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A website focused on what God is doing now! Letters on our union with Christ. |
Date: November 15th 2008 Faith Makes Christ In Me Personal A Video Recording of this Letter Dear Friends, Although I have had this list for some time, it is not until now that the Lord has released me to send out the first letter. The Lord has taken me through a time of proving my faith and has brought me through into a most pleasant, flower-filled meadow of rest in my union with Him. I have known greater anointings, but never a more delightful joy. When the Lord first shows us that He is our life, that we have no other life, that He fills every part of our human self and that every part of us, including the ugliest parts, He carries in Himself and has always carried in Himself, when we first come to that understanding, it is so foreign to everything that has ever screamed at us, from our own mind, from the pulpit, from Christian "theology", from do-good others, that it takes many months for the whole thought processes of our mind to change. Last summer, I started building an Internet publishing business in an attempt to support my family in a way I am able to do, with the hope that we can somehow get to a country property. Focusing many hours a week on business takes one's mind "away from the Lord." Then, in August, school began again and I found myself once again in the desperate place of needing God to come through for me on a regular basis. -- I disagree with most of the "Christianity" that is presented in the school where I teach - yet I see Christ certainly visible in the brethren with whom I work. I am not a bold man, nor confrontive, and the situation the Lord has created for me to walk through is not easy. I do not speak, nor would it be the Lord if I did, yet I am very distraught over many of the things I believe are in open opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ -- yet made to appear "Christian." That is the setting, but what I want to share with you is the truth on the inside of me. Always in the past, if I FELT rebellious, or angry, or frustrated, or far away from God, I believed that I was "in the flesh," and that I was, in fact, far away from God. At the same time, I once believed that if I FELT mightily anointed, with joy welling up in my soul, that I had now entered His presence. It is easy to see how absurd that notion is. Is Jesus my life only when I FEEL a certain way? Does my FEELING bad indicate that He has departed from me? When I FEEL raunchy, does that mean He has removed my sin from Himself and placed it back upon me? When we look at it this way, it is obvious that we do not determine truth by what we see with our eyes, but by what God says. God says that I am crucified with Christ; God says that I am in the Spirit; God says that old things are passed away and all things are brand new, all things in me are of God; God says that He creates the want to and the doing of His will inside of me; and so on. Truth is what God says, not what I feel. But then we get into the hard press of life. I "feel" unannointed; yet I desperately need God's help to survive the day. My Christian brethren assure me (through their devotional statements and prayers) that I am "in the flesh, in the carnal mind." All the old arguments that weighed against me for so many years crowd into my mind. "Give it up, Daniel, you know God is displeased with you. You're in rebellion, trying to do something that isn't of Him." Yet, I will not. Jesus is my life. He lives His life in all of my humanity. All of these ill feelings that seem to work against me, He carries in Himself. He is simply sharing with me the agony of His people. I groan and weep over the false teachings being presented to my own children. I grieve over the idolatry being mixed with the Holy Spirit of Christ, knowing that innocent people are being murdered right now, today, on the other side of the world, as a result of that idolatry. Through this time, I have found confirmation from the Lord through Fred Pruitt's emails and messages. You can read them for yourself at www.christasus.com The Lord has taught me these things separately from others, but has then sent the teaching of others to confirm what He teaches me. Fred was in our home last spring, a precious brother in Christ. It can be a terrible and fearful thing to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The thinking of "death to self" had worked against my faith in Jesus for so many years. We can accept doctrinally that "death to self" is open unbelief and disobedience against what God says, but it is another matter to make the leap through the dark, feeling bloody and battered, yet holding without wavering to what God says. Jesus is my life; I have no other life. I AM (NOT must make myself) crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live IN THE FLESH, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loves me and who gave Himself for me. Christ lives in me! Oh, we sang it for years and never believed it once. Always, we compartmentalized Jesus. "Yes, He lives right over there in that part of me, but that part of me has very little relevance to all the rest of me, and since I refuse to believe that He lives in ME, I must create a doctrine of Christianity that says that it is now up to ME to open all the rooms He does not live in and let Him in. And so I pretend to seek after God, all the while refusing to believe what He says." It is enough for me to say that Jesus lives in me - in all of me, in all of my humanity. And those raunchy parts of myself, He has always carried them utterly inside of Himself - He carried them all to the cross long ago, and He has never offered to place them back upon me. It is faith. It is believing against the sight of the eyes and the feelings of the human. And so I have believed that Jesus is my life, that I walk in utter union with Him, He in me, and I in Him, without regard to any feelings or circumstances whatsoever. Hold to that belief! Hold! And then the darkness passes as if it never was, and it dawns on me that I walk in a garden of peace, with a delight of oneness with Jesus that I have never known before. The joy of knowing that an unending discovery of Jesus in me and me in Jesus lies before me. Jesus, as He is right now, lives His life in my life, as I am right here. And I? I am hid with Christ in God. And the difficult circumstances I face? They are the cross He has for me right now. The cross is not inside of me, Jesus is inside of me as He is, risen above the heavens. His cross is outside of me, that which I bear with joy, knowing that it is He who is bearing it, not me. And at the same time, I can build my business, knowing that He is building my business through me. And I see His hand, causing favor to surround my efforts, with patience. I no longer seek His will. I live in His will with all confidence of joy. Jesus is my life; I have no other life. |
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