Date: February 15th 2009

And I in You
By Daniel Yordy
www.dyordy.com

Every word God has spoken to us, every word He speaks in the New Covenant, He is fulfilling in our lives right now. Jesus is the Word God speaks. This is God's doing. We are simply, as Fred Pruitt shares, the bush that is not consumed. God is the fire. Yet He has chosen us, and all we can do is laugh with joy and embrace Him with all of our hearts.

Right now, the doorway into the fulfillment of the New Covenant is wide open, for a little season, before the storm hits. My purpose in these letters is to share with you what God is doing right now in me, both the truth of His Word, and the experience of His fire. My hope is that some, a few at least, will find that God is doing the same precious work inside of them.

Two words I want to place in front of you. Two words that could become life to you, if you wanted them to.

The first is "Call those things that be not as though they are."

The second is do not limit God, ever.

Do Not Limit God! Do not say or think, thus far and no more.

There is not one word God has ever spoken into this earth that He does not intend to fulfill in our lives right here on this earth, right now in this age.

Do not limit Him.

Let's reach for the farthest:

"And I saw thrones and they sat upon them and judgment was given to them."

"And she brought forth a manchild and her child was caught up to God and to His throne."

"He who overcomes shall sit with Me in My throne, as I overcame and am sat down with My Father in His throne."

"That you might be filled with all the fullness of God."

"Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb."

You might say, 'This is definitely not talking about you, Daniel Yordy, nor me.'

My answer is that you are right. And with God, I call those things that BE NOT as though they are.

Most of God's people are gambling. They are betting that God will not fulfill what He speaks inside of them, at least not here and not now. The saddest thing in all the world is that they will win their bet.

What do any of these look like? I have no idea, nor does anyone. We are no more than the bush that is not consumed, living our lives in this world. But God is the fire and God does what He says. And whether I live or whether I die, I will live in faith, and I will die in faith, believing that ALL THINGS that God speaks, He fulfills in me.

Here is the most amazing thing. When God says, "As He is so are you in this world," He means two seemingly opposite things. First, He means that as we live our lives, our human lives, we are Jesus living His life through us. This word God speaks is not what "should be" it is what IS. We do not "get" Jesus to live His life in our human lives, He just does. He is the Savior for goodness sake!

Let me share two things that happened to me in the last couple of days. First, I have been walking in such a gladness that I have never known. But in the midst of that gladness, Jesus continues to open my understanding of He in me through the pressures of daily living. First, I read a book Friday in which three characters end up walking away with 2 million dollars each. I thought to myself that I could certainly use a nice sum of money like that. So my mind drifted to the lottery. You know, if you don't try, you can't win. The Lord will give you the wealth of the heathen, and all that. I didn't get the chance to buy a ticket, but it's fun thinking about it. Then, early the next morning, as I was lying awake in bed, I could sense what I have always understood to be "shame" inside. A sense of a barrier. It is my habit always to place myself inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of me in my "sight" any time any form of shadow falls upon me. But the sense of "shame" did no t leave. So I thought through the last while, as I used to do, searching for what it might be that caused the shadow. Then I thought of the dream of winning the lottery and in an instant I understood what I had never understood before.

Always I see the human me as Jesus living His life in me. And then I knew that sense I had always called "shame" was not shame at all, it was jealousy. Jesus is jealous over me. That feeling was not me, it was He in me. He loves me so much and delights to be my joy and light. He loves to freely give me all things richly to enjoy. And He is quite miffed when I look elsewhere for anything. Always before I had pictured an angry God who was stern against my "sin," and though I had always pressed through the "guilt" until I knew His "forgiveness," I could never draw close to One who required so much.

How very very sad. And what joy now to know the truth. I live with my head leaned against His breast. When my attention is caught elsewhere, He chides me, and I, remembering my Beloved, return joyfully to His embrace. This is living by faith.

The second incident was this, one of my students was wearing a "peace" symbol, which is the broken cross used by very evil people to dishonor and spit upon Jesus as they carry out their hideous practices. I had shared with her what it really was, but she wore it again, so I called her aside and shared, a second time, a bit more strongly that that symbol was not "her" but it was the device of those who spit upon Jesus.

It has always been my nature, then, to worry that situation in my own mind. I think and think what I would say or do if she continued wearing it. I have no intention of controlling or manipulating anyone. So I tried to make myself stop rehashing it in my thinking, but I could not. Again, yesterday morning, early, I was again worrying the thing in my mind, as I have done for years when I got into something that confused me, something I knew wasn't right, but had no idea what to do about it. But this time, I saw Jesus in me.

Suddenly I understood that I had always been reading myself wrong. This "worrying" was Jesus in me, not that He worries, but that He intercedes. Intercession had never appealed to me in the past. Who was I and why would God listen to me or how could I accomplish anything useful? And most intercession became a groveling before an "unwilling" God. -- "Have mercy on me."

No, this was Jesus, sharing with me His own agony of heart. But it is He, and He is the One who intercedes. And so I prayed for this student in expectation of faith, knowing that all I was doing was expressing the intercession that Jesus was already performing for her. I did not pray long, but I joined her and Jesus in my own heart. Then, with all certainty, the need to "worry" the thing in my mind lifted and I felt it no more.

I have been accused of "thinking too much" by elders in the church who thought they were "fixing my problem." Never did I know through all those long years, that it was Jesus, expressing His intercession inside the human me, wanting me simply to join my heart in agreement with Him.

All the years of loss makes the present revelation of Jesus so very very precious.

And so, when we look at our own messy life in this world, we see that it is always at all times, Jesus living as us. And never do we think that we are "obligated" in any way to "make" things happen.

But the opposite is also true at all times. Jesus is living His life in us as we are, and we rest in that certainty at all times. But Jesus is much more than us. "As He is, so are we in this world," includes everything that Jesus is right now. He is the creator of the universe, the resurrected Christ ascended above all the heavens. He is the defeater of all of His enemies, He triumphs by fulfilling in this dark and fallen world every word the Father has spoken through Him.

He is the fire, we are the bush. All things that He speaks, He fulfills in us and through us.

At the same time that He always lives in us in all of our human weakness, so, just as certainly, He always lives in us as all that He is in all of His divine glory and power.

Do not ever limit God, in your own life or in anyone else's.

God is never inside our box. We are the only ones there. Whatever limit we may place, God is always beyond it.

Believe in Jesus.