Dead People Are Free

The freedom Jesus promised those who would receive His divine life can be nothing less but the freedom found in God. If a person is to be truly free he has to be free from everything to such an extent that he is accountable to no one or nothing. He is not bound to any doctrine, article or law save the law of liberty. In freedom there is no fear, obligations, commandments or coercion.

Freedom must start in desire. It is desire that is the driving force that puts a person in motion. Every desire is unique because God is unique in every person in whom Christ dwells. It says that God grants the desires of your heart - not the desires that others might have for you. He only rewards what He has deposited in every unique person because freedom is individualized and it has to be this way or else there would be no corporate freedom.

The feet must have their individual freedom or else a person would not be able to walk. The eyes have to function independently from the ears, or else there would be no clear vision or hearing. It is each body part’s freedom that ensures that the whole body works in harmony and according to its design without any conflicts of desire or expression.

The arms do not expect the hips to function differently from their unique construction or that they are to take over for the arms. Each body part has its burden, but at the same time they carry the other parts of the body exactly because they are free. And freedom equals loneliness. Force the kidneys to be the liver, and not only would the kidneys be unhappy because they desire to be kidneys, but the whole body would suffer tremendously.

Freedom must spring from the heart of God or else it is not freedom. God is not deterred or petrified by freedom, because there is always a cross in true freedom. The knees are worn out and spent so that the rest of the body can be mobile. It says that God will fill up every valley and close every gap, that is, fill every need, but most of us are surprised that He does in, as and by us. Freedom finds its ultimate expression in that He was rejected, despised and a man of sorrows dying and rising for those who hated Him, and every day this is reenacted in us because we are free.

Freedom is to step out of ourselves and assume our position in the heavenlies beholding He living our lives for the benefit of others. Freedom is to accept ourselves and our unique desires and makeup because it is He living. Freedom is to be dead and raised to newness of life. It is to assume no responsibility because dead people are free from any responsibility. And all this would be impossible without the Spirit.

The Math of Faith

Always when we are confronted with a complex math problem we will wrestle with doubt as to whether we can actually solve it. We will feel insecure how to approach it and the path towards the solution, which we know exist, is far from obvious. This is the agony of faith or laboring faith, if you like. It in many ways resembles or feels like laboring up a steep hill. There is nothing wrong with having a laboring faith and we do not take any condemnation for it.

In accordance with the nature of math different paths will have to be explored in order to find the one that leads to the answer. These paths might be Hagar, Saul or even Judas, and they will contribute nothing towards a solution. But, there is wisdom to be extracted from each of them.

While wrestling with the problem still laboring uphill in faith you will pass a certain point of elevation and in the instant you are there you suddenly know that the answer is within your reach. It is like you are standing in front of a wide open expanse, and a profound peace settles in. This is the laboring faith becoming the rest of faith. There is still terrain to traverse, but now the steps are light while the final calculations are made with confidence, peace and a quiet joy.

In a true faith adventure the settling in doesn’t come from the persons involved. Nor does it come from circumstances. It comes from He who is the Substance.

In any commission humbleness is a deed. Don’t think too highly about yourself when there is no reason to. If you are wrestling with doubt; admit it. If you are stuck; admit it. If you don’t radiate the level of faith you thought you had; admit it. Call for assistance from the Teacher who gives liberally without upbraiding anyone. Stubbornly wrestling with the problem without calling for assistance will only leave you mulling over it without making any progress.

The mystery of faith (and of math) will remain unknown to a person if he does not have the will to enter therein. He enters by his own free will and by that is joined to the Spirit of faith. To stand on the outside is safe, but the glory belongs to the one who is inside the adventure.

The desire that drove a person to commit himself to a given task might grow cold halfway through. He might either give up his desire or have it renewed. If he give up he will be praised for his heroic effort and applauded for that he tried, but he will soon be forgotten. No one will charge him for having given up. No one will condemn him for it, but only those who persist to the end will be remembered in the spirit of Abraham.

Of course there will be pain and suffering along the road. It will sometimes hurt so much that we are tempted like Jonah to run away and build our own shield to cast a protective shadow over our heads. However, the shield will soon wither and the sun will find us again and burn our heads until we give in and move on.

A Norwegian poet wrote: Without uphills it is impossible to climb higher.

A Seamless Robe

The Old Testament temple with its three different parts is an image of man. It consisted of an outer court, the holy place and the holy of holies. These represent our body (flesh), soul and spirit, respectively. The Bible teaches that man is three-part. However, the three parts always operating as a whole. Man is further created in the likeness of God who also is three-part, but the three Persons function as an undivided unity in intent, will and expression.

Until the veil that divided the holy place from the holy of holies was rent in two our identity was basically a soul identity. Such an identity is never fixed, but is fluctuating and under the influence of varying conditions. Most of us long believed our soul was our true self until we by the Spirit’s enlightenment discovered that our center, our spirit, was fixed in God who is changeless and immutable.

“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, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebr 4:12).

It is not for us to chop up ourselves, but in order to exchange our soul identity with a spirit identity where the self is truly located in a union with the true Self, the word of God teaches us the difference between soul and spirit.

The wisdom that Solomon asked for came to expression when he threatened to split the baby in two with the sword. The one who loved the baby and who was its true mother wanted it to remain whole. The other woman involved in the dispute wanted it split in two. Wisdom hence is to perceive spirit, soul and body as a seamless whole. Jesus’ robe was one seamless piece - an image of how He functioned as a whole person.

In the context of our personhood Jesus gave us a very telling picture of man being as a lamp.

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 5:14-16).

The lamp or vessel was made from clay. Man is likewise made from the dust of the earth, and God is the potter molding the clay as He pleases. For the lamp to function and give off light it had within the wick, which is a fibrous fabric. This is an image of the soul and its inner weaving or mesh of feelings, reason, emotions, likes, dislikes etc.

The lamp is filled with air until the air is replaced with olive oil. John wrote: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). It is the Holy Spirit who fills the vessel and gives it life. The oil was to flow through the fibers of the wick and its different components to its outer point of ignition - ignited by the love of God - giving off the light of Christ to the world we live in.

The lamp analogy accurately shows how the entire man is involved in expressing the indwelling Christ. Not least our souls are now rightly used by the Spirit to out-picture or manifest the life of Christ which otherwise would have been hidden. To put the lamp on a stand means that we are now free to embrace our souls as a merit and not a liability. To know this effectively dispels any notions regarding that we have to change in order to fit into some kind of pattern or mold. We are free to be ourselves. Don’t hide your precious self and expression “under a basket”, Jesus is in effect saying.

That Jesus has filled the entire temple is vividly pictured in the Old Testament. It was the priests who brought the Ark of the Covenant, which is a type of Christ, into the temple. The Ark was made from wood and overlaid with pure gold. The wood represents the humanity of Jesus, whereas the gold represents his deity. The gates to the Outer Court were to be opened so that the priests could carry the Ark through the Outer Court to the Holy Place. Then the doors to the Holy Place were opened to bring the Ark through the Holy Place to be placed behind the Veil in the Holy of Holies typifying that we are one spirit with Him by the Holy Spirit.

It is also noteworthy that the distinction between the soul and the spirit is spiritually discerned like Hebrews 4:12 states, and Paul said the same thing: "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Prayer - An Agreement Between Bride and Bridegroom

It was vital for Jesus to reestablish prayer in the realm of faith. He had made it absolutely clear that vain repetition of words would avail nothing. Prayer had to be brought out of the realm of self-effort to the realm of the Spirit. Thus He said to the astonished disciples: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

The use of the word “whatever” means that prayer is no longer to be judged according to the tree of knowledge to good and evil, including its subtle branch: “Is my prayer for others?” It is God who is at work in you to both will and do in accordance with His good pleasure, Paul bluntly wrote. Understood in this context of freedom prayer was to be reinstated as a spontaneous outflow of the Spirit in the believer - whether in intelligible words or not.

And finally, believe that you have received it is another way of saying that the thing is done by God, and that there is nothing you can do to aid Him in the outworking of the manifestation - simply because He is the One who is God. Vain repetition of words or any effort towards assisting God would add nothing to the already finished result. Only believe!

One last thing: When Jesus educates the disciples on marriage and divorce in Mark 10 He says that the two, husband and wife, are one flesh. This is a shadow of our true and only marriage with Christ. Since husband and wife are one flesh, Christ and those who are joined to Him are one spirit/Spirit. Thus, if properly understood, Jesus’ words on prayer in Mark 11:24 make full circle back to Him, meaning that prayer is an agreement between bride and bridegroom.

The Talents

The parable of the talents in a way takes up the thread from the parable of the prodigal son where the Father says to the son: “All mine is yours.” The parable of the prodigal son illustrates how the returned son is awakened to faith and takes possession of his possessions and leaves any religious baggage at the threshold, whereas the second son remains on the outside, and even receives a reprimand from his father concerning his unbelief. The invitation is extended to both sons to enter all the Father is, but only one of them accepted the gift.

God is not an austere master. Whenever He invites us to come up higher the faith to do so is provided, but we are responsible to receive and take advantage of God’s own faith which He confers lavishly upon us. This is also true about every faith commission into which He takes us. The faith to accomplish the task is provided, and we learn to invest this faith so that what in the beginning seemed like little and wavering faith is added upon so that it becomes perfect faith; five talents become ten talents.

There is also boldness involved in using the talents that graciously are endowed upon us. The one who buried his talent stepped back in fear and his talent was taken away from him. What we learn is that God, the creator of the universe, rewards boldness. We do not, however, find this boldness as something inherent human, but we partake from the Son’s boldness. We are seated with Him in heavenly places, and since we now are accepted into the triune fellowship the boldness of Jesus is ours.

What we easily overlook when we read these parables is that we are all those persons in the parables. It is by the Lord’s doing that we are transformed into being the daring one with five talents - by Christ in us. All these transformations transpire in our consciousnesses as we are taken from glory to glory in faith, increasingly recognizing Christ as our life. These things are, however, not automatic. We are definitely involved in these transformations by our leaps of faith.

In the parable of the talents we learn that there are many who are against the king, and at the end of the parable the following decree is issued: “Slay all those who are against me.” Who are those who are against the reign of the Lord if it is not all those faulty beliefs that we somehow are something more than empty vessels?

Our point of departure is usually that we think that we somehow have faith apart from the One who is one person with us. In any faith adventure one of God’s objectives is to strip us of any ideas that we have faith apart from Him – that we can do it apart from Him. Frustrations, circumstances etc will slay us until what is left is the Lord as us. This sure is a refining process that presses us into He who is our life – not as a separate person inside of us, but as one person with us.

Faith is both natural and unnatural depending on our angle of perception. It is definitely unnatural to walk on water, and investing our talents is indeed walking on water. But, in God that veil that separates the natural and the unnatural is rent in two. Faith asks us to step into the unknown, that is, stepping behind the veil, because it is now possible to do so. Faith is our response to revelation, and it is faith because the object of our faith is a Person who is faithful and who cannot lie. Faith is further aligning ourselves with the “it is done” consciousness of the Father.

Boldness is commitment since faith also requires that we speak our words of faith in accordance with the pattern that is shown us by revelation. We believe, hence we speak. Our faith commitment is easily discerned by what we speak.

Easy, Right

After having posted yesterday’s entry “Crossing the Red Sea” I asked John Collings to read it and share his immediate thoughts on what I had written. This is his reply which blessed me tremendously:

Our point of perception certainly matters in this grasping of the faith that isn’t our own and that starting point matters until He carries us beyond our perception and without “Revelation it will Remain so.” Ultimately, our faith, our desires and even our actions are not our own.  They are His and purposed through us.  From where I sit, it isn’t a matter of me asking what I will, because it is His will in me; so how can it go wrong.  It only goes wrong or does not manifest, if it is me apart from Him which is only an illusion.

The difference between Mary, Zacharias, Jesus and me is our perception of the truth.  God takes care of any misconceptions from his vessels by giving us the perfect way to understand; through pondering, through becoming mute, through a time in our own personal dessert of revelation.  Still what we see until we see with His eyes is our limited grasp of what He is up to around and through us.  We see through the glass darkly, he certainly sees clearly.  It is His plan and His doing.  Of course His Desire will come to pass.  So when we understand who we truly are, then how can our desires help but work out.  They are His planted in us for the purpose of bearing His fruit.

Easy, Right.

Crossing the Red Sea

Jesus boldly and without any reservations said: “Whatsoever you pray for in your prayers, believe you have received it and it is yours.” This promise has flabbergasted me more than once. How could He say such a thing? He is in fact issuing a blank check to those who would follow Him.

As of now this is my best explanation: He knew that we one day would leave the wilderness and begin to flow in the consciousness of the I AM and thus take in faith that it is me speaking, but at the same time it is Him. And when we know it is Him as us all judgment is removed from the request and it will thus flow effortlessly into manifestation by Him who has spoken by us and done it in the same now.

Yesterday I was marveling at how spirit is too deep for us and without revelation it will remain so. While pondering these things I was reminded about myself praying in tongues. It comes out in a language I do not comprehend with reason. And if the words are not interpreted they will remain beyond my reach. This became an image to me on how spirit it too deep for our intellect or reason to grasp.

The language of spirit is faith exactly because faith goes against every conclusion the intellect makes based on appearances. Faith operates with facts that are hidden in the invisible - spirit facts. Faith speaks spirit knowledge – what is known on the spirit level where we are joined one spirit with God. But, even though spirit knows, emotions will waver to and fro until a settling or knowing comes from He who runs the show.

We know, thus we speak, and faith is knowing without knowing since faith cannot be verified by reason or appearances. Faith skips reason, and that is what makes faith both so simple and so difficult. Difficult because we state or confess something that is contrary to what we always have relied on when we are to make judgments; the natural and how it presents itself to our natural senses.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, Paul said. The spirit is always willing to express the deeper truths of God whereas the flesh is mesmerized by what it perceives in the natural, and thus we are confronted with these tension fields that are created by this tug-of-war between sense-knowledge and spirit-knowledge.

These inner confrontations might lead to progressively new leaps of faith. It struck me the other day that these leaps of faith find their equivalent in the crossing of the Red Sea. Will the walls of appearances come crushing over us while we walk on the dry faith ground? Safe through on the other side every belief, idea or notion that oppose faith, that is, the truth, will be drowned in the water that closes the gap behind us, and will be remembered no more. “The former things are passed away.” Walking below the sea level, below the sea of appearances, that is, walking on the sea bed illustrates how faith is walking in accordance with the spirit level that is hidden under the water of appearances.

The sea bed is rock solid substance, and it is not affected by the changing conditions on the surface. I like to think that faith is its own proof. Faith is substance – faith is facts – God is – faith is now – it is done.

It is written that Mary pondered these things in her heart, that is, in her spirit and that saved her from much agony, as far as I can see. The other extreme is visualized by Zacharias, John the Baptist's father, who didn't believe the answer when it was presented to him by an angel even though he and his wife had prayed for a son for many years. It doesn't say so in the scriptures, but he must have pondered these things in his intellect.  His unbelief didn't reverse the promise, because Elizabeth’s faith became the channel through which the promise manifested.

Zacharias temporarily losing his voice is merely another way of saying: “Be quiet and know that I am God; I have a way of which ye do not know.”

The reason why I dare to call faith a channel through which the manifestation flows is because I one night got an inner image of faith as exactly that. Without faith it is impossible to please God, we learn. Faith is the channel through which that which is done is manifested either in our consciousnesses or in the natural whether it is salvation, our union stand, a physical healing or the birth of a child. Jesus said: “According to your faith be it unto you.” Faith is the channel through which we receive and it is by faith we speak things into existence.

The new idea is conceived in the womb of God and when the time is ripe the desire will press upon us for expression and the birth channel is our faith. If the new idea is weighted in our intellect we will conceive it as impossible, but faith is consciousness and not thoughts and hence circumvents the intellect. Faith is the Christ consciousness that dawns upon us. We receive it and begin to use it. That Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith is another way of saying this.

Friction

This life isn’t really about me anymore. I am God’s and He walks as me in this life as He pleases to reach those He has placed around me. Before I can fully see this it is vital that I know under all circumstances and in any situation that I am the son in whom He is well pleased. I do not understand all the paths He takes me along. What I notice, however, is how He by my soul reenacts His own death, resurrection and ascension so that others may have life.

Around every corner in this walk I face a temptation. The temptation to believe that there is something wrong with me, that I have fallen, that I ought not think, feel or react like I do. The law always tries to make me go back to self-effort. Its subtleness can only be exposed by the practice of our senses, and it lurks around every corner trying to catch us in its net. Trying to be good is so alluring, but there is only One who is good.

Jesus was a man of sorrows, it says in the prophet. And that is a sure thing in this new life; to walk in faith believing at all times that Christ is living my life in every current moment and that I am righteous no matter outer appearances can only be established in me through various sufferings. Jesus learned the obedience of faith by what He suffered and I am by no means exempted from that.

To pick up my cross and deny myself is simply to acknowledge that I am a temple for the living immutable God, and that He works in me and as me in often mysterious ways. Jesus said: “I of myself can do nothing” and by that giving a most potent example of what it means to deny ourselves. Losing our lives is giving up any idea about self-improvement. How can a dead person go about making his appearance look more endearing?

To accept ourselves with all our weaknesses and oddities is in our inner seeing often like a huge mountain we have to ascend. But, Jesus said we could speak to mountains like that and they would be thrown into the sea. The friction created in our souls when we move into the reality of perfection against all outer apparent evidences to the contrary often causes us great pains, but the heat generated will be an outgoing flame that will be life for others.

When self-loathing, condemnation and confusion knock on the door, Jesus is even more eagerly knocking on the door to our consciousnesses. The first three insist that we are to suppress and oppose ourselves and they more than suggest that we are independent selves operating and managing ourselves apart from God. Jesus, however, leads us to the still waters of self-acceptance rekindling our faith to the fact that He is living our lives in perfection.

What Is Love?

What is love? Can it be defined within the sphere of emotions, or is love something that rests on a more secure foundation than good feelings? And what does it mean that God is love? Do I have love or am I love? Can I muster up love when circumstances demand love, or is love beyond self-effort?  Can I for instance recognize love by faith?

The answer to almost all of our questions is found in God’s declaration: “I will!”, or hearing Him say “Let us make man in our image.” That is love. It is the Fire-Self becoming light when it “chose” to become for others. This means that love is something far greater than emotions, but it doesn’t exclude emotions like the parable of the prodigal son demonstrates.

If love is an is-thing than I do not have love, but I am love because God is joined one Spirit with me, and, not least, because it is He who works in me to will and do after His good pleasure. It is He who says as me: I will! Since I cannot judge love based on emotions, love must be recognized in faith as seeing God in everything working forth His eternal purposes in all things. In the instant I say that I also understand that love is beyond appearances. Love simply defies judgment on human terms.

I hear all those calls to love almost everywhere I turn, but I have become deaf to those calls. I have learned the hard way that I cannot muster up a grain of love by self effort. This thing most of us call love, is human “love”, and it tastes like honey in our mouth, but it will turn sour in our stomachs.

However, Divine love wells up from our innermost being as a refreshing river that manifests its purposes of love spontaneously as us in everything. Love is thus resting in faith that we can do nothing of ourselves, and that it is He who does the works, and not to mention; I do only what I see my Father is doing.

You See, But See Not

Jesus at several instances said: You see, but see not. You hear, but hear not. Once facing the Pharisees and Scribes he exclaimed: “I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father” (John 8:38).

My testimony in this context is: I see and hear on the sense level seeing/hearing my life, my emotions, my reactions and actions and at the I same time I see and hear within my spirit, and what I see and hear on this level is what I see and hear on the sense level. By faith I see what my Father is doing, but this seeing isn't outer sense-seeing. But, with my natural senses I see how He comes out of me. This is what I believe Jesus was referring to when He spoke to the Pharisees and the Scribes.

James said that if the source is clean the fountain will be likewise. Spirit is too deep for us which means that without revelation we will continue to walk in the delusion that what we see with our natural senses is all there is, and hence we will judge accordingly. In other words; we see, but see not and hear, but hear not. Some authors speak about the extended senses, which is nothing else than faith seeing and hearing, that is, a recognition of that the facts of being are found in the invisible. Faith deals with these facts. It sees what is beyond the scope of our natural senses.

God’s invitation is always: “Come up on higher!” This invitation leads to, for us, new faith choices which if responded to take us further into uncharted territory. We learn to hear and hear, and to see and see. Why is this important? Because, God desires to lead His sons to maturity knowing who they are. A safe son’s testimony is: “I speak that which I have seen with my Father” no matter outer appearances. A safe son knows that he is kept by the Father and that the Father does the works.

Jesus knew Who His Source was and He knew that if the Source was pure the fountain would be clean. The Pharisees saw, but didn’t see and thus based their judgment on performance and what they saw with their natural senses not knowing that if their source, their father, was unclean their doings would be of the same quality. Jesus in one instance said about the Pharisees: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.”

Jesus’ “who by taking thought can add one cubit unto their stature” makes perfectly sense when we know that all things starts in the invisible and that our Father is the responsible One in this spirit/Spirit union, and, further, that we are the temples through which He has found a point of expression.

Come Now, Let Us Reason Together

As the Spirit expands our inner consciousness we enter new levels of insights as we agree with the truths which are His privilege to reveal to us as our inner teacher. One of those transitions that take place in our awareness is when we move from the idea that we have to keep ourselves to acknowledging that the Spirit is our keeper and has been so from the instant Jesus cleansed our temple. My great problem when beginning to see this was that I had some very distinct opinions on how He should keep me and in which areas He should keep me. Evidently this has led to some confusion on my part when things haven’t materialized or turned out as I had envisioned them. It is quite typic that when we think we are in charge that condemnation and other not so very edifying emotions find cracks in our armour and disturb our equilibrium. I am, however, confident all these emotions and sensations are all necessary in God’s rearing scheme as He continues to settle us in the reality of Christ living as us.

Another implication of me following a thought pattern where I imagine that I dictate how the Spirit is to enact His will in me is disappointment in Him, and, not least, an idea is formed in my mind which insists that I somehow have deviated from His will – that I am an impossible case, that is, not possible to control. However, there comes a day when the Lord says: “Come now, let us reason together.” When that day arrives it is a day of great release, because His message is simply: “I keep you, but I do not keep you in accordance with your expectations on how I am to keep you.” That’s all He says, but the profundity of His words when recognized promptly leads to an awareness of total safety and a new and expanded sense of liberty to just be.

My closest friend and I had a discussion going a couple of days ago. I openly told my friend about some of my weaknesses and how I had not yet experienced deliverance from any of them. Well, my friend told me, dead people do not need deliverance. That became another “Come now, let us reason together” moment.

So, I do not understand everything that transpires in my life.  But what I have come to know without a shadow of doubt is that His thoughts are far higher than mine, and that purity, holiness, righteousness and ad infinitum aren’t based on outer reality but just are because those are the characteristics of He who has taken me over in totality. In other words, everything we encounter is meant so that we in increasing measure by the Spirit can be taken from outer appearances to seeing God only as a fixed inner reality.

He is the Real One

Before we finally can accept our humanity as a right humanity we must negotiate our way through a maze of lies. They cover every part of our personal makeup and are designed to keep us in bondage and blind us from the reality that we now function as God’s agents in this present age. The devil wants to perpetuate the illusion that we somehow have a nature of our own that can act independently from God. The truth is that we are branches of the true wine and its sap brings forth fruit of the Spirit. We find our rescue when it begins to dawn upon us that we are ordinary men and women who believe what God says about us, and we do so against all appearances. In every circumstance we attest to who we are by our word of faith. We are Christ in our forms always led by the Spirit geared to respond to His promptings, and, further, that He is our inner motivator.

Emotions, inclinations and reactions are all meant even though they sometimes confuse us. Nothing originates in our selves. Jesus attributed all goodness to God. Every affection, every loyalty, every attraction, every hope, every interest, every ambition we manifest originates in the Spirit, Son and Father. Loving someone is God loving that person through us. When you love yourself, you love the Father. You want to call attention to yourself? Wonderful! Even though you don’t see it nor has such an awareness it is Christ you basically desire to see glorified. The devil will accuse you of being full of self, pride and that you long for self-glory. However, if He can get you caught up in self-flagellation and condemnation you lose your boldness and testimony.

The truth is that you cannot longer be a self-loving self because you are God’s and He has taken you over. He even uses negative emotions and reactions to move us in a special direction. Our job is simply to enter that rest where we first reckon upon Him living as us before we have this fixed inner awareness of this glorious fact. All of us is His, no part left out. We are often apt to think that we have some self reactions which are contrary to God, but that can't be. We have become His in perfection. The Spirit takes us on a variety of journeys and to a variety of places to hammer this truth home. We don't say that we one day will be settled in Him. We say in faith that we are settled in Him not paying any attention to emotions or other things which attempt to take our faith assurance from us. Every x,y and z in the equation is God and the equation yields that through us He has brought heaven to this earth and that this present age is our training ground for our glorious task as co-operators of the universe.

The enemy will continue to throw accusations at us whatever we do or don’t do. He will say to you: “You need to change! You need to do something about yourself! You are hopeless!” However, we blatantly refuse to engage in any kind of self-striving or self-improvement because we recognize that this was how the serpent tricked Eve into sin. God allows these temptations coming our way so that we gradually can come to the bottom of our being where we are faced with our nothingness. It is here that God becomes our all in all. Our release comes when we in all plainness accept and admit what is going on in and through us whatever it is and affirm that God is the Real One manifesting Himself through us as us, and ultimately we cease fussing about ourselves and just live.

I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord

It was Paul who exclaimed when I am weak then I am strong. Paul had discovered the great secret which has the inherent power to alter every new creation’s view of himself and thus move into the full reality of the cross. Far too often we are victims of the flood of occurrences that come against us. Humanly speaking many of the things we face are too big for us. A sense of defeat, depression and impotence can hold us in a tight grip. Some of those seasons are merely the Spirit teaching us that He comes perfectly through us whether we are sparkling or are down, which is an important lesson to learn for many of us.

But the majority of our defeats are a result of us trying to find the resources to face our challenges by human means. Paul had visited that place of nothingness and thus been persuaded to look somewhere else to find the strength to be an overcomer. Christ in Paul was his strength. He had thoroughly learned that he could reckon on the indwelling Christ in every circumstance. This doesn’t mean that whenever he faced opposition or difficult circumstances he would always fall on his knees in prayer. No, to the contrary, he would face whatever he met as Paul knowing that he was Christ in his form with every resource in the universe to his disposal in order to bring redemption to his world.

"And the Lord said to Moses, 'Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. But lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it; and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea'" (Exodus 14:15,16). In effect God is saying to Moses: “Why do you want me to do it? Do it yourself. I have given you a new self, a new identity. That rod of old is cleansed. The snake is dispelled. You are new through and through. Stretch out your rod (express your new self) and divide the sea.” Moses had said to God, “You do it”, but God said: “You do it.”

Every one of us starts our walk on the highway of faith with much of the old grave cloths from the Fall still upon us. Separation from God has been our blatant reality. We know the weakness of the flesh and its inclinations. We are more used to visible lack and need than the bounty of supply in the invisible. But when the new word comes which objective is to undress the grave cloths a question arises; do we have ears to hear? The prophet had and hence cried: “But truly I am full of power by the spirit of the LORD.” (Micah 3:8) In effect the prophet is saying: I am God’s mouthpiece and I am to call into existence things that do not yet exist.

Norman Grubb wrote: “You feel weak, you don't sense the presence of Christ, you feel loveless, and of little faith, and all the rest of it, because you still live in the devil's lies of the have-not life. But you have all things. All is within, if Christ the Savior is within. Burst through those bonds of feelings. Say, 'Though all men and devils say I have not, I say I have, on the authority of God's word.”

It is the personal, intimate and deeply private revelation that we are one with God which empowers us to go against the grain and boldly recognize every stirring within as a safe desire which first originated in the heart of our Father. Oneness finds no other explanation to those stirrings and as a consequence affirms the prophet’s words; “I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord.” We finally have the key to Mark 11:24: "Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them." Our faith focus isn’t arbitrary any more when Oneness is our outlook since we then are not governed by condemnation. Condemnation makes us see need everywhere even where there is no need. It brings confusion and we always fall short of its demands. The truth is that God has given each and every one of us a sphere of influence which we swiftly recognize when we operate in the freedom of the Spirit. No man can tell us what to do when our sole motivation is those joyful inner promptings which are an interwoven part of our makeup as new creations.

So, You Need to Be Changed?

A saying which we frequently encounter in Christian circles goes like this: “God loves you like you are, but He loves you too much to keep you like you are.” I wonder from where this saying originates. I cannot find any scriptural basis for it. Jesus never prayed such a prayer for us. What was His main concern? Wasn’t it that every believer should be one with God in the same manner as He was one with His Father? Evidently this prayer has been answered, because Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians revolves around eyes being opened to what is already accomplished. Paul never prayed that God in His love should change anyone. Why? Paul saw perhaps clearer than most that those who had entered God’s kingdom were forever perfected (Hebr 10:14, Col 2:10).

If you are one of those who feel that God needs to change you I am afraid I have to ask: Who has told you that you are naked? To the Romans Paul spoke about a process he called the renewal of the mind. What was he speaking about? If we are forever perfected, which we are, there must be a Spirit led process going on in each and every one of us which end is to unfold everything accomplished through Jesus Christ. We are talking about a gradually unfolding of His consciousness in us because we are one with Christ and have His mind. Every barrier, every impediment, every inconsistency is removed in Him. As our eyes are increasingly opened we go from faith to faith. It is never a question about what we should be or any striving on our part. It is forever finished. The light which shines upon us unfolds what already is. Its purpose is not to reveal any bad spots in us, but to unearth who we truly are viz. Christ in our forms.

The battleground is our souls as they are drawn to and fro on account of the circumstances we encounter in our daily lives. Many of us drag with us this utopian notion that when God has finished His work in us we will become super-Christians, whatever that is. Every day we are tempted to think due to our reactions, emotions and actions that Christ isn’t our life, that we somehow are separate selves always erring. But it is in the midst of those storms that faith is operative and we confess the truth until it one day is a settled fact. To become a teacher took me four years of higher education. Then I began working as a teacher. It took me two years in the profession before what I had taken took me and I and teacher became one in my consciousness. In no way could I advance the process. It had to run its course in the midst of sensations of stress, failure and insufficiency. However, I was a teacher every second of those two years. Those around me regarded me as a teacher, but this truth of what already was had to be settled in my consciousness. I don’t know exactly when that took place but suddenly one day I effortlessly practiced my profession.

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” This is Paul’s word to the Romans. Is he speaking about a process or is this an already accomplished fact? Do you or God have to turn every stone in your life so that you can be conformed to the image of His Son, or have this already taken place so that when you open your eyes this is what you see? The first alternative excludes faith whilst the other depends wholly on faith. Are we called to walk by sight or by faith?

Jesus on Lilies

When Jesus wanted to teach the disciples about faith He spoke about lilies. One of the most potent parables concerning faith is found in Matt 6:28; “See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin." Jesus is offering us a preposterous idea. Something can grow without putting any labor or sweat into it. How can this be? Those lilies are created with a couple of amazing faculties. Its seed is planted in an environment of soil and air. It didn’t plant itself, but everything it will become is in that seed. How does it germinate and grow? Simply by receiving water and light! And Jesus likens that receiving with faith (v. 30). By a mystic process which still leaves scientists flabbergasted those lilies absorb everything they receive and become stunning beauties.

Imagine that you are a flower in the midst of a beautiful meadow. You cannot do anything except receive sunlight, water and air. As a flower you have not the power to change either yourself or your circumstances. That would have been like uprooting yourself and moving yourself to another part of the meadow and replanting yourself there. We know that flowers cannot do stuff like that, only the Gardener can.You cannot prune yourself either. After Jesus has introduced the disciples to this magnificent image of faith He tells His listeners: Are not you more worth than any of these flowers!

Where does the light emanate from? The sun! And the sun can do nothing but give light. By that same token God is the eternal giver of light. In the similitude of God the sun is a giver. We are the recipients of every good thing from above. Receiving is faith and is Jesus’startling message to a world which is caught up in labor by the sweat of their brow. Can the flowers create their own light? Nope! They do not even try. They merely rest in the hands of their Maker.

Two Ways

One day we come to a crossroad. We are hard pressed from all sides. Current circumstances almost overwhelm us and we do not understand everything which takes place inside of us or around us. The crossroad forks into two roads. One says faith. The other says unbelief. To choose the faith road means that we accept ourselves as we are accepted. It means that we choose ourselves like we are chosen. Daring to go the faith way also means that we finally can relax because in the instant we go that way we acknowledge we are taken over in totality by God. Everything we are is He expressing Himself in our beautiful humanity. Every step we take on the faith road creates an echo which shouts in our awareness:  God can nothing but reproduce Himself in every now as us.

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true” (Søren Kierkegaard). “We live by faith and not sight” (St Paul).

The Art of Receiving

God doesn’t sow sparingly. That would to be to contradict His nature, and He who can nothing but give abundantly will therefore never reap sparingly. He gives as He has decided in His heart, never reluctantly or under any compulsion. God is a cheerful giver, and thus He is able to make all grace abound to us, so that we at all times have sufficiency in all things. He is the one who supplies seed to the sower and who will multiply our seed to increase the harvest of our righteousness (2 Cor 6:9-11).

He requires from us nothing but Himself so that the seed He has lavished upon us we cheerfully disperse and when we as His image give abundantly, from what we already plentifully have been given, more will be given us. He gives richly so that we are provisioned to supply copiously in all things. We can never outgive God, and we can never give anything apart from what we have received. That is the nature of giving. We first receive and then we give. Our inner teacher thus works mightily in us to teach us how to receive and how to recognize what we already are given.

Giving isn’t confined to the realm of money only. It covers every area of our existence, since all things originate in God. “That is why the primary function of all creation, animate and inanimate, is receptivity. Your basic function, and mine, is the same – simply to receive” (Norman Grubb). Every day we behold this principle demonstrated in nature. All things in nature spring to life because what nature receives it utilizes to spontaneously and naturally produce fruit, colors, fragrances etc each according to its own unique kind.

Two Laws

Co-authored with Andrea Garzon

The most “radical” message we hear nowadays sounds something like: “we are not perfect, BUT God is so merciful that He relates to us ‘in spite of' us." One of the most important topics in order to grasp the fullness of the redemptive work of Jesus is the “sin” question. Sin and righteousness represent two persons, Satan and Jesus, the spirit of error and the spirit of truth. Thinking otherwise, unavoidably makes us face a host of incongruences.

These are Jesus’ words on sin:

“If you were blind, you would have no sin; but because you now claim to have sight, your sin remains. [If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but because you insist: ‘We do see clearly’ you are unable to escape your guilt.]” John 9:41

“Then, the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked…” Genesis 3:7

Adam’s transgression opened our eyes to a dimension of separation, dragged us from resting in all-sufficiency to the anxiety of perpetual lack. We fell into a world of externalism and strife. We were made in the image of the One who is Love and love expresses itself in freedom. It is imperative to understand there are two laws: "the Law of God" (the law of love) and "the law of commandments" (the law men). In Colossians 2:20 God Himself refers to the Ten Commandments as "commandments of men". We may think this was the Law of God because He gave it to Moses, but all these regulations were nothing more than a mean to expose Satan's seed in man, that is, the illusion of independence.

“By the law came the knowledge of sin” Which sin? Self-righteousness, which plainly means we think we can become like God by our own powers. The "law of men" alludes to that God was talking to His offspring in their own language: "You want commandments? You think you can produce anything apart from me? Here they are!" That external approach to God that we inherited through Adam refers to the law, flesh and sin. Paul said 'sin' deceived him through the law. Which sin? Covetousness? No! The sin of “trying to be good" (self-righteousness).

We could say the outer law is for those who live by the outer and the inner law for those who live by the inner (law of love). The inner consciousness regard the outer law as something inner already fulfilled in Christ, and since He is our life we are that law of love, something we spontaneously fulfill every now in righteousness because we are love. Thus we do not regard the law in outer terms, that is, judging by appearances. Outer people, however, only see a list of ordinances they have to fulfill.

By the Spirit's mighty work in us we learn to see through everything to the core of things and acknowledge that we are beautifully made, and those "warts" we all have are a part of God's wisdom so that His glory can be manifested in everything. As we penetrate further and further into the Promised Land we do not see the outer law anymore. It is erased from our consciousness. Everything is inner and we are only accountable to our personal inner reality, which is God. Thus, those still seeing sin in relation to outer laws basically lack the faith to move on across the river.

Sin basically is a person, Satan. When we were indwelt by him we did his works and we were sin. Now, indwelt by God, we are righteousness and it is His deeds we now do, more and more so as we move past should's and ought to's (Romans 7). But, on a deeper sense we are still doing righteous works even when under the law, because we are still God's and He is using our outer failures to condition us to take that leap of faith and go from outer to inner where we find rest from our works.

The Pillars

The types, shadows and parables which abound in the Old Testament all points to Jesus Christ, who is All in all and the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth. We cannot escape the fact that we are inextricably united to Him so that many of the processes we are taken through in the temporal have a clear and distinct goal, namely to expand our consciousnesses so that we in increasing measure can come to terms with His “allness” in everything, including us.

God led the Israelites out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and He led them through the desert by His Spirit who appeared as a pillar of clouds during day and a pillar of light during night. The pillars are a parable of how God in the desert appeared to the Israelites as in a separate visible form, as if He was another person apart from them. This is how we all begin our faith journey. We see God as a celestial power separate from ourselves. He is in heaven somewhere, whereas we are stuck in the temporal with all its apparent limitations.

However, when the Israelites crossed Jordan this separation gap had been bridged and it was no longer God external, but God internal, because in the instant they entered the Promised Land the pillars were gone. This is the exact same transformation or transition which takes place in us when we take that leap of faith Kierkegaard referred to. This leap of faith aligns our consciousnesses with what is and not what seems to be. This is a bold and daring maneuver on our part since we have to leave behind everything we know, that is, self-effort, and start a process of possessing or conquering a land of promises.  It is here that we finally find out that Christ ultimately is All in all.

It can be no other way. A land of promises is governed by faith, and excludes any effort on our part. By faith we take what is ours to possess and lay hold on our inheritance among the saints. How can this be? When our ears are opened we hear “It is finished” reverberating through the ages. Christ has done it all and by us His word of reconciliation is dissipated to the ends of the world. It is by that same faith we recognize that God is the sustainer and upholder of everything. It is by faith we joyfully see that our nothingness is filled and is running over with His abundant life.

This renewing of our minds, or transformation of our consciousnesses, as it were, relocates heaven from the sphere of abstractions to a tangible reality, viz. in you and me. We have by a mighty work of the Spirit internalized the cloud and the fire. This further connotes that we no longer operate from a state of mind where we think we are led by a God apart from us, but we rest in the faith reality that God expresses Himself spontaneously and naturally as us. The pillars have in a sense reappeared to us in a new form. In our minds they manifest themselves as human beings like you and me.

Let There Be Light

Let there be light God proclaimed as recorded in that first chapter of Genesis. John has told us that God is love so letting light burst forth is love in action. As we all know God is an eternal being outside time and thus found in every now. In our spirits we hear Him say let there be light in every now manifested in us as desires, wants and willing.

Praying is responding to His love-drive and cooperating with Him in manifesting His love-will in everything. Prayer is not us calling Him into action as He somehow needs to be persuaded to intervene on our behalf. No, prayer is simply moving in harmony with His initiative to let light dispel darkness. In faith we recognize God pressing us through in love and perfection towards His gracious ends concerning His creation.

When that inner urge drives us towards praying for a person we, from our position, 'randomly' meet on a street it often seems to us that we are persuading God into revealing Himself to that person. Our prayer will then lack the convincing and sure faith that what we prayed will actually happen. But when we recognize that we are merely responding to God's love-drive in us we can pray with conviction.

Our greatest challenge is perhaps that we do not perceive ourselves as reliable and trustworthy sons in regards to our desires and willings. Both our prayer life and those actions we a desire towards will suffer when that is our outlook. The thing is that we cannot by our own powers become reliable sons. God has made us reliable sons in Christ owing to the fact that He is our life.

To make righteous judgments is to see beyond appearances and trust our spirit union with God and that everything in us is an outworking of His self-for-others love nature. We are made joint heirs with His Son. This is not something we will become, but already are. A co-heir is a reliable and responsible person. This is something we progressively come to know as we go from glory to glory.

A crucial aim for God in His dealings with us is to reveal this tremendous fact to us. How does He do that? It is by letting our own attempts at becoming something we already are fail miserably. It is by taking us through a season where our vanity is made into nothing and our imagined self-reliance is exposed as an illusion. At the bottom utterly helpless we are finally in a position to acknowledge what He has already done for us in Christ.

Far too often we pray with a conviction that our prayers merely are meeting some selfish ends, and as a consequence our prayers do not accomplish much. However, the branch-vine relationship means that we are conduits manifesting God in our daily living. He takes the initiative and we respond. Faith is receiving and faith is recognizing what we have received. Let us make righteous judgments concerning ourselves and trust ourselves as God trusts us.

Jesus final word to us in this context is: You can do nothing without me. That gives us a platform to pray boldly and with conviction in all matters expecting to see our prayers answered in glory. To step out of our mistaken identity as selfish and that we are not reliable sons is another facet of that obedience of faith to which Paul refers.

The Treasure Hunters

Being a son of God means standing in the frontline of human liberation. It also means to be persecuted and ridiculed in the midst of peace. Each son is assigned different missions so that the body is whole and lacking in nothing. The commission each and every one of us is given is in perfect harmony with our inner consciousness of who we are and our drives and whatever we are geared towards.

Some in the body are given the task of leading their sisters and brothers into a larger understanding of who they are in Christ and have a special drive towards exploring the mystery, that is, Christ in you. They are willing to take great risks in their undertaking and are willing to stretch God’s grace beyond what is commonly recognized in the community of believers. Thus they will invariably face opposition from various holds on account of that their findings often challenge people’s inclination towards self preservation.

However, they cannot but speak about what they have seen and heard, and if they have gone to the extremes, which they often do, they are confident that the Spirit will correct their understanding if they have taken it too far. They are also well aware of that some of the things they are granted to see will perhaps in an early stage come out somewhat immature, but that is no problem to them since they acknowledge that an expansion of the consciousness will sometimes lead to slight misunderstandings. But, what they one day saw as in a glimpse will one day come out as fully matured knowledge edifying those who are in a position to and willing to receive.

To be taken beyond the letters of the Bible is what they desire and when God who is more than willing to share His secrets opens up their minds they become like small kids eagerly sharing the treasures from above hoping that someone will receive and eat the fresh manna from above.

The Truth

Standing before Pilate Jesus said he had come to bear witness to the truth. Then Pilate posed the obvious question: What is truth? Jesus never answered him because there are no answers to that question. It was and still is the wrong question. Ever since the fall the question Pilate posed has haunted mankind. We have tried to answer it in every possible way from sex to complex theology. The answer continues to evade us until we pose the right question: Who is truth? Jesus came to bear witness to himself. He is the truth. He said: I am the way and the truth and the life. The startling fact is that every new creation is truth. You are truth. It doesn't matter if our knowledge is wrong. We are still the truth. If our confession is contrary to who we are we are still the truth. In every now the Father recognizes us as the truth. It is an inescapable fact that every son is the truth on account of that the Father is truth. You want to know the truth? Behold yourself. You are it! And as we all know it is the truth that sets us free. There is nothing more freeing than recognizing Christ as us.

Called to Freedom

Total freedom can only exist is an environment of no condemnation and no fear. Perfect love thus casts our fear so that we can trust our hearts, souls, emotions and desires in all things even though we not always understand their inclinations. Every moment God encourages us to walk in faith and not by what we see because in trusting ourselves we trust Him. Condemnation will always threaten our freedom and make us doubt our choices and ways, which in reality are His choices and ways. God never wondered whether He was in sin or not when He crucified His own Son or when He made the devil aware of Job’s perfection which led to Job’s sufferings. When God asks us to trust Him and ourselves in seemingly hopeless and contradictory circumstances it is because He is God and knows all things, whilst we are not God, merely His means of expression in glory, and thus we are inhibited by a limited sight and therefore faith is our means of seeing through to God only.

I Am Not the Head

By Andrea Garzon

The head’s function is to master the body. Jesus is the head and we are the body (Colossians 1:18). Acknowledging this fact does not make Him the Head, for He is, whether you reckon it or not, just as the law of gravity works whether you believe in it or not. Living by any form of restriction or self-government states: "I am the head" (for the head runs the body). This completely negates my condition of dependence upon Christ as the source of my wisdom and illusory establishes my humanity as such. Satan deceived Adam with the same lie he deceived himself: “You can be like (a) God”. What ‘a god’ is? A god is a source, a creator, a separate self-sufficient being. Obviously Satan's proposition was a bluff, a mere illusion because we were not created to be something of our own, except from expressers, vessels, tabernacles, branches and containers of the one and only true Deity.

I am sure God's desire is that we live a life of adequacy, but that is solely achievable after going through the acknowledging process of “I no longer live”. This is certainly a stage we cannot omit or overleap. Which part of us no longer lives? That which was bound to the obligations and demands of the law. We died to considering ourselves as heads (self-controlled beings), although this is a mere illusion because there is only one Source in the universe.

Walking after the flesh (under the Law) can be defined as living by any source apart from the Head, although this “independence” is nothing but a deception because a body cannot walk without a head. The Spirit takes us through seasons of “trying to run our lives” in order to expose that illusion of separation, and settle us in the reality of Christ living our lives as us, which brings a sense of competence.

Our sufficiency rests entirely on our dependency upon Christ as the Head, but do not approach this dependency as, "I must depend more on God" or "I must consecrate my life more". Forget it! There is no such thing as “I” apart from Christ; this is still part of the deception, as if this union reality with God was something external. This dependency I am talking about here goes beyond the mere concept of reliance; it is a life or death matter, as the tree is to the branch. You can still be deceived believing you are the head (your own source), although this does not diminish a single bit the truth that you are not.

The true ‘denial of self’ is actually renouncing to that illusion of independence (false self). The term ‘flesh’ has nothing to do with ‘wrong doing’, but with wrong ‘seeing’. This detachment, falling away from grace, or alienation from Christ that the Bible often talks about, is of the consciousness (seeing/focus). The Word does not say God was our enemy, Colossians 1:21 says we were enemies of God ‘in our minds’ (consciousness).

Jesus said: “Take up your cross and follow me”. I believe the ‘cross’ he was referring to, is the realization deep down inside our inner consciousness, that we are not running our lives anymore, and this is a process that unquestionably involves agony (no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful). Of course, it is not when you reckon yourself as dead that you die, that is a fact, but the reckoning allows you to experience and enjoy your new resurrected identity. We do not need to 'know what to do' because that is the role of the head. Colossians 2:10 says: "And you are now complete in him, who is the head of all rule and authority..." That is why there is now no condemnation; if the head cannot be condemned, the body cannot be condemned either. Forgiveness and acceptance is a quite inferior description of what the good news are all about. The gospel is about an exchange of owner. We were once containers of the spirit of error (vessels of wrath), now the Spirit of truth indwells us (vessels of mercy).

Although it takes a while to be established in the reality of Christ as the Head, once we are settled in this glorious truth, we are able to experience that peace that surpasses all understanding and enjoy His sufficiency as our own. Now we can shout "I can do all things...".

The Wind Blows Wherever It Wishes

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8).  We can only speak about what we know and bear witness to what we have seen. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit and can behold the heavenly things and testify to their glory. Reason and our senses can only testify to what we hear and behold in the temporal. Spirit truth must therefore circumvent our senses and enlighten our minds by other means. We are alluding to the Spirit’s expansion of our minds as far as we are willing to receive His teachings.

The realization of the reality of which Jesus draws an outline can’t be found within the limitations of what we encounter in the natural and it must far surpass outer laws and regulations. To be a wind that blows wherever it wishes denotes an inner awareness that merely carries vague memories of concepts such as sin, guilt, moral, ethics and duty. To be bound by nothing and accountable to nothing but one’s inner reality of freedom, which is heaven as so far we belong to Christ, is that wind which no man can control, but merely observe in either astonishment or annoyance.

The Real Thing

By Andrea Garzon & Ole Henrik Skjelstad

Almost all of Christianity is obsessed with this idea that we have to change. In the church this quest for becoming more holy and righteous is characterized by self-effort. The emphasis is on you and what you have to do in order to improve and become a better person. In grace circles the stress is put upon correct teaching. If you just get to learn how much God loves you and how righteous and holy you are that change in your life you long for will quite effortlessly come to pass.

Let us for a moment speak about geography: Would you call a mountain an imperfection or a flaw because it's not flat? Or a valley an imperfection because it's hollow? God’s view on beauty and perfection as displayed in nature is fascinating. And this applies to our personalities too! His creation might seem “crazy” and from a human perspective marred when we only focus on outer things like mountaintops that are not flat and erupting volcanoes.

Let us also be pragmatic for a moment. I can't change? Can you? Why do we encounter this emphasis on change when God lives His life as me? Can God change? No! How can the immutable God change? If He wants my valleys to be deep then let them be deep. If He wants my mountaintops to be ragged, well, let them be so. May our inner eyes be opened so that we can embrace ourselves in our stunning and amazing perfection!

The fact is that those who preach a gospel of change are opposing themselves. To put it bluntly, they look like a bunch of clones trying to "be more like Jesus". We are not supposed to be clones. God’s idea is that we are supposed to be “more like ourselves”. There’s no need to be afraid of ourselves, because it is Love that drives us. When we have tasted the Real thing, we cannot go back to a gospel that put all its emphasis on that we are not whole and need to be changed.

Behind all these "doctrines", no matter the label, unbelief reigns. To enter the gate of Gal 2:20 is scary because that in a sense implies zero control for man, but the paradox is that in the instant we enter that heavenly entrance we find ourselves in Christ with all His resources at our disposal. It is when we recognize the PERSON, the Real Thing, as us confusion must end. When we learn what a person is, that is, a person is a person containing a PERSON, and recognize this person in work in us as us that quest for change becomes void and nothing.

To be depraved of the knowledge that God is the one acting and working in us is, however, a necessary preludium to possessing our heritage as free sons. It is most necessary that we learn that change is impossible by either this or that, so that the Son can emerge in us. But, this is not either our full heritage. True freedom is attained when we “forget”, that is, “not knowing or perceiving” that it is God acting in us as us. We are just ourselves in true freedom.

Thou Shalt Love The Lord With All Thy Heart

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, the lawyer answered Jesus when Jesus challenged him concerning what must be done to inherit eternal life. I assume the lawyer soon enough found out that he hadn’t it in him to love like this. Since there is only One who is love in this universe the reality is that no human can love like this. It is beyond our capacities. God only requires himself so we can only love God with His own love. But, a most crucial question is how is this love expressed in our relation to God? Is it a matter of emotions? Is it related to how much we do for God? Has it something to do with obedience? Or is it expressed in faith?

In what ways did Jesus express His love towards His Father? It is true that they often spent time together, but not that often. Jesus spent most of His time with friends and His disciples. He was even accused of being a glutton and drunkard. The question thus still remains unanswered. How did Jesus love His Father? We are so accustomed to gauge, think and assess in terms of outer realities and appearances that we assume to love God is something outer, for instance, like good works.

If that is the case we have fallen for one of the enemy’s tricks, because love is something inner. It is simply saying yes to God and trust His reality when He opens up our awareness to things far beyond the scope of our natural minds and which shake the foundations of which our reason is secured. It is to dare to jump into the river and get soaked in whatever the Spirit shows us concerning our identity in Christ. To love God is to dare entering the reality in which He moves lives and has His being, that is, total freedom to be being accountable to no one save our personal inner reality. This is what Kierkegaard called existentialism. It was Eckhart who said that when the Father begets the Son, He gives Him all His nature and essence! We are that son in our unique expressions of Him. If we are still caught up in a sin-consciousness, questions about the law and things that pertain to our temporal earthly abode we haven’t yet dared penetrate the infinite abyss in which God dwells and by that expressed our love and trust in Him.

Love Cannot Go Wrong

Co-authored with Andrea Garzon

“As for God, His way is perfect; The word of the LORD is proven; He is a shield to all who trust in Him” (Psalm 18:30). What does it mean that His ways are perfect? We find in the scriptures several instances where God speaks about His ways. He says that He will cause us to walk in His ways. We also learn that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and that His ways are not our ways.

What we now are going to share is based on two revelations which make the foundation for our exposition: “Contrary to common belief, God’s goal is not to improve us. The new creation is perfect, how could you fix perfection? There is nothing more spiritual than being yourself and enjoy it” (Andrea). “‎"Freedom is the ultimate form of life because it is God's kind of life" (Ole Henrik).

"God's kind of life" implies that we are free to choose and that ALL choices are okay! All of them are righteous and holy because they are born out of freedom. We often think there is one specific plan God had for us and this is what we call "His ways" for our lives. However, "His ways" really means "His ways of doing things" and "His kind of life", and both are perfect because He is love. God is free, therefore we are free and whatever we chose is perfect! That completely takes off from our shoulders that heavy burden of "what if I mess up?" The quoted verse from the psalms confirms how God is free and how He shields our choices in freedom! To trust ourselves and our choices means that we trust God and the quality of the new life we have been granted!

In Genesis 20 we find a most curious story. Abimelech, King of Gerar, took Sarah because Abraham lied and told everyone she was his sister. When God intervenes all blame is put on Abimelech, and Abraham goes free. In fact Abraham’s riches are increased in the course of everything that transpires. We never find that God rebuked Abraham for his actions. On the contrary, Abraham is commissioned to pray for Abimelech so that God saves the king’s life. This account is a most startling testimony on God’s faithfulness and how He treats His own. Abraham acted out of his freedom to choose and God shielded his freedom to be himself in whatever form that would appear. To our natural minds it seems quite unfair that God blamed the king for everything. What to us appears as apparent unrighteousness (Abraham lying) isn't so to God, because Abraham was righteous, that is, in a New Testament understanding indwelt by God.

Whatever deed we did under the influence of the spirit of error was evil. WHATEVER deed we do now is righteous. There are plenty of things that look really "unfair" due to our conception of "right living", but according to God's perspective EVERYTHING we chose is okay, and this is His will for our lives; that we can chose. We have often believed that God's perfect will is like a target and if we miss the target we would have to conform to His "second will" (or plan B or back-up plan if we somehow mess up.) There is no plan B, everything is plan A.

It demands a huge leap of faith to dare to enter the reality of His ways, that is, to act and live in total freedom which is His ways. Do we dare to trust that He is our shield no matter what, and that everything works together for good for those who love God? And isn’t it so that the greatest love we can show God is to trust His reality when it opens up to us and boldly enter into it? We often think God is saying: "Ok, you are free, BUT if you chose wrongly, assume the consequences!" Well, yes, in a sense there are consequences due to our choices but they are all God's will.