Saturday 15 June 2013

Covenant Series P17: Our Inheritance by Daniel Yordy

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17. Our Inheritance
The New Covenant is several things. First, it is a Blood Covenant, second it is a Marriage Contract, and third, it is a Will of Inheritance.
By the Blood Covenant, we walk side by side, heart to heart with God in Person filling us full – walking through all the concourses of the universe through all the ages to come in the Bond of the Covenant.
By the Marriage Contract, we receive the seed of Christ into ourselves. We bear and bring forth the very life of God into visible reality that all creation might know and see and touch the Living God.
By the Will of Inheritance, we possess all things. We possess all things found in God, in His nature and His Person, first, and then we possess all things in creation, second. This on the one hand, but on the other hand, by the Will of the Inheritance, God finds His inheritance in us; God possesses us.
The Bond of the Covenant and The Inheritance are closely related, actually all three are found inside the Covenant. The Bond of the Covenant corresponds to the nature of the Father. Producing and revealing LIFE is what the Holy Spirit is all about. And Jesus is the Inheritance, it's writer, it's proving, and it's being.
In this letter I want to focus on the Inheritance.
We inherit by right, upon the death of Jesus, all of God. Yes, we inherit creation as well, but that's small stuff compared to inheriting God. God Himself is our reward.
Don't ever think of God as “simple.” God is simple-hearted, yes, and only the simple-hearted can know Him. But God is infinite and eternal. That means that the complexities found in God never end. It also means that all the complexity of God is right here present and right now in fullness.
Yet after 10,000 ages to come, He will still surprise, astonish, and bewilder us with avenues and vistas of glory and wonder we had never before considered.
Anyone who thinks God is dull has never actually thought.
Yet there is a word in the New Testament, part of the fine print of the Covenant, that has always sparked the deepest groanings inside of me on my face before a holy God over many years. That “fine print” clause is tucked in here and there, repeated mysteriously. Jesus said it this way:
I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away. Luke 19:26
There is no question that the Spirit word coming out of Jesus' mind as He spoke these words, as they were remembered years later by someone explaining things to Luke, as he then wrote those words into Greek, as they were then translated into English, there is no question that a certain muddledness crept in.
It is hard to speak a Spirit word into human language. That's why God uses symbols and metaphors; it's why He reveals Himself only through story, and why the same Holy Spirit resting upon Jesus must also open our understanding to the Spirit realms out of which these words were spoken.
Annie Schissler, in the seeing of God she was granted, describes this same Spirit word over and over as God showed it to her in differing ways. Let me share two – though I have to pick between many.
A Final Opportunity
Taking me into His world where everything vibrates with divine life, He showed me some of His workings with His own ones here below in this dark world. He was showing me His dealings, including His saving works to bring forth His own ones unto salvation. These workings took place amid great conflicts between acceptance and rejection of those things which God offered them. In their moments of opportunity, when He granted them the  privilege of His offers of grace and mercy, those who received entered into the blessing He had purposed for them, and all was well. Others continued to reject His gracious offers all though the period of their God-given opportunities. This conflict waged its fierce battle within their wills: they could “will” to receive, or “will” to reject. There came a time when this opportunity came to an end and was taken away from them. Those who had rejected could no longer choose; there was no longer any inner conflict, for the time of their opportunity was over.
Then the Lord showed me how He granted them yet another opportunity; this time they were forcibly brought to His gracious offer. Once again they were forced into this inner conflict of their own wills; once again they had the option of choosing the thing that he was sending; but this time the pressure greatly increased, for He sent a still greater light to them.
Those who chose unto good and received that which He sent forth to them entered into good, and it was well with them; but He was much displeased with those who still rejected and refused His mercies in this further period of their opportunity. When He took this opportunity away and withdrew His offer, it was very final; it would never again come to them. Their rejection was now final, and there was no remedy nor place of recalling their lost opportunity.
Three Processing Realms
Today the Spirit of the Lord showed me yet another mystery of His workings in His own ones: three separate realms which were processing areas. The first was called the “realm of God's dealings.” The second, the “realm of growth,” into which His own ones were taken after they had passed through His dealings. And the third, the “realm of enrichment,” where all was adorned and made beautiful.
These three realms of processes were consecutive in their order: the “realm of God's dealings” being followed by the “realm of growth,” and this realm followed by the “realm of enrichment.” Each of these three realms could be possessed partially or completely. However, the acceptance of His dealings only in part brought a corresponding limitation in growth and enrichment.
He also showed me that there are other “realms of processing” apart from these first three. For example, a certain process with its resultant blessing from God had been purposed for a certain individual; but that process was still far from him. If that person remained open and receptive, this process would move forward to him and he could receive it on the condition that he remained receptive and open, and in an attitude of expectancy. To the contrary, if he did not remain open and receptive, he would lose the offer completely and would not even be aware that such a process with its resultant blessing had been offered to him. He escaped both the process and its resultant blessing, without even knowing that it had existed and been destined for him.
~~~
In another vision Annie saw a great sieve very fine. Some passed through the sieve and thus entered into the next place in God destined for them. Others did not enter through the sieve and thus passed on and were never offered that place in God again.
These words, “without even knowing that it had been destined for him,” were always too much for me to bear when I read them. To be given an opportunity to enter into a special place in God and to not enter or even to walk stupid and oblivious to that place? Such cannot be considered. And so more than once, in a sense of horror of the terrible weeping and utter loss that must come to those who do not seize hold of that for which God has seized hold of them – I got off my duff and ran back into the pursuit of God in the midst His dealings in the midst of His church.
Now, I do not read these visions at present apart from Christ living as me, that Christ is my only life. As sons of God, we are not subject to “visions,” rather any seeing that comes by the Spirit is always subject to the authority of Christ inside of us. We live by the power of what God says in His word fulfilled in us.
Nevertheless, these visions are just an expansion of what Jesus said:
I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away. Luke 19:26
God is filled with many rooms, dimensions, capacities, experiences, and provisions. In My Father's house are many dwelling-places. That word has two distinct meanings, and it is intended fully in both directions. It means that in God there are many places to live, higher or lower, in fullness or in-part. It also means that the church, God's house, is filled with distinct places for God to dwell, you and me, members of His body – that each of us, each “room” for God, is unique and special and one-of-a-kind.
So we understand that knowing God is knowing a Being filled with an infinite number of different places and experiences. To know Him increases without end. On the one hand we are called to hold the door wide open that many might come rushing in – that whosoever will may come and drink. On the other hand, God never forces anyone to partake of Him. We experience only that measure of God that we desire. If we're not interested, we will never know what God would have given us freely.
Annie also saw a vision of a great room filled with many wonderful things. It was a room of great joy and blessings, greatly to be desired. Many came into that room and enjoyed what was there. But after awhile they stopped using what God had placed in that room for their advancement into a further knowledge of Him. After no longer using those things, the room became ugly and undesirable to them and they were happy to leave it behind.
Let me include next part of an ongoing communication with Bonnie Morris.
~~~
Bonnie, I am deeply honored that you would keep reading what I write until you see yourself as I see. It stirs my heart to be found worthy of such trust. It always "troubles" me to think that people are hearing from God through what I share, "Father, am I leading them to You?"
I was also struck, here, by what you share about those who once "spoke in tongues," etc., who no longer "believe in" those things, but have adopted a definition of the kingdom that is passivity, a complete non-involvement between God and us as interacting persons. What we were saying about "Those that have not, even what they have is taken away," struck me with sorrow. One could say the same thing this way. "Those who do not value the things of God inside of them, will slowly lose the practice of those things until they "believe" something entirely different." Now they are locked out in their own minds, "Been there, done that, nothing to see." And all the vistas of the heavenlies behind those gifts of the Spirit are now lost to them. Some will recover, but many will not, not until a future age.
You see that truth in the Annie visions, over and over. God offers something to His own; some take advantage of it, and some do not. Those who do not enter into this next thing God has for them are never offered that again. It was reading one of those visions that birthed the cry in me, "All of His ways concerning me are perfect. He has never led me wrong, but everything I have needed He brought to me and all of my life has been exactly what was needed to bring me into those things God has appointed for me." It is a statement of faith, BECAUSE I cannot have it not be true.
You see, I am at heart an explorer, you have no idea how much of my life has been devoted to exploration, whenever I could. The thought of arriving at some mountain peak in the knowledge of God and seeing before me a wondrous valley and then finding the way barred because "you did not value that inside the time of proving, you cannot know it now," finding my own flippant words standing in my way, that, I could not bear.
Edward Kjos was expressing a similar thing in a recent video on his site, the sorrow over those many who once rejoiced in a vision of overcoming, of the manifestation of the sons of God, but who no longer regard such a thing. On the earthly side, they just pull back and find other interests, but on the heavenly side, it's what Jesus said about losing what you have.
Our inheritance, the Person of God Himself filling us full, is worth considering to any length. Let's take just one field, entomology, the study of insects. One could spend a lifetime of intense study on all the complexity and variety of insects in all their life processes and never come to an end, never really count one's self an expert. Yet all of that vast complexity and wonder is just one tiny part of a tiny creation inside the God who fills us with all of Himself. All creation is just one thing in His pocket. In other words, He is so vast, so complex, so filled with wonder, so many awesome rooms, such vast fields of study, such indescribable avenues of pleasure and joy and awe.
Then I receive a daily email of a statement by Kierkegaard that we can't understand or know God, so faith is just completely blind. And I wonder at the passivity of our fellow believers who, filled with such complexity and wonder, find nothing that interests them! They've never read, I guess, Jesus' statement that the Holy Spirit will lead us into ALL truth.
Everything presented to us in the New Testament, every experience, every gift, every truth is there ONLY as a door. Behind each of those many doors are whole world's of truth and experience in the God who fills us full - if we are interested.
One problem is that people think He's big and tough, so they stay away from Him. They don't realize that He speaks quietly, and everything of Him is found in what He says, but we can do whatever we want with it. We can do whatever we want with God; He is entirely at our disposal.
So very few want to know Him; most just want to escape discomfort. For many grace is just a wonderful way to escape discomfort, not a way to engage with the Incredible One who desires to walk in them.
Here now, I'm writing a letter that is supposed to come later in the series. But maybe it comes sooner than I thought. Resurrection is part of the Ark of the Covenant as well. The Mercy Seat is the end of the Atonement, sitting down at the right hand of the Father. Yet there we are as well.
Blessings, Daniel
~~~
Sometimes I write better when I write personally to someone I know, so I will leave the above note as I have shared. I want to expand, now, on some of the things I said to Bonnie, specifically the God of  many rooms, the God of many doors, all of which are the one door, Christ. We inherit all of Him.
First, this whole way of thinking, that we may “miss out” on wonderful things in God because of our foolishness produces in us, when we do not know our full union with Christ, an anxiety that actually serves to separate us from Christ and thus “miss out.” The greatest jeopardy passage in the Covenant implies that we can fail to partake of Christ by losing our confidence that He is our life, that He is fully victorious in us.
Even when I began this journey of speaking Christ – eating of the tree of life, I was still swayed by this anxiety, momentarily, reading through the Annie visions – and this is what Jesus said, enter in or lose out. I was still able to sense that anxiety because I believed only and did not yet know that Christ is my only life.
Now, I see this entire issue entirely differently.
I love to explore. Give me a map and a vehicle and mountains filled with roads and streams, rock faces and little lakes, and I am in heaven. What is that next ridge, but a place filled with wonder, ascending into the clouds. And the valley it blocks? Just the next wondrous place on our journey of cooling streams and bright meadows.
How can God be filled with adventure if there is no adventure?
How can He be our everlasting joy if it's all just the same old same old?
There are two ways to view Jesus' statement: “To him who has more will be given, but he who does not value what he has, even that little bit will be taken from him.” The first way is to think, “Oh me, oh my. God probably doesn't like me. I do so poorly, I'm sure He must curse me. I may never make it.” This evil way of thinking creates two outward stances that are both an offense to God. The first is the obvious, “Poor me,” the second is far more prevalent. The worst outcome of this theology is adamant, flint-gut determination, “All that the Lord says, I WILL do!” And by this theology, Christians spend their lifetimes transforming themselves into something they think looks like Christ, but in actuality makes them completely unlike Him.
We lay out this contrast to shine the brightest light on its opposite. “'To him who has'? Well, I have. Christ is my life: I have no other life. I am seized in the grip of His determination, and He proves all that He speaks through me.” And thus came the cry of my heart, “All of His ways concerning me are perfect. He has brought to me everything I ever needed. I will never miss out of anything in God appointed to me.”
I am trying, in some limited way, to convey a sense of this room-filled God whom we get to explore, to possess, and to dwell inside of from joy to joy, from adventure to adventure, from goodness to goodness.
But God is always both/and. He is never either/or. He is a God filled with many rooms, everyone of which belongs to us. And He is a God filling a body of many rooms, through whom He flows in glorious liberty, healing, setting free, bringing life and joy and goodness to others.
We possess what we know. – Learn of Me.
All that the sole of your foot treads upon shall be yours. – Learn of Me.
Next, I want to look at the doorways into and out of these many rooms in God in us. Doors go both ways. To us all doors are wide open. Why are all doors wide open? We believe in Jesus, and we expect God.
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Romans 8:32
These doors go both ways. By these wide open doors, we rush into every particular found inside the Person of the God who fills us full. And by those wide open doors, God pours Himself out through us, each of us His many rooms, touching every hurting soul, bringing life and joy when once there was none.
This is the Covenant. It is a Covenant of joy.
God placed Gethsemane as the Veil to keep out those who really are not interested. The moment we arise from Gethsemane, the Cup turns into Joy. We arose in Him. When the Lord Jesus rose to His feet in Gethsemane, turning the Cup into Joy, we arose in Him.
Here is the dynamic God places before us, the inflowing and the outrushing.
   “If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink – out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
Drinking always comes first. God knows how to flow out from us; He does so as we enter into Him. It is impossible to engage with God without becoming life to others, both in visible ways and in ways yet unseen. But those who “have to be” life to others, who are driven by a whip of duty to “reach the lost,” have little knowledge of Christ Himself to give them and thus can only make them “Christians.”
The world has been full of “Christians” for 2000 years and creation has not yet been set free. Christianity is not the answer. The answer is found in these words:
Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. Behold I have come, in the volume of the book it is written of Me, to do Your will, Oh God.
   I am the door – in the volume of the book it is written of Me.
I want to look at the Door who is the Door into every room in God and who is the Door of every room of God's temple out of which He flows.
Christ is every word God speaks. Let me include another Annie vision.
The Fullness of His Word
Once again in marvelous mercies He reached down; lifting me up in His arms of love, He took me into the world of light to show me more of the wonders and mysteries of His unseen things.
God does not communicate with us as we communicate with one another. His words and ways of communicating are so utterly different from ours that there is really no comparison. Sending forth a few bits of information or an idea that will enlarge man's fund of knowledge is our way of communication, but it is not His. When God communicates with us, He sends forth a word with a part of Himself in it. His way of communicating is to send forth a very part of Himself to us. His word – if word it might be called – is a part of Himself in living power filled with light, vibrant life, and creative force. Thus, when His word comes to us it is filled with the very life of God Himself.
He has given His own ones a special gift; the faculty of reception that enables them to receive this communicated part of Himself. This ability, which is far superior to hearing, is a spiritual sense that enables them not only to receive this living word from God, but also to receive all the fullness with which it comes to them. No part or portion of His word is either lost or screened out for lack of our ability to receive its fullness. In this way He gives us, time after time, a living part of Himself which builds up His nature within us.
From God came forth a living word, accompanied by a force of fulfillment which caused His word to be executed and thereby fulfilled. This word was sent to bring forth, as it were, a very concentrated essence from among His own ones, which came forth by the power and force of His word sent to them.
~~~
First, I did not receive this understanding of the Word God speaks from any other source than the Bible, good Bible teaching, and the revelation of the Holy Spirit. A word such as this vision comes as confirmation, not as the source of truth. But as confirmation, it establishes our hearts in what God Himself says.
The “letter of the word” is simply the heart of the reader who looks at the Bible as a source of bits of “information” about God and how they should try their best to “be like God.” The “Spirit of the Word” is simply the heart of the reader who looks at the Bible as a volume filled with the Door, Christ, into innumerable rooms in God and through which God comes by His Living Word to birth and reveal Himself through us, His many rooms in more ways than we can count.
To the first reader, every word is a weight of obligation.
To the second reader, every word is a doorway into more adventure and joy than could possibly be considered.
The working of the Covenant and the climax of the Great Story of God are the same thing.
God is filled with an infinite number of wonderful and good things. But He is invisible and unknowable. How can creation, both heaven and earth, enjoy God when He is a total blank? Yet God is not a total blank; rather, He is joy indescribable, adventure and pleasure forevermore.
God shows Himself by His Word. But that Word is a living Seed that carries inside itself the power to bring forth all the life that is in it inside of the hearts of those who believe, who connect with that word in the boldest of faith.
Let's see if we can paint this picture rightly.
God is infinite and filled with an infinite number of rooms filled with unending glory and goodness. He wants to share Himself with His creation. We and this Covenant are how He has determined to do that.
Every single word God speaks is Christ, that is, a Door into a huge room of God Himself. Those who enter into that particular room by the Covenant then become the room itself and the open door through which God is enabled to reveal that particular part of Himself to His creation.
He pours out of us as we drink of Him.
But this is not a static thing, water in, water out. Just look at the wonder of creation – so complex and varied, so filled with every imaginable kind of thing, expressing beauty and usefulness in every possible kind of way. We can look at the sea teaming with wondrous things, or the jungles filled with life. We can study the air and the clouds. A person could spend a lifetime studying only rain and never come to the placing of “knowing all there is to know.” And the usefulness of anything comes from surprising connections unforeseen. Nothing God made is useless, nor anything that might interest someone a “dead-end.”
Then there are the stars and planets and unending wonders in the cosmos. But I have left out innumerable rooms of wonder in the physical side of creation and have said nothing about the larger number of wonders in the heavenly side of creation.
And all of this is just a tiny expression, just a little bit, of who and what God is. And all of what God is fills every part of us in all fullness.
This is the Covenant. We possess a room in God, entering through the Door, His word, and God is now free to reveal that part of Himself to others, to the enjoyment of His entire creation, both heaven and earth.
We are His glory.
Now, every single human being God created is designed for particular arenas inside of God, to know those things, to possess them, and thus to be the revelation of God concerning those particular things appointed to them. We are members of a many-membered body of God BECAUSE God is and always must be too much. There is no weight upon me to know and to reveal everything that is God in every word that He speaks. I would blow up and pop! Yet I am filled with all of His fullness. Wow!
And so when someone says, “Speaking in tongues doesn't interest me,” that's perfectly fine. That is their right. Yes, they may never know all the vistas in God that are opened to us through praying and groaning in the Spirit, but that's okay, God is pretty big.
Yet the Covenant is with those who “overcome.” That is, those who are not satisfied with knowing only a little tiny bit of God, but who enter into the Holiest of All in all boldness, determined to drink of all that He is, determined to set creation free by the God flowing out of them.
The world is full of timid souls, and God has a place of goodness and joy for every one of them. It is highly unlikely that timid souls would spend much time reading these letters. Knowing God in boldness is a pretty audacious enterprise.
God is a consuming Fire, filled with untameable desire and unquenchable determination. To be caught up into God is to be caught up in an electric tornado who will spin you into places you've never dreamed, and who will risk His life and yours to prove His word true.
And He is gentle and tender and kind.
There is an exchange in John Chapter 12 that is so very telling.
“While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them. — “He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him – the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day.”
God never forces anything on anyone. The Covenant is there for all believers to freely enter in. Every word God speaks in the Bible, coming to us as the Living Word, Christ, is a door into rooms in God untold. Jesus is that Door. He speaks, then He seems to disappear. He never pushes what He says. Yet to reject His word is to reject Him. To fail to eat of, to KNOW the life of every word He speaks IS to be judged by that word in the last day.
We will never say, “God, I did not know.” For He will say, “No, son, you did not want.”
But I lay this reality of the nature of Jesus, the nature of the Word God speaks, that we can do anything we want with every word He speaks alongside the other possibility. Yes, we can ignore a word, defy it, “try to” “obey” it, twist it, jump on it, walk away from it, crucify it. We can do anything we want to our Creator, and He will not fight back.
But we don't see in that way. No, here is the boldness in which we live.
I have the right to become a son of God.
I have the right to know, to possess, and to reveal every word God speaks, every facet and dimension of this God who fills me full.
The Covenant is by invitation only. We BOLDLY enter in.
We receive every word God speaks by faith. We drink of that word, knowing that it is Christ our life and that He brings forth every nuance of that Word as us in this world. We are just like Him. And thus God is free to reveal Himself to His creation as He always wanted to – the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
This is the Covenant, the Blood Covenant between the Father and Christ our Life. We possess Him and He possesses us. The order cannot be changed. If we are waiting for “God to possess us,” we will never know Him. We must share God's heart, the heart of boldness. We possess God; then He reveals Himself through us.
Take any word from God concerning Christ our life. Know God through that word, and expect God to reveal Himself though you by that word.
This is the original intention and purpose of God; this is the whole point of everything.
God will be seen and touched and handled. He is determined it shall be so.
The Covenant gives to God the very desire and drive of His heart.

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