14. Perseverance
© Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The Lord has thrown in another very large question that must find an answer inside our present discussion. In fact, this question is probably the largest reason why people draw back.
“I tried that Yordy stuff for a while, but nothing happened. I still get angry with my wife and say awful things. This “love” Yordy claims is inside of me just doesn’t work.”
This is the response Fred Pruitt receives on a regular basis – union with Christ doesn’t “work.” That is, I don’t see the instant results I demand. I keep Fred’s article “What If Deliverance Never Comes” on my site as one of his best responses to that question.
And that’s why I say, over and over, that faith is “against the sight of the eyes and against the judgment of the human.”
Bottom line – who is telling me the truth, my eyes and emotions or God?
BUT – I would have hated the answer “Just persevere, brother, just persevere.”
Right now, I love the word, “the perseverance of the holy ones,” because I know what it means, here, inside of my Father. The reason I would have hated it at an earlier point in my writing of these letters is that I knew the word “persevere” ONLY inside the thinking of right and wrong, of split-apartness and separation, of seeing God through the devil.
Here is the meaning of “persevere” in that mindset. – “Do what I say for a long while, then, I will decide whether you have ‘earned’ My approval so that I will then zap you and you will manifest My love.” That is, in fact, the “P” in the Calvinist “Tulip.” And it is a horror that no one has ever “accomplished,” mostly because it is entirely of the wrong tree and because a God of Life never “zaps.”
Nonetheless, perseverance has always been a bottom-line element in the contention between me and God, forehead to Forehead, over the last 43 years. –
Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” So He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.” And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:24-28).
This has been the description of my relationship with God for 43 years. And I can assure you of this, contending with God, face to Face, that He would fulfill His word in you will cost you every element of strength you have possessed. To wrestle with God is to walk with Him through the worst years of your life and to keep on walking, to keep on contending, until you say with Job – “This I know, that in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26).
You saw me contending with God as I completed the last chapters of Symmorphy V: Life, having written these things for twelve years now – “God, You WILL DO Love One Another Yourself among us.” And I am bankrupt if God does not do God in me, for I cannot have what is not real and I am incapable of producing God myself.
As I sit here now, looking without and knowing myself only as inside of God’s bubble of Self, and looking within and knowing only my Father here, inside of my bubble, I realize that I know exactly why perseverance over years is so necessary. It’s entirely because of how God is made in His bubble and how we are made in ours.
God placing His Heart into yours is the most difficult thing in the universe, the costliest enterprise, and the riskiest gamble God has ever proposed. What will you do with His heart?
But let’s look, step by step, at how and why perseverance is the only way this transition could ever happen.
Why would God give His Heart to you, to share with you the authority of Mercy as one person together? Have you earned the right to the possession of the Heart of Father God? For God to give you His Heart is to place into your hands and partly under your control, the deepest element of His being, the greatest and most intimate treasure God possesses – the Lord Jesus Christ. At what point do you dare to make such a demand upon God?
God has His forehead locked hard against yours. Would you contend with the Almighty?
And so the first and most important element of perseverance is this – with what are you contending?
Christians can be divided into four groups – those who contend with the Bible, those who contend with the preacher, those who contend with themselves – and those who contend with God regarding His Word.
I have never known or understood the other three, for I have never contended except directly with God regarding what He says. I cannot comprehend what on earth the other groups of Christians are doing. Yet I have had to realize, bit by bit, that most of my brethren are in those other three groups.
Those who contend with the Bible try to figure the Bible out. These typically come under some form of law and become the theologians of Christianity, keeping everyone they can far away from God.
Those who contend with the preacher believe with all their hearts whatever they are told – until it doesn’t work. Then they divide into two groups, those who say, “It’s my fault,” and those who say, “The preacher was wrong.” Then they go find another preacher to believe. These are those who are blown around with every wind of doctrine. The problem isn’t the doctrine, per se, the problem is where they have placed their anchor. These are the ones who say, “Hey, Yordy, I tried what you teach, and it doesn’t work.” (Not that asking that question is not legitimate – in fact, it’s these questions that make me dig deep.)
Those who contend with themselves either become rigid in self-righteousness or go about making themselves into the image they hold in their minds of a “manifest son of God,” or an “ascended Christed one.” These use some of the Bible and dispense with the rest, and they use the anointing of the Spirit to practice their image of their exalted selves. The thing is, I find more in common with some of these last than with many – EXCEPT one thing. I will not walk with anyone who does not want Jesus alone, who does not NEED a Savior.
But look at those few who contend only with God regarding what He says, poking God’s own words into His eyeballs and demanding, “God, I will not let You go until You do what You say inside of me!” We are looking at the sorriest lot of failures the world has ever known. They cannot do the Bible, they cannot do the preacher, they can’t even do themselves. They can’t do anything at all.
We were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves… (2 Corinthians 2:8-9). – Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves… (2 Corinthians 3:5). – My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Here is how I have said it. – “You will NEVER know Jesus in His power until you first know Him in and as your utter human weakness.”
You will never know God until you know a Christ who stumbles under a cross He cannot carry, and you inside of Him. – If Jesus could not carry His cross, what makes you think you are capable of carrying your own?
Contend with God alone, and do not stop until you see God alone, God as He says, God as He is, in your human and mortal flesh.
WHY? What is all this for? Why on earth does God need such a stance of us against Himself?
I’m glad you asked the question, because God’s answer is the most incredibly amazing thing in the universe, in the Bible, and even inside of God.
Paul called it the Ekenosis, calling forth an invisible God into being seen and known and touched. Moses called it the Mercy Seat, the beating and beating of hammers until God Himself becomes that form that meets directly with us. John called it the throne of heaven, the authority of Love. I have called it “sharing Hheart with God.”
This most incredible wonder of that process, and it IS a process, of God’s Heart merging together with my heart and my heart merging together with God’s Heart. Oh, what priceless treasure! Could there be anything else? There is nothing else.
If you want to know where that Yordy fellow is, there is only one place to look. You will find him there in his absolute failure and inability, poking God’s word into His Face, contending all night long with the Almighty – God I will not let You go until my heart belongs utterly to You and Your heart belongs utterly to me, right here, inside my own chest!
Okay, that’s enough melodrama. I will stop writing now and come back when I can share the wonder of perseverance in a more rational manner 😊.
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Perseverance is a passage on the one hand and a barrier on the other hand.
Perseverance as a barrier serves a secondary purpose of keeping out those who do not belong. And they do not “belong” for one reason only – because God knows that if they possessed His heart in the present season, they would abuse God for their own gain.
For instance, some college programs, such as medical school, have placed a series of difficult and boring courses at the beginning of the program for all incoming students. Those who don’t have the integrity inside to become good doctors will use the boring difficulty to choose another path. On the other hand, those who persevere show that they have at least some of the qualities it takes to become a good doctor.
But again, that is the secondary purpose of the perseverance. Those who persevere through those basic and difficult courses gain an understanding of their field that will prove itself incredibly useful in every “interesting” course ahead.
Sharing heart with God is the same. God is real, and you are real. You cannot “zap” the two of you together. The weaving together of heart with Heart is a process that simply takes time, and it happens through the course of innumerable circumstances, the fun, the horrible, and the mundane.
Narrow is the gate and pressed in is the way by which you are led to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:14 – as it actually reads).
I have sought to find a change inside of me for over forty years. For most of those years nothing ever changed inside at all regardless of the levels of anointing, revelation, and deliverance that I experienced.
After a while I quit trying to find a change, mostly because I was so tired of trying to pretend, I just could not stomach it any more. That did NOT mean that I was anything but miserable in my outlook, my inner feelings, and my poor responses. It simply meant that if there was going to be a change inside, I required that change to arise in me out from God for REAL. I would never again “try” to be a “good Christian.”
When I first entered into the knowledge of my union with the Lord Jesus, Christ being all that there is in me, I went through nine months of unrelenting spiritual assault. I said to myself, over and over, “Christ is my life; I have no other life. Christ is all there is in me,” not as a religious chant, but as my solid declaration of faith in Jesus, standing firm in desperation upon the word He speaks. As I did so, every voice of accusation screamed and cried and wailed against me.
I refused to give them heed. I KNEW that I KNEW my Jesus now in the way I had always longed to know Him, and I was not about to trade that knowing for anything, especially for remaining inside my own miserable self-story of separation and defeat.
My way was pressed in, but I refused to be touched by it.
That time of speaking Christ my only life in the knowledge of WORD ALONE, that I was speaking the truth, against all human judgment, against all of my own humiliating mistakes, against all sight of the eyes, against all turbulent emotions, began in February of 2008 and did not end until November of 2008, nine months later. I sent out my first Christ Our Life letter, then, that November.
The assault backed off, yes, but that does not mean I was any “different” than before. Rather, I had begun to accept my humanity – the way God made me, with all of its ups and downs, ins and outs, brilliance and stupidity, gentleness and crudeness. But not just “accept,” rather, I had learned to call it all by Christ regardless.
It was not until over four and a half years later than the first REAL changes began inside of me, changes I had never known in decades of seeking to be a son of God.
This is not, however, a testimony of the discovery of Christ my only life, but rather an attempt to understand this thing called “perseverance.” Why is perseverance required, not “by God,” but by ours and God’s very makeup?
For that reason, let me frame the changes that came in me, bit by bit, from the negative rather than from the positive.
What was my problem prior to 2008? Very simply this – I cursed myself with every thought and breath. Cursing myself in one way or another was the very fabric of my existence. Part of the self-cursing came out from Bible words and “Christian” themes, part of it came out of my lust for superiority and part of it came out of my hatred of myself for not being superior.
I sat under Joel Osteen’s ministry from the summer of 2006 until the summer of 2013 before self-cursing was pretty much gone from the pathways of my mind.
Continued self-cursing stands as a mighty barrier between you and knowing Jesus. You curse yourself because you want to be superior like the serpent, but you judge yourself to be a despicable worm. Your self-cursing IS the rebellion of Adam.
How can you know Jesus when you are hostile against Him? He understands that hostility; He takes all of that hostility into Himself and carries you in spite of it inside His tender regard. But until He can gently break your ridiculous and uncalled-for lust for superiority, that is, for Satan, and bring the acceptance of the way God designed and created you into your heart, there’s not much of Himself as He is that He can cause you to know.
And He certainly cannot bring Father’s Heart anywhere near your awareness, not while you are cursing it’s every expression through you.
The removal of self-cursing did not bring the changes that began in me from mid-2013 on however. Rather, it was necessary before I could be given the most precious knowledge God has ever given me – sharing Hheart with God.
It was not until the fall of 2011, however, that I finally began to stop calling God by the devil. That’s the time when God turned me right-side-up and I saw that my Father was always beneath of me, lifting me up, carrying me inside Himself all the way through death and into life. That’s when I discovered that God thinks more highly of me than He does of Himself.
It took 3 ½ years of speaking Christ my only life in persistence against all reason on this planet not to do so before I finally stopped knowing God by the devil.
How much of what you call “God” is not God at all, but rather you imposing the image of the highest angel of heaven upon the Father, seeing Him through the lens of arrogance and not through a Man stumbling under a cross He could not carry?
It was not until the summer of 2013 that any lust in me to be a “better person” finally ceased. When I think of such wickedness now, I am appalled. Yet to us back then, our rebellion was “the normal Christian life.”
Why has there not come any change in you? Because you hate the way God made you, and you lust after a “drug” that will fix God’s stupid mistake.
Now, I am framing this as if “the old must go before the new can come.” That is NOT the truth, and all those who live inside that darkness must remain there.
The darkness that was vanishing in my life from 2008 to 2013 was not “allowing” the real to come, rather, it was the real Jesus becoming me in my knowing bit by bit that was causing the wickedness to cease.
I just did the JSV of 2 Thessalonians. Here is how it actually reads. For the mystery of lawlessness is already energeoing; but is only presently restrained until it might become out of the midst. And then lawlessness will be unveiled which the Lord Jesus will eliminate with the breath of His mouth and will render inoperative by His presence made visible [and known], that [other] is present according to the energeia of Satan inside of every fake power… (2 Thessalonians 2:7-9).
Self-cursing IS lawlessness. Self-cursing is what the gospel of the serpent teaches all “good” Christians to do. Self-cursing is the present energeia of Satan behind every fake mask we have worn in order to pretend to one another that we are “good Christians.”
Self-cursing is hatred of God. We curse ourselves because we want to be superior like the devil, calling that image of arrogance “God.” Yet all of the awfulness of self-righteousness has been hidden from your life. You did not see it till now, as Paul said.
What is the one and only thing that eliminates all the awfulness? The Lord Jesus – by the breath of His mouth, that is, you with the Word in your mouth, speaking the same word – and by His presence made known to you.
Christ is always ALL before anything not-Christ could ever vanish away.
You are a complex being. And it takes time for the merging of your story and Jesus’ story together into one. It takes time before the speaking of your mouth is coming out from the all-pervasive knowing of your heart.
It takes time for you to believe that God is telling you the truth.
I have testified all the way through that I have found all that I have ever desired – and that is knowing the Jesus of my heart. But just above I made the statement that I am now beginning to see REAL change happening inside of me, ten years after my first victory over all the wailing cries of accusation.
What is causing those changes? The short answer would be knowing Jesus as He is. But that answer, though entirely true, is inadequate.
It was in the fall of 2012 that God gave me my first glimpse of being His Mercy Seat. I was stricken with fear. I thought for sure that I had finally dropped off the deep end into abject heresy. But I also knew that it was Father’s Heart in me that I had found, the very thing I had longed for with tears all the years of my life.
Here is what you MUST understand. God is gentle and lowly of heart. God thinks more highly of others than He does of Himself. God always takes the lowest place. God always walks beneath. When the Bible says that “God is great,” this quality of walking beneath, lifting up all others is the very thing that is GREAT to God.
God never accuses. God thinks no evil. God never seeks to hurt anyone; hurting others never enters God’s mind. Yet this God who fills us with all that He is DESISRES with every passion inside of Him to share His very heart with you.
How can you love your wife if you do not place this meek and lowly heart of our Father as the greatest treasure of the universe?
Any change that has come inside of me, real and true, has happened for one reason only, because I have turned around inside all the completion of Salvation, inside of all the fullness of God, and I have agreed with God to share His heart towards you.
And I have done so against every cost to myself.
This merging of Father’s heart with your heart is the costliest treasure in the universe.
And if there is anything inside of you that would speak accusation publicly against other believers in Jesus, accusation of any kind, but especially that accusation that is spoken back against those whom you perceive have hurt and betrayed you, then please, for your sake, dear reader, go read something else.
The greatest rebellion of all is a Christian using union with Christ to speak accusation. Better to remain in self-cursing than to come anywhere near such a horror.
God did something incredible with David. God placed David, in David’s own knowing, inside of Jesus’ own bubble of self as He hung there upon the cross. Here is what David saw and felt inside of Jesus’ own seeing and feeling.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent. –
I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!” – (David through Jesus is seeing the Pharisees standing before the cross mocking Him. These are Jesus’ thoughts rolling around inside of His agony.) – Trouble is near; for there is none to help. Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. They gape at Me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots.
But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me (from Psalm 22).
This is what Jesus was feeling and thinking in His agony and despair.
BUT – Here is what He spoke, the Sword of God coming out of His mouth to slay the strongest expression of wicked accusation against God ever given voice.
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
I’m talking about sharing Hheart with God.
You want to love? You want love to be the fruit coming out of you for real in every expression of your life? You are asking God to give you the greatest Treasure in the universe, His most priceless possession. You are asking God to be His Heart revealed.
And that means your embracing of every difficulty, every agony, every failure, every boring moment, every stupid mistake, every joy, every victory, every delight AS God through you reconciling the world to Himself.
You are turned around. You are a done deal.
Your reckless and exuberant Father is now entering into His creation through you without the slightest regard to any cost to you or to Him, doing and being what Father is – loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
It’s called perseverance. And it comes as the refusal of anything else.
Because, you see, every bit of the beating of hammers beating your own heart into the shape and form of Father’s heart is also doing the same inside of God, beating His heart into the shape and form of your own human heart – the Mercy Seat.
It wasn’t just Jesus whom David was inside of, but Father revealed.