10.1 Turn Around
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The difference between the manifest sons of God walking this earth setting creation free and you and me right now is simple. They believe that what God says is true; we do not.
The word you have heard up until now CANNOT bring forth such life in you. The word that will bring forth such life and faith, though it is a word you have read on the pages of the New Testament all your life, yet when it comes into you through your believing that it IS true, will seem brand new. It will seem brand new because it will turn you around. It is not the word that is “new,” but your believing and therefore your seeing.
Life or Death
The seduction of heaven is the worship of death. When Adam and Eve turned towards all heavenly glory, they turned their backs on God manifest in the flesh.
Christians hate being the image of God. They refuse to consider God through them as they are now, but lust after death instead, imagining that if they are dead, then they will have “God” as He “ought to be.”
I find myself right now in the experience of a mighty sword passing all through me, splitting everything into two. Life or Death. The pursuit of heaven is the pursuit of death.
A Dream
I have known only a few occasions where God has spoken to me spontaneously and profoundly, either by dream or by an unexpected word arising from within me. In the late 1980’s, after a visit with my parents in Oregon, and after arriving back at Blueberry, the Christian community in northern British Columbia where I was attending college, I had a dream that remains vivid to this day.
In front of me was a long line of good Christian people, some I had known in community and others back in Oregon. They bore no chains; there were no guards. Yet they shuffled forward with heads down, convinced that they must die. I pled with them – Step away – but they could not hear me.
Hold Against the Press
God is positioning you and me as a football defensive guard. Our feet are planted in the turf; one knee is on the ground. We lean heavily forward with bulky shoulder pads of faith, our bodies rigid against the onslaught of our brethren going the wrong way. They surge against us, convinced in wild abandon, like zombies almost, that death is the only place life can be found. And when we tell them that Jesus alive now in their hearts is already all Salvation revealed through them as they find themselves to be, they are convinced that we are stealing salvation from them. Hold against the press. Hold.
God in My Heart
Christ lives in your hearts by faith (Ephesians 3:17).
Let me give an explicit and required “definition” of God. God is the One who lives in my heart; there is no other God. (Each one of us must say this for ourselves.) We know God only by heart; we know Him no other way. Those who see God ONLY IN and out from their own hearts know God; those who see God outside, a god looking “at” them, see a serpentine “god.”
Jesus lives in my heart is the only truth. Everything inside and out from those words is true; everything not inside or out from those words is false.
Convinced
Our part in symmorphy is FAITH, the absolute conviction that we are, right now, filled with all the fullness of God. Convinced that God walks as one person with us. Convinced that God and us together ARE making all things good.
Convinced that every manner in which I appear outwardly right now is God’s perfect means to His very best end – showing Himself as He IS to all. Convinced that God is in ME, IN every circumstance of my life, using all that is ME to reconcile the cosmos to Himself. Convinced that every step I take is INSIDE the love of God.
Paul’s Use of the Old Testament
This short lesson serves the purpose of repositioning us for what is yet ahead.
Consider Paul’s take on the Old Testament. On the one hand, he did instruct us that the entire Old Testament is useful to us in order to know how to conduct our lives in this world. BUT – when establishing the New Covenant in the Blood of Jesus, Paul dealt much differently with the Old Testament.
No Bible interpreter would ever allow Paul to do what he did with the Old Testament. Paul took a handful of phrases out of context and used them in ways no one else would have considered, chopping off parts that did not fit his purpose. Most of the Old Testament opposes Paul’s use of those few verses.
Everyone Creates Their “God”
Paul took all authority over what he found in the Old Testament and bent it to serve the purpose of the revelation of Christ arising inside his own heart. BUT!!! You and I, with that same revelation of Christ, discover that the entire Old Testament then bends itself without resistance to that same knowledge of Christ.
I want to refer you back to Lesson 28.1 Knowing God in Symmorphy I: Purpose. Everyone creates “God” as they wish Him to be; everyone draws their own take out from verses, just as Paul did. Everyone then bends the rest of the Bible to support their own take on “God.” And for almost all, their “take” begins with Augustine.
What If?
I read a statement a couple of years ago that I instantly knew to be the truth. “God will anoint that Word that is of Him.”
The Bible was written out from the darkness of a shattered creation. Inside of it God deliberately placed both life and death, both trees in the garden. And more than that, it is read by people who themselves do not know God, not as they think they do.
What if? What if God is waiting until He is known as He is before He anoints that knowledge of God with demonstration. What if God wants to be known through a people like you and me, people who have no sufficiency in themselves, people who are kind and tenderhearted?
Father As He Is
Here is the point I am driving towards.
The few Old Testament verses Paul used are similar in nature, and, if taken to be the revelation of Christ, those verses then MUST rule over everything else God says in the Old Testament. “Abraham believed God and He counted it to him for righteousness” MUST RULE over “the man who does what God says shall live by doing what God says” (Leviticus 18:5).
I am creating a list, not just of the ten most important verses, but of all those New Testament verses that expand them. IF these verses be true, they MUST RULE over everything else. God Himself will come through this Word and through our hearts as we are right now to reveal Father as He is to all.