Yes I Am 32 - Paul Moving Into The Third Level

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 32

PAUL MOVING INTO THE THIRD LEVEL

The most revealing of all analyses of these three grades of experience is by Paul himself in his Philippian letter. In 3:3-14 he pours out to us some of the Lord’s dealings with him. He starts by mentioning the many qualifications he had "in the flesh," but plainly states that he no longer has confidence in such things. We can sense his thankfulness for his awareness of the false pride he had in his own righteousness, and his disgust as he sees it as the rotten rags of Satanic self-love. He declares: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (vs. 7). Here he is alluding to his "Damascus road" conversion experience. There the truth had first pierced his honest heart like an ox goad. There the contrast between his own hate and rage and the glory and rapture on the face of Stephen, the battered but forgiving martyr, had been clearly revealed. There, on the Damascus road, in a blinding flash Paul had seen that same supernatural love in the face of the ascended Jesus, who spoke to him not in wrath or retaliation but in loving appeal: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? Don’t you know I love you?" There he had exchanged the rags of his self-loving self for the eternal gain of Christ’s own garment of self-giving self.

But then Paul made a startling and costly discovery: The ascended Jesus, now a marvelous Savior to him, was much more to him. Christ made it plain that He had come to take over Paul’s whole life and express His own love-selfhood through Paul. "Yea doubtless," continues Paul (vs. 8), "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…" This was something altogether more revolutionary and advanced than merely Jesus as his Savior and Justifier, marvelous though that was. Now this One is to manage his whole life - take him over - so that Paul becomes an embodiment of Jesus Christ formed in him as well as revealed to him. And this Paul "jumped into"! Everything earthly must go to the winds for that, whatever the cost. There was pain in it: "…for whom I have suffered the loss of all things." There had been the painful cutting-off from all his ambitions as a leading young Jew of his day, with a great future among his own people. This was the paying of the "disciple price," where we hate father, mother, wife, children, houses, lands, physical well-being, and in fact, "all that we have," to be a disciple. Paul paid that, and at that time it was a sacrifice. And this conditioned Paul for his great Galatians 2:20 revelation, which was his unique contribution to the body of Christ through all the coming centuries. This was Paul as a "young man" (1 John 2:13), in the second stage where he now found himself - which meant finding Christ as the exchanged self in him.

Now comes the most revolutionary change of attitude. He suddenly says that the things it "cost" him to surrender would now be a stench in his nostrils to retain! What was once precious is now disgusting to him. What he had called "suffering the loss of all things" he now says he counts as "stinking dung"! "I count them but dung, that I may win Christ…" A total reversal. And why? Because he was no longer concerned with getting his own inner need settled. This was now completed in Christ - not only Christ for him, but now Christ in him, as him. Now he’s free to be one with whom Christ would delight to share His inner self and His purposes. A great ambition had seized Paul - to "win Christ." "Winning Christ" means not depending on Christ for my own convenience any longer but being privileged, rather, to reach a place where He can share with me as His companion, bosom friend, and intimate cooperator what He came down on earth to do. And how supreme this ambition is! But it is not attained through any methods of the flesh, but only through "the faith of Christ." For Paul continues: "... and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (vs. 9).

Then Paul explains what these highest ways "in Him" are: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death…" To thus "know Him" means an inner understanding of His ways as the Savior: living by the power of His resurrection, as a heavenly man in every earthly condition or daily demand, as Jesus did; fellowshipping with Him also in His sufferings, not now the joys of union but in Jesus’ costly identification with the world in its needs, as well as meeting its antagonism. Finally, it means pouring out one’s life, not in some quiet retirement, but in God’s appointed way - spiritually or physically dying that others may live. This Paul now embraced and lived out in his co-saviorhood, right to its last limit and into its final glory. As he wrote, "…if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection from among the dead" (literal Greek). In this he did not refer, of course, to his share in the bodily resurrection (which is a gift of God to all believers) but to a death like that of Jesus which brings resurrection to others - that "bringing many sons to glory" for which the Captain of our salvation tasted death (Heb. 2:10).

To gain this - that by his dying many should live - Paul, now in his old age, pressed toward the mark in that high calling. As he wrote, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." He lived to take hold of that for which Christ had taken hold of him. People often mistakenly interpret this saying of Paul’s as if he wasn’t perfect in the sense of sanctification, not yet in the full victory life, and had yet to attain that one day. Not so. Paul had long passed through that second, "young man" stage of handing his whole life over to the Lordship and indwelling of Christ. That was settled forever, as with us who now know our second stage. But here he was in his co-saviorhood with Jesus... who Himself had also said that He had "a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" As Jesus cried out triumphantly on the cross, "It is finished," Paul also in his final letter to son Timothy, when facing his execution, wrote, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course" - the glorious course of a gained intercession. Paul the father, Paul the co-priest, Paul carrying right through the purpose for which he was seated in the heavenlies in Christ... yes, Paul the corn of wheat sown in the ground and dying, and bringing forth much fruit.

Now we see what this third level means in our own experience, and that it is to be taken seriously as a third crisis of faith and experience. As seriously as the first and second crises. The key scripture summoning us from the second level, to move into the third, is Paul’s Romans 12:1: "I beseech you therefore, brethren,… that ye present your bodies [as] a living sacrifice." (For intercession involves the body, as we shall see later.)

The second stage had been thoroughly established with its final triumphant shout of "no separation" - no separation possible from our eternal union. Paul’s "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... I am persuaded that [nothing] can separate us…" (Rom. 8:35-39). But now a shock! There is a new and glorious reversal from "no separation" to a voluntary separation from God if necessary - even going to hell that our brother humans may be saved. For Paul immediately thereafter writes about his "great heaviness" for his own people: "I could wish myself accursed [i.e., separated] from Christ for my brethren." This was Paul the intercessor, and it is as such that he calls on us all - all who are redeemed - to present our bodies now as living sacrifices on the altar of self giving for others. While death works in us, life will come to them. And from this point on in his Roman letter, nothing is spoken about except how the light and life of Christ reaches out by us to the world, and how we thankfully use the various gifts with which the Spirit has equipped us - about eighteen in all.

What this means is a total move over, by the compulsion of the Spirit, to a life of unceasing love-activities in spirit and body - from the discipleship to the apostleship level, from the apprenticeship to the proficiency level, from the school of faith to the life of faith… yet all (as ever) on the "can’t help it" level, with all the zest of living, the enthusiasm, the gaiety-at-heart of a permanent seriousness, where "the zeal of God’s house" has eaten us up.

So this is as much a total entry into a fully meaningful relationship with Christ on this third level as was the entry into the "replaced life." It is entering into the final and total meaning of our portion of suffering in this life. From the suffering in our sin condition, to the suffering in our striving condition, to the suffering in our self-giving condition. It is revolutionary - and to those not settled and at home with the Trinity in our union relationship, it will again appear blasphemous - because we are really now saying that we are co-gods with God, just as the man Jesus said this to the Pharisees opposing Him (John 10:34-35).

So we see how we have now been permitted to share in the true purpose of sonship: no longer just the privilege of fallen sinners being sons and brothers with the Son, but joining with the Father in His eternal love-purposes for the "final reconciliation of all things," when He’ll be known as "God all in all." But if that is glorious for us, it is also most serious; for it means that as sons in this present moment of history, we are co-saviors, co-intercessors, in completing the number of His elect, co-laborers with Him in the harvesting. That also means co-sufferers with Him in "filling up that which is behind [i.e., still lacking] of the afflictions of Christ... for His body’s sake" (Col. 1:24). We’re on the saving level with Him, and boldly accepting ourselves as such, carrying out the details of His plans, pressing toward the mark, paying the price, and "knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord."

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 31 - On,Now,To The Third Level

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 31

ON, NOW, TO THE THIRD LEVEL

We have seen with unmistakable clarity that there are stages in our becoming settled about who we are by grace, and stages through which we must pass; or we can call them grades from which we must be graduated. We have already looked into two of these… (whatever name we decide to call them): justification and unification - Christ for us and Christ in us.

But the Bible makes it plain that there are three grades, not two - and each equally necessary. We have spent much time on the first two, but it is less recognized that there is a third to be consciously entered into.

In calling them "grades" or "levels of being" there is always a danger that we may slip back into the old snare of self-effort and self-development and think of them as something we have to attain to. "Growth," also, is a common concept we use to denote what we think of as spiritual progress. How often I hear it said, "Well, it has taken you time and will take me time to get there." So we need a constant reminder that spiritual growth, or the attaining of a new "grade," is not some form of painfully acquired self-enlargement; rather it is the same old story, nothing but a growth in recognition of what Christ, our last Adam, has attained for us… which is already ours. That is why growth is spoken by Peter in his Second Epistle with these words: "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Growth, therefore, is merely the next stage of recognition of who we already are in Him; and that recognition, as we now know, is always and only by the nonworks method of faith, and the Spirit is the one who establishes us.


So with this safeguard, we move on to this third level. The simplest description of the three levels (because he uses a down-to-earth analogy) is John’s, when he writes to his readers as "little children," "young men," and "fathers" (1 John 2:12-14). He makes brief comments about what he means, spiritually speaking, by these three stages. A little child is totally dependent externally on his parents and knows nothing but what they outwardly are to him. So a little child in grace knows simply that he was a sinner, that he is forgiven through Christ, and thus, now, God is his heavenly Father. A young man has moved from outer dependence on his parents to finding his own inner resources for life - progress from outer to inner. "I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one… because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you." This is a plain-spoken description of our being established in the "on top" life which we have spent so long in examining in every detail, and into which we have now moved by the second crisis. We now know we are strong - and we know why. Therefore we are no longer tossed about in those old struggles with devil and flesh. We know inwardly, not just outwardly, what first came to us as outer, written word... but which now abides in us, fused into our inner consciousness by the Spirit. What a total description of an established, achieved life... not of trying, hoping, kind of slipping in and out of it, but being!

In calling them "grades" or "levels of being" there is always a danger that we may slip back into the old snare of self-effort and self-development and think of them as something we have to attain to.

"I have written unto you, fathers," John states cryptically, "because ye have known Him that is from the beginning." That brings us back to the realization that "knowing" in Scripture usually refers not to mere mental understanding, but implies being mixed with the thing we know. That is why the Bible uses the word for sexual intercourse: "Adam knew Eve his wife." Spiritually, it is inner know-how; and what you know, that you are. "This is eternal life," said Jesus in His great prayer to His Father, "that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." And we who are born of His Spirit know that knowing is the inner union. So when John says that we "fathers" know Him that is from the beginning, he means that, as fathers, we are in inner union with that Eternal One - not in His beginning, but as the One who now, as from the beginning, is in the process of completing what He has begun; and we are involved with Him in that completing process. Amazing grace! The point, then, is that we now are no longer dependent children, but cooperating sons: Father and Sons, Inc.!

What John has given us on its three levels in such understandable terms is seen all through Scripture in those same three forms. We are united with Christ in His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension - and Paul wrote letters which concentrate on each of these: Galatians on our identification with Him in His death; Colossians on our being risen with Him; Ephesians on our ascended life, seated with Him in the heavenlies, and its outcome.

Paul’s Roman letter we all recognize as his fully developed, detailed, and authoritative statement of what he calls "my gospel." In this letter the three states are plain enough: chapters 3 to 5 - justification (little children); 6 to 8 - unification (young men); 9 to 15 - cooperation, co-saviorhood (fathers).

being mixed with the thing we know

In Hebrews there are the three again. The writer plainly likens Jesus to Moses because, by the new birth, He saves us out of our Egypt, the world; and to Joshua, because He takes us into the land of milk and honey, the promised rest, after we have emerged from the childhood wilderness. Then he stops short very significantly, and says there is a third likeness: to Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God. In this parallel Jesus is our great High Priest. 

Now whenever there is a high priest, there must be other priests serving along with him. But when speaking here of the order of Melchisedec, the writer does not name anyone as co-priests, because those Hebrew believers had a spiritual blockage en route (5:12-6:2), showed negative reactions to their sufferings (10:32-39), and were tied in knots of self-pity (12:5-13). He does, however, describe the co-priesthood of the third level in his famous list in Hebrews chapter 11 of the giants of faith, who were the intercessor priests of their respective generations. And we are to be such for our God today, "a royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9).

 inner know-how

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 30 - That Soul-Spirit Understanding

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 30

THAT SOUL-SPIRIT UNDERSTANDING

All of us in Union Life know that a special key is given us for our daily stabilizing by the writer to the Hebrews. He declares that this life has rest, not strain as its basis (4:1-11). It is the rest God has had since He rested on the seventh day after completing the creation. It is also that of Israel entering into the land of Canaan. But he goes on to say that the true rest is what we have in Christ, our Joshua. That rest is by no means a folding of the hands, but a fully active life that is a thrill to live because it has adequacy at its center, not inadequacy. Living life without what it takes to live it causes strain; living life with what it takes to live it produces rest. The resting life he describes this way: "He that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His" (4:10). Living by my own works was when I was the worker. The rest-life will have even more works, for He is the worker. But that type of working is resting. The key to entering into God’s rest and continuing in it is by a revelation nowhere else so clearly stated in the Bible. It is in knowing the difference between soul and spirit (4:12).

We already have seen that the human spirit is the basic self. Soul and body are the means by which we express ourself and live a fully active life. So as long as we confuse what we are in our inner spirit-self with the ways in which we express ourself by our outer soul and body, we are in trouble.

The writer to the Hebrews likens the difference between soul and spirit to the joints and marrow in our physical bodies. The marrow is what contains the inner life of the bones - a picture of spirit. The joints are the way by which that inner life goes into action in hands and feet, etc. - analogous to soul. And he says we have spirit and soul so mixed up that it takes a revelation for us to see the difference. "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit" (4:12).

In simple terms, in our spirits we love. By our soul emotions and body action we express our love. In the spirit we know. By the soul we express our knowledge by our reasoning faculty. (Peter shows the relationship between those two when he says we should be ready to give "a reason for the hope that is in us.") So soul and body are the precious and only means by which we - our spirit, and God’s Spirit by us - can express ourselves.

The quality of Spirit-spirit union is stillness, for the universal is always still. "Be still and know that I am God." God spoke to Elijah in a "still, small voice." Spirit can be compared to the sea, which, with its mighty currents and streams, is a "still" source of power; the soul is like the rampaging waves which dash about as the expression of that power. The power is in the sea, and not in the waves.

So our danger and problem - till we are awakened to it - is in mistaking the surges of the waves (soul emotions) for the unmoved and calm center (spirit). We get into trouble when we mistake the variable emotions of the soul for our still spirit-center. The waves are feelings such as anger, hurts, jealousies, fears, lusts; or alternatively, soul feelings of depression, deadness, uselessness, meaninglessness, coldness, emptiness, inability to believe - an endless list. The same is true of our soul in its reasoning activities: All kinds of disturbing or evil thoughts can pour into us, with all the doubts and questionings they bring, and influence our mental attitudes. Notice that this verse of Scripture also compares soul and spirit to "the thoughts and intents of the heart": intents, our spirit - fixed purpose; thoughts, our soul - varied opinions about the intents.

That is also why John in his First Epistle (3:19-21) makes a differentiation between our hearts and God. He says, "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things." "Heart," representing feelings, is soul - and we can get plenty of condemnation in our feelings. But God, who knows all and doesn’t condemn, speaks His assuring word into our spirits.

Even so, it is easy, outwardly, to be strongly drawn by some desire of the heart and seem to be helpless against it. But in my spirit-center, where God is, I know my real desire is His will, and He keeps His firm hold on me. A friend recently wrote regarding a strong desire for a certain thing: "....but in this I felt myself kept. This keeping made me angry at times, because I wanted to have my own way and I knew I could not. I knew it could never be because that wasn’t what the real me wanted." Outward and inward desire: the workings of soul and spirit.

A person inquires of me, "What do I do when I say I am ‘Christ as me’ and yet there is someone I hate?" I laugh and reply, "You are kidding yourself. You don’t hate; you can’t hate. You can only feel you do on your soul/emotional level and mistake that for hate. Hate is only love reversed - and you are love, which is He in you, and you love by the set purpose of the will; and you know that if the real need arose you would give yourself for the one you ‘hate.’ While soul love is emotion, spirit love is will - and we are fixed in that kind of love. So we may feel more like hell and yet be in heaven.

So we see ourselves in our spirit-center, where we and He are one in spirit, and all things are ours in Him. Soul and body are our wonderful means of endless spirit expression. And having grasped, by the revelation of the Word, the distinction between soul and spirit, I do not fear my soul and body... and still less do I foolishly wish I were without their disturbing reactions. No, I thankfully see myself as a whole person, God’s whole person. He has equipped me with these fascinating means for living out my full life as a whole self with Himself, in all my life’s activities. Because they are wholly His, I will put no limits on the liberated use of my soul and body. At the same time, I totally enjoy the fact that He has me safely in hand, even with the surges of the negatives temporarily flooding in. Spirit wins its battles over soul and body diversions, being "kept by the power of God"; and we, "having all sufficiency in all things, abound unto every good work."

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 29 - James Explains

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 29

JAMES EXPLAINS

But how can we say that it is Christ who is manifested when we are tempted? Let us look at what we do when we are tempted, and then at the remedy for it.

What happens during temptation is that the human part of us is being drawn away by some solicitation to function just as our old flesh-self used to; and what this means is that we temporarily forget who we are. We forget we are Christ in our human form, and we are pulled to respond as if apart from Him. Instead of being in our normal daily condition of subconsciously recognizing that we are in our vine-branch union (which is what Jesus meant by "abiding," which in the Greek means "remaining"), we are diverted into believing in some attractive flesh-response of body or soul; and what we are believing in at any time holds us in its grasp.

Now in our former self-striving life, trying to combat temptation and sin in our own strength, we would try to resist it even while we responded to it and, as a result, have an inner sense of condemnation because we were even dallying with it. But usually the more we resisted and condemned ourselves, the more the thing gained its hold on us. So we lived a fighting, struggling, supposedly two-nature life - the one striving against the other.

But now, in our new understanding, we don’t deny or fight the temptation. We do not resist or struggle against it. No, we admit and accept it, because we recognize it is not sin but is the normal pull that the outer world, through the flesh, has on us - as it did on Christ - and that God means us to have it. But the importance of accepting, acknowledging, and not resisting is that this "draws the teeth" of the temptation. What you resist, resists you. What you fight, fights you. In this sense I apply Jesus’ words, "Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilest thou art in the way with him; lest… thou be cast into prison." In other words, acknowledge that he is your adversary, and that will take the bite out of him.

So the result of my accepting and agreeing is that it takes the heat out of any resistance by me, and loosens me from the grip of my diverted believing in this enticement... and as I free the temptation to be a temptation, I equally free myself from being bound to it by my false believing in it. And I am free to do what? To remember and recognize who I really am - Christ in me! Recognition is faith in its completed form. So I recognize that He is peace when I am tempted to worry. He is courage when fear grabs me. He is genuine love for a person I am feeling hatred for. Furthermore, He is other love who can reverse my temptation to an illicit love, and can cause me to love that one for his or her own benefit and not for my self-gratification. Since He is all these to me as me. I am the manifestation of peace, love and power. Christ is the light who uses the darkness as something which, by His swallowing it up, manifests Him as light in a new form. If I wasn’t tempted to hate, I couldn’t experience and manifest His love. If I wasn’t tempted to fear, I couldn’t experience and manifest His courage. If I wasn’t tempted to an illicit love, I couldn’t experience and manifest His other-love for the benefit of that person through me. My temptations are my assets in continually manifesting Him in new forms.

This is the way in which we totally reverse our outlook on our temptations. We used to be frightened of them because, while still thinking we were independent selves, we were afraid of ourselves and how we could be captured by sin... so we would pray the beginner’s prayer, "Lead us not into temptation." But now we see temptation as the adventure of faith! For it is this necessary negative on which the positive of Christ is built. That’s why I can say with James that I "count it all joy" (a strong, total word - count, not feel) when I have my various temptations.

Let us look a little more closely into how James gives us the remedy for the assaults of all kinds of double-mindedness, in his strongly practical letter. Here we will see works not as antagonistic to faith, but as its fulfillment. The basic question will be, How do we add the right kind of works to our faith?

In this epistle it looks as if we believers have a constant struggle. James speaks of us having the problem of two minds (either believing or wavering); having two standards in our brotherhood relationships (one for the rich but another for the poor); using two tongues (for blessing and cursing); holding two friendships (for the world and for God); having two motives in prayer (self-interest and for others). James mentions all these doubles and presents us as having a conflict between them, with the negative usually overwhelming the positive.

This is a two-nature struggle, all right, and it’s set forth in a letter to believing brethren! But now look more closely at the beautiful remedy James slips in for those eager enough to search it out and find it - or, shall we say, who are open to its God-given reality. In the first chapter he speaks of God’s goodness in "begetting us with the word of truth" - his expression for the new birth (1:18). But then, he continues, we get mixed up with all kinds of disturbing self-reactions, not yet knowing the remedy for the "self" problem. He calls this "all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness" (1:21). So what is the answer? We experience it when, by faith, the living word of truth has not only begotten us but is also engrafted into us - his way of describing the vine-branch union relationship - and we become inwardly fixed. This fixedness comes as we see ourselves in union with Christ - that we are forms by which He is manifesting Himself. James calls this blessed insight "the perfect law of liberty" (1:25).

Now he gives this subtle illustration. While we are still in the old self-effort illusion and don’t yet know Christ in us as us, we are like a man who looks into a mirror and sees himself just as his normal, helpless self - with no hope of any means of changing himself (1:24). So he just goes away and forgets about it. But, James says, when we know the inner union, He in our form, then when we look into the mirror we no longer see our human, failing selves, we see ourselves as who we now are: human expressions of that perfect law of liberty, Christ Jesus, who is the Spirit of other-love. So now we can go out into life with confidence, because we are no longer just ourselves, we are Christ in us as us.

So now we understand the conflict of these doubles not as the contest of two natures, one pitted against the other; rather, we see the temptation as something not within us but something seeking to draw us away from who we are. So we "resist" that drawing not by denying or fighting it but by recognizing Christ in us as us. Thus He uses the temptation for a new manifestation of Himself by us.

So, James says, life will always consist of endless trials and temptations, because they are the negatives by which He the positive can reveal Himself. Therefore, when we lack wisdom in a situation and ask for it, let us take it for granted that He is in the process of giving it to us. But along come questionings. Will He really show us what to do? Now if we were in the old two-nature conflict, we should be swinging between faith and doubt; but we, knowing we are He in us, dissolve the temptation by saying, "I’m not taking that temptation to doubt. That is an external assault on me. I’m not double - I’m single. And Christ is my wisdom." The stand of faith dissolves the doubt.

The same is true with our new tongues, says James (3:1-18). Our old tongue is a filthy one; our new tongue glorifies God and blesses man. So what then when our tongue slips back into some negative speaking? - if instead of blessing God we curse men, who are made after the similitude of God? Have we then two tongues, and must we always swing from the one to the other? No, says James, for we are like a fountain of water which can’t produce "both salt water and fresh" (NIV). We know we are a fountain of fresh water. Therefore, the salt was just something which got mixed up with the water as it flowed out of the fountain. The defect cannot be within the fountain itself, nor can it be in us. So we recognize the wrong things we said as a slip into temptation - not affecting the purity of the fountain in our union reality - and remedied by a word of repentance and cleansing. We no longer live in a struggle between two kinds of speaking, good and evil discourse. We speak positively and lovingly from our love source with what James calls "the wisdom that is from above," rather than from beneath.

Then he raises the question of our motives in prayer (4:1-4). Are they sometimes double, and mainly for our own self-interest? Once that was so, and it caused us to question what we were asking for, as if we lived with double motives. But now we don’t. Our motives are pure from their pure center, and we go boldly forward in our prayer requests, asking, as Jesus said, "whatsoever we desire." So we have become established in this glorious fixed reality wherein we see ourselves as the expression of the perfect law of liberty, that law which James also calls "the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And we are that!

And we remain unchanged through all the temptations. "I am single, not double." The assaults of doubleness are only attempts to divert me from my basic singleness. That is why temptations are always such an adventure of faith, and the means of perfecting my faith so that I "count them all joy." Finally, James calls on the brethren to move into this faith union in Christ, and out from that apparent double-mindedness. "Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded" (4:8).

There is one further question which is always being asked about the temptation issue - a favorite question. "But what about sin? Do we still commit sins?" Why do people always bring that up? Because, until we have found a way out, we are so congenitally sin-minded. We have become so used to our struggles and failures and guilt - and perhaps we also want some excuse for our continuance in sin!

The usual scripture on which people base that question is 1 John 1:8-9, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves... If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins...." But our anxious concern about sin is what gives us away, for the whole point of this summit letter of John’s on the union is not about sinning, but our union reality. We are in the light as He is in the light (for He is the light in us). We walk as He walked (for He is walking in us). We know all truth (for the Spirit is the knower in us). We live the right life, as He does (for the sin spirit in us has been replaced by the Holy Spirit). We love as He loves (because He is love and dwells in us). We believe as He believes (with the world-overcoming faith of the Son of God). We are as He is ("for as He is, so are we in this world" - 1 John 4:17). It is the total union level. The totally positive level. We are! We know we are! Yes, I am.

But because we have our real, temptable humanity, John started his letter with these sin statements. He declares that there is sin, and that if we sin there is this immediate remedy in Christ’s blood. If it is quick sinning, it is quick cleansing. Indeed, we add sin to sin if we don’t immediately replace the sin and guilt-consciousness with a total forgetting of it in Him of whom it is stated that "our sins and iniquities He remembers no more." We go right ahead praising, and indeed use a sin "slip" once again to magnify the grace of God. The loss turned to gain! But then John also adds, "These things I write unto you that ye sin not." That is all that John has to say in his whole five chapters about the possibility of our sinning. It is a detail to him. We are Christ-minded, not sin-minded. We walk so confidently in our new union-relationship that John says, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin... he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (3:9). We cannot return to sin as a principle, but if we do slip into a sin there is the immediate remedy. Confess it and forget it; don’t rehash it or ask sin questions. Talk Christ union and live it... because we can’t help it.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 28 - What About Temptation?

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 28

WHAT ABOUT TEMPTATION?

This still leaves a major question to be answered. Indeed, it is the chief objection usually raised to such a life as we have now been affirming as ours. It seems, they say, too easy. Life is not a bed of roses. Life is not lived on a Cloud Nine. What about those areas of our daily living which appear to contradict a life which we say is not we living it, but He as us? What about what are certainly temptations, and appear often to be failures and even sins?

Paul and James speak of these aspects of life as temptations and trials (one word covers both concepts in the original Greek). Temptations are enticements to want what we should not; trials are those times when we are faced with what we don’t want, but can’t avoid!

First then, temptations, which until we have them in right focus are the most troublesome to us. (We’ll look at trials in a later chapter.) They are the reason why many people say, "This Christ-in-you life is not livable or workable, because of the way we succumb to so many temptations." Yet we know that temptations are just as continuous in a perfect human life, because it is said of Jesus that He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15). Therefore temptations and their enticement are part of a perfect, not imperfect life - and are not themselves sin.

So we squarely face constant temptation on this new level of living, just as much as in the former. The question, then, is often asked, "What is it in us which is tempted and responds to temptation, if we are this new man in Christ and say we are dead to sin and have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts?" The answer is simply that, as we have already said, we are human selves, and our oneness with Christ does not alter our two-ness in being He and I. God’s whole purpose is to express Himself through our fully human selves, just as He did with Jesus.

So this human self of ours is just as continually tempted as His was. James explains temptation as being related to the obvious fact that I, as a human, have all the human appetites and faculties of soul and body. In fact, it is by these that God manifests Himself through our selves. Our humanity is responsive to what we might call the "upward temptations" of producing the fruits of the Spirit (see how God "tempted" Abraham to sacrifice his son - Gen. 22:1). So also it is fully open and responsive to all the downward temptations of the flesh, world and devil. This world contains every form of solicitation to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life, for "the whole world lieth in the wicked one." To these we in our humanity have responded and lived in all our unsaved days. We have been at home in them. So no wonder that we are constantly assailed by such "drawings." For James says temptation is when we are "drawn away by our own desires and enticed" (1:14); and enticement makes us really want to do it. So temptation definitely makes us want to do what we should not.

Now the vital point is to recognize that this is not sin. Scripture clearly states that Jesus was tempted at all points (and that covers a great deal) as we are, so temptation is not sin for He was "without sin." That means He was enticed to do such things and yet never sinned. Therefore, temptation is not sin. We know He was so tempted because we are given one instance when He did temporarily respond to temptation. That was after He had constantly told His disciples that His Father’s will was for Him to die and rise again. Yet when the time came, He plainly said He didn’t want to die. He was "enticed" to want to escape death and live. "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." That was temptation, and He plainly had it. Of course His victory was, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt," and that took three hours of bloody sweat to have it settled.

This is of great value to us. Just because we are so often tempted, just because we feel the various pulls of soul and body, we should not drag our feet under a sense of guilt and false condemnation.

Sin is only when we go a definite further step. When, as James says, "lust has conceived, it brings forth sin." Conception and birth are the results of a marriage union. In other words, we have gone beyond the "wanting" condition to a deliberate, conscious choice of doing the thing; and we don’t often go that far.

But now in our union life, a total reversal has taken place: not just a change of our spirit joined to His Spirit, but of the control of our whole personhood, including our soul emotions and body appetites. All are now His property. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. Our members are "instruments of righteousness unto God." We are slaves of righteousness, whereas we used to be slaves of sin. We are "renewed in the spirit of our minds," and every thought is being "brought into subjection to the obedience of Christ." There is now this upward pull on our souls and bodies - upward temptation to respond to Him. Our bodies are living sacrifices. We delight to do His will.

This is a radical reversal from our fear of flesh responses and our constant guarding against them. Even though Christians, we have become so used to seeing ourselves negatively: Sex is so dangerous and so close around the corner that we are captured by illicit desires... also by greed and love of material things... and by jealousy and hate and resentment. We have been afraid of our flesh, and by no means free to fearlessly use our body faculties and soul emotions for Christ and others.

We therefore, in our new union relationship, take a further step of faith on the soul-and-body level. We are firm in faith that we are kept, and He does the keeping. "Kept by the power of God through faith," wrote Peter. "Now unto Him who is able to keep us from falling," wrote Jude. And said John, "Perfect love casts out fear." So why be fearful?

So, in this new way, we have our emotions to use to express our love and joys and interests, and our minds to be stretched in daily launches of faith in the God of the impossible; our bodies too, appetites and all, are free to express our love and care for others, without being fearful of their misuse. That is our new boldness of faith, though those appetites and emotions have formerly had such a negative hold on us. But fear not. Have faith in the Keeper.

This also gives us a radical change of outlook on temptation. It used to be something to be fearful of, avoid, and feel greatly guilty about; now we see temptation as an asset, not a liability! Why and in what sense? Because light must have darkness to shine out of. Temptations are pulls back to walk again in darkness. But if we now know who we are, we see all our temptations as what God is meaning us to have, and each exactly suitable to us. We see them all as opportunities to manifest Him through our souls and bodies. Temptation has become opportunity! We understand why James tells us to count all temptations as joy. Christ is manifested by them.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 27 - A Woman and a Man Tell It

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 27

A WOMAN AND A MAN TELL IT

Here are two letters which show the same thing. They show the difference which realizing who we are makes in our thinking and acting. They make it plain that even committed, consecrated servants of Christ may be living with a conscious inner gap between themselves and Him. When the storm blows, that Christian finds himself at one end of the boat sinking, while Christ is asleep at the other - and he has to call on Him to awake and save him! What a difference when the Christian realizes that there is no difference - that Christ is on the boat in him, as him - and when the sea gets rough, he rebukes the storm as He.

The first letter comes from a friend of many years, Cally Gordon, now a widow with her five children in their early twenties and upward. She has been involved in the Lord’s work for many years, and we’ve had many meetings and conversations together. She was with us in our Wisconsin Conference, and then in the home of Dr. John and Linda Bunting, in Louisville, Kentucky, which is really a family home to us in our Union Life fellowship, and where a number of us gather for our annual family fellowship. She writes:

To say the least, my time with you all meant a transformation in my thoughts. Suddenly everything I had read, heard and talked with you about in the past twenty years seemed to "jell" and becomes a reality. It became me! It was almost like a miracle! And ever since, I’ve experienced something within - which for so many years was more intermittent, but which now has become continuous, and which also has become a definite part of my consciousness - or really, which has become me. It’s like a long voyage (learning is), and finally arriving at my destination. So in actuality (slowly arriving after all these years) the new "me" is really Christ as me. I know it, I live it, and it’s a reality not just occasionally or after "down times," but all the time.

During these twenty-odd years, by talks, letters, et cetera, something real was actually transpiring in a tangible way, a new or increased consciousness was becoming me. But going to the Union Life Conference Center in Wisconsin (before going on to the Louisville conference) was God’s way for me to finally emerge from my cocoon and into the miracle of knowing who He is and who I am (that knowing within the deepest part of me); and the fetters of concern or worry of what is happening and why - the hurts of life, etc., which come to all of us - all began to fall off. I know the hurts will come, but I know what to do with them. (I knew before, but somehow there was a block somewhere in me which allowed them to remain in me, even though as a shadow.)

So now I live in the center of me. I live from the real me, and not in the appearance of things which come and go. I cannot convey to you (or can I?) the true sheer joy of arriving home, finding in truth and in reality Him as me. In the past, the knowledge in my head was frequently forgotten for a time, with the illusion that all the painful experiences were the reality. Even though I’d try not to believe this, nevertheless the pains of the hurts caused me, for a moment, to forget that knowledge. I had learned about Reality v. illusion. Apparently God has a time for all of us to know, to reach that destination within our being where it’s not only settled, but there is nothing else but Him to us. Everything now is God. (Of course it always was, but I concentrated on appearances too much.) Circumstances, events, people, actions, everything is He, and my spirit is quiet and one with Him, and that is fixed, not only in my saying it, but because I honestly know it.

What a glorious life it really is, to finally arrive home in Him - that’s where I live now, and it works! So many years of struggle and pain, but that was God’s way for me and it was good. I now live in that center. The wind, rain and storms may come and probably will - but I’m not the old me who will be blown about with the pain of them, because I’m fixed forever.

I just had to ramble on, as I knew that you would want to know that these days clinched it all for me. God’s time - for me - for that miracle of all miracles, the Knowledge, the Knowing, the Reality (Is there any way to aptly describe it?), the glorious Constant Consciousness of that mystery "Jesus as me." What a relief. I’ve come to Rest!

The second letter is from a stockbroker, Robert Chamberlain. He writes:

On February 20, 1973, at the age of 21, I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart. Twelve days later, in a charismatic church, I indicated my desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. So I was taken to the prayer room along with a few others and we all received instructions about how to "receive." Shortly after several people had laid their hands on me and began praying, I experienced what charismatics frequently label as "the baptism with signs accompanying."

Two years later, in January 1975, I was involved in the biggest decision of my life. At this point I recognized that up to that time in my life I had not experienced what Norman Grubb refers to as the "second crisis." But I was unfamiliar with his books at that time. I merely knew before that I did not do God’s will, but now I realized that I could not do God’s will. What a predicament! I prayed. I read. I searched for an answer.

During this time I read about such men of God as Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Hudson Taylor, John Hyde, Rees Howells, and many more. I noticed that most of them spoke of an experience with God, apart from salvation, that drastically changed their lives. After they were saved - after they had done works for God such as starting missions, churches, schools, etc. - after all these things - something happened. They met God in a new way. They called it by various names, but they seemed to share a common experience. This is what I needed. This is what I sought - a deeper experience with God which would radically transform my life to be able to perform that impossible task which was set before me.

In my searching, I came across Norman Grubb’s book The Spontaneous You, and was greatly blessed. I discovered that Norman had a more recent book entitled Who Am I?, so I bought a copy and read it and underlined it, and read it again and again. I knew that this man had what I wanted, and he was trying to share it with me. I prayed the prayer that he recommended about acknowledging "Christ in me," but nothing happened. Still I persisted. I read more of his books and the books of others, mostly biographies of men of God. My hunger increased, and my yearning grew more intense. When would God answer my cry?

I began to have serious doubts about God and about myself. I came dangerously close to turning my back on God, my wife, everything. If God was real, why wouldn’t He answer my cry? If He wasn’t real, I wasn’t going to waste my life "playing church." I was really getting desperate.

On the evening of November 8, 1978, a Wednesday, I was troubled, as usual. I went into my study and shut the door behind me. I talked to God. I don’t remember what I said. I flipped through a few books I had on my shelf about men of God. I read Dwight Moody’s account of his "baptism in the Holy Spirit" again. I read Hudson Taylor’s account of his experience with God after he had been a missionary for many years. I read the book of Romans. In the fourth chapter of Romans I came across the story of Abraham. The following excerpts seemed to come alive to me.

As Paul wrote in Romans 4:3-13 (NIV): "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness... To the man who... trusts God,... his faith is credited as righteousness… Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised." Then Paul continued: "It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith."

God had given Abraham a promise, I saw. By all human means, it would be impossible for Abraham to ever obtain that promise. Yet, Abraham believed. He didn’t understand. He just believed. And because he believed what God had said - even though the thing was impossible - he was righteous. He walked in the truth that God had declared. He assumed the role of the "Father of many nations" even though it was impossible for him and his wife to have a son.

Because Abraham believed God and walked in the truth, he was righteous. Did he feel righteous? Had he any outward signs of being righteous? I think not. He received circumcision much later. The inward reality existed long before the outward evidence appeared. But he was righteous as soon as he believed.

God was going to perform this impossible task in me and through me. I didn’t have to do it. God would do it. In fact, it was already done. Right from the beginning, I had always been what "I" couldn’t become. All I do is believe God's Word about me is true and that is pressing the Start button. How God turns the wheels to confirm it is up to His processes. 


God was telling me to believe. The task was impossible for me to perform. But I didn’t have to perform it. I had now come to the point where I could appropriate Galatians 2:20: "It’s Christ that lives in me." God was going to perform this impossible task in me and through me. I didn’t have to do it. God would do it. In fact, it was already done. Right from the beginning, I had always been what "I" couldn’t become. The truth of Galatians 2:20 became real to me. I now saw what Norman and the others came to see. I read on in Romans 4:18-23: "Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations… He did not waver through unbelief,… but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised. This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’ The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness - for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead."

Now, for the very first time, I could see what it was all about. I called to my wife and shared these things with her. I told her that this was what Norman Grubb had been talking about when he spoke of a second crisis. We reread a portion of Who Am I? - and Norman said that when you come to this point, you say a prayer acknowledging that it is Christ now living in you; not yourself any longer. I asked my wife, "What shall we do?" There was a long silence. I answered my own question, "I think we have to."

She replied, "We really don’t have any choice."

As we realized that Jesus wanted to take over our lives it seemed exciting, except for one fact: in order for Him to live in us, we had to die. That wasn’t so exciting. But we prayed the prayer, one at a time in our own words. I really believed. Before I prayed the prayer I expected that at some time - several years later maybe - I would receive a sign or seal of what God had done. But, immediately upon acknowledging that Christ was in me now, something happened. I received a seal upon my heart. No lightning. No choirs of angels. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything was different. It wasn’t just a profession by faith. Christ in me was me - is me! He was there all the time - I just hadn’t let Him "be" before. At this point I have a hard time trying to explain just what happened. But it happened to my wife, too. Everything is different now for both of us. There is a world of difference between life as we live it now and life as we lived it before.

I had many questions in my mind before this. Questions such as "Who am I? What am I? Who is God? What is life?" and many, many more. Before, these questions haunted me. Now it didn’t matter. What matters now is Christ in me. Everything else is O.K. The problems are still there - maybe more than before. But now it is O.K. Christ is still there too; and He’ll take care or them.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 26 - Yes I AM

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 26

YES, I AM

I have to say again and again that this union life is different from a committed, dedicated relationship to Christ in which we still see ourselves as two and thus are occupied in depending on Him and receiving from Him the immediate supplies for life. Union is different. It is radical because I have stepped right over the line into "Him as me" as well as acknowledging "Him in me." Yes, He is in me; I am I and He is He. We are two - yet that’s not what I live by. It is union - and in the union He is so much my all, and I nothing, that I live with Him as me! I talk the language of Him being the one thinking, choosing, acting - when it is really I. Enormous, glorious paradox! I thus speak of "replacement."

Less than that is still short of a union leap. I may be saying "I have all - I in Him and He in me," but I’m having to keep closing a gap. Here am I, here is He - and He’s doing these things for me: providing power, grace, victory, faith... and I receiving them. But this is not the same as you or I experiencing them all as me. No gap there!

If Self was an independently powered soul unit you may have  been able to squash it underfoot with enough pressure and effort !!!! But it's not. We have to go behind the scenes to where the real power source is. SPIRIT. That is why Jesus admires John the Baptist under the Old Covenant. But in the new scheme of things,and an actual change of owner operator, he would be considered the very least in the kingdom of heaven under this old form of Operating license.


This is why I gave this book the title of YES, I AM. It sounds bold and boastful, and is meant to be, because this is the missing truth about ourselves which is restored only in this union reality. We had, as selves, to go through the process of deceived self, then through self dead to sin and Satan, and thus pass out of self-condemnation into where the central fact now is, He is fully formed in us (Gal. 4:19). But thereby we discover right self. The whole purpose of God is that we should be the total persons by whom He can express His total self. So back we come again. Probably when we first experience our union reality it is He whom we are seeing and rejoicing about - He in us, as us. But then the further light dawns. We are real persons and are meant to be, just as a head can be in action only through its body. We rise and shine for our light has come. And how can we now accept and love ourselves as Jesus told us we must? Because we now know that He loves and accepts us to the total degree that He has made us His permanent abode. "The life I now live in the flesh," Paul confidently said, "I live by the faith-recognition that He has loved me and given Himself for me." So I then surely can love myself. If I’m good enough for Him, then I’m good enough for myself. This is something really new and fresh when it comes to us. At least it was to me. I am to drop those belittling, downgrading statements about myself. If I am an earthen vessel, it doesn’t mean earthy in a derogatory sense, but "human"; and He was human, and God was manifested in that humanity.

So I am no longer a wretched man, but a whole (and holy) man. I am to be myself! Unafraid. Yes, I am, and like Paul, I can do all things in Christ, as Christ. I am well able (like Caleb). I’m full of power and of judgment and of might (like Micah). I am my Beloved’s and His desire is toward me (as His spouse) (S. of S. 7:10).

Once the Savior knew at His baptism that the moment of His commissioning had come as the Christ of God, He never once hesitated in saying, "I am…", "I am...", "I am..."; and they crucified Him for it. And I must not hesitate to be my "I am." If I am now an equipped, anointed, indwelt son of God, I say so. Yes, I am.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 25 - I Get Myself Back

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 25

I GET MYSELF BACK

Now we move on to the surprising and glorious effects on us of this total relationship of replacement-union. The chief one is the paradox.

A person might think that this inner consciousness of Christ in me, as me, would give me an enlarged consciousness of Him and an increased glorying in Him. It does... even though He has already been, for years, my precious Christ in the love relationship of the Song of Songs. But what becomes paradoxically new to me is a totally new self-acceptance. And here, at once, we move onto "dangerous ground" - not dangerous to us, but to onlookers like the daughters of Jerusalem in the Song! Because it seems to produce a newly inflated ego - I! It does. But of course, we who have entered in and are now in on the secret know the whole key - that it is a Satan-expressing ego which has first disappeared forever in His cross, before reappearing as our new Christ-expressing ego. But it is a total reappearing of the "I"! Why? Because it has been God’s fixed plan of grace from before the foundation of the world that He was going to have a vast company of fully liberated sons - liberated fully to be themselves - by whom He would fully be Himself embodied in human forms. Yet in that paradoxical relationship, unintelligible to those not initiated into it, the human "I" is its full spontaneous self, and acting as such. That is why I often say there is no egoist in history equal to our Lord Jesus Christ! He was always I, I, I – "I am the door," "I am the living bread," "I am the light," "I am the way." Emphatic self. Yet we who know Him are also aware - look within Him! - that He was always saying "I do nothing by Myself, but only what I see My Father do," and "If you see Me, you see the Father."

From just after the Pentecostal outbreak in the early 1900s people like Jessie Penn Lewis were catching this thirdlevel message. So what's been the holdup? Is it God? No. As in the natural, so in the Spirit.We've started to find out so much more of how we run in our brains, and in the rest of our bodies with DNA. As we start to catch how we are made up spiritually, we are then able to catch the Third level Message. The chapters of John 13 through 17 are largely meaningless to people who have not crossed the line of spirit going from believing ourselves to be "independent portable soul-units" to actual spirit beings with souls in flesh outer housings.(ACW)

That is precisely what happens to us. Before we know our exchanged life, while still in the struggles and self-condemnation of Romans 7, we dislike and downgrade ourselves - "O wretched man that I am!" We are compulsively negative about ourselves and deeply suspicious of what we think are our dangerous tendencies. So now it is an altogether new thing, and may take a little time to sink into us, that so far from downgrading ourselves, because He now accepts us, we now accept ourselves as His precious vessel, branch, body member, bride. Every part of us - our physical appetites, our soulish emotions and reasoning powers - are beautiful and wholly valuable as His outer means of manifestation. It usually takes a little time to realize this, just because we’ve been so used to thinking the opposite about ourselves.

So now we’re free to be ourselves, because we now know we are wholly His human forms. We live with raised, not lowered heads! Sure, we’re not unaware of the subtle misuse today by psychologists and many others of a false "self-acceptance" and "self-liberation to be ourselves." Indeed, this is universal, because the deceived natural man assumes he has no self except himself, and his only remedy for his self problems is the fraudulent build-up of himself as "inherently good." But just because there is a wave of modern, false emphasis on the buildup of self, that must not inhibit us from boldly accepting and affirming ourselves - we who truly know who we truly are!

One notable effect of this is also another kind of paradox - in that in our normal daily living, for most of the time, we forget who we are, and just function as ourselves. It is the same principle as in our professional lives. Once we are competent in our particular profession, as we’ve said before, whether a cook, teacher, carpenter, engineer, or whatever, we do not spend our hours reminding ourselves or others that we are this or that, but we just go ahead being it.

We don’t keep saying "I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher," but we just teach! So in precisely the same way, when we know that we are really He in us, we don’t keep running around reminding ourselves or telling that to others. We just do our daily job, enter into our daily conversations, etc., totally forgetting that it is He in us by us - but it is only He, all the time. So we don’t have to have special prayer times to "remind ourselves," though we love any chances we have for our secret inner-love tryst with Him. Nor do we have to come to the end of a busy day and condemn ourselves for not having thought more of Him. If we do that, He tells us not to be so foolish... for our doings and talkings were His all the time.

I don’t think my friend, Gloria, sister of former-President Carter, will mind me telling this story about her. About eight or more years ago we were together at a Faith at Work conference in Georgia, and during the weekend the Lord revealed to her the secret that she was really Christ in her form. When she returned home to Plains, she found a card in the mail asking her to speak on herbs at her garden club. But she told me that she knew little about herbs, so she spent the next day or two studying up on them. Then, after having given her lecture and returned home, she talked to the Lord in her room and asked His forgiveness because she had forgotten about Him those days because of her herb preparations. The answer He gave her: "What are you apologizing to Me for? I was co-herbing with you. That was My lecture, not yours!"

So we actually are free persons and learn to recognize ourselves as such - free to express our opinions, to make our judgments, to do our jobs, make our choices. Dangerous? It surely looks like that, and others would tell us it is - who don’t know the spontaneity of the union. But no danger to us who know our unchangeable oneness. We know that all we do is He, and we live the "dangerous life" of believing... which is knowing and thus recognizing that it is all He. We live spontaneously. If we cook, it is He doing the cooking. If we do our job, it is He doing it. If we have conversation, it is He conversing. Union in the Spirit is actual, factual. Where He is, we are. Where we are, He is. No hairbreadth separation between us can ever be possible.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version

Yes I Am 24 - Union Reality and The Charismatic

Yes I Am by Norman Grubb

Chapter 24

UNION REALITY AND THE CHARISMATIC

A question that will arise in many minds is whether what millions today speak of as "the baptism in the Spirit" is the same experience as this second crisis of faith of which we are speaking. By "baptism in the Spirit" I mean the most amazing phenomenon of living Christianity today - an experience of the Spirit, usually accompanied by speaking in tongues, commonly called "pentecostal" and nowadays "charismatic." It is amazing, because what was once regarded as some weird manifestation confined to a far-out group of people called Pentecostals, who were often given a contemptuous title such as "holy rollers," has now burst through into all the denominations of the church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, with such dramatic effects that they are welcomed as new quickenings of the Spirit by some... and opposed as dangerous or even demonic extravagances by others. But it is certainly widespread enough today for this question to be asked.

The first Pentecost, forty days after Christ’s ascension - an event He had told His disciples to await as "the promise of the Father" and taking the form of their "receiving power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you" - came with electric effect on those waiting 120. Outwardly it was a rushing mighty wind and cloven tongues as of fire, and inwardly an upsurge of the Spirit which caused them to speak in other languages. Although not in such a dramatic form as that first Pentecost, many thousands of Christians today bear witness to a like experience - usually accompanied by the speaking in other tongues and resulting in a radical change of life and a new enthusiasm for Christ by its recipients. But while this was the great transforming event of the early church and by it the Holy Spirit was experienced in His power, it did not by itself establish in them this total inner knowing of the risen Christ as their permanent Indweller, as the One who so replaced them that they could say with Paul, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

Paul himself was filled with the Holy Ghost at his conversion, when Ananias laid hands on him; but it was only later, after three years alone in Arabia, that he had that "Christ in you" revelation about which he wrote to the Galatians in such absolute terms that to preach any other gospel would be anathema.

And still more strikingly is this plain with Peter, whom we might almost call "Mr. Pentecost," for he had been the spokesman for the disciples at Pentecost. Yet years later, when he visited the live, mostly Gentile church in Antioch, what he still lacked surfaced in public form. This church had such freedom from the do’s and don’t’s of the law that Peter, though at first enjoying it with them, panicked and drew back from this new-found liberty. A group of Jewish Christians claiming to represent James, the head of the mother church in Jerusalem, had come, saying that such liberty was license, and calling on those who were circumcised to make a stand in opposing it. Peter was so frightened by this delegation that he, with others, even including Barnabas, cut himself off from such free fellowship as eating with the Gentiles.

And what did that expose in Peter? Paul told him of his hypocrisy, and it was serious enough to necessitate making a public stand against Peter. What a crisis, a historic moment in the infant church! So Paul "withstood him to the face," and what he told Peter was his revelation in Arabia which included this famous Galatians 2:20 - reality that the Holy Spirit was not only a power as experienced in the baptism of Pentecost, but the actual indwelling Christ Himself replacing Peter in his inner center.

And the evidence that Peter did not yet know this Total Truth was plain for all to see. If Peter had known not only the power of the Spirit but the living Christ within, replacing himself when these Judaizers came to rebuke the "lawless liberty" within the Antioch church, Peter would have recognized his human fear as just an external temptation, such as we all have. He would have known how to replace that outer invasion of fear by the reality of Christ within him confirming the new freedom. But God used this negative situation to bring out this glorious "identification truth" for all the centuries. For it was then that Paul spoke the great Galatians 2:20 inspired word, and in effect said to Peter, "Peter, you don’t yet know this. I didn’t either, until years after my baptism in the Spirit it was revealed to me in Arabia. You, Peter, are crucified with Christ... and instead of being your old, fearing self, you now have Christ Himself in you. He has replaced your human fears by confirming in you the liberation He has brought to us all from those old Jewish legalisms. If you had known this you would have stood firm with us all, even against the Jewish leaders. Learn that, Peter."

From all this we learn a lesson of fundamental importance. It is a glorious experience when God confirms His presence in us by His gifts of the Spirit, as He did at Pentecost. This is a gracious manifestation of the Spirit as power, and produces such marvelous effects on us that at first we may think we now have all. But in fact, that first impartation of power has to be inwardly expanded... through our personal pilgrimage in the delusion of self-effort living in Romans 7, and then through the wide-open gateway into the full freedom of Romans 8. Then He is known and established in us as the living Person He is, not merely manifested in power. By Him living His own total overcoming life in us, we are adequate for every situation.

Therefore those who have experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit - with the sign or gift of tongues, or other gifts - have been highly privileged in this great steppingstone into Christ as all in all. We can then expand that great primary experience into its full reality by moving in by faith into the "Christ is all and in all" of Colossians 3:11. Today I often find that those who have had a charismatic experience more readily respond to the revelation of the total Christ-union-and-replacement reality than do those who are inclined more to the objective relationship with Christ, as apart from us in His risen and ascended position at the right hand of God. Though they know and love the Lord, they’re often fearful of and cautious about too close an approach to Paul’s mystery, "hidden, but now made manifest to His saints,... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Some even label it as some form of "mysticism," dangerous and fanatical.

For myself, as I have many world-wide contacts with God’s people of all nations, I cannot conceive how any of my evangelical brethren really oppose as of the flesh or devil all these mighty world-wide manifestations of the Spirit, call them Pentecostal or charismatic. I cannot see how any honest person can attribute the experience of all these we meet with, these who so fervently love and worship Jesus in charismatic assemblies, to being erroneous and warn against them. To me it comes close to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

For myself, I esteem my Pentecostal brethren as better than myself and rejoice in fellowship with them as part of them, as I also do with all who preach Christ, whatever lesser differences of interpretation we may have. So when any of these brethren take a position that "you ought to have what we have," I say, "You may be right; pray for me. But I can receive and experience only what the Holy Spirit Himself confirms to me and works in me."

But divide from any? No. We are already one in Christ and we bless each other in the name of the Lord. Wisdom is justified of all her children.

Yes I Am............on Kindle

Yes I Am........... as a Paperback


Yes I Am........... free but unwieldy online screen version