Writing Chapters 17, “Anti-Design – Again,” through 23, “Designed by Accusation,” has been for me the most intense writing I have done yet resulting in a mighty transformation in my knowing. Delineating and defining each of the specific parts of the serpent’s lie as it works in Christian thinking has done so much for me.

Two specific things that have happened for me are first, that so many holes have been filled up in my understanding, resulting in a sea-change regarding my confidence in God. The sea change is that I, once again, feel as if I have turned around for the first time. Part of what is different is that I now see the layout and focus of Set My People Free from an entirely different view. (The first chapter of that text will be the “next” chapter of Knowing Jesus as He Is.)

Then, second, I find myself so encased in the knowing of God within me and tight all around me, out of whom I am coming every moment, that I can no longer imagine any nonsensical separation in which to “wiggle.”

That section of this “writing to learn” is so important, and would, I do believe, bring silence to anyone honest enough to read and consider all of it. Nonetheless, I feel so fully that it is complete. For that reason, these last three letters in my outline will be a full return to our true design by Christ as every Word God speaks, with little reference to the other.

Yet I will be writing everything in these three letters now out from this new-found place in which I am sitting.

In this letter, now, I want to place the “rules” of Christ thinking, how such ideas might be God’s design of our true souls. Then, in the next letter, we will consider how we are designed by Christ, by every word God speaks. Finally, in the final letter, I want to talk about how we sing this wondrous song of the Lamb.

I have adjusted the layout of my “rules for Christian thinking” from the rough draft I sent to you earlier to the final form in the print copy of Knowing Jesus as He Is. At this point, I have changed what is on the website to the final version.

But before reading these “rules,” we must define the term “rule” as I am using it in this context. I do not mean a “rule” which we must obey, but rather, as the principles by which God operates inside His own being. Since our hearts are letters of Christ, written with the living Spirit of God, these same principles, then, govern how we think.

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How We Think.
1. The first work of God in a believer’s life is knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself in Person, lives inside of your heart.

• 1.1 You know the Lord Jesus Christ as He is only as the One who dwells in all that He is in Person inside your heart. You know Jesus only by heart and only through faith.
• 1.2 God’s Heart, ruled by His determination, stands above and directs all that God speaks in the Bible. We are overwhelmed with God’s determination that we would be just like Jesus as Father made known.
• 1.3 Your knowing of God and God made known through you is the completion and fulfilment of all that God speaks and does. It is the age-unfolding life that Jesus gives us.

2. Jesus is every word God speaks. We treat with every word God speaks only as it is the Person of the Lord Jesus.

• 2.1 The Bible can be the Word of God, but only as the words of the Bible enter through your faith and by the Spirit to become Jesus Himself alive in you as every Word God speaks.
• 2.2 Jesus is our Saviour and Friend, the One who carries us, the One upon whose breast we always lean our heads, connecting us together with God our Father in every way.
• 2.3 Jesus is the design and pattern of everything that exists, sustaining all things by His good speaking. Jesus, specifically, is our design as humans, fulfilling God’s intentions to work together with us, making all things good, and to reveal Himself to all through us.

3. The second work of God in a believer’s life is knowing the full immersion of the soul into the Holy Spirit, thus becoming capable of learning heavenly realities.

• 3.1 As you are immersed into the Holy Spirit, you know the Words written upon your heart as Spirit and Life. Word and Spirit are always entwined together and Personal inside of you.
• 3.2 You eat of Jesus as Bread as you ask God to fulfil in you all that He means by what He speaks and then believe you have received all you ask. Then, having asked and believed, you speak Christ as your own soul, your own story of self.
• 3.3 As you walk in honesty, knowing you are incapable of pleasing God, so you walk in confidence that God Himself is performing all He desires in you. You give thanks in and for all things; Jesus Himself directs your every step, regardless.

4. God is always together with us, filling us with Himself, in the same way that heaven and earth are always together.

• 4.1 Heaven and earth are part of one another, one place together. Heavenly things and earthly things act upon each other continuously. All created things exist only inside the Spirit and the knowing of God. What appears in creation may not look to us like the substance out from which it comes.
• 4.2 God created humans weak for His purposes. – That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. For that reason, God embeds our human weakness and every particle of our lives inside of His love, rooted and grounded in love.
• 4.3 God created humans to be filled with all of Himself. Man is created to contain God; man is custom made to fit God; man is what God looks like when He appears inside heaven/earth.

5. God is together with His creation, bearing all sin and grief inside Himself and expecting with all faith that Jesus will restore everything.

• 5.1 God is personal, invisible, and symmorphic. That means that God is a Being who reveals Himself through other persons. For that reason, a believer can know God only personally inside him or herself and only through the permission of their faith. Yet God is also the One who carries us through all things
• 5.2 Sin is falling short of one’s created place. For a believer, that means not abiding in Christ and Christ in them through faith. It means unthankfulness, self-hatred/self-exaltation, pretending to be right, and contempt for others.
• 5.3 God accepts nothing less than all creation restored back to Himself. This is the purpose for which He sent Jesus into us, to share form with us, to make us just like Himself, thus making God visible and known to a creation that does not know God.

6. Christ is our life, every Word fulfilled. We have no other life.

• 6.1 Everything is already finished. God never speaks anything that is not already fulfilled and completed inside Himself. Just as God exists as complete in Himself, so, in the same way, every Word He speaks exists fulfilled.
• 6.2 The Cross is absolute and complete. Every element of the old creation has already perished in totality upon the cross. The cross is our doorway into Christ; the cross is our protector from all sin and death.
• 6.3 Complete and present union with Christ, Jesus living as us, is the only age-unfolding life. The Lord Jesus gives us all that He is inside of all that we are and takes all that we are into Himself as His own.

7. The third work of God in a believer’s life is knowing full union with Christ and thus living inside of God as the Holy of Holies in all boldness.

• 7.1 The Blood removes all consciousness of sins. By the blood, you never see yourself as “fallen short” or “disconnected” from God in any way, ever.
• 7.2 The boldness of a true heart alone takes believers into everything inside of God. An aggressive desire to know and to live inside of God is the only thing that pleases Him.
• 7.3 Believers live only inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of them. This symmorphic relationship is Salvation, now and forever, the only place you live, the place where you BELONG.

8. We then turn around inside the Holiest, in absolute confidence in God, with hearts utterly devoted to Him.

• 8.1 Absolute confidence in God is the only thing that pleases Him, declaring with all certainty that His Word, the Lord Jesus, is true and Personal inside of you and giving thanks in all.
• 8.2 Believers put the Lord Jesus Christ upon themselves entirely through faith, sinking into Him living now as them in every circumstance and moment of their lives.
• 8.3 As Father God is devoted to you, so you also devote yourself utterly to Him, to share His Heart together as your own. And as you are devoted to Father, so you separate yourself from the outward human “glory” of this world.

9. Our hearts are God’s Mercy Seat as we share with Him His love for one another, carrying each one in our hearts.

• 9.1 The essence and meaning of God is Love. Know Father’s Love; live inside of His Love in all confidence; be as you are already, the expression of that Love.
• 9.2 God is travail through you, carrying all things inside Himself, laboring with you over all for their sakes, seeing with you all things good, bearing with you the cost of love, bringing forth His knowledge through you, that all might know Him.
• 9.3 As believers love one another, so they share Hheart with God. Know that you are the Mercy Seat of God, practice being that Mercy Seat, love one another out from your shared Hheart with Father, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

10. We see the Church as the Beloved of Jesus, one body and one Spirit together. We commit ourselves to that Church.

• 10.1 Christ is a many-membered body; believers are part of one another. The Church is the end of all salvation, the fullness of Christ, the dwelling place of God forever. Church is Father made known.
• 10.2 Believers live in and by the same One Spirit. We see each other as belonging to each other. We drink of the same Spirit together. We see the entire Church across the earth as one Spirit and one body.
• 10.3 You commit yourself to walk together as one with other believers in Jesus, to love one another, to be together the revelation of Jesus Christ, Father now seen and known.

11. Together we take our place as God’s authority, setting creation free, bringing life to all.

• 11.1 God placed humans as His authority over all. Changing our place never enters God’s mind. We have the authority of God to love one another and to call all things into goodness.
• 11.2 The work of God flows into all creation through humans. God reveals Himself, makes Himself known through us together, and His work is accomplished in creation by the sending forth of the Spirit as a River of Life.
• 11.3 The great task of believers is to set creation free. Our confidence is the first proof of Christ, and our loving one another is the second. As we love one another, so that River of Life flows out into all things, bringing all things into the glorious liberty of our Salvation.

12. We walk together as the full expression that is Christ, casting down every false word and sending forth the Holy Spirit as Rivers.

• 12.1 Believers walk as if already resurrected, just as Jesus walked, by this response to every Word God speaks – Let it be to me. Having no sufficiency in ourselves, we know that God directs our every step in the celebration of victory.
• 12.2 Through humans God proves Christ against all that opposes. The accuser accuses the Word God speaks of falseness; we cast that voice down as the Church together. Jesus proves Himself true as we see Him as He is in one another.
• 12.3 The ministry of Christ is the sending forth of the Holy Spirit to accomplish all that Love desires. That river of the Spirit flowing out from Father and us together will transform everything with the knowledge of God-made-visible.

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As these “ideas” become the only way we think about everything, and always keeping #1 as #1, so we find our own souls fully in tune with the thinking of Jesus.

And please understand, these are not “my” ideas. Three quarters of these ideas are what God says through the ruling verses of the Bible. The remaining, though from slightly less important points of God speaking, simply fill in the gaps as applied to the unfolding of Christ through the seasons of our lives.

Also understand, that ALL Christians possess ruling ideas that they use to define and place every word God speaks. Most of those “rules” come out from the serpent’s words in the garden. By choosing our own “ruling ideas,” we are not different than anyone else – except that we prefer to live in the ideas that are Christ Himself.

At the same time, we know that we could never “make” these ideas the rule of our lives. For all of these ideas are, in fact, a Person, and He already lives as us.

For that reason we know that we are simply acknowledging what is already true.

In fact all we are doing is obeying Paul’s injunction – the fellowship of your faith energeoes by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is inside of you inside of Christ Jesus (Philemon 1:6). When I read through the above list, I am reading every good thing inside of me inside of Christ Jesus.

By acknowledging that these things are true, that is, Christ, He Himself becomes the melody, harmony, and rhythm of my song.

The transformation of my mind, then, takes place, not as I make use of these “rules” in a mental fashion, using them with my brain to judge every thought flitting through my mind. That approach, we well know, cannot work.

Rather, the transformation of my mind takes place as all of these realities that are Christ within my heart pass from my heart through faith, that I would ask and believe I have received, to my tongue, that I would speak these things as Christ personal as me, to my eyes, that I would see through the eyes of the Lord Jesus to see all things pure, to my mind where I just naturally begin to think of all reality in terms of what God says.

It is called “conversion,” which, from the Latin roots means “the act of coming together with truth.”

Consider all of God’s thoughts concerning me. (And when I say, “me,” think in terms of yourself, the “me” as you. I make it personal to myself because Christ MUST BE Personal.)

God’s thoughts concerning me contain in themselves all the ages of the unfolding of my own person, reality, and experience. Is there any shadow of darkness in those thoughts? James said that in Him is no darkness at all nor any shadow of turning.

Jeremiah said it this way, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). [Remember that Paul applies all such statements as referring only to Christ and us inside of Him.]

Look at that – the thoughts that I think towards you. God’s thoughts are not temporal or passing. God does not think “about” us. God’s thoughts are us before we become. But the act of God’s thoughts becoming us in our person, our reality, and our experience, happens through a process, again, of conversion, or, as Paul put it, Ekenosis.

The metaphor God uses, then, is the spoken and the written word, that is Christ Jesus spoken out from God and written all through our hearts.

Jesus is the conversion of God’s thoughts, which are an essential part of God Himself, becoming us.

Thoughts of peace and not of evil. – that is, – has blessed us with all spiritual good-speaking in the heavens inside of Christ. Then – to give you a future and a hope. The word “future” denotes the unfolding of our lives through all the ages to come, all already inside of God. And “hope” means, not someday, but rather, expectation.

I sit here expecting that God’s thoughts ARE becoming me in my every present moment. That’s what hope means. And I fulfill God’s word to me to give His people hope, then, only as I connect you in all joyous expectation, with the knowledge of God’s thoughts always and right now becoming you through Christ Jesus.

You, in all that you are, in every moment of your life, are utterly and only coming out of God through the good-speaking of Jesus.

But that is not and never will be a rigid “perfection.” The reason is, very simply, that God always sets you free of Himself in every same present moment. Thus you, as God’s thoughts expressed, relate with God in the present only through faith, only through your delight in being God’s thoughts revealed.

You are perfectly free to be what you are, a human. And thus you are free of God to make entirely your own mistakes. Nonetheless, as you walk together with the Father out from whom you come every moment, walking together in the present moment as He, by action, shares your life with you, then you and Father together, by your shared Hheart, the Lord Jesus, and through your shared Sspirit, make all things good.

Let’s bring back in the five actions this word, that is Jesus, is always doing in every present moment. – 1. Creating. 2. Sustaining. 3. Setting Free. 4. Subduing. 5. Restoring

(1.) We come into existence every moment because Jesus speaks God’s thoughts concerning us. (2.) We are sustained in our existence every moment as Jesus causes us to exist by the words of His power. (3.) We are set free from all control and in full respect of our persons every moment by the liberty that is Christ Jesus. (4). Jesus is always actively winning our hearts every moment. (5.) We are always being restored back to the Father, Father and us together, by every word that God speaks.

Never, in all the ages to come, will this dynamic process of our existence ever alter or cease.

The goal of the transformation of our minds, then, is that we would think, in all ways, like Jesus thinks. And that goal is not that we “copy” Christ, but that we acknowledge Christ.

“I acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that You cause me to exist in every present NOW by Your creative speaking. I acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that You sustain my life, that You energeo me in this present moment by the power and goodness of Your every word. I acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that You set me free of Yourself in full honor and respect, that You think more highly of me than You do of Yourself. I acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that You are always winning my heart to Yourself in love, but especially in this present moment. I acknowledge, Lord Jesus, that You are always connecting me with Father, making Father and me to be one Hheart together in sweet fellowship.”

It matters not to me what thoughts flit through my brain or what feelings weigh upon my emotions or what foolish mistakes I might make. The Lord Jesus Christ IS the only writing there is to be found anyplace inside my heart. His words are my only source; I am coming only out of Him.

I want to insert, now, an assignment for you. It’s no good to “think about” God’s good ideas. We must follow God’s simple path to make those good ideas to be the only thing we know.

More than that, a brother who has been reading my letters for several years, shared with me that he had, for the first time, carefully completed every step in the assignment of “Practicing the Mercy Seat” this last time I included it in Knowing Jesus as He Is. The brother shared with me that doing that exercise has transformed his life.

Jesus must be in your mouth. If you do this assignment carefully and in full, you will begin to think Jesus as your only knowing of everything.

Assignment:
Transfer the Christ Thinking of Your Heart to the Thinking of Your Mind.

Purpose of Assignment:

• To become personally familiar with the “rules” of Christ thinking.
• To know all the writing of Christ found already within one’s heart.
• To transform the writing of one’s heart into the thinking of one’s mind.
• To think as Jesus Himself, seeing all things as He sees them.

General Directions:

• This is a large assignment that will be the work of many hours. In this exercise, you will study and take notes, you will write out your own lines, and you will engage with God through asking and believing, and through speaking Christ personally as yourself.
• To accomplish this assignment you will need a printed copy (or more than one for marking) of the “Rules of Christ Thinking,” as well as the text of Knowing Jesus as He Is.
• Your task is to create your own version of each of these points written down, first as prayers of asking and believing you have received, and second as confessions of faith, those words as Christ personal as you.

Specific Directions:
1. Print out a copy of the “Rules of Christ Thinking.” You might want more than one copy since you will be marking it.

2. Work with one point at a time. Since each set of three in this list is introduced by a larger concept, you actually have 48 different points. Work with each one distinctly. Don’t skip anything. Of truth, you might want to do the three points from each chapter before you do the one point that sums up the chapter.

3. Skim through the lesson that explains each one point you are working on. As you do, jot down three or four very brief notes on things that make that point relevant to you. Also make note of the key Bible verses that are God speaking that point.

4. Before writing anything each time, give thanks for all of your present moment. Give thanks for your mundane life, that God IS expressing Himself through you in every circumstance. Give thanks for the good, for the bad, and for the ugly. As you give thanks, so you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, so you know Christ written upon your heart.

5. With each one point, first write out your own personal version of asking God to fulfill that Word in your life and heart and mind, as His will concerning you, and then write the words of believing you have received. [For the one negative statement in this list, the definition of “sin,” simply rephrase those things to the positive, as in, “I possess no consciousness of sins.”

6. There is a very important reason why you must study each point for yourself with the actual words God speaks in the Bible. At no point do I want you to be quoting me. My purpose is to give perspective and understanding to the word God speaks. Your job is to make His Word (not mine) your own. Use the things I write ONLY as they enable you to know what God says. Thus, in your writing out your own personal renditions, make use mostly of God’s words, using my teaching only when you know that what I am sharing makes those words become life and Jesus personally in you. Each lesson contains those verses you will need for this task. If my Jesus Secret Version does not work for you in any particular line, feel free to use any version you wish. Just speak what God speaks. If you know of other verses you want to include in each point, feel free to do so. Just speak what God speaks.

7. After you have written each prayer, placing yourself into full recognition of Father with you, speak that prayer out loud. Be sure that your confession of believing you have received is inside your prayer each time.

8. Then, with each one point, write out a short confession of faith, making those words personal as you. Speak each one out loud. Shout them at the top of your lungs.

9. Continue on through, point by point, writing out each first as a prayer of asking and believing, then praying that prayer, then writing out each as a personal confession of faith, then speaking that confession out loud.

10. When you get to the points that include your togetherness with other believers in Jesus, be sure to include that togetherness in your prayers and confessions of faith.

11. When you have completed all the points, a work that should fill a number of joy-filled hours, then go through them all again. In one go, pray all of the prayers in the full expectation of Father with you. Then, in one go, speak all the confessions of Christ made personal as you in full Confidence that you ARE part of Christ coming every moment out from Father upwelling as fountains of water inside of you.

12. Live every moment of your life in this giving of thanks, in this asking and believing you have received, in this speaking of Christ personal as you, in this walking every moment in the knowing that you ARE, that Father and you together share all things together, Father and you together make all things good. Think as Father Himself thinks you through Jesus spoken and then written all through your heart. Think that Father is always arising inside of you. Think that Father shares all things with you. Think that you and Father together make all things good.