4. Sing of Good Things

That the sharing [koinonia – fellowship] of your faith may be energeoed by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is inside of you inside Christ Jesus (Philemon 1:6).

Why MUST we sing of good things?

Awhile back I ventured onto someone else's page on Facebook, a sister who reads these letters. She and many who responded to her were rejoicing in the goodness of Christ. Then, another sister placed in her comment. I do not remember the exact words, and thus I must paraphrase what this other sister said. – “The Christian life is not all about joy and rejoicing. We have to get rid of sinfulness first (before we can rejoice in the fullness of Christ).”

Let me restate these words as they really are. – “You here are so wrong to be facing Jesus now. Turn your backs on Him and join with me to look at sin, first.”

I was writing about control in the church at the time, and it was clear to me that the only real purpose for this other sister to say any such thing was to win control over the conversation and over the hearts of her sisters. If they had regarded her words, they would have come under her control. I did not read further; I am confident they did no such thing.

Let me state my position concerning sin in my flesh.

1. I, Daniel Yordy, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I am condemned in my iniquity by all the righteous judgment of God.

2. I, Daniel Yordy, am incapable of getting right with God or measuring up to the image of Christ or pleasing God in any way. I continue condemned in my iniquity by all the righteous judgment of God.

3. I, Daniel Yordy, refuse to inject the drug of self-delusion, more terrible than heroin and more addictive than alcohol, into my veins. I will not pretend to “obey God.” Should I succeed once, I will fail the next time.

4. I, Daniel Yordy, shut my mouth before a Holy and a Mighty God. All thought of being “right” or proving that I can “make it” has ceased. I will not speak such offensive diarrhea.

5. I, Daniel Yordy, accept my guilt, my incapacity, and God's righteous judgment. I accept, with all my heart and with all finality, that God has put me to death upon the cross. I am dead, crucified and buried with Christ. – I agree fully with God.

That's it. I have no other relationship with sin.

Those who “try to be like Christ” have rejected God's hatred against sin, and they have rejected the cross. They believe they can fix what God has already declared unfixable, condemned, and executed. They do not agree with God.

There is one way only to “put off the old man,” and that is to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. All those who are busy “putting off the old man,” will never, not in ten billion years, ever put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Why not? Because they are in love with themselves. They are stoned on the drug of self, this incredibly dark and invalid belief that being empty of God now is okay, that they can fix themselves.

Now, I say all this to show exactly why we MUST sing of the good things of Christ filling us full. The ONLY other song, the song sung by too many of our brethren, is more dark and wicked, perverted and sick, than we are capable of comprehending.

We enter into Christ, into John 14:20, through the cross, through Galatians 2:20. Thus we live beyond the cross. But living now beyond the cross means that we live in the absolute knowledge of the justice and of the finality of that cross. – One Sacrifice for sins forever.

I sing of Christ now because I know that I, Daniel Yordy, a sinner, was executed by God. I have no other song to sing.

But if I am dead, then how can I be alive? Here is the evidence that, though I was once and forever executed upon the cross, “I” am still around inside this new man who is Christ. – And He calls His own sheep by name (John 10:2).

This is the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe, this Shepherd, this “He.” By the breath of His mouth, Jesus calls my name, “Daniel Yordy,” and I arise inside of Him out from an empty tomb. I exist by hearing Jesus calling my name. I chose to hear Him call my name every moment. I would live nowhere else. Every part of me is found only out from Jesus calling my name.

Here am I, I and the children whom You have given Me (Hebrews 2:13). – The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live (John 5:25).

Why do I choose to hear Jesus call my name every moment? – Because I love Him. I exist only because Jesus calls me by name every moment out of the grave.

That is the backdrop. Now let me give the other end of the picture, my present reality in the knowledge of God. When Paul said that we are transformed by changing our minds, he was so right on! Perception is everything. James was precisely correct as well. The tongue is the rudder of our ship. We will go, rapidly, in the direction that the song we sing takes us.

Why do people speak of getting rid of sin and sinfulness? Because they love sin. There is no other explanation. And their love of sin will see the increase of sin and sinfulness in their perceptions, regardless of Christ their Savior.

Why do we speak of all the good things of Christ inside of us? Because we love Christ Jesus. There is no other explanation. And our love of Christ will see the increase of the knowledge of God in our perception, regardless of any failings of the human.

An enormous change has come in my perception. I will only briefly describe the change, but then I want to enlarge on what it means. Here is the change, as best I can state it.

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). Father has arisen in me in my knowledge, through Christ Jesus, and now dwells utterly with me.

Christ alone exists between Father and me, and He exists as the Bond, as the Glue, that binds Father to me and me to Father. Here is the Song of the Lamb – the Father and I are one.

My perception of Father with me and me with Father is best expressed in two ways. First as the most incredibly profound statement in the universe, the sum total of the gospel and all of Salvation; out from this statement flows all the purposes of God forever.

– Jesus lives in my heart. –

So here inside of God inside of me inside of God, I look out. My body is out there somewhere, my soul is out there somewhere, my spirit is out there somewhere. BUT God is not. God is not “out there.” There is no God “out there.” Even my mind and emotions are “out there,” but God is not. God, all of God in fullness, is in here and utterly with me.

(You will notice that “God” has slowly shifted in my general speech to “Father.”)

Second is this thought, that Father and I share all things together. Every circumstance, every difficulty, everything, Father and I walk through it together. There is no “God out there” sending stuff at me. Such a thought no longer exists in my mind.

But here's the deal. Because I see Father and me utterly bound together by the Lord Jesus Christ, sharing all circumstances, all difficulties and all joys together, even all stumblings and failings. Because I see that whatever is coming against me is not coming against “me,” but against Father and me. Because I see that Father and I are one, then everything has changed in my perception.

Paul was not exaggerating when he said, “this light affliction.” James was not being ridiculous when he said, “Get excited when you fall into weird and unusual difficulties.” But neither one saw the full extent of their words.

Father and I together, through our travail, are setting creation free. Father and I together, through our travail, are birthing the new heavens and the new earth out of our belly, a new heaven and a new earth that will swallow up all that was old.

The Song of the Lamb is not Jesus' performance. The Song of the Lamb is Jesus' relationship with the Father. – The Father and I are one.

And how did I come to this present Song of the Lamb? By singing of every good thing inside of me inside Christ Jesus. Notice Paul's words: every good thing which is inside of you inside Christ Jesus. Clearly, this can and should be read two different ways both at the same time. First, it is every good thing in me because I am in Christ Jesus. And second, it is every good thing in me because Jesus is in me.

This distinction is important because our tendency is to deify Jesus, making His qualities super-human, as if “Christ” is not the revelation of God through a Man, as the apostles argued. Yes, there are innumerable elements of divinity that are inside this very long list of good things inside of us, but the elements of our humanity are just as much a part of the good things.

In my last letter, when I wrote out confessions of Christ my life, I wrote of things pertaining to Christ as He proved all the faithfulness of God in the gospels. That is one side of our picture. Everything we can say of Christ as He walked this earth, everything we can say of Christ as He is right now, the resurrected Christ of God, King of the Universe, everything inside of all that is Christ is found inside of every good thing in me in Christ Jesus.

But what about human things, things of my soul, things of my natural, earthly abilities? God designed and created me to be just like Himself. Filled with God, every part of me is good. Empty of God, every part of me is evil.

Christ lives in our hearts through faith. – We walk by faith and not by sight.

I am filled with God if I believe that I am. I am “empty” of God if I believe that I am; that is, I prevent myself from knowing Him.

You see, when a Christian perceives that God is not in his or her flesh, even though Paul states specifically more than once that the Holy Spirit fills our bodies, then that perception creates a false “absence of God.” Inside this false perception, it makes no difference what the flesh does or does not do, it exists apart from faith and therefore must be hostile to God.

But when we perceive the Father all through our flesh by His Spirit, then we rejoice even in our own human qualities, for they are filled with life and goodness.

What I am saying is that our song of good things goes back and forth rejoicing in the good things of Christ in our one Holy Spirit and the good things of Christ in our earthly humanity, flesh of His flesh. And that even includes all the weakness of our bodies. Listen, it is substance that rules, not appearance. As we lock ourselves into the singing of Christ, we come to know that everything is different from what it appears.

Only one thing matters regarding these years allotted to us in these bodies of flesh in this present age – the shaping of the human heart to fit, to contain, and to release God. A huge part of that shaping comes from giving thanks in the midst of lack and inability, from singing of the good things of Christ filling us full, even when we feel utterly not-Christ.

The one who is “trying to get rid of the outer skin” is not satisfied with his or her humanity and sees their humanity as empty and unlike God. The problem, the sin, the evil nature they must get rid of is their false seeing, that is, unbelief. When such a Christian attacks and suppresses elements of their humanity, they are doing the opposite of shaping their hearts to fit God. Rather, they are twisting up their humanity in such a way that it will take much time and effort coming to them from outside of themselves to coax them out of their twisted accusations against self and God and out of the inherent sense of religious exaltation that is the only fruit of such activity.

This “coaxing out” is our ministry and our privilege; thus we sing the Song of the Lamb.

All humans spend their lifetimes defining themselves according to what they want themselves to be. Everyone receives what they ask and finds what they seek. This self-defining is a quality found only among humans; neither angels nor animals know it. Humans are created to be filled with Another, and since God is “absent” in their false imaginations, they are compelled to fill that void with self-definitions.

Almost all humans build their self-definitions around accusation of some form. Thus, most Christians who busy themselves with Christian work do so to compensate for the story line of accusation that never turns off inside of themselves. The more the accusation grows, the more they work. They more they work, the more the accusation grows.

I marvel when I observe people, how hard and how busy most everyone seems to be in contorting a self-story by which to live. One cannot describe any human-created story except by synonyms of twisted, contorted, perverted, nonsensical, delusional, and so on. Think of the boasting arrogance of professional wrestlers in terms of one of the more pronounced kinds of twisted self-story.

On the other hand, when you see someone who has come to a full acceptance of themselves, of the way God created them, and who, out of that acceptance of self, blesses others, you see someone real and wholesome. Such a person's heart is being shaped for God, whether they are born again, yet, or not.

Yet, the self-story contorted by too many of our brethren, putting off the nature of sinfulness by human effort inside of a burning background hum of accusation, can become one of the ugliest and most damaging of all human stories. And all Christian “works” coming out of this underlying self-accusation never really satisfy anyone.

Let me define the judgment of God. – Living in the story of self you have created. The writers of the New Testament used three particular words to describe this definition of God's judgment, this living in one's own self-created story: gehenna, tarantulas, and hades.

Now, here's the thing. I'm just writing along making comments. But I would like you to consider the definitive reality of what I just said, and to consider it as the truth.

The judgment of God is that humans must live inside the story of self they have created – until the moment when someone breaks through the mental barriers and coaxes them to take that first baby step out. This judgment is no less true for Christians as for the unregenerate.

God does not sit there and say, “You did bad, so you get punished,” or, “You did good, so you get blessed.” There is no such thing. Everyone lives in the story they have sung, as it really is, and with all the consequences of their own story coming back upon themselves continuously. All “punishment” is self-inflicted.

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit. Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned (Matthew 12:33-37).

The day of judgment is to live in the story that we speak. – In this love has been perfected, brought to full completion fused together with us, that we might have boldness to speak [Christ our life] inside the [to]day of judgment, that just exactly as He is, so also are we in this present world (1 John 4:17).

We have the right to become sons of God; we have the right to sing the Song of the Lamb and to sing no other song. – The Father and I are one.

I was filled in the night with overwhelming joy, with utterly restful peace, and with a confidence and boldness of faith as I have never known, as I knew that what I wrote yesterday is true. It is true. The Lord Jesus has come to me with the Father, and They have made their home with me, as Jesus promised, and as I have longed for all these years.

Father has come home; I have come home.

This is no lightning flashing, power-displaying, external sort of experience. It is simply a quiet and certain faith in an invisible God, that He speaks the truth, yet a faith filled with springs of Joy. And it comes because I know, now, that there is no separate “Jesus,” but that His resurrected and ascended body has, by transubstantiation, by symmorphy, as I eat and drink of Him, become my own physical body, and that He, Jesus in Person, lives in my heart in all of His glory, for real.

And it comes because, for several years now, I have sung the Song of the Lamb, Christ Jesus my only life, by faith alone, against all sight of my eyes and against all feelings of my emotions. I have sung the Song of the Lamb until Jesus, my only life, is the only story I know, and all of my humanity is swallowed up in Him, filled with God and therefore, filled with goodness.

Now this is something to think about. I am less concerned in this letter with a delineation of the “good things” about which we sing, but rather why we should sing only the Song of the Lamb.

Every individual person is creating the world in which they will live, the world that will be their judgment, by the song that they sing, the story of self which they create, their own account, their own word, their own logos. Because God will not violate anyone's person, they are locked into that story forever.

Except that Jesus said that the gates of Hades, the barriers of self, of being locked into one's own demented and twisted self-story, cannot keep the Church out.

Those of us who sing the Song of the Lamb, Jesus singing in our mouth, are the ones bringing forth the real new heaven-earth. We will then step into the awareness of each individual bubble of hades and sing each person out into the reality of Christ, one at a time, until all creation is restored back to the Father.

Yet the first step out, for each individual person, is these words, this one moment of honesty, “I was wrong.” For some, including many who are Christians, saying those words will be the hardest thing they will ever do. I have no doubt that many non-Christians, including people who happen to be Muslim, will say them long before many who consider themselves to be bona fide Christians.

I just marvel at how different everything looks. Everything is different from what it appears; most everything in this world is the opposite of how it appears. There is no truth in the world; the world MUST lie. Look at the rulers of this world; they are tiny little shriveled up things. Look at a Down-syndrome girl who loves Jesus with all of her heart and has suffered and wept. She is huge and mighty in reality.

The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory revealed inside of us (Romans 8:18).

What is different about what I teach from most things you may hear? Two things. First, I teach, along with most who teach union with Christ, that we place, in the story of our minds, all of our humanity into the Lord Jesus Christ, especially our sin and our shame. Second, I teach that Father God, in all of His fullness, is bound to us in Covenant Bond inside of us through the Lord Jesus Christ. We are just like Jesus in all ways except honor.

The perception in my mind concerning God in me, revealed through me, has changed only slowly, bit by bit, over the last several years. The change has come by the words that I speak (or write), prophesying Christ my only life, calling those things that be not as though they are, in agreement with the Covenant I signed with God and He with me.

Somehow, it seems, a corner has been turned. More and more readers are now singing the Song of the Lamb for themselves, in their own words, Jesus as their only life. This is so wonderful. So wonderful.

Sing with me. Sing of good things; the good things of Christ that you are.

Sing of the Covenant Bond between you and Father, filling you full with all of Himself. Sing of sharing all things together, Father and you, taking each step together, regardless of, even including our propensity to do foolish things. Sing of rivers flowing out from Father and you together, your Holy Spirit, setting all creation free.

Tell the story of goodness; tell the story of Love. – Heart. – The revelation of Father.