let us face this. We are about to find out how we enter into this second inner knowing. It also comes naturally and effortlessly, and with a certainty that we never lose again. I now know that not only do I have Christ as my Savior from sin, but that I have passed through an inner experience of death to my former striving, sin-dominated, and self-condemning self. I now know that I am dead to sin, the world, flesh-dominion, and law; and now I equally know that I am no longer a lonely, independent "I," or still worse, have sin and Satan living in me. I know that in place of "I" it is now Christ living His life in me. And this I now know - actually know - without ever again having to reckon on it, or trying to reassure myself about it, or refreshing my recognition of it.

This does not mean that we are like two people separate within myself. No, we are one. I am "joined to the Lord - one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17); we are two, yet we are one. He is the One living in me, yet not as separate from me, but reproducing Himself by me - as vine through branch, head through body, husband through wife.

In that union relationship I can say that it is Christ who is manifested in my human form -just as it is when He says that both He and I are "the light of the world" (John 8:12, Matt. 5:14). In actual fact, we are two - light and lamp, and He is the light shining through the lamp. Yet we so forget the existence of the lamp that when we come into a room we don’t say "Turn on the lamp" but "Turn on the light"! So in our conscious union relationship: though each Christian really is the two united in one, we don’t see ourselves as thinking, speaking, acting, but it is He expressed through our forms doing the thinking, speaking and acting.
Nobody says turn on the Lampshade, even when it's as glorious as this Tiffany Lamp. Yet we talk all the time as if we are self-existent "soul-units"
It was in the glory of this inner consciousness that Paul said, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; no, not I, it is Christ living in me." That paradoxical contradiction was the only way in which he could describe a union-and-replacement experience in words. "I live in His resurrection life… No, I must contradict that - it is not I, but He living in me." That is the union-duality! We are two, but no, we are one - and so much one that I speak of His doing the living in place of me. "Not I, but Christ living in me." That is the nearest in third-dimensional human words that he can put a fourth-dimensional union truth. It is Christ in his Paul form; Christ in even my human form. And from the moment that the light of this inner knowing is "turned on" in me, it becomes real to my consciousness that it is not I thinking, speaking, acting, but it is He. And so it is!

Yet all this hangs, in the end, on personal experience... and we are now going to find out how we may have this experience. Union is no good being a fact for me unless I know it to be so and thus can "use" it. The fact that in Christ I already was given total deliverance from both sins and sin is meaningless for me until I know it by experience. A carpenter can only use the tools he knows how to use. That was why sin could laugh at me and deceive me during those long years of struggle in my Christian living. I didn’t inwardly know I was totally delivered from its indwelling presence, so it continued to mock me with a false claim of dwelling in me. Again I repeat, we are all always controlled by our inner believings... which become knowings. All depends on how I am seeing things. When, therefore, I don’t know by an inner knowing (even though I might have an outer reckoning) that it is Christ living in my human self, and not sin or Satan, then I continue under the delusion of sin dwelling in me, and I mistakenly think I am an independent self with my own responsibilities and responses... and thus, I am consciously under the power of the god of independent-self.

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