The Power of Choice by Phillip Morris (and Chris Welch)

Will you take the red or the blue pill? Iconic question recognized by the Matrix generation

THE POWER OF CHOICE

What is it that keeps us in this unending to and fro, this endless swing from one extreme to the other? What is it that keeps us living in a state of parenthesis always expecting what is the next event to take place that will show once more the adversity or negativity of life? Have you ever thought why is it that we can’t have a world of perfection and continual joy and peace?

After a lifetime of questioning ALL, this Life has smiled and unveiled Itself in Truth and Reality. It all seemed to have started at the beginning with the eating of the “apple”, the account that has given much to say through the centuries. But in reality it all has a simple lesson behind it. You either live and exist as the expression and essence of God that you are or you continually partake of a fruit that is produced from a tree of duality and recurrent judgment. This tree will take you into thought processes, evaluations, thinking, analysis, opinions and conclusions, all a product of a sense ruled mind that seems to know it all according to what is seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. Here we remain in that state of a continual whirlwind that will only produce struggle, strain, suffering, pain, instability, ups and downs and the like. It is never ending, a vicious circle similar to a cat trying to catch its tail. Meanwhile there is something Greater, something that goes beyond and transcends this dual life, this dilemma of controversy and adversity.

When there was given a choice between two, life and death; the choice was between Life as the One and only substance that is All in All and the other alternative was death; death being the result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the dual judgment that comes and goes according to our senses. The “Life” was the One, the one that transcended this dimension of polarity and being thrown to and fro by the forces of its nature in the context of an unstable teeter totter. The choice of Life is the simple choice of the heart of a child that proceeds in all, out of his Being and spontaneity, allowing its nature and source to express Itself. The unlimited creative world of a child is what brings the fullness of joy and continual peace and tranquility that ultimately is “Who we are”.




The choice to see inwardly - Chris continues
"Some said it thundered".
Others heard the voice of God announcing "This is my Beloved Son."

The 12 apostles were all told specifically to their faces in many and various ways by Jesus:
I will suffer and die at Jerusalem
I will destroy this Temple and raise it up again in 3 days, speaking of His Body.
I will go to My Father and I will send to you a Comforter, (My Spirit) who will take what is mine and reveal it unto you.
No sign will be given this generation save for the sign of Jonah.....(namely the prophet who spent 3 days in the belly of a whale)
Only one was at the tomb ready.
Mary Magdalen and Mary the Mother of Jesus "who kept all these things in her heart.".

They all heard what Jesus said. Physically. With their flappy ears. But it didn't have meaning.

For Mary the disciple who was by now fully awake spiritually, fully engaged with the words of Jesus and turned up at the Tomb after she had counted 3 days.

We choose to SEE.
Revelation 3. 18 latter part    I counsel you to buy from me......SALVE FOR YOUR EYES

why do we need salve?

Our eyes are filled with snake venom. In Genesis 3 it says "then were the eyes of Adam and Eve opened....and they realised they were naked."  God asks " who told you you were naked?"

Let's abolish the carnal understanding of this phrase. This version reads that God was stupid in keeping Adam and Eve in the Dark about nakedness. As if He was secretly running some kind of nudist camp without telling Adam and Eve anything to the contrary.

What was actually happening was a whole new world of shame now opened up. Like a gouge or gash in our spiritual environment and in poured the snakebite of shame into a world that had been completely devoid of it.  Secondly, and relatedly, "Living as separate beings from God"....as selfpowered souls in our own right is what is meant by seeing EVIL.

If we see only God going on, we have His Single Eye

To believe there is an "independent existence" is to be powered by the same self for self inverted spirit of Satan himself. Satan isn't free himself. He is totally bound up in his self for self spirit with the wrath of God upon it. Outside of Christ we aren't free beings either as Satan lied to us....we are in fact caught up in Satan's spirit, Satan's walk, Satan's ways, Satan's fruit. Everything he sold us is bogus.

But we have to now choose in a very costly way to see all this.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. He has promised to lead us into all Truth. This is as Hebrews 4 says to pierce like adouble edged sword between soul and spirit.
Every vestige of the hookup with the world, the flesh and the devil, which is one seamless linkup....has to be uncovered in us for us to ever walk out free from the MATRIX.

Jesus said in the Upper Room...."Now is the Son of Man glorified. The devil has nothing (literally no landing places) in Me.
1 John 3:8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil [c]has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

We learned the life of faith from Abraham. This is like the evangelical discovery that "by grace you are saved, it is not according to works".  We enter into a Blood-bought Covenant with Jesus our Saviour and God our Father.

We learned to dig wells like Isaac. We learned to find the heavenly provisions of God by standing on faith.
We rediscovered the world of the supernatural Presence of God as mediated to us through the experience of being baptised in the Spirit. What has been the charismatic realm.

But to properly change our inner seeing and as Norman Grubb repeated  all life is consciousness....for this inner seeing to change FULL TIME....we had to believe ON the concepts of Romans 6. We had to believe on the phrase also "As He is so are we in the world."

WE CHOOSE TO SEE GOD IN EVERYTHING.

Early steps were in the realms of praise. To praise the Lord even when everything "looked dire".
To praise the Lord is to choose to acknowledge God in a bit of the Universe that appears like it is broken down...that He isn't sustaining that bit of it. Well we decide in our hearts that no matter how it looks He IS LORD. HE IS IN CHARGE.

The Race FOR NICENESS

One of the biggest changes I have noticed since I came back from Mars is the change in the secular workplace.
By Mars I am joking ofcourse and refer to both the experience in working in Christian Community as well as being on my own and with my wife as a self employed piano tuner, seller and remover.
I did some restoration some months ago for somebody in a cutting edge financial firm, and since then I have been doing some additional menial work for different firms as well as continuing some self employed work.

Moses and the magicians in Pharoah's court did a kind of power battle before the anointing of the Lord that was on Moses outdid anything the sorcerers were able to do.

Well, today, apart from witches, nobody in the day to day western environment knows anything apart from the leftbrain education they received in school and university. Christians who have been filled with the Spirit do, but as they were also educated in the self-same leftbrain bubble, they are not particularly great yet at moving in the supernatural realms. (Many even reading this will dismiss this last sentence as crazy, since at no time in their life will they have ever confronted anything that was not immediately explainable by cause and effect.)

There is a race on, however, between spiritual and secular, or even spiritual secular and just plain old secular.
It's the NICENESS RACE.
Anybody reading Daniel Yordy's material which is available as Amazon Books, or online at www.dyordy.com will already know the greater race is that God becomes manifest the world over through flesh.  And God is LOVE.

Except that Agape Love, Hesed Love, Covenant Love, Unconditional Love is of God and comes and is expressed through the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life relates with our heart. Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. NIV
Although that is direct it misses some of the meaning of the original texts:
Above every charge keep thy heart, For out of it are the outgoings of life....the issues of life...the wellsprings of life
That verse which I often quote alongside the proverbs 3 verses are incredibly accurate in their phrasing, once you know who Man is in his makeup. In this post  I am not sidetracking to explore this, but for those who are interested in meditating on God's Word...here are some thought links.

1.Your very future is bound up in what you are "seeing" of God and life in general. This is all going on in the recesses of your heart. The pure in heart shall see God. Take care that your eye is single.
2. The wellsprings are literally God creating for you in your environment the sort of Universe you want to live in.
3. There are many things WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN CHARGE OVER....but most in western society have not prioritised their  personal charge over their heart. And we have become something on the way to a Dalek, or a Dr Who Cyberman. A cog in a machine.
4.The realm of the heart is your soil.The parable of the Sower is about that very soil. And Ezekiel 8 is about what is going on in your inner rooms...the inner rooms of your temple.
The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has two departments as is written on the tin. Their version of Love would generally appear up the good end of the Tree...but it isn't usually unconditional, and a better word would be NICE.

If NICE is the  Tree of Good's word  for God's LOVE
then HAPPY is the TREE of GOOD's word for God's JOY, BLESSING,SHALOM,CONTENTMENT.

The main reason the secular world is being pushed into this race to mimic the Kingdom has been the release of the gifts and the fruit of the Holy Spirit as multiplied thousands have experienced the baptism in the Spirit in the new, and some of the old churches worldwide.

If you see a bunch of Christians happily doing group hugs, and more and more solo hugging, this is going to force you onto your left foot, away from the rather stilted stiff upper lip ways of the Western world before that. And this is what has happened. Since the widespread form of relating that the baptism in the Spirit brings, the old rather detached form of relating, certainly in the workplace, has been severely challenged.

Well, that was until the eighties and nineties.

The movers and shakers have been learning some new tools, and I must admit I was very ill-prepared for how sophisticated they were now.

There are two levels this seems to be happening:
1. The form of relating we found natural in churches has now been codified, described and set down to encourage a different form of workplace altogether. But so far the secular world are not very good at bridging the gap between NICE and bottom line profit.
So there's a rather manic depressive approach to relationship in the workplace. Like the two faces of Janus.

They will receive you NICELY.
Most banks have this softly softly front. Very welcoming staff.
I feel it is a direct fulfilment of Daniel's prophetic description of the last empire....the FEET made of clay mixed with iron. Well, right there, that's the point! They don't mix. So you get this seeming human warmth and  softer quality. We are after all made from "the dust", from clay. But not far behind this surface is what your spirit always warned you about, but you were telling it that it was just paranoid!  HARD METAL UNFEELING COLD IRON.

Well this is not a blogpost about banks, I just use that one example.
I was speaking on the phone to the financial man I was restoring for. Up until that moment he'd been one of this new type of commercial being. Utterly friendly, very talkative, very open. But he happened to be at work and obviously an underling wasn't pulling his or her weight, and forgetting he was also speaking to me, he changed personality completely. He could have been Ghenghis Khan.

Several times since then I have observed this uneasy phenomenon.
What is unnatural is the tensecond timespan between maximum niceness and maximum dictator mode. I find this very disturbing.

Jesus wasn't nice. He was Good. He had unconditional love.
But to the man who was boring Him with all the deatils about how he was so good that he was keeping all the Law, and what more should he do...Jesus just turned, looked straight at Him and by the Spirit was inspired to say....
Go...Sell all you have and give it all to the poor and come and follow me.

Jesus wasn't NICE. He wanted to see that man free of himself...his nitpicky attitude to God, to keeping law...but all the while hanging tightly to control his life from ever being what he felt would be unmanageable. And Jesus was saying...just let God manage it all...at least until you've learned how to walk in Him, and if you follow me I'll teach you how to walk that way.

The NICENESS stakes are going up the more believers are learning how to walk Christ as them, by believing  Galations 2:20 as fact.

But at some point we have to make this Galations 2:20 leap of consciousness...that's the point with Moses and the magicians. At some point they ran out of steam.

The charismatic leaders are now so clever at mimicking what a Christian should look like, so its no wonder we encourage the world to keep their fake play acting...because the church are doing it. Flanders the Christian in the Simpsons Cartoon is a laughing stock. We only brought it on ourselves because of this false ISHMAEL of Christian NICENESS...it's not Christ. It's the GOOD end of the Devil's TREE. The Existence called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

You cannot fake genuine goodness. To live authentically as you, you must find the Original Life source, and Christians are saying, look, it has a Cross in the heart of it. Take up your Cross and follow Me said Jesus.

2. The second way this False niceness is pervading is absolutely sinister.
Through different investigators like Fritz Springmeier, and even the comments  to the side of this blog in the videos about the CIA by Kay Griggs it becomes clear that the subject of MIND CONTROL is now of first rank importance.

Mindcontrol as a deep study began with the early Austrian psychoanalysts, which came out of research in the Austrian police state of the 19th century. Very technical studies were carried out on humans in the Communist Gulags and the Nazi Concentration camps. Some of the Nazi researchers were removed to USA and subsequently established the CIA and just simply continued their research over there. The ruling elite families are in about 13 dynastic families who have many different family subnames or fronts so that they are not obvious, but they intermarry only among these lines for occult reasons. Over thousands of years they have been refining the upbringing of the children through trauma and abuse to create grownups with very appealing front personalities or "alters", but behind this thin appearance is one mess of controllable and controlling personalities. These persons ARE NICE. And since the CIA did various forms of deeper research most often preceeded by the name letters MK, eg MKUltra...their mindcontrol is virtually untraceable except by close family and friends who may learn some of the symptoms and begin to guess.
These NICE-fronted people are installed in all key walks of life, in churches,in banks, in politics, in education. They are one of the larger reasons Jesus believing Christians don't hardly feature in our countries. These people, these NICE people are brought up to exclude all of them.

This becomes very obvious when you get baptised in the Holy Spirit in the UK. Looking back I can see some of the subtle techniques which were employed to shut down our school revival, and ofcourse all we saw were NICE people, wanting the "best " for our education.

My friend came I believe now from such a family.
M. was my friend in primary school. We both got into the State Grammar School. He "prayed the prayer to become a Christian" when many others in my class did.
In primary school I visited his nearby house. Not many times. There were always excuses.
His dad was in one of the big name firms that many have continuously accused of occult connections.I only learned that very recently about the firm . His mother "just happened" to have someone in the family starting an influential UK magazine. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but M's family were Fabian socialists or that was the front. They hated Jesus Christ with a passion.
They disallowed my friend from ever singing in assembly although his voice was good enough for choir.
With continuous heat they put him off going to my church, and it seemed he forgot about the "religious episode". Just out of interest I tried to contact him again after or during my time at university.His mother answered the phone and asked pointedly why I wanted to see him? (Afterwards I reflected, she did not want her Cambridge graduate son already lined up for directorship in the same firm as his Dad to have anything to do with my Christian ways, I guess)
Some little time later I heard he was dead. Some "freak swimming accident in America" and his body was never found!!!!
His brother has spent most of his life with MPD in a home at taxpayer's expense. Rockefeller's family dynasty has huge numbers with MPD using up services funding. The bloodline childrearing method  creates people with MPD. So the more I think about my friend , the more I conclude , unbeknown to any of us, he was probably in such a family. At the worst, it could be that his Christianity resurfaced and some "friends" got rid of him for them. Since meeting an Icelander online on Facebook who has probably also been terminated after wanting to expose his bloodline family and becoming a Christian, I am much more able to accept the existence of such behaviour...even if it is also close to home as with my friend.

I have decided that I am not NICE, but I want to express the goodness of Jesus Christ, and if that means ripping away some of the devil's carefully manipulated facades as led by the Spirit,this will lead to a much less dangerous world, in which at present you never know who has an IRON SOUL because it is covered in Tree of GOOD - style CLAY.

Covenant Series P14: A Heart Throne by Daniel Yordy

  
Original Article with PDF and Audio

Order the Book Here

© Daniel Yordy - 2012 - Our Path Home

14. A Heart Throne

We live boldly inside the Holy of Holies.

There is no sacrifice inside the Holy of Holies, only Blood. That Blood is splattered across the Mercy Seat. But before we can consider the Mercy Seat, we must deal with a claim I have made, a claim that, I suspect, is and will be a stumbling stone for many.

Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He who sat there was like a jasper and a sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald . . . And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. Revelation 4:2-5

The claim I have made has two parts. The first part is this – this throne that John sees in His vision IS the hearts of God's elect walking upon this earth. The second part is this – that throne, our hearts, is God's throne and God's heart. We share heart with God.

I have no intention of “defending” this claim. Those Christians whose hearts have not yet been won by God cannot know this reality, and those whose hearts in which He sits enthroned, filling us with all of His Person, will see by the light of the Holiest what their own hearts really are.

But I do intend to explore this truth in this letter. We are looking, here, at things more Holy than we have ever known or considered. We are seeing the Holiest of All.

There was no basin to catch the Blood of the spotless Lamb of God as His body was pierced, over and over. Rather, that Blood, each drop more precious – of greater value – than the entire universe, fell down upon the ground, saturating the dirt, mixing totally with the earth.

We sit upon the Mercy Seat; we sit upon Blood. Read Hebrews 9 with the understanding of the Tabernacle of Moses as I have been teaching. I will insert here only a part of verse 12.

. . . with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained age-abiding redemption.

There was no basin. Jesus had to bring the Blood that had mixed with the dirt of the earth into the Most Holy Place to sprinkle there upon the Mercy Seat. Did He separate the dirt first? The Bible does not say.

But it does say that He sprinkled our very human hearts, made of dirt, with that same Blood.

The Mercy Seat IS the throne of heaven. Jesus sprinkled His blood ONCE for all. God says He sprinkled it upon the Mercy Seat. God says He sprinkled it upon our hearts. They are the same thing.

How does God win our hearts?

A heart can only be won. Bodies can be commanded, though God never employs force, minds can be trained, but hearts can only be won. How does God win our hearts?

 We are looking, here,

 at things more Holy 

than we have ever known

 or considered. We are seeing 

the Holiest of All.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. Jeremiah 17:9-10

I want to get at the greatest evil in Christianity, the open rejection of the Covenant that fills Christian theology and practice. Yes, I repeat myself, but I see it afresh and the fire of His indignation burns bright again in me.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19 – Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:5

The old covenant versus the New Covenant.

The law of sin and death versus the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.

Death versus Life.

God on the outside versus God on the inside.

An old heart of iniquity versus a new heart sprinkled from all consciousness of sin.

You can live in one or you can live in the other but you CANNOT live in both, not even a little bit.

 I want to get at the greatest evil in Christianity, the open rejection of the Covenant that fills Christian theology and practice.

Where you choose to live, one side or the other, is 100% your own personal choice, by your own desire. Those who want to stay far away from God wrap themselves in Jeremiah 17:9; those who want to live inside of God and God inside of them wrap themselves in Ephesians 3:17-19. It's as simple as that.

What you believe about your own heart IS where you live.

You can do anything with Christ, the word God speaks, anything you want. It is your own, personal decision.

(I usually don't say “you,” but on this issue, we need the bony-finger-between-the-eyeballs kind of experience.)

 The Mercy Seat 

IS the throne 

of heaven.

 You are free to believe that your heart is evil, deceitful, desperately wicked, and filled with trickery and selfishness. You are perfectly free to believe that all the way through. But if you do, you need to be prepared for the consequences of your choice.

You will never, not in a million years, give a deceitful heart to God; God will never, He cannot, win your heart.

Christ CANNOT dwell in your heart by visible, outward sight. You will never “SEE” Him there unless you choose to cast down the sight of your eyes. Never!

If God has not won your heart, you will never pass through the veil into the Holiest. Deceitful and wicked hearts never do. Only those whose hearts are pure, sprinkled always by the Blood, filled with a mighty boldness, who know that what God says in the New Covenant concerning Christ our only life is true, who disregard with all abandonment what their human eyes “see” or their human feelings “feel,” will ever enter into the Holiest of All.

To overcome is our faith. Faith is to overcome. Faith is not blind; I hate that whole muttering about “blind faith that just can't understand God, oh poo.” Faith sees what is not seen – because faith regards only what God says concerning Christ our only life. Faith is bold with all the audacity of which the human heart, the heart of God, is capable. Faith sits upon the throne of God; faith knows nothing less.

I have found Me a man after My own heart.

If you believe that your heart is wrong, God will never win your heart; He cannot. You have placed your heart outside of where He goes. He does not know the place where you keep your heart.

You must know that your heart is pure and holy, that it is good, that you have a good heart and no shadow lies upon it, before you will ever give your heart to God.

And if you think that you will “make your deceitful heart pure” by your own “obedience” to something outside your own person, you are as deluded as every human being from Adam till now is deluded.

Enough with “you,” let's get back to the revelation of Christ our only life. Our hearts are pure and they are good, for He has made them so, and we regard Christ alone. We see Him in glory, especially when we look at our hearts, especially when we look in the mirror when we get up in the middle of the night.

 Faith sees what is not seen – because faith regards only what God says concerning Christ our only life. Faith is bold with all the audacity of which the human heart, the heart of God, is capable. Faith sits upon the throne of God; faith knows nothing less.

We simply are unable to see anything else but Jesus.

Much of my pondering over the last few days that has produced the thoughts in this letter comes out of two questions that Bonnie Morris asked me. I want to attempt an answer to both of those questions inside the same narrative. The questions are closely related. Let me share both of her questions first, and then I will begin my random comments that came out of my pondering these things before the Lord.

Let me throw in this first. Last Thursday evening, Thanksgiving, November 22, 2012, as I lay in bed before sleep, I did something I have never before done. What I did opened a door I had never known existed in God. I was filled with wonder and fear, both at the same time. Yet I have entered that door without hesitation, though my trepidation continues. This is not a room in God for human foolishness; it is a Most Holy Place.

It is a room filled with the most dynamic and powerful activity in God beyond what I have ever heard. In this room inside of God inside of us – God fills us with ALL of Himself, is all the authority of Christ released now into this earth through us in the fullness of times. It is the Mercy Seat; it is the throne of heaven; it is our own hearts.

But the description of this incredible room in God I have never before heard or known – and what I did that opened the door to it, what I did, coming out of the present dealings of God in my life and the last two letters I have written, “Carry Your Cross,” and “Resurrection Life,” must wait until my next letter.

I do take my role as a mapmaker very seriously. I love maps. There are few things in this life that I love more than a good map and a path ahead and adventure beckoning, calling to me. I know what is my present calling in the body of Christ. My calling is to forge the trail, to make a straight path, a clear highway, so that all those who will most certainly come rushing up behind me very soon will see it all as so very obvious and clear and true as they connect in all ways with the God of Adventure who lives in their hearts.

Here are Bonnie's two questions, sent to me at different times.

I want to share with you something M__ said. He said... Tabernacles is where the law is written on our minds.  At first I totally rejected what he said, but then I got to meditating it and am now musing over this.... Is it possible that the law (principles of God) was written only upon our hearts in Pentecost? We know that the tabernacle feast is where we find the resurrection of the body... but, could it be that the renewing of the mind to the law is now? Not speaking here of law as anything except the life principles flowing out of God. The Scripture says that He will write the law on our hearts and on our minds. I know in the past I never separated that as two different moments in time.

You mentioned biting the tree of life.  Was that an actual manifestation for you... and did it cause a distinct difference such as being filled with the Holy Spirit?  We were busy discussing it and realized we were looking for more info on that moment in your life...if there is any...

First, I will give my initial response to Bonnie's first question. I use different terminology, but we are speaking of the same thing.

~~~

Interesting, at first I thought the same as you concerning M__'s comment, but then I also got to thinking about it in my own life. And I see that God did not begin changing my mind until after He had won my heart. All the years of God's dealings with me, He left my mind in holy place thinking while He first won my heart. But then – His final winning of my heart was when John Eldredge taught me to say, "My heart is good." Wow. God cannot win our hearts if we believe they are evil, for we will never let them come close to Him; we will never see Him living in a heart we think is false.

Then, as I started to write The Jesus Secret, I was seeing in the Holy of Holies, and that is when my thinking started to change, and continues to change.

I would not make it a law to impose on others, but it is likely true, that even though brethren may "see" things of the Holiest, they are still looking through Holy Place eyes until God wins their hearts for His own.

Then we go to the Altar of Incense. Moses clearly places it in the Holy Place, but the writer of Hebrews places it in the Holy of Holies. It is both (– on the Day of Atonement, the censer of burning incense is taken into the Holy of Holies). When we first engage with the Altar of Incense, God is out to win our hearts, but when He has done so, we look around, and guess what! We are now in the Holiest, and now we can see clearly, and now He can change the way we think. That transition is the passing through the veil. The veil is the winning of our hearts.

In all of His dealings over the last six years, none of them have had anything to do with my heart – that belongs to Him and He fills it without question. All of His dealings have been to change the way I think about everything.

~~~

Let's bring this question into the Covenant. The Covenant we signed with God is filled with “fine print.” That is, many provisions and requirements that are not obvious to the surface reader or to a heart that does not engage with God. A large part of that “fine print” is found in the steps of overcoming in Revelation Chapters 2 & 3. Now, we know these are “fine print” clauses to the Covenant because Jesus says, “to those who overcome.”

Everyone of these addenda to the Covenant is fulfilled inside the Holy of Holies experience in our lives and in the life of the church. “To those who overcome” MEANS “to those who pass through the veil into the Holiest of All.”

That “passing through the veil” takes place in Israel's religious year, in the Feasts of the Lord, at the center of the Day of Atonement. Here is the exact account from Leviticus 16:11-14.

And Aaron shall bring the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house, and shall kill the bull as the sin offering which is for himself. Then he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from the altar before the Lord, with his hands full of sweet incense beaten fine, and bring it inside the veil. And he shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the Testimony, lest he die. He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

This is the same office Jesus performed as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, when He appeared before the Father and sprinkled His blood upon the Mercy Seat in the heavenlies, just before He first appeared to His disciples after His resurrection.

That censer of burning coals, sweet incense beaten fine, the Battering of Desire, is from the Altar of Incense. Thus the Altar of Incense, on the Day of Atonement, passes from being a Holy Place furnishing to being a part of the Holy of Holies. The fire of incense is what passes through the veil. Let's focus on the first of those Covenant “addenda” found in Revelation 2: 7.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.

Then, let's bring in the other side of this statement of Jesus from Genesis 3:21-24. The Covenant we signed is very specific and clear, but we must have its specificity front and center before our eyes.

Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

The cherubim of the Mercy Seat, between which the Blood of the Atonement is sprinkled symbolizes the same thing as these cherubim keeping the way to the tree of life.  The passage into life is by the fire of the incense – the Battering of Desire.

Let me bring in two more verses before I begin to build my point.

Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on age-abiding life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:24 – For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:4-5

The words “lay hold on” are the Greek word best translated “to seize.” Notice that seizing hold of LIFE is a fight of faith. Notice that it is faith, the confidence that we are, in fact, born of God, by which we overcome.

Before the fall, the “forbidden fruit” was the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Not so today. Today the “forbidden fruit” is the fruit of the tree of life. Non-Christians see the tree of knowledge as normal; Christians see the tree of knowledge as godly (it is entirely of God).  It takes great audacity and boldness of presumption to turn one's back on the tree of knowledge, to seize hold of the fruit of the tree of life, and to sink one's teeth into it. Yet Paul told Timothy, a mature Spirit-filled Christian minister, that such is exactly what he ought to be doing.

Now, Bonnie was referring to a discussion of mine concerning how the Kingdom of God swallows up into itself all things, conveying everything out of darkness and into life. I talked about the “proto-universe” that existed before Adam made his decision, and that everything we know in the present universe, the “old” creation, comes out of the very moment that Adam's teeth bit into the fruit of knowledge.

Then I insinuated, without seeing all the implications, the opposing reality – the moment our teeth sink into the fruit of the tree of life given to us by Jesus.

It is clear to me that we did not eat of the tree of life when we were born again. It is clear from the verses I included here, that we did not eat of the tree of life when we were Baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus offers the fruit of the tree of life ONLY to those who have “overcome,” that is, who believe what God says, who see by faith fully that which is not visible to the outward sight. Those who believe ALL that God says concerning Christ our only life inside the Covenant. Jesus offers the fruit of the tree of life only to those who have passed through the veil by the fire of incense, hearts won wholly by God, and who live utterly and only in the Holy of Holies, in the glory of heaven, right here and right now.

That happens to be us. Listen, whatever is true of Christ Jesus is most certainly true of us, for He is our only life!

I want you to see the clear picture given to us by God.

Adam and Eve were nowhere near the tree of knowledge all the way through the garden. They were busy laughing and talking and eating fruit from this tree and that. Yet they followed the deep yearning in their heart for completion, for LIFE. They had many experiences together with God all the way along their journey. God walked with them in the cool of the garden. Yet, as they approached the very tree of life, the very life of Almighty God, God became quiet, seemingly withdrawing Himself into the background. At the very moment that Adam saw, for the very first time, the tree of LIVING LIFE, at that same moment, all the power of the tree of knowledge bore down upon him overwhelmingly. Adam crumpled under the power of separation just steps away from the glory of Life.

The power of the tree of separation does not bear down on those living in the outer court, rejoicing that Jesus is their Savior. The power of the tree of separation does not bear down on those living in the Holy Place, rejoicing in the healing and anointing and understanding of the Spirit they find there.

No, it is only those who, rejoicing in Jesus as Savior, rejoicing in the Spirit as the light of their seeing, who sense the call to enter into LIFE and who move over to the visible Altar of Incense to begin the process by which they pass through the veil and thus come into the place where Jesus offers to them the fruit of the tree of life – it is only those who come under the overwhelming power of the knowledge of separation.

Why? Why? Why? I will tell you exactly why.

God does not trust you and He does not trust me. Jesus will never offer us life until He has won our heart.

If you believe your heart is evil, you will never give your heart to Jesus; He will never win it for Himself. Shame is never appropriate to your heart. If you imagine that it is, your heart cannot belong wholly to Him.

And thus you will find the tree of separation, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, only in “deeper truth” circles, Christians who draw close to the tree of life, Christians who engage God with Gethsemane, with the Altar of Incense, and thus have come into the face of the serpent. They are the ones who eat the fruit of separation, not so much the Christians in the outer court or the Holy Place.

Thus you will find Christian groups and ministries whose hearts long for the tree of life, who have drawn close to the power of God, who have embraced what they call “the message of the cross,” which is really the fruit of separation, “I am bad, and bad me must die,” the rebellion of Adam. They preach separation as if it is godliness and they decry union as if it is ungodly deception.

Now, understand this, God is filled with contradictions – He is really an odd One.

Almost all Christians are convinced of a belief that is complete malarkey. Almost all Christians imagine that someone cannot be “deceived” and “close to God,” both at the same time. They are convinced, first, that they themselves know most all things as they really are, that their own beliefs are the only clearly true and logical beliefs one should have, they are convinced that by those beliefs they are as “close to God” as anyone can be in this life, and they are convinced that anyone who sees things entirely differently from them is clearly “deceived,” and therefore, at the same time, of necessity, “far away from God.”

 They preach separation 

as if it is godliness 

and they decry union

 as if it is ungodly deception.

A God who would draw His beloved close to Himself, and then thrust her under the power of deception for a season, even while she is but one step away from eating of the tree of life, this God just doesn't fit anyone's thinking.

Because we see the patterns, we understand exactly what God is doing.

The New Covenant, in its fulfillment, engages with the heart FIRST. God could care less what silly ideas bounce around in our heads BEFORE He has won our hearts. God does not care how deceived anyone is, He cares about winning our hearts – FIRST! The Altar of Incense, as it sits in the Holy Place, is entirely an engagement of the heart. Once God has won our hearts and we are willing to call them GOOD, the throne of God, then, and only then, can He work on the way we think.

The final win of our hearts and passing through the veil are the same thing. It is the overcoming of faith.

Look at the two sides of Gethsemane; the contrast is beyond comprehension.

Take this Cup away from Me! – Who, for the Joy set before Him. . .

The first phrase is the last thought of Jesus on His knees in Gethsemane, the second phrase is the first and only thought in Jesus mind as He stood to face His betrayer. They are the SAME THING. The CUP and the JOY are the same thing! The Cup Jesus drank and the Joy set before Him are  you and me, His prize and His glory.

The passage from the Holy Place to the Holy of Holies, the fire of incense, happened in the Pattern Son, the Head of the body, at the moment He rose to His feet the third time in Gethsemane. God had won the heart of the entire body of Christ. At that very moment, God transformed Jesus' mind from Cup to Joy.

Yet that WIN must be proven out in each of our lives. God requires of Jesus to prove Himself inside of each one of us; God requires proof of Himself in the earth. That is the Cup Jesus drank, the Joy set before Him, to become us, to carry us all the way into Life.

Here is the funny thing about God – He always gets the last laugh. The firebrand “deeper truth” preacher, who teaches that “union with Christ,” “Christ becoming us,” is deception, that our hearts are, in fact, deceitful and wicked, that our flesh is “filthy and cursed,” and that “the death of the cross,” is something we must “come to,” before we will ever know God (separation) is, in fact, carried by the very One who has already become them, though they know it not, all the way into life.

They are one step away from life, and when they finally eat of it, they will go very quiet. It will be someone else who does the talking at that point.

Here is the obvious logic of the first moment one eats of the fruit of the tree of life. You've never eaten of it before. Which means that everything you think is true before that moment is just pure deception, but that's okay, because He carried you all the way through.

It is only after we have eaten of LIFE that our seeing changes, that our thinking changes, that everything now makes sense as God means it, and not as we ever understood in our pre-tree-of-life theology. Our definition of God, of Christ, of ourselves, of salvation, of EVERYTHING MUST change from the moment we eat of life!

Let me paint another picture. Here are two people standing side by side, in full agreement on all “Christian theology.” Yet both of them believe, fully, (and accurately) that they have not yet experienced this moment here, in Revelation 2:7, eating of the Tree of Life. Now, here's what happens next. You see, the work God does inside the Altar of Incense when it is positioned in the Holy Place, is entirely an inner work. God is hammering away at the heart. And what He is doing in a man or woman's heart CANNOT be seen or known by anyone else. The person whose heart God is working on hardly knows themselves what God is doing.

You see, when God spoke to me, after I had failed utterly in my own sight and in the sight of all others, elders and apostles, when He said, “Son, you passed the test.” Once I got over the shock of the unreality of His words, I began to rethink the whole arena of the work of God in a man's heart – that God is after something that is definitely not visible outwardly. When God works on a heart, He is not interested in either outward performance or the thinking of the mind. He ignores those two things absolutely.

God simply does not consider changing our thinking before He has won our hearts. Then, and only then, it is eating of the tree of life by which our minds are transformed. And He simply does not consider the transformation of our outer persons until He has changed utterly the way we think by our eating of the tree of life. That's why attempting to “transform ourselves” is a really bad idea; the only image we can produce ourselves must be false.

Back to the two brothers standing side by side in the Altar of Incense, looking forward to the fulfillment of the third feast and the Holy of Holies in their lives. What happens when Jesus offers to one only to eat of the tree of life, what happens in that moment?

That's simple. The one who just ate of life turns to his friend and says, “Wow, I just ate of life; it's so exciting and simple. You also may freely eat.” And the one who has not eaten says, “That is heresy. You are pushing darkness. You cannot eat of life because your heart cannot be pure.” The theology of the one who ate of life MUST change drastically; the theology of the one who has not eaten of life CANNOT change. Thus the one who has not eaten of life casts out the one who has, convinced that his friend is now imbibing deception. That's just the way it works.

One who believes that Jeremiah 17:9 applies to themselves in spite of the Salvation of Christ, cannot ever accept a new heart from God BECAUSE saying “My heart is good; my heart is pure; my heart is entirely brand new,” would defy their theology and the theology of all those before whom they hope to put up a good appearance.

Most “deeper truth” Christians simply do not have the permission of the ministries under which they sit to eat of the Tree of Life, should Jesus offer its fruit to them. Those Altar of Incense Holy Place ministries, very close to life themselves, but not quite there, warn them over and over that “union with God” is darkness, and separation from God is the only true “godliness.” That they will never know God until their outward performance is perfected first.

So have I eaten of the fruit of the tree of life offered to me by Jesus? I actually believe that I have. And if so, when did I have that experience and how has it affected my life? I'm so glad Bonnie asked this of me because it is good that I delineate these things as clearly as I can.

First, I share about God initially winning my heart at the age of 21 in the article, “Cutting the Covenant.” Yet, as in all things, God must prove to us what is already true, and thus it took the next 20 years for Him to convince me that yes, my heart did belong to Him. But when I left the move communities, my heart was frozen; I believed there was something terribly wrong with me.

Thus, I could not fully give my heart to God until John Eldredge (from 2001-2004) had taught me to say, and to completely believe, that my heart is good. That God prizes my heart above all things. Understand that God's changing of our psychology takes time. God can change our bodies, our outer form, in the twinkling of an eye, but winning our hearts and changing our minds simply takes time.

Then, in the fall of 2006, after hearing the thought, “Speak what God says you are,” I wrote out all the New Testament verses that were pertinent as confessions of faith concerning Christ our only life. It is when I arrived at Colossians 3:11 and wrote these words, “Christ is all there is in me,” at that moment, I do believe, I ate of the tree of life. At that moment, my teeth pierced its skin. I believed with all my heart that it was true. At that moment, for the first time in my Christian experience, God could begin to transform my thinking.

But, as I said, the changing of our minds is a progressive experience. Yes, I believed without wavering, but it took five years, five years of speaking Christ to myself every single time the question came at me, from the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2011, in order to completely change my mind. I no longer “fight” to know that Christ is my only life. I fought to know that for five years; that passage is completed. During the first couple of years of that passage, the accuser assailed me more ferociously than I have ever known – yet my heart stayed firm. At no point did I waver.

That doesn't mean I didn't get angry with God and utterly discouraged from time to time. That is normal, and it speaks nothing of the fixed nature of the heart. Such times never lasted very long.

But then God used the email sent by the brother in the early fall of 2011 to drive me further into the knowledge of Him than I had ever gone. Writing three articles in particular, “God Is Beneath Your Feet,” “The Weakness of God,” and “Filled with All Fulness,” over a several month period, changed something in a big way on the inside of me, altered my SEEING.

Now, I do not boast or make “claims” of myself. It should not surprise us at all that Jesus would grant us to eat of the Tree of Life. It is the normal Christian Life; it is what the gospel always was about. The veil has always been wide open; the invitation to enter boldly into the Holiest of All has always been there.

The difference for me is very simple. I know God so differently from how I ever knew Him. I know Him as the One who carries me, arising from beneath of me, catching me up always in Himself, stumbling with me along my way, limiting Himself by my weakness, carrying me into Life, ascending on high, and I in Him.

He fills me FULL in Person. I see myself now as a thin shell of acacia wood, beloved of God, soft to His hand, filled full with God on the inside – as if my heart all the way out to my ribs has been replaced by God Himself, surrounded by God on the outside, always flowing out of me. I am never tempted to “see” myself by outward sight. God is my life; He fills me full; I know nothing else.

I'm still me. Still a silly man bumbling along through life. But I will not back down; I will not stop speaking Christ; I go out from His throne with His purposes flowing out from me.

But I do NOT have to be SOMEBODY! I don't have to present myself as some great man of power and faith. What a burden of vanity! The One who is Somebody fills me full. His glory shines through my weakness.

And the same with you. 

 – And the same with you.

Covenant Series P11: The Ark of the Covenant by Daniel Yordy

Acacia wood cross section

Original Article with PDF and Audio

Order the Book Here

11. The Ark of the Covenant

And they shall make an ark of acacia wood; two and a half cubits shall be its length, a cubit and a half its width, and a cubit and a half its height. And you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out you shall overlay it, and shall make on it a molding of gold all around . . . And you shall put into the ark the Testimony which I will give you. Exodus 25:10-16
And they shall make a “box” of acacia wood. The Ark of the Covenant IS a wooden box.
We must begin here. Wood is a symbol of human flesh.

acacia nest of tables

At all times and in all ways, this box pictures for us the Lord Jesus Christ. But as we see Him as He is, we are made just like Him. Therefore, in all ways and at all times, this box pictures us in our present state of perfection moving out from God.
The wooden box is Christ as us. In recent writing I have suggested the idea of “God as us.” I am now backpedaling from that thought. Christ is as us; our flesh is His flesh and His flesh is our flesh. We are one flesh with Him.  God is not the box;  Christ is.  God fills the box.
Writing the article “Filled with All Fullness” has changed everything for me. Since writing that, I no longer wake up in the middle of the night feeling “awful.” That is gone. I wake up in the night, now, knowing that God Himself fills me full. More and more, I know nothing else. How do I know this? I know it by faith. I choose to believe absolutely that what God says is true and personal in me. I speak of myself ONLY to set before you that you as well ought to be seeing God Himself in Person filling you in all fullness all the time as well. See Him just as I see Him – by choosing to do so first, and by practicing that seeing second, because He says.
More than that, everything looks different, especially everything God says in the Bible.
I am writing two articles at the same time. In fact, all through this series, I have been following two large metaphors, going back and forth between them. One of those metaphors is the path from the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies; the other is the path of the Atonement from Gethsemane to the right hand of the Father.
I arrive at the cross at the same time as I arrive at the Ark of the Covenant. The connection is astonishing!
Everything looks entirely different from what I have ever seen before. Here is the difference. Always before, I had placed myself on the outside looking on. Now I see myself on the inside looking out.
Let's bring in the Word: In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in You.

I did not include this statement of Jesus in my list of “the most important verses in the Bible.” But I see now that it must be placed alongside of Galatians 2:20 as its necessary counterpart. Galatians 2:20 is incomplete, only half of the seeing of our salvation; John 14:20 is the vital second half of our seeing.

 But as we see Him as He is, we are made just like Him. Therefore, in all ways and at all times, this box pictures us in our present state of perfection moving out from God.

Let's make a statement of reality based on John 14:20. I will expand on this statement in my letter on “The Cross.” Put your own name in the blank instead of mine.
I am inside of God, and God is inside of me. There is no God without   Daniel Yordy   inside of  Him; there is no   Daniel Yordy    without God inside of him.
Look at the Ark of the Covenant – remembering that Hebrews 10:19-22 says that we enter boldly into the Holiest of All. That means that we are that Ark. It is a box of Acacia Wood, at this point open to the heavens. We are not yet considering the Mercy Seat. But as a symbol or metaphor, the Ark has a major flaw, a flaw intended by God as part of “The Veil.”
You see, gold is visible; God is not.

Acacia grain in flooring

And so, I always heard the Ark of the Covenant fulfilled in our lives explained in this way: man, covered on the inside with the nature of God and covered on the outside with the nature of God. That way of seeing was good for that time, since it drew us on into God. But as time went on, it became the very thing that kept and still keeps so many out of the Holy of Holies, laboring forever in the Altar of Incense, blocked entirely by the Veil.
It became the block of the Veil because we focused our eyes, then, on the need to make ourselves the “nature” of God, inside and out, visible gold, a desperate and impossible task.
Now, God does send out from Himself the Holy Spirit whose task is to reveal Christ as us inside of us. But that is the ONLY thing God gives us OF Himself. He will never ever give us His “NATURE.” That's not the deal.
The Covenant is not a package of things we get from God. The Covenant is God HIMSELF in Person, filling us full. God sends us nothing; He comes in Person to be Himself our insides and our outsides.
And that is why faith IS the central quality of the Ark of Acacia Wood, the central quality of the human.
Because, you see, God is invisible.
When you looked at the outside of the Ark, all you saw was gold. When you looked on the inside of the Ark, all you saw was gold. Wood was simply not visible. You would not know there was any wood involved, let alone that it was actually a box OF wood, unless you had been told. And that is the “problem” with the metaphor.
God is invisible. When you look on the outside of man, you see man. When you look on the inside of man, you see man. God is invisible. Yet God fills us full with all of Himself, and He flows out from us in Person as mighty rivers of living water. We look like God because we can't look like anything else.
We are the face of God. I am inside of God and God is inside of me AND flowing out from me, touching all; I am the face of God. This reality is absolute and Today.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
So what if I am still “being sanctified,” I am first perfected forever – just as my Father is perfect.
So, looking at this equation between God and the face of God, me, we see that God has no problem being Himself. God is very good at being God; it's what He does best. God knows exactly how to be God in me and how to be God flowing out from me. God's side of the equation is set and certain. All we have to know is that the largest part of who and what we are on the inside and on the outside IS God in Person.
We know that by faith.
The real question before us, then, is this box: an ark of acacia wood.
You may have noticed that Alexander Pope is my favorite poet. Let me bring in a third line from him that rings with truth. “Know then thyself. Presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.” We thought once that this was a statement of “humanism.” I no longer think that. Pope was aiming directly at what has been termed England's second greatest literary work, Paradise Lost, by John Milton, written a generation before him.
Let me bring in a rabbit trail. I always teach from rabbit trails for two reasons: I like rabbit trails, and I am convinced that rabbit trails connect us with truth in surprising ways. I am always amazed years later when I visit with a former student and discover that it was the rabbit trail they remember as the thing that cemented whatever I was teaching into their minds and hearts.
Someone mentioned my comment that Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is among the greatest works of literature; I would place it in the top five, defining literature here as any great creative fictional story in any form that causes us to think deeply on this object God calls His image. That comment immediately set me off once again creating my list of the top ten greatest literary writers in history. The top five are fairly easy, though some would debate the order in which I will list them. Here they are.
Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
Miguel Cervantes – Don Quixote
William Shakespeare (Edward de Vere) – Hamlet/Othello
Homer – The Iliad/The Odyssey
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Everyone of these individuals explores deeply, with much thought, an understanding of who and what the image of God, this box of acacia wood is, how he/she works and operates maneuvering through a dark and fallen world.
The second five are a bit harder to choose, since so many crowd up into the top twenty to thirty. (I have a purpose for my rabbit trail.) Let me have a go at it, though the “order” is not important.
Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
J.R.R. Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings
Sophocles – Oedipus Rex/Antigone
Geoffrey Chaucer – Canterbury Tales
?? – ??

 In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in You.


The problem with the last entry is that many vie for that spot. So in trying to fill it, I pulled Milton's Paradise Lost off my shelf and in a few minutes understood why I would never include it or Dante's Divine Comedy in any list of great creative literature, why I would agree fully with Alexander Pope.
The difference between the nine authors I have listed and Milton/Dante is huge. The nine (and at this point I would likely stick Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in that tenth spot as a study of the image of God) all knowingly wrote fiction with the intent of unveiling the truth. Milton and Dante imagined they were creating a work describing the truth – scanning God – and instead became the two powerful minds behind the realms of Christian fantasy that hold most of our brethren in bondage to nonsense.
The images of Paradise Lost rule the Christian picture of “heaven” and “hell,” and they are darkness.
By studying man, the image of God, the great authors unveiled truth while “pretending” to write fiction. By scanning God, the other two created lies and fiction while “pretending” to write the truth.
Now, it is really easy to read any literature of any kind and see nothing but the folly of man upon the earth, filled with darkness, though the same is true of reading the Bible. At the same time, the pure in heart see God. We can read these same works and see a groping for, a desire to understand the image of God, and thus understand God Himself.
The Bible itself is, primarily, the telling of many human stories. In fact, Jesus said that everything said in the Bible “about” God is only figurative, that the only way we can see God is to look at a Man laying down His life for His friends. The only way we can know God is by story, His story and ours.
We do not create a god in the image and likeness of man, as so many do. We know God by knowing His image and likeness in the earth, first the Man, Christ Jesus, and then by knowing the God who fills us full, though He forever remains unseen.
I have read/watched all in my top ten, except Othello and some of The Canterbury Tales.
I find the same deep longing call inside of me reaching for knowing this One who fills me full when I contemplate these literary works as I do when I read the Annie visions or Hind's Feet on High Places or even the Bible. It is the heart of man God is engaged with, not some outer form. That is not speaking against the Bible; everything I see, I see out from what God says in the Bible concerning Christ our life.
And that brings us to the Ark, to the acacia wood. I want to approach that Ark from the mindset of Alexander Pope's counsel, “Presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.” God can be who He is inside of us and flowing out from us without any help from us other than our firm confidence that He IS. What we desire to know is who and what is this man that God calls His image.
“I have found Me a man after My own heart.”
One of the most important verses in the Old Testament is 1 Samuel 13:14, an incredible verse, almost beyond our limited ability to accept.
The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart . . .
Paul said it this way in Acts 13:22: He (God) gave testimony and said, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.”
First, God spoke this word through Samuel in 1063 BC. David was neither born nor known. David was born  eight years later in 1055 BC.
To understand the powerful and unbelievable implications of this verse, we must see the Ark of the Covenant.
What is Acacia wood?
If you want to see a picture of an Acacia bowl, go here. Read the short description below the image as well.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-acacia-wood.htm#lbimages.
The variety of Acacia used for the Ark of the Covenant, also known as “Shittim-wood,” is, in fact, a thorn tree. It is called the “tree of life” in Egyptian lore, and Christian lore states that Jesus' crown of thorns was made from that same Acacia. Note that it is also used for medicine and for incense. Interesting, but this is the first I knew this fact. When I talked about the tree of life as a thorn tree, I was simply surmising.
I have not worked with Acacia wood, though I have worked with desert cedar and have some knowledge of Texas Mesquite, both of which are very similar in appearance and quality to the Acacia wood. Had I the extra money, I would have my woodshed filled with all three woods. I suspect now that Acacia wood would be my favorite.
I don't know that there is any other wood more beautiful and more a pleasure to work with than these; I have worked with walnut, which itself is wonderful. However, all three grow only in desert conditions, they are twisted and gnarled in trunk and in branch, and to obtain a large plank from them is rare and expensive.
Here are some more pictures of Acacia wood products: http://www.surlatable.com
Remember that the gold, God Himself, is never actually seen. All that is visible is the beauty of the Acacia wood.
What is Acacia wood? What is a man after God's own heart?
We will know who and what God is only when we know who and what we are.
“He who has seen Me, has seen the Father.” The Man, Christ Jesus, the first One of our kind.
“I have found Me a man after My own heart.” God, who is seen only through His image.
God placed David at the center of the Bible. David and his Psalms fill more pages of Scripture than any other person. A study of David is a study in brokenness, in the shaping of a man's heart. I have a course on my college transcript titled, “The Life of David,” 45 hours of teaching by one of the best Bible teachers I have been privileged to sit under, Ernest Watkins. I have another course on my transcript titled “The Tabernacle of David,” another 45 hours taught by Ethelwyn Davison, another wonderful teacher, a woman of praise and of God.
If I could draw back into myself every word that they said, I would do so with tears. How many times over the years did I cry out to God, “God, please, my mind is finite; I forget so easily. Please, somehow, write these things upon my heart. Make them become me, that I might never lose the reality of You that is in these words.”
Yet here it is not my purpose to give a “study” of the life of David. I could, however, point you to Gene Edward's book, A Tale of Three Kings, a book I have studied deeply, having turned it into a play for my college Creative Writing course. (Gene Edwards uses the human story to unveil, just a bit, this One who fills us full.)
Rather, I am very interested in this thing we and God call “heart.” And I am very interested in the nature and characteristics of those human beings who are in the present moment the elect of God, through whom God is preparing to reveal Himself in the manifestation of the sons of God, and through whom God is preparing to cover and nourish His woman.
To start, I bring in a line from John's vision on Patmos.
These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God. Revelation 14:4-5
I prefer, here, the King James for the important line: And in their mouth was found no guile . . .
The sin of that other guy, the one long dead and buried, is forever gone. The firstfruits of God simply do not pretend. They are utterly real and thankful for themselves exactly as God made them.
Acacia grows slowly, twisted and gnarled in the windy and dry desert climate. It is a tree of thorns.
If you would like to purchase the fruit of the Acacia tree, you can do so here: Wattle Seed, 5 Oz Unit In the natural, one could call this “the fruit of the tree of life.” (This seed is the Australian version, not the same species of Acacia that grows in the Sinai, a description of that can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia_seyal) It has no power in the natural, of course, except that it is highly nutritious.
We are speaking here of symbols and metaphors.
In Augustinian Christianity, there is a great desire to call Jesus, “God the Son,” something God never ever says, primarily to sever the Lord Jesus far, far away from us. By this means, the serpent relegates the core promise of the Covenant, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,” into a meaningless oblivion.
Jesus said two things – among many – that do not allow us to join in that darkness.
I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. – Whatever you do unto the least of these My brethren, you ARE doing it to Me.
What is heart?
It is harder to define “heart” from the Bible than it is to define “heaven,” which is nearly impossible.
I suspect that heart is found only at the junction of God and dirt. God is not a man, but Jesus IS. Jesus, the Image of God, the pattern by which we were formed in the beginning, and are being made just like, now, in the end, is a Man. Jesus is the first One of our kind.
Man is God revealed. And God revealed is, primarily, heart.
“I have found Me a man after My own heart.”
These are incredible words, impossible to grasp or to admit. We will never know God until we are comfortable with “blasphemy.” (That is, with what religious man calls “blasphemy,” fleeing in horror from a God who always reveals Himself through weakness.)
 There is only one way by which I can talk about what is this “man after God's own heart,” and that is to draw from story, whether the story of Jesus, David, and Abraham, or the stories of great literature, or my own story. Heart is known only by story; it can be known no other way.
Let me get at this reality more closely. In the Great Books series, four authors only are granted two books each. The largest by far is Thomas Aquinas. His Summa Theologica numbers over 1900 pages in the Great Books, which would likely be more than 5000 pages if it were printed the same as my books. (If I keep writing at my present rate, I might surpass him in twenty more years!)
Now, let me say this about Thomas Aquinas. First, though he quotes Augustine a lot, I find him to be more honest, less offensive and more “likeable” in his search for understanding God than Augustine. Second, Thomas Aquinas clearly had a heart to know God because we discover that in his later years he had an experience with God that we would call the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, after which he had this to say about his Summa Theoligica, “All that I have written is like straw in my mouth.”
Thomas Aquinas based his great “study of God” on this definition of “image.” – “Hence it is according to his intelligence and reason that man is said to be according to the image of God.” Thus it's not hard to see, looking at all that he says about God, about Christ, about salvation, and about us, most of which is considered good “Christian truth,” that Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, is looking AT God from the outside.
You could spend a lifetime studying Summa Theologica – AND the Bible, and never know God.
God is known only in the dealings of the Holy with the heart of a man. Intelligence and reason, though useful and important servants, can never know God. Only heart can know God.
So what are the characteristics of such a man with such a heart, a man or woman who is the Acacia Wood of the Ark of God. (Though I use the male term, I am always speaking of women equally with men.)
There is no guile in the mouths of God's elect, no pretending, no grand-standing, no need to prove one's self “superior” to others.
From their hearts flow a sheer delight and love of all others – as they are real and honest in the light of God.
But also in their hearts is found an abhorrence of pretending and masquerade, of bullying and manipulating others for self-pleasure.
We all stumble and fall flat on our face in the mud, including Jesus – but that's just it, the elect of God know that about themselves. They do not hide. They are simply real and open before one another.
But we're talking about the end; let's go back to the beginning. How is a heart prepared to contain the Living God? Two things: Desire and Battering. The call of the deep and the Hound of heaven.
 For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. Hebrews 12:6
The lives of God's elect are always filled with both, never one without, fully, the other.
They honor His word; they speak only what He speaks concerning Christ revealed in them; they tremble when God speaks. They are concerned about His heart alone; they speak only for Him.
Like David, they sing His praises in the nighttime when they feel lonely and cut-off. Like David, they turn to Him when everyone else abandons them. Like David, they grasp for God when they are attacked by bullies. Like David, they run straight into the Holy of Holies when they are caught in their sin. Like David, they turn and walk away when someone challenges their place and their honor. They do not defend themselves. And they have done these things for years. In “The Grace that Is to Come,” I included these thoughts:

~~~

I live in a grace I already know. I have seen His grace in my life innumerable times in all the years I have walked with Him. I have seen His grace in the power of the Holy Ghost upon me and upon His people. I have watched Him heal physical bodies and deliver myself and precious friends from the agony of demonic assault. I have known His hand guiding my steps, preparing the way before me, bringing goodness and mercy into my life.
I have known His love in the midst of my bitterness, His strength in the midst of my weakness, His faith welling up in the night watches when all I could feel was loss and emptiness and missed opportunity. I have watched Him deliver me from physical death more times than once.
I know His grace that has never let me get away with anything that was not His purpose for my life, constraining me, blocking my way, keeping me from evil. I have known affliction and sorrow and great grief, and in the midst of all of it – Jesus, in tenderness and in grace. All my life is seized in the grip of His determination; I know His grace.

~~~

The elect of God live with their faces upon the ground before the Presence of the Holy. At the same time they look God in the eye, face to face, heart to heart, shoulder to shoulder. They worship and command, both at the same time, both 100%.
They love one another.
They love one another.
They would find it easier to hurt themselves than to inflict pain on one of these little ones. Yet they speak the judgment of God as the only thing that will set people free. They are clothed in sackcloth. They walk in unending grief; they walk in overflowing joy.
They prove with their bodies the will of God in the earth.
But here I am at the end of the path again. What about the beginning? Where do we find the first evidence of Acacia Wood in the heart of a man or woman?
We find it in the hearts of two 16-year-old boys, John and Andrew, who run away from home because they heard that God is speaking to Israel once again and they CANNOT be anywhere else.
We find it in the heart of a hero, bold and ambitious (Odysseus), who contends with “the gods” until they win and the deepest of thankfulness and humility now rests in the core of his being. Though he still exhibits strength, he no longer trusts in it.
The elect of God simply do not fit into this world. They try, occasionally, and there may be periods in their lives where they “appear” to be making a go of it in the world, but it never works. They never fit. They always look around themselves and see others filling their minds and hearts with emptiness and they just don't understand how they can do that.
The elect of God awake in the middle of the night, all through their lives, seized by a great horror, that God is doing something in the earth, and they have not yet found it.
They know the limiting hand of God all through their journey.
They must know Him; they must. No other option is available to them. Yet He batters their way with difficulty.
We find the Acacia Wood in the heart of a little girl, Much-Afraid, who cannot rest until she knows her Beloved, though she walks long with Suffering and with Sorrow.
We find the Acacia Wood in an old man, John, who thrusts out his hands to us and says, “Do you see these hands, here, these rough and hoary hands. These hands have touched God.” We find it in another old man, Andrew, preaching for three days from the cross while many, many who hear him rush into the kingdom.
Why? Why is the Ark that contains the fullness of Almighty God made of Acacia Wood?
God has many, many who know great power, anointing, and authority from God. They move in mighty ministry with certainty. I'm sure you've known such people. They always begin their introduction by presenting to all the great calling God has placed upon their lives. They describe moments of visitation, divine revelation, powerful heavenly visions. They speak with strength and authority. They say, “Follow me,” in one form or another.
Why does God not give these capable people the revelation of Jesus Christ? These ones whom you never witness crying. You never seem them weak and tired and afraid.
Let me quote, here, a chapter from Gene Edward's A Tale of Three Kings – concerning David as he fled from Saul.

~~~

Caves are not the ideal place for morale building. There is a certain sameness to them all, no matter how many you have lived in. Dark. Wet. Cold. Stale. A cave becomes even worse when you are its sole inhabitant. . . and in the distance you can hear the dogs baying.
But sometimes, when the dogs and hunters were not near, the prey sang. He started low, then lifted up his voice and sang the song the little lamb had taught him. The cavern walls echoed each note just as the mountains once had done. The music rolled down into deep cavern darkness that soon became an echoing choir singing back to him.
He had less now than he had when he was a shepherd, for now he had no lyre, no sun, not even the company of sheep. The memories of the court had faded. David's greatest ambition now reached no higher than a shepherd's staff. Everything was being crushed out of him.
He sang a great deal.
And matched each note with a tear.
How strange, is it not, what suffering begets?
There in those caves, drowned in the sorrow of his song, and in the song of his sorrow, David very simply became the greatest hymn writer, and the greatest comforter of broken hearts this world shall ever know.

~~~

David cried, a lot.
In my letter on the cross, I will explain more fully why we NEVER see the chastisement of God as something “bringing us to the end of ourselves,” as if we are “bad,” and “bad” me must die. That thought is the core and center of darkest rebellion.
God fills our hearts with Desire and then Batters those same hearts all the days of our lives for one purpose.
That we might KNOW Him.
You see, He is the One who weeps; He is the One who is silent when He is mocked; He is the One who walks away when everything He ever did is challenged and ruined and lost. He is the One who never fights back. He is the One who lays down His life for His enemies. He is the One who carries inside Himself even those who are spitting on Him – all the way into life. He is the One who stumbles and falls under the weight of a cross He cannot carry, a cross He must ask another to carry for Him.
Very simply. How can God reveal Himself through us unless we are just like Him?
I am convinced that we will never call the Battering of the Holy we have known all our lives, “Chastisement.” We will call it “Glory.”
There are two elements that go perfectly together in all ways –  gold and acacia wood.
God will never be seen, never be known, except through the hearts of those who KNOW Him.
I have found Me a man after My own heart.
If you WANT TO BE this man or woman, then your Desire is sufficient. Let God make you just like Himself – The Ark of the Covenant. Let Him teach you to cry.