My note: Daniel's Parts one and two come from his own numbering. In my series they are Part 3.
Open Ye Gates: Part 1 Daniel YordyI am so very excited this morning. Over the last several days, God has given me one of the most important keys for the unveiling of Jesus Christ that there is. I want to carefully share that key with you.
The central point, the way of seeing that opened the door for me, came out of a recent exercise of contemplating and drawing out a corrected (Chris Welch called it "More Accurate") diagram of the spirit-soul-body of the believer, along with something Annie Schissler said, something Chris Welch said in an email to me, something Joel Osteen said last Sunday, and a whole lot the Lord showed me in the middle of the night and in a victory over the weakness that has sat upon my physical body for many years now.
If you are serious yourself about being part of the unveiling of Jesus Christ at this beginning of the age to come, I would strongly urge you to print out this document and spend time with it until you understand what the Spirit of God is speaking to you personally through it.
A Corrected Diagram of Spirit-Soul-Body (pdf)
I am convinced we are in the first years of the age to come and my faith that God has chosen to include me in the revelation of Jesus Christ grows stronger and clearer. It is with great joy that I am also convinced that He has chosen you as well. When I say, "God has given me a key to share with you," I am being bold, on the one hand, yes, but I am also convinced that you are in no way dependent on "me," but that Christ is revealing Himself through you right now as well.
We have viewed ourselves and Christ in ourselves completely backwards and inside out. Previous diagrams of spirit-soul-body, put the inside of us on the outside, put the outside of us on the inside, made the largest part of ourselves the smallest and the smallest part of ourselves the largest. No wonder our Christian lives have been such a mess, our thinking has been all screwed up.
Let's look at the previous model of how we saw ourselves and how we saw Christ in us.
According to the backwards way of seeing ourselves, the outer circle is the body. I made it brown to represent the earth out of which it came. The second circle, the grayish-whitish one, is the soul. We used to believe that all Christians ARE double-minded, that we have to accept the hard reality that we have two minds. No one can deny that we have the mind of Christ, since God says we do so clearly. But everyone is convinced we also have a carnal mind and that we go back and forth with every part of our soul being at least a touch of gray, with parts of it being much darker.
According to the backwards way of seeing ourselves, the inner circle is our spirit. That spirit is tucked deep inside, somewhere in the inner parts of ourselves. Now, we admitted that our spirit was made clean, that it was born again. But we placed two definite hearts inside that inner circle. We were convinced, not only that all Christians are double-minded, but that all Christians are double-hearted as well. Yes, we had to agree that Christ lives in our heart because God says He does, but we also believed that inside our human nature was also a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked.
And so Christ lives in a tiny little room deep inside ourselves somewhere, and that little part of us certainly is redeemed and contains goodness and righteousness. But there were a whole lot of other things inside of our makeup that we were convinced are certainly not Christ.
But that whole way of seeing ourselves and of seeing Christ in us, also required the invention of a third little guy. That third little guy is ourselves - the guy with the blue face, the me that always bobs around no matter how hard I try to die to me. You see, we were blue in the face because we were always running so fast back and forth between Christ and that evil guy called SELF. Back and forth between the red heart made clean by the blood and the black heart still wicked and deceitful. Up and down between a "spiritual" mind and the carnal mind.
And so the Christian life, in this inside-out way of seeing, just wore us out. There was certainly no rest for the blue-faced me, all the days of our lives. Christ in us was limited entirely to that one red heart. And it was up to us to bring every other part of our makeup into obedience and submission to Christ, something the blue-faced me, never knowing for sure if he was red or black or simply blue, could never succeed in doing.
Now, isn't this the way you used to see yourself? And isn't this the way most Christian teaching about the "Christian" life came to you? This was certainly how truth was applied in the move of God I used to be a part of and how I saw myself for many years.
I do not want to repeat here what I already wrote in A Corrected Diagram of Spirit-Soul-Body. So if you have not read it yet, please do so now.
All through the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, and in anointed songs we used to sing are the words "Open ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in."
Open ye Gates,
and the King of Glory shall come in!
This is what we want; this is what all creation is groaning for; this is the only answer for any and all of the problems in this world - the entrance of the King of Glory. This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, this is the beginning of the age to come.
This word is not just something found in the pages of the Old Testament that's nice to sing. This is a clarion call, a command, sent forth by the power and might of the Spirit of God, resounding from eternity to eternity. "Open the gates!" It is a word on par with, equal to, the word God spoke in the beginning, "Let there be light," a command that birthed the universe and all things that exist - The Lord Jesus Christ issuing forth from the Father.
Open the Gates.
What are those gates? There are three of them, to be exact. And who opens the gates? Who is entrusted with this greatest of tasks, this greatest of responsibilities? Who gets the honor of being the one who opens the gates to allow the King of Glory to ride through and into every part of the earth?
Here is the backwardness turned around. My spirit is the largest part of me, literally and actually. My human spirit extends far beyond my physical body. I will not spend time discussing how far, except to say that since my human spirit is one spirit with the Holy Spirit, my human spirit literally fills and extends beyond the universe. That's not our concern right now, however; our concern is to open the gates. This is the great privilege that you and I have been given by the Father.
Not only is my spirit the largest part of me, but my heart, which is the anchor and center of my spirit inside my being, is the portal, the front room, the vanguard of heaven. My heart, then, is much larger than my body, even though it is the center of me, of who and what I am.
The physical body and the earth is the smallest part of this equation. The King of Glory already fills heaven. He fills my spirit; He lives in my heart. I am not opening the gate to let Him into me. That happened when I was born again. The King of Glory is on the outside of the earth, looking in. He wants to enter out of heaven and into the realms of the physical, into the earth, into this planet. And I am not talking about present evangelism. I'm talking about the whole creation being set free into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. I'm talking about the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
Now, Annie Schissler, in her 2006 vision that I included in my last letter, shared that the elect ones must open the gates for the mighty moving of God to enter into the earth and to reach all those who are precious to Jesus beneath the storm. She shared that this opening of the gates included two specific things: a cleansing and purification greater than anything known before, and a deeply increased personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has shown me over the last few days exactly how the opening of the gates is both of these things at the same time.
Let us anchor ourselves into the One who alone keeps us true and with God.
Jesus.
"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
My spirit is one spirit with the Holy Spirit. The union of my spirit and the Holy Spirit is called "Christ." But there is a huge difference between the Christ of God and the "christ" that is the new age spirit of Satan. God is always personal. Satan denies personality and comes in as an impersonal "force" just like the "force" on Star Wars. That is why I refuse to write "Satan" with a small letter. A capital letter in English grammar denotes personality, the name of some one. Satan wants to be known as an impersonal force. He is not; he is a person who will bow his knee to the Lord Jesus.
Jesus is God present personally in the human realms. I am not filled with a "force" called "Christ." I am filled with the Lord Jesus Christ. A person.
But the nature of the Spirit of God and of the personality of the Lord Jesus Christ means this.
He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one person with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one heart with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one will with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one mind with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one set of emotions with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one body with Him.
"For we are of His flesh and His bones." Ephesians 5
I read recently a rebuttal of the claims of Christianity. The writer said, "If two people say 'I am Jesus,' we know one of them is lying."
The world and the spirit in this world demand that Jesus, the Messiah of God, the One sent into the world, be one individual person, quantifiable, and therefore excludable. God wants Jesus to be many. Jesus said, "If I enter into the "earth," into the humanity of the body of Christ, and "die" there in them, then I will come alive in them as many, many more of Myself."
Jesus is a Person, my elder Brother, my Savior, my Friend, the One upon whose breast I lean my head.
I am a person, conscious of myself as a living being, with a mind, a will, and emotions, and with a heart stretched and filled with hope, forged in affliction, in beauty, and in love.
Jesus and I are one person together. We walk together in sweet communion with no distinction of separation between Him and me. It is by this anchor alone that you and I walk forward boldly into the mind-blowing stuff God is releasing into this earth without being afraid of going off the deep end. We already have.
My spirit, Christ in me, is the largest part of my being. My spirit fills and pervades every other part of me. My spirit fills and pervades my will, my mind, my emotions, and my body. The vibrancy and frequency of my spirit, joined as one with the Holy Spirit, reverberates through all of my makeup.
But there is a barrier, a door, a gate, three to be exact, placed by God into me as the entrance of the King of Glory into the physical body and into the earth.
The first gate is my will. The second gate is my mind. And the third gate is my emotions. The first target of the entrance of the King of Glory through these gates IS the healing of my physical body.
"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." Romans 8:11
We do not distinguish between His Spirit and our human spirit; they are one spirit.
But just as we had the view of ourselves all mixed up, inside out and backwards, so was our understanding of the opening of these three gates.
Of these three gates, the largest and most important GATE, through which the King of Glory issues forth into all the realms of earth and of this world, is the mind. And I, me, Daniel Yordy, I have complete and total control of my own mind at all times. In God's order, there is never one moment nor any way in which another force separate from me, ever takes control of my mind. If that happens in someone, it is demonic; it is not Christ.
My mind is the central gate, and I, me, my mind, is the only keeper of that gate, the only one who must by willful and deliberate practice, open that GATE of heaven for the King of Glory to ride triumphantly through. God will have it no other way; God will never, ever violate me or remove from me the power He has given exclusively and only to me, the gatekeeper of the House of God, the gatekeeper of heaven invading earth.
But first is the opening of the will. And this has been so very, very backward in Christian teaching. Here is why.
The garden of Gethsemane was at the end of Jesus' work and ministry in this earth. It was at the end of the career of a manifest Son of God revealing the Father in the work the Father sent Him to do. The prayer of Jesus in John 17 comes BEFORE Gethsemane. Jesus said, "I have finished the work You gave Me to do," BEFORE He prayed, "Not My will, but Thine be done."
Jesus is the pattern. But foolish teachers of the word have taken this final work of a mature Son of God and placed it entirely upon babes in Christ. That practice is so wrong it is wicked. Yes, in the pattern of Jesus revealed again in our lives as sons of God, there is a fulfillment of Gethsemane once again upon the earth in the second witness of Christ. That fulfillment of Gethsemane finds its place inside of Revelation Chapter 11. I see what that is (dimly) and how it will work in our experience; I may share that in a letter before I have completed this series on the Unveiling of Jesus Christ, but God continues to surprise me on where He wants this series to go.
But the opening of our will to allow the King of Glory to come through into our minds, into our emotions, into our physical body, and through us into all the earth, is something quite different.
Let me explain.
We had a dog a few years ago. This dog, Jack, was skittish and fearful. I got it for my son, but it proved to be a poor choice. We had it in the back yard, but we had to confine it. We put up a wire with a pulley to which he was attached. He could run back and forth, which he did, barking and whining, pulling against the chain all the time, wearing a muddy track in the yard. This went on for months until we were beside ourselves. When Jack was off the chain, though, he always wanted to come into the house. Finally, we gave up. We removed him from the chain and brought him into the house. He made a mess, yes, but the most amazing thing happened. Jack was transformed in a moment. The chain made him rebel. Freedom brought him peace and he lay quietly for hours on end, content to be in the presence of his master.
Those who understand natural freedom and prosperity and how they work in the earth say this: "Freedom is the mother of order, not its daughter." Now this statement is in full agreement with the word of God, but not with Christianity. Christianity wants to claim that the only way we can know freedom in this world is to first impose order. Then, when everyone is in order, we will know true freedom.
That argument is false. It is Satan's way of control. But to the religious mind, the belief that freedom, setting someone completely free to do good or evil as they wish, is the only thing that will birth order into the universe, to the religious mind, that idea is heresy. How can order come out of freedom? But man on this earth has proven over and over that the more order is imposed, the more chaos results. The more people are made free to do whatever they want to do, as in the early years of America, the more orderly society became and the more prosperity everyone enjoyed.
The increase of externally imposed "order" in America today in the guise of "security" can only result in an ever increasing loss of prosperity and freedom and an ever increasing chaos, thus requiring more "order."
In Europe, they tried an experiment in different places recently. They removed all traffic signs and lights from a small town. There were now no laws governing traffic, none. What happened? Accidents decreased sharply, the traffic flowed much more orderly than it had before, and people began to acquire a deeper appreciation for the other person than they had once shown.
Law always inserts itself between people. When law is imposed, relationships go through the law before reaching the other person. When freedom is released, people relate to one another as people. The argument that freedom only releases "the beast," is not true. The Beast released in history has always come through those nations that practiced the strongest and most forceful "ORDER."
The chaos we see growing in America comes entirely through the increase in laws. The more things that are made illegal, the more crimes must be committed. Paul said that the knowledge of sin comes through the law; without law, we would not know sin. Freedom comes through Christ and through the presence of His Spirit, completely separate from outwardly imposed law.
Let's bring this discussion back into the will of a believer in Jesus Christ. I was taught and believed that my will was not, in itself, submitted to God's will. I was taught that I had to "learn" to obey. I was taught that God spoke, I heard, and then I was to do what God told me to do. If I didn't want to do what God told me to do, if I refused, then I was in rebellion against God.
[I came to the place that I rejected instantly any thought that could be "God" telling me to do something. My gut always told me that to "obey" something that "came" to me was a violation of my person. My theology said the opposite. I learned to live in an unnatural contradiction - not a good idea.]
I was taught that I needed to seek God's will all the time, because God's will was something quite foreign to my will. I was taught that God's will and my will were two different and opposing things. I was taught that I needed to continually seek "confirmation" to determine if I was continuing to do "God's will" instead of my own will. I was taught that my will was always at odds with God's will, that my will, if it asserted itself, would always chose a way that was not God's way for me. I was taught that my will, by its very nature and essence, was always opposed to "God's will," that my will was always at war with God's will.
I was taught that I needed to die to my will, die to doing what "I" wanted to do, that I always needed to do something other than what I wanted to do. I was taught that obeying my superiors was the stand in for "God's will," since they represented God's spiritual authority in my life. I was taught that a "strong-willed" person (such as I was charged as being) was always walking in resistance to God. I was taught that I always needed to have a "submissive" will if I ever wanted to know Christ or to move in any kind of spiritual authority in the body of Christ.
All this was fine for me, from age twenty to age thirty-three, as a single man. But then I married. I now had the responsibility of a wife and a son. And something shifted inside of me. I had fully embraced "submitting to the elders." That was how I lived. But now that I bore a responsibility before God for others who were dear to me, I found that "submitting to the elders" was a continual denial of my God-given place - as if it was not important.
I will not go through the agonizing experiences that locked me into a deep and all-pervasive sense of powerlessness, of rightful power denied without hope, that sat its dark shadow upon my soul. That dark shadow of powerlessness worked its way into every cell of my physical body over a period of some years.
I became sick.
For twenty years I have labored under that sickness, that weariness of body and heart. All of His ways concerning me are perfect. God made me weak. But He did not make me weak for any other reason than to bring me to the knowledge of His power and His glory released through me. And for that I give Him thanks for every dark and lonely place I have ever known.
I am now an enemy, a ferocious enemy, of that false teaching concerning the will of the believer and that teaching's dark and vicious repudiation of the gospel and salvation of Jesus Christ, the thing that whines "Dead men have no rights."
Let's root ourselves in something specific God says.
"Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure." Philippians 2:12-13
When Paul says, "For it is God who," he is making it clear that what God does comes first before anything we do. What we do comes only out of what God Himself does. And what God does is that He creates His will inside of our will and even the doing of His will in our will is of Him.
Now to the beginning and the essence of the gospel. "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." Romans 5: 1-2
Peace with God is the very first thing that comes into the life of the new believer who is first justified by faith. I am not at war with God. My will is not opposed to God's will, and God's will is not opposed to my will. War is something that can be conducted only in the will. There is complete peace between my will and God's will. I, me, Daniel Yordy, I am at peace with God.
That is basic gospel truth.
The opening of the first gate is the acknowledgment, the acceptance, that the cross of Christ is enough for me. It is finished. The opening of the first gate is the revelation that Christ is my life, the acceptance of Paul's words, "I am crucified with Christ. But I'm still alive, only, it's not me, it's Christ." The opening of the first gate is the acceptance, the surrender, the yielding, that I am not a self separate from Christ, that I, joined to the Lord, am one spirit and one person with Him.
It is those believers who see themselves as separate in any way from the Lord Jesus, who believe that they have a will that is contrary to God's will, and that they must force their own will into submission and obedience to God's will, it is those believers who remain at war with God and in rebellion against the Lord Jesus Christ.
But when I surrendered to the certain conviction that Jesus and I are one spirit and one person, that I am in Him and He is in me, all struggle vanished. All contention between "my will" and "God's will" just disappeared. I know that I can do whatever I want. I know that all things are lawful for me. And I also know that I love Him; I know that the only place I want to be is to rest quietly at His side, with my head leaned against His breast, just like Jack!
I do not seek God's will for my life; my life IS God's will. Inside of that certainty, I follow the peace of God, knowing that He directs my steps. And I never, ever worry about whether I am doing "my will" versus God's will. I am always doing both. If I do what I want to do, I am doing God's will. If I do God's will, I'm doing what I want to do.
I am one spirit, I am one person, with Him.
Over the years, I have often "surrendered" my will to God's will. Those places and times were deep and penetrating. God never concerns Himself with our limited understanding of Him and His ways, but He always comes to us in tenderness and great kindness, no matter where we walk. But I have never known a deeper or sweeter surrender than to stop trying to call myself a "self" separate from God.
The prophet Joel said that multitudes of people are thrust into the valley of decision. He said that the day of the Lord is near the valley of decision. He was not talking about me.
My decision was made long years ago, I can take you to the very moment and the very place. It was a most unlikely place, a toilet stall in a Greyhound bus station in Prince George, British Columbia. I was twenty one years old. The fear and presence of God came upon me and I went into the stall so that other people would not see me tremble. God said, "Will you surrender yourself as a son to me?" I answered, "Yes, Lord." God sealed me in that moment into that decision and has never paid attention to anything else I've said since.
I follow Jesus. The GATE of my will stands wide open.
But I have passed page 8, and I have much yet to write about the opening of the primary GATE of the mind and the opening of the gate of the emotions to the King of Glory who fills our physical body with the presence of His healing virtue and moves out from us bringing life and healing to the whole earth. So I will have to call this Part 1 and write another Part 2.
Blessings in Christ, Daniel Yordy
P.S. I don't usually throw something like this in, but I urge you to read and understand this article.
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Open the Gates: Part 2
PDF original
"Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty,
The LORD mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Lift up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
He is the King of glory." Psalm 24:7-10
"But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him." 1 Corinthians 6:17
"Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place." 2 Corinthians 2:14
The unity between ourselves and Christ is complete. We have an eternity to discover more and more what it means, but nothing can ever be added to the unity with the Lord Jesus Christ that we presently enjoy; it is perfect and complete.
I must confess an "error" in my last letter, Open Ye Gates: Part 1. I have set myself not to bend or twist Scripture in order to "back up" what the Lord is teaching me. "Open the gates" is from Isaiah and is followed by, "that the righteous people who keep the truth may enter in." The reference to the King of glory is here in Psalms 24 and is prefaced by the phrase, "Lift up your heads, O you gates!"
We sang both phrases in gospel songs. As I considered what Annie Schissler saw in her vision, that the sons of God needed to open the gates inside of them, and as I considered the role of the mind in the salvation of God, that we are being renewed in the spirit of our mind, that song came into my heart in full force, only it put the two phrases together, "Open ye gates - that the King of glory may come in." Combine that with seeing our spirit as the largest part of us, and knowing that from God's point of view, the Holy of Holies fills the universe and that the outer court and the earth beyond it are tiny in relationship, it is apparent that the King of glory is coming out of that which is heaven and entering into that which is earth.
I must be honest, then, in sharing with you that the line, "Open the gates, that the King of Glory may come in," comes from prophetic utterance, not from the actual Scriptures. We can move forward with that because Jesus said, "He that believes in me, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water." Those rivers of living water are the King of Glory entering into all creation, bringing into the earth the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
I found this explanation on the Internet: "The words 'lift up your heads, o ye gates' can also be translated, 'Yield, you princes at the gates'." However, the phrase "lift up your heads" is a wonderful phrase. To lift up Christ in every possible way inside of us IS the entrance of the King.
Now, when we lived as if we ourselves were separate from the Lord Jesus Christ and were required by God to bring ourselves into alignment with His word, we sought for the Lord with all our hearts, yes, but we lived always under a shadow of condemnation and all of our teaching came out of that shadow of condemnation.
But now everything has been turned around for us. We know that we are not separate from the Lord, but that in God's incredible plan, Jesus Himself entered into the earth and became us, the human us. Now He is rising up in us, in our humanity, transforming us from the inside out. Our part is to rejoice with all expectation, to keep our confidence high, to sit boldly upon the throne, the mercy seat of God, and to speak all that God speaks as Christ made personal in us.
Our part is to lift up our heads, which is lifting up Christ.
It is the reckless confidence of David that alone pleases God. Our joy and our freedom are what makes us pure.
The responsibility granted to us by God, to open the gates for the King of Glory, is no longer an obligation as we once thought it was, but it is an honor and a privilege that God has extended to us. There is no greater honor in the universe save that which belongs to Jesus alone, and all honor and glory that belongs to Him, He says that He shares it fully with us.
For those of you who continue to read these letters, there is no doubt in my mind, the gate of your will has been swung fully wide for the King of Glory for many years.
The opening of the Gate of the Mind is the essence of sanctification, redemption completing its work in the salvation of our souls. The opening of our mind to the Lord Jesus Christ is not the obligation or duty it once was, "Stop thinking, you sinner, you're mind is carnal!" It is the incredible privilege given to us who, as God says, "have the mind of Christ."
The confusion through the years concerning my own mind and its role in my life was almost as great as the confusion concerning my will that I shared with you in Part 1. I will not go much into the details. But discovering that I am Asperger's has answered all the questions (and accusations) concerning my mind that I could not understand for years. Asperger's do not have the normal human quality of intuitively knowing how to respond and communicate with people in a social setting. That is the primary definition of Asperger's. It is different from normal shyness or being introverted.
As a teenager, I liked to be around others my age, yes, but I learned quite soon to keep my mouth shut - always. No matter how reasonable I thought my words would be, they always turned out to be the completely wrong thing to say. The only way an Asperger's can know how to communicate in a difficult or "political" setting, that is, dealing with authority, is to figure it out mentally. But that takes time and you have to rehearse what things may or may not result in unexpected pain hurled back at you. You have to figure out what was said, what it meant, how you should respond, and all that takes place some hours after the event.
Meanwhile, the outward appearance of one who is Asperger's (a form of autism) resembles "pride." Those who are Asperger's are almost always defined as "proud and unsubmissive," even though they are often pouring out their hearts in giving, happily tootling along in their own little world of serving others, without any knowledge of how people are defining them. And when those definitions are thrown back at them, they have no idea what it means or how to answer.
Teaching school, in my own classroom, behind my teacher's desk, is a safe place for me. If a student says something personal, I can always respond with the safe and easy, "Is that so?" They think I'm weird, but at least it's okay.
So all the preaching against "the carnal mind" or "that peanut brain that thinks too much," could only confuse me. I was nearly thirty, in college, when I discovered that I was fairly intelligent. (I did not understand other people until I went to college, therefore I could in no way understand myself.) My naïve, joyous amazement at that discovery, you can be sure, did not go over very well.
But the defining moment came several years later in an elder's meeting, sitting next to another elder who turned to me and said, "Daniel, your problem is you think too much. You need to stop trying to think everything through." He repeated himself several times, with all the other elders in the circle nodding their agreement. I sat there like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I had no idea what he meant. I didn't know, then, that everyone else in that room had a normal human capacity that I did not share. I might have thought, having just gone through the exercise together of burying "under the carpet" a disastrous business start-up, that their problem was that they didn't think enough. But I didn't say anything; I just walked home that night totally confused, convinced that there must be something desperately wrong with me.
So when I discovered that God says that I have the mind of Christ, but He never, ever says that I have a carnal mind, rather, He says that I am not in the flesh, I am in the Spirit - that discovery was such joy and freedom for me, a truth I latched onto with all my strength and commitment.
I absolutely do not like preaching against "the carnal mind." It is pointless, it takes no one anywhere, it does nothing for anyone. No one has ever been delivered from "their carnal mind," from any and all of the boatloads of worthless exhortation in that regard. Preaching against the carnal mind has never brought anything but confusion to anyone. We do not preach against, we preach Christ. We lift up our head!
Christ is my life; I have no other life. When I am preached against, that preaching is going against something that died and was buried long years ago. What a waste of breath! To preach Christ is to fill people with hope and expectation, with confidence and joy. Christ is well able to save to the uttermost.
God will never violate your mind. He will never ask you to put your own mind on hold. To violate your mind or your will is to violate your person, it is to rob you of your conscience, it is to deface the very image of God. Only Satan would ever do that.
Your mind, my mind, is so precious to God, that He honored it with the most important task given to anything in the universe, outside of the task given to His Son upon the cross.
David said, "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness."
My mind has been given the honor and the privilege by God to open the way to the King of Glory, that He might enter in to the full possession of all that belongs to Him. I am - my mind is - the doorkeeper of God's house.
Our previous view of our mind was that it was the thing that needed to be renewed. Our present view of our mind is that it is the thing that releases the Lord Jesus Christ into all the world. That is what a renewed mind means.
The union between the Holy Spirit and our human spirit IS Christ in us. Our born-again spirit is the largest part of our makeup. It fills and pervades and gives life and energy to every part of our soul and every cell and organ of our body. If you remove the frequency, the life, the energy, which the spirit imparts to the physical body, the body itself instantly ceases to live. Jesus did not die because His body ceased. His body ceased because Jesus willed His spirit to depart. Many saints do not die because their body fails, their body ceases because they lift up their arms with joy to the entrance of the Lord Jesus into the room, and they leave the body because they have somewhere better to go right then.
"But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." Romans 8: 9-11
Now, the fact that the body cannot live without the frequencies of the spirit energizing the cells and organs is equally true of the unregenerate. Only, their spirit is still fallen, still the old man. Yet that fallen spirit, that "old man" in them, gives the same life to their bodies as we who are believers seem to experience in our bodies.
Paul, here in Romans 8, is suggesting that as believers, we have a far greater power giving life to our mortal bodies than the unregenerate have. Our spirit is joined in a fused union with the Holy Spirit; our human spirit is the Spirit of Christ in us. Therefore, our spirit, energizing our physical bodies with its frequency, is something so far beyond that which keeps the bodies of the unregenerate alive that there is absolutely no comparison between the two.
So what is it that keeps our own physical bodies operating at the same low, sick frequencies as the bodies of the unregenerate?
Our minds. Our minds remember the wrong things. Our minds remember what ought to have been forgotten, and do not know the truth of what God says, so clearly, in His Covenant with us.
Life, immortal life, eternal life, abundant life, is in our spirit. Everything pertaining to life and godliness is in our spirit, everything. God Himself is one Sspirit with our Sspirit. Yet our mortal, dying bodies live only because our spirit energizes and gives life to the cells and to all the operations of the body. From whence come the low frequencies, the sickness, the death? Those things do not come from our own spirits, they do not come from the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead. How do they get into our bodies?
Now, someone might think, "Well, this is all focused on our own bodies and not on all the needs of people in the world out there. Shouldn't the focus be 'unselfish' and on how we can help others?"
There is the statement, "Physician, heal thyself," that has some merit. In other words, God has given us our own physical body to practice on. As we learn to open the gates of our mind to the Spirit of Christ in our spirit that it might bring life and healing first to our physical, mortal, dying body, then we will also know how to bring life and healing to all things in creation.
Before I talk about how we do that, I need to lay two foundations. The first is the most important.
I am not separate from the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is not separate from me. When I am doing something, He is doing that same thing. When He is doing something, I am doing that same thing. "In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you are in Me and I am in you."
It is impossible for us to arrive at the end of what that means. There will never be a moment in all of the ages to come when we will arrive at a wall and God will say, "Well, I guess your union with the Lord Jesus Christ stops here. Jesus continues on the other side of that wall, but you do not." All of His glory, all of it, He shares fully with us; He can do nothing else, for Christ and we are one.
When we get excited about the meaning of Christ revealed as us in our humanity, we can fall into the deception of thinking, "Well, I'm just little old me, and if something wondrous is going to happen, it will be God doing it." But when we get excited about the meaning of Christ revealed through us in His divinity, we look at ourselves and see the tiredness, the sickness, and we moan, "Oh you of little faith," and soon fall under condemnation.
Neither of those two ways of thinking have anything to do with Christ. Let's leave them both in the dustbin of what must be forgotten by our minds.
When I open the Gate of my mind, so that the power and glory of God can move out of my Sspirit into my body, and through me into all the earth, bringing life and healing to all - that "I" operating my mind is the Lord Jesus Christ, AND that "I" is me, Daniel Yordy.
My will has already been opened without reservation to the Lord Jesus. The gate of my emotions swings wide open with joy, with confidence, with overflowing peace and love, once my mind is opened to Jesus. The issues involved in the opening of the emotions are healing and restoration, for which we must extend full and total forgiveness to all others. But it is the operation of my mind upon which God has hung the wheels of the universe. It is through the Gate of my mind through which the Lord Jesus Christ rides into the possession of all His inheritance.
Now, listen, I am sitting here with the full awareness that I have gone off the deep end. I am saying things that are so far beyond me that I am aghast. "Yordy, what are you saying? Have you lost your marbles?" Our problem is this. For us, at this time in our lives, in this day in which we find ourselves, there is NO standing still. We either go forward, wherever going forward takes us, or we draw back. And we know that God takes no pleasure in those who draw back.
So, it's over the cliff for us. Saw that limb off behind you. Leap for the stars.
But again, our SAFETY, and we do need safety, is this - the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, My Savior, the One upon whose breast I lean my head. He is my life; I have no other life. I cast myself entirely upon Him and I know that not only will He keep me, not only will He save me to the uttermost, but that He seats me with Himself upon the throne of His Father. There, and only there, am I safe. I cannot, I dare not, tarry anywhere else. Let us run into Him with all our heart.
And let me open the gate to Him, for He will pass through me into all of this world. He will come no other way. He cannot; for what He does, I do, and what I do, He does. (And whenever I use the word, "I," in these confessions of faith, I know that you use that word to speak of yourself as you read them. Better yet, as you speak them out loud. - And that you replace my name with yours.)
Second, I want to speak briefly of the emotions, which are the third gate through which the King of Glory comes. All the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, all these are expressed through the emotions. God is a very emotional person, and He formed us the same way.
Our emotions are on the side of our soul next to the body. Now, our spirit gives life to our body. James said that the body without the spirit is dead. A corpse has the outward appearance of the person that once lived there, but it is clear that when the spirit let go of the body, the person departed as well. Since the body gets its energy from the spirit, one could surmise that spirit-body is all there is. But this is not true.
When spirit comes into union with body, it gives energy and frequency to that body so that the body is alive, yes. But something else takes place right at the junction, that union, between spirit and flesh, between pneuma and soma. That something is me, my soul, my will, my mind, and my emotions. That something is the psuche. But there is no such thing as a line where the spirit ends and the soul begins or another line where the soul ends and the body begins. That's not how it works at all. Rather, the soul is found all through the merger and the union between the spirit of a man and his physical body.
Modern medicine is beginning to discover (though most won't admit it) that the human personality is found inside of organs besides the brain. That part of our person is found, literally, in the physical organ of the heart. Those who receive the heart of another into their physical bodies, receive also a part of that other person's personality. The Bible suggests that more of our personality is also found IN the kidneys, the pancreas, and so on.
While our will is more involved with the spirit side of things, the emotions are more involved with the body side of things. In other words, emotions are tied up in the condition and functioning of the cells and organs of the physical body, and vice versa. The physical body responds directly to the condition of the emotions.
"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine," is not just a nice saying, it is literal.
When the cells and organs of the body are operating at a low frequency, when they are out of balance, when they are sick, the emotions "feel" very low. At the same time, when bitterness and anger and resentment and unforgiveness grip the emotions, the frequency of the cells and organs of the body lowers, and we become sick in some way or another.
There is a direct connection between bitterness and unforgiveness held strongly in the heart and certain physical diseases. There are times when a person forgives from the heart and the disease disappears. And that happens to the unregenerate as well as the believer, the healing has nothing to do with a "miracle." The miracle was the forgiveness that came.
But physical sickness can come from emotions that are not unforgiveness, it can come from deep unanswered pain as well. Natural health, which tries to understand how God created us, - contrary to allopathy (modern medicine) which loves to drug and cut the body with human invention - is convinced that viruses and bacteria do not "cause" sickness, they only take advantage of sickness that is already there. An un-sick body, operating at its normal high frequency, easily throws off invading viruses.
Demon spirits, external low frequencies casting their shadow upon our bodies and souls, work the same way. When I am always putting everything I find inside myself into Christ and Christ into everything, by an act of my mind, demonic spirits bounce off me like water off a duck's back. But when people sees themselves as separate from Christ, when they live under a shadow of condemnation, then the voices of other spirits sound reasonable to them; they view those "frequencies" as their own, as belonging to themselves, and they become sick.
So, here is what I am saying. We know from Romans 8:11 that the Spirit of Christ is always giving life to our mortal body by the power of the resurrection. Now, I have read those who try to limit the meaning of that verse. Yes, people actually do think they have the gumption, the ability, the crassness, to limit God. Look back at the verse and tell me if you can find a line, a limit, a boundary by which God says, "This far and no more." They try to say, "That's not talking about the transformation of our body into incorruptibility, into immortality, into LIFE."
Anytime anyone puts the lie to God by limiting Him where He never limits Himself, they have set themselves up, not only for a fight with God, but for a stunning and embarrassing defeat. (Jesus calls it "weeping and gnashing of teeth.") God, by His very nature, must defeat those who put the lie to Him, He must prove them wrong. "Let God be true, and every man a liar."
I think I'll stay with, "Yes, God. Let it be to me according to all that You say."
It's the most dangerous thing that we can do as far as this world is concerned, but let's do it. Let's commit ourselves not ever to limit God or ever say to Him, "You can go this far, God, and no more." It is Jesus alone who keeps us safe.
[Let me throw this in. Jesus said, "The words that I speak are Spirit and they are life." By that He meant that the power of the Holy Spirit makes the words God speaks life and reality inside of us. We also know that God speaks to us through many metaphors and symbols. But the mental practice of "spiritualizing" the things God says can also be an effort to claim that God can do it in heaven all right, but He sure won't do it in the earth.]
So now, let me arrive at where I've been going.
I have been physically weak, a debilitating emotional and physical weakness, for eighteen years. I have learned to live with it. I eat healthy; I have explored every natural health avenue and have learned much about how the human body actually works, but though I have found ways to maintain, I have never really gotten better. Doctors have never given me an answer, none at all. They won't even say anything useful, except, "Here's some drugs, be stoned." (Not quite their words, but to the same effect.) I have pursued every form of Christian healing, and have found much blessing from the Lord, but no relief.
The last year has been too much; I simply have not had the stamina to produce half of what even a physically simple job like teaching requires. I gave the little strength I had entirely to my students, with none left over for the school's requirements. That didn't go over too well. Yet I can still function well enough that I appear to be fine.
I refuse to condemn myself. I have closed my ears to many "Job's comforters" over the years. I will not condemn myself; there is no life found in that. I justify God in all things; I am weak, that I might know His power in me.
A few days ago, I picked up a book on adrenal fatigue that I had read before. I have known for some years that my adrenal glands do not work, but there is no "cure," and the medical system does not even consider such a thing.
I read these words. "A sense of powerlessness or helplessness is the most debilitating and stress-inducing emotion there is. Any situation, no matter how bad, is more tolerable and less stressful when you feel you can do something about it." And "the particular kind of rest you need when you have adrenal fatigue comes not so much from lying down, but from standing up for yourself."
I shared with you in Part 1 of this title, concerning the first years of my marriage when I felt completely powerless in every aspect of my life and responsibility towards my wife and my son. I will not go into particulars only to say that indeed, it was a most difficult valley of the shadow of darkness. Yet, in all things, at every step along the way, I justified God and gave Him praise for His goodness. I failed, badly. But He said to me, "Son, you passed the test." I said, "How can you say that?" He said, "In all things you justified Me. You blamed no one."
I carefully select the things I share with you about the places my Father takes me through only because I think that those things can be useful to you to understand the great joy and wonder and power of the glorious and holy thing God is doing now in you. I expect that you apply the truth to your own experiences in life.
I sat there in my chair, a few days ago, and remembered, fully, that debilitating, crippling sense of powerlessness, with no ability whatsoever to stand up for myself or for the integrity of my person. I felt it as fully in that moment as I felt it through all those years. But that was not all that I felt. Much more than that, I felt the power and love of My Savior, filling my heart with Himself. I then took Him, my spirit, stretching His kindness in my heart, with my MIND, I placed the life and goodness of Christ over that pain, that feeling of powerlessness. I placed, with my MIND, that feeling into Christ; and I placed Christ into that feeling.
That deep-rooted, pervading emotion vanished, and I cannot find it again. Its memory is gone. A couple of days ago, I sat and visited with one whom we knew from that time, and I could only remember good things about those who were part of that time. More than that, the sense of fatigue that sat upon my body has lifted. That doesn't mean I'm running laps today. But healing is taking place. I'll explain more of that in a bit.
What happened?
The cells and organs of our body have "memories." That is, the electrical frequency by which they operate picks up and records the various deep emotions that we experience through life. A bad experience will lower the frequency of the cells and organs. Just like a magnetic strip carries information recorded on it, so our cells carry information recorded on them. That is easy to understand.
What I did was use my mind to open the gate so that the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ that fills my heart, that is one spirit with my spirit, could move upon the literal cells and organs of my body and erase the bad frequency that had lodged itself inside of them, erase it with the love and presence of Christ. That is literally how it works.
This is not mind over matter. It is the mind opening itself as a Gate so that the King of Glory, who fills my heart with Himself, can bring healing, that is, the erasure of negative frequencies and the re-writing of the frequencies of life and peace and joy upon the cells and organs of my body.
The power of God and natural science work together in complete harmony. We are not talking about "miracles," we are talking about the normal Christian life.
Here's the point. Why stop there?
Christ fills my heart. As I rest in His joy and peace, using the gate of my mind, I open my heart to extend His life and goodness upon every feeling of pain I have ever known in my life, both emotional pain and physical pain.
I see, with my mind, Christ in that pain and that pain in Christ. Some might call it visualization. But we do not take our definitions from those who climb over the wall apart from Jesus. We see Jesus, and He lives in our hearts. I call it:
Open the gates, the King of Glory comes into His own!
I can take every particular lack in my body and place it into Christ and Christ into it. Or whatever pain or emotional or physical affliction that you might know. And I can see healing.
Even modern medicine is beginning to realize that physical healing comes from the mind. That if you see yourself whole, you will become whole; and if you see yourself sick, you will become sick. I was sick because I could see no way out. That sense of powerlessness was so strong and went so deep into my cells that it takes the present revelation of Christ God has brought me to in order to finally provide the answer.
My will has opened itself wide open to the Lord Jesus because I have stopped trying to exist as a self separate from Him, trying to line up with what I think God expects me to do. My emotions still go up and down, sometimes simply because of something I ate, but as the King of Glory rides through, that gate swings wide open in joy and in peace. Forgiveness is a way of life that became part of me many years ago.
But it is by my mind that I open the door to Him into every part of this world. As I see Him in all things, as I mentally place Him there, the Lord Jesus Christ in all things and all things in Him, the King of Glory rides through and takes possession of all that belongs to Him.
God always leads me to lift up the victory of Christ in every situation. That practice is an exercise conducted by the mind.
And it extends far beyond healing for our own emotions and physical bodies. When my son is troubled, resulting in disturbance with his mother, can I not place my hand upon his shoulder, open my own heart to reach out over him and place the Sspirit of Christ all around and through him and to place him into that same Spirit? And if I see him in Christ and Christ in him, can I not believe that the frequency of the spirit of Christ IS, in that moment, erasing the negative disturbance?
That is the application of grace, and it comes through the gate of my mind. It is Christ, and it is a thousand times superior to the application of the law through punishment.
But the mind does not work alone; it works hand in hand with the tongue and the voice box. When I speak Christ, that is an exercise of the mind.
The mind has been given the great task of opening the GATES for the entrance of the King of Glory into all His inheritance. It is the Spirit that flows through as rivers of living water, but it is the mind that opens the floodgates.
Jesus said, "Whatever you ask the Father, believe that you have received it, and you shall have it." He said, "If you have faith as much as the very tiniest of seeds, you will move mountains."
We have made that into an abnormal, spiritually "deep" occurrence given only to a few particular mighty men and women of God. But Jesus was saying that the entrance of God into the earth comes so simply and so easily. Releasing God into creation in power is a simple, normal part of the normal Christian life.
It is as simple as giving a cup of cold water - and seeing Christ move in power with our minds.
And here is a critical point. We neither "expect" to see nor "not expect" to see a physical change in that moment. We know that God is working in power the moment we speak Christ into anything. That is an absolute given. And we know that what we have asked for is absolutely coming into creation. The moment of its appearance, whether immediate or delayed a short time has no bearing on the fact that good things are the path of our future.
We know it is happening because we believe it to be true. We have lifted up our heads and opened our minds to the entrance of the King of Glory, and He is riding through!
Be blessed in the Lord, Daniel Yordy
