40. Understanding the Prison Cage
© Daniel Yordy – 2021The Image of God
In the fall of 2011, when I made the decision to see God only through Jesus, and in particular, Jesus through the path of the Atonement from Gethsemane to the Resurrection, God turned me right-side up, and I saw Him for the first time as the One who carries us.
From then until now, I have seen a continual increase in Biblical evidence that God indeed is the One who carries. This transformation of God in my understanding was the first significant result of my inner desire to remove all accusation against God that He “knows” evil.
More changes would come through the next four years. Chief among those subsequent transformations of my understanding was realizing that the Bible does not say that the actions of Jesus in redemption were “for God,” but for us, for our sakes.
Consider the image of God, that we are inside of Him.
The Nicene definition of “redemption” posits that it is the Roman soldiers who show us a God who knows evil and who punishes Jesus because of our sins.
Then consider these words. – This is age-unfolding life, to know You, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
If the Nicene definition of redemption is “correct,” then no human can ever know such a God, for as we are made, we would be terrified on the one hand and alternate between obsequiousness and manipulation on the other hand.
And we would not be responding to such a ‘God’ in that way because we are evil, but because we are like the true God and because we don’t know the true God.
God PUNISHED Jesus BECAUSE OF our sins? Or does Jesus show us God carrying us through death and into life? Two opposing images; only one is true. Which does the Bible say?
Two chapters in my life story cover the years from the fall of 2011 to the spring of 2015, first “A Vision of God,” and second, “Time to Turn Around.”
Here’s the thing, I did not know until now that the drive inside of me that caused all the changes in my knowledge of God through these 3 ½ years was my great need to remove all accusation against God, that He knows evil, from every aspect of the gospel. I was aware of that need, but I could not yet see its significance. It was not mental, but God Himself in me. (I am driving here towards understanding the prison bars.)
Changes in Understanding.
I want to list here in order, then, the massive changes that came to my understanding from October 9, 2011 when God became the All-Carrying One in my seeing until the beginning of “A Season of Symmorphy” when “becoming something else” vanished forever and “sharing the same form” entered my knowing.
In the early months of 2012, right after I had written “God always reveals Himself through weakness,” the words from 1 John 3:16, AND WE ALSO, poked their nose under my tent and would not stay out. I knew this to be true long before, however, that whatever Jesus is, we cannot know it apart from an equal and real “and we also.”
Then, in the first week of June 2012, I wrote “Filled with God,” and from then on knew for real a God who fills me with all that He is. Then through the summer of 2012 I looked more closely at that path of the Atonement through which Jesus walked.
By the fall of 2012 a brand-new understanding of the Mercy Seat, drawing those who offend into our hearts and setting them free into the Father introduced itself to me. This was scary because I still thought I might be blaspheming.
Then, on May 24, 2013, I read “Sealed in the Midst of the Storm” into audio. As I spoke those words out loud, something permanent happened inside of me. This was not a change of understanding, but a change of me inside.
Now I was ready to deal with evil. And immediately it came clear to me that sin did NOT come through the serpent, but through Adam, that the angel in the garden could not have sinned apart from Adam. God did NOT take evil or darkness out from Himself and make the devil evil in himself. Evil did not become through Jesus.
But how do you see a world that appears evil as anything else? How can all things now be “of God” as Paul says? In my search for the answer, God’s mighty principle of substance versus appearance came into my understanding, that what we see is not what things are.
Then, in March of 2014, I wrote “The Humility of Christ,” coming out from an experience of deep humiliation for me. My seeing was ready to change even more. In quick succession then, as I wrote The Feast of Tabernacles, these things came quickly. A first view of “turn around.” A first view of the Ekenosis. Then, a new view of redemption.
The Ekenosis and a new view of redemption came in May of 2014, and this is the primary thing I want to address. But the final wondrous piece of understanding that marked the end of this time period came in May of 2015, when the little phrase from Hebrews 1:3 became the definition of all things that exist in my understanding. Sustaining ALL things by the word of His power.
Everything real, including every created thing, comes out from the good-speaking of Jesus every moment.
In May of 2014, however, in order to know redemption, I wrote out every redemption verse in the New Testament. I was satisfied, then, that not one of those verses required a “God” who punished Jesus, or a “God” who had to be “paid off” or “appeased” in order to “forgive” us. I was fully satisfied that every one of those verses supported a different view of redemption, that every part of it was meant for our sakes, to win our hearts, to persuade us to step out from the prison bars of Adam’s mental rebellion, and to know Jesus and the Father without fear of evil.
From then until now we have come to appreciate how difficult redemption is. Our brethren shout that they are “FREE” even while clinging tightly to the prison bars of their own design.
God does not burn people in flames without hope. How could a God who does not know evil do such an evil thing? If Hitler was ‘evil’ for killing the Jews, how could a ‘God’ who now burns those same people in torment forever be anything less?
Yet, our brethren are convinced, inside their mental prison of “correct ideas,” that ‘God’ is determined to torture us in hellfire forever, no matter how much we love Jesus, because we dare to believe that our Father does no such thing!
Hades is a mental state; hades is that mind of “correct ideas” that binds people to a ‘God’ who knows evil.
Look back at the illustrations I used in my life story, that of running the gauntlet and of Eliza fleeing with her baby across the ice flows of the St. Lawrence. I lived in Hell, and it was Hell that I was fleeing. And I’m not saying that lightly. I was terrified out of my wits by my inability to “please” a God who could never be pleased.
“Correct Ideas.”
It was just recently, however, that I again saw the coldness of those prison bars inside the Christian mind. I clearly remember the hardness of my former mental ideas about God. Yet they are so far removed from my present knowing that when I hear them again, it is overwhelming. I wonder that anyone could speak such evil things – and yet, I walked with God and knew His grace when I also spoke them.
We also know our Friend who is inside of them, carrying them despite their present refusals, just as He carried us. It is easy for us to see Jesus in their hearts, but they see only the prison bars of “correct ideas” they call “Jesus,” and thus are unable to see the Glorious ONE who fills them full.
If I could draw, I would draw out the illustration. Picture a man or a woman inside a prison cell looking out from their wide window filled with iron bars. The bars are unattached on the inside and the person inside the cage could easily pull them out and walk free. We notice a bright and glorious Jesus sitting comfortably on the bench inside of their hearts, but they are oblivious. We say – “Look there at Jesus inside your heart.”
But the person grabs one of the bars and whacks you over the head with it. You stagger stunned, but you point again at Jesus, but they whack again, for they will not turn to look.
We define the prison bars as “correct ideas.” Of truth, that’s all they are – the “carnal mind.” The carnal mind is “correct ideas” about God. For those ideas are the work of the human, carefully studied out and chosen over many years. The specific arrangement of the correct ideas in one is unique to them, entirely different from the arrangement of correct ideas of every other.
And the great work of building these correct ideas is lifelong and of great value to them. “Look at this wondrous confusion which I myself have built. – This is me!”
Yet they also call their correct ideas “the truth of God,” that is, Christ Jesus to them.
Here’s the thing. No correct idea, no matter how correct it is can ever give life or save anyone. In fact, one can have all the correct ideas about God that there are and remain entirely dead.
Conversely, if there is a trust in the grace of Jesus inside one’s heart, despite all the “correct” ideas, then NO “incorrect idea” can kill anyone or cause anyone to be lost!
Neither life nor death are found in the ideas of the mind. Life is Jesus inside the heart; and death is not knowing God.
Therefore, although incorrect ideas cannot separate anyone from God, calling the ideas of the mind “God,” prevents the person from knowing God. And thus, all mental ideas separate from knowing Jesus inside the heart do KILL in the end.
In February of 1998, I came to the end of all mental ideas about God, period. As I left the communities, I wanted nothing more to do with any “Christian” idea. And I have never sought mental ideas since, but only that I might know my Father. Yet false ideas do prevent us from knowing God, and thus they must be replaced with true.
Iron Bar against Iron Bar.
Here is the bottom line of true ideas. There is inside of them NO accusation against God that He knows evil. And so, my pursuit from 2009 on was to KNOW no evil in my thinking about God.
That pursuit was no small thing, for evil fills all the Christian definitions of “God” we have known. Yet those definitions filled me with great horror. I was escaping the last tentacles of a nightmare.
Here is the difference between me and most. Most say, “I will study what Christianity says the Bible says that I might be safe inside of correct ideas.” I always said inside, “God, what do You say in Your word – that I might be safe in You.”
Those who live inside of Jesus inside their hearts see another believer also living inside of Jesus inside of them. But those who live inside their carefully constructed iron bars of “correct ideas,” see the one who says, “BUT John 14:20” as just another purveyor of a different set of ideas which HAVE TO BE WRONG.
And so they pull out the appropriate iron bar to whack you, and they determine that your pointing at their heart and saying, “Life is Jesus Himself inside of you,” as being an incorrect iron bar whacking back at them. A ‘correct’ Jesus is far away right now; He has not come back.
The iron bars, the correct ideas, have NO meaning and we must never fight against them, that is, we never argue idea against idea. “My prison bars are better than your prison bars.” Yeah!
But here’s the trick. The enemy will inspire a lesser idea to discuss, one that can easily be “disagreed upon,” as Paul explains in Romans 14-15, without consequence. And when you fall for that trap, the ideas have you, and you cannot speak more of Jesus inside the heart.
You cannot remove any one iron bar, for there are plenty more ready to take its place in the design of mental fantasy.
Redemption is no easy thing, for what you are attempting to do, entirely in full alliance with Jesus inside your brother, is to coax him out into knowing Jesus in Person.
And this is exactly why God said through Moses, “HOLD YOUR PEACE (shut up), stand still and see – Jesus.” And through Paul, “Be silent – you are already toast!” “Shut up” means NO MORE correct ideas at all, but rather, an utter trust in the Person living inside your heart who already shares your life with you.
The nightmare continues, however, for “My heart is evil, and if I look at my heart, I will come into union with SIN.”
And We Also.
The only thing I know to do, then, is to practice the Mercy Seat, together with my Father – to place my brother upon the Blood and release him into the expectation of God, regardless of all the pain Father and I bear together. And we also.
This is the only path to redemption, that our brothers and sisters can step out from their useless mental fantasies in order to know the Father inside of whom they already live. That’s all it is, just a bunch of made-up mental stuff without purpose or meaning.
Christ lives inside of your heart through faith.
Let’s Pray Together.
I think that we should continue to pray for ourselves in these parenthetical sessions, that Jesus might strengthen us in this battle. Indeed, that’s what I mean by “Stay with me,” that Jesus might be our all.
“Lord Jesus, thank You for saving us from hell, from the nightmare imagination that our Father knows evil. Lord Jesus, let us just rest inside of You for this moment, for we do not have to be or do anything. You are already all. Lord Jesus, thank You for being in us NO NEED to counter ideas with ideas, but rather the Mercy Seat.
“Lord Jesus, we know that redemption is not an idea, but a power of our Holy Spirit. And we know that You turned Your back against the face of all whom You loved, and, instead, carried us inside Yourself through every stumbling step. In Your agony, Lord Jesus, You received us as part of Yourself, and You presented us to God as utterly WITH YOU as You claimed LIFE for Yourself in every step.
“Lord Jesus, regardless of our offense, You would not live without us living with You; You would not rise without us rising with You. And there, inside the agony of Your troubled human soul upon the cross, Lord Jesus, You joined us together with Father above the Blood of Your Heart poured out for us. It is in that secret place that we live.
“Lord Jesus, we ask You for that carrying and sustaining, enabling and energeoing grace of the presence of God that we might also carry our brothers and sisters inside our hearts, that we might receive them as You receive us. And as we also arise into LIFE with You, Lord Jesus, so we also require that our brothers and sisters, many millions who love You, would rise into LIFE with us.”
Allies of Jesus.
When we say that Jesus lives as our brother or sister, without regard to the prison of correct ideas they have built for themselves, we do not mean that God intends them to live inside of hades in their present knowing. And so I have always said it this way – that God carries us through the darkness all the way into life. God never intends the darkness, but He does intend us in every step.
This is a stunning paradox, however. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of all, lives inside of them and lives as them. Does He not – or can He not – show Himself to them?
And this is where redemption is difficult, for we have determined that God cannot sin. Thus, we can conclude only that Jesus cannot show Himself to them against their desire. Yet He lives as them so that, when they desire Him alone for real, then they will discover, as I have discovered, that their whole life has been Christ – though they did not know.
Every knee bowing cannot be a giving of thanks unless all things already come out from God. Since all things already come through the good speaking of Jesus, giving thanks is the only appropriate response to a Savior who carries all.
Jesus is far more eager than we ever could be to show Himself to our brothers and sisters, and He holds a far better position to do so than we.
Yet it is not we who need Jesus as our ally, but Jesus who needs us as His ally. Here is the proof of that claim. – Receive one another in just the same way as Jesus receives you. – And we also are committed to setting forth our souls for our brethren.
Yet so often we have been Jesus’ enemy towards our brethren, either by debating ideas with ideas or by being religious and demanding.
What Jesus needs from us, as He fills our brother and sister with His Salvation and desires to show Himself to them, is to be His help, not His hindrance. And to know how we can help, we must know what it is that blocks this one from knowing the Jesus who already shares their life with them. You cannot force people out of their prison, for if you tried you would only break them, and thus you will be helping them forge a far greater prison.
Jesus has one job to do, and that is to win their hearts, so that they willingly let go of all they have built to know Him. What Jesus needs from us, then, is that we would speak into each individual person those specific words that win their heart for Jesus.
And we must understand that this winning does not happen overnight. It is a process. Even when Jesus said, “For the elect’s sake, the time will be shortened,” it still remains a process. Indeed, fifty years could be thought of as a “short time.”
This is a large part of my goal, then, in A Highway for God, to set out those specific words, unique to each individual, that will win their heart for Christ.
The Planting of Seeds.
As I look across the span of my life, I marvel at the specific little words God planted into my heart as seeds of Christ scattered across the years.
The first was that a black heart covered by a red heart becomes a white heart. And thus I always knew the grace of the Lord Jesus deep inside despite all the contrary word. The second was the most important of all since the first, give thanks in and for all things. That was NOT me; of myself, I did not give thanks. It was a Seed of Christ in me that I knew was true and that showed itself to me after I hit rock bottom, which was often.
I could almost call the pathway of those little words of Christ as a “trail of breadcrumbs” all the way through the dark woods to the Joy in which I now live.
And it was because I picked up those words along the way, hiding them in my heart, as Much Afraid, in Hind’s Feet on High Places, picked up the little pebbles she found along the way, that when I heard the word, “Speak what God says you are,” I already knew what it meant.
I KNEW what it meant in that moment BECAUSE of the store of Christ Seed I had carefully treasured deep inside from the age of seven.
Think of Dan Kurtz, when I was just twenty, gently pointing his hoary finger at my heart. “Christ is in you.” When I had read that same thing in Watchman Nee, I did not know what it meant, but when I heard it again in a pig barn at Graham River Farm, I still did not know what it meant, but I then KNEW that it was true.
Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him (Psalm 126:5-6). This is speaking of you and me.
We are farmers and we are warriors, both at the same time. In fact, a gardener is a warrior as well as a planter of seed. We could think of the great war, the war of words, speaking the same word as Christ against all the anti-speaking of the human, as a war of true crops versus weeds, or as Jesus put it, wheat versus tares.
Only one “soil conditioner,” then, will prepare the soil for the true words of Christ we would plant, and that is love. Rooted and grounded in love. – A climate of love in which occasional small seeds are planted!
As I followed the breadcrumbs that led me step by step out of the dark woods of my own hades, I came to the place where Jesus was the only acceptable solution to me.
I was LOST, I knew that I was LOST, and I KNEW that I, in my own mind, could NOT find my way. I needed a real Person to help me.
Here is the one word that we plant – Christ lives in your heart through faith. Yet such a word can be phrased in more ways than one can count, finely tuned to each person in each differing set of circumstances.
We Are Farmers.
Of truth, being a gardener is simply the best metaphor to use, that’s why Jesus used it so often. And a gardener has two enemies – things that eat garden plants, false spirits, and things that grow stronger than garden plants, false words.
Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the presence of the Lord [is known]. Consider the farmer who awaits the precious fruit of the earth, being patient for it until it receives the early and latter rains. You also be patient; strengthen your hearts, because the presence of the Lord is here (James 5:7-8).
Wow, James did not mean “someday,” but rather until that moment when the person into whom you are planting the precious seed awakens to the knowledge of Jesus-with-me.
Here is what I am realizing. It is critical that we understand the battle and the role that false spirits and false words play in devouring the little words of Christ that we plant. But what we must understand is that, in the end, the false spirits and false words are of little account. What matters is the precious seed, that it be rooted deep and that it spring forth into life.
It does no good to “win” against the false if the true dies.
And this is exactly what Jesus meant. – The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather [the tares] up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them’ (Matthew 13).
When we fight ideas with ideas, iron bars with iron bars, words against words, what we are doing is ripping out all the seed of Christ and giving greater strength to the lies. And when we come in a spirit of religiosity, above looking down, all we are doing is giving greater strength to the false spirits that anoint the false words.
Now, please understand that I am speaking to myself, for I want to argue word for word and rise up to look down upon. God has given me a great gift, however, in making me incapable of doing so in the moment. It leaves me humiliated inside, but at least I have not destroyed Christ in my brother or sister.
As James said, a farmer plants a seed knowing that it will be weeks or months before that seed brings forth more of its same kind, and also knowing that the right environment for the growth of that seed must be maintained.
There is only one “right” environment and that is Love.
Patience.
And there is only One who loves, and that is God. If there is to be Love, there has to be God-made-known. And this, of course, is the whole point of my book, A Highway for God, God coming through. Patience. – Be patient; strengthen your hearts, because the presence of the Lord is here. Jesus IS present inside our brother or sister, and we are His ally, not He ours.
And this is why Sun Tzu’s advice is so critical. – Fight only the right battles, do not be sidetracked into the wrong fight.
My great desire, every single time, to “set my brother straight,” is always the wrong battle, and it will always result in causing my brother to harden his heart against the good word of Christ. Be patient; strengthen your hearts. A farmer never loses sight of the seed he has planted, regardless of all that comes to destroy it. Yes, he battles the blackbirds and the weeds, the windstorm and the drought.
But far more important to him is the needs of that seed, the former and the latter rain, the sunshine, the space in which to grow, and especially the good soil in which it is planted.
Think about the Word that was planted in me when I was but fifteen years old – Give thanks. It was thirty-four years later when I heard the words, “Speak what God says you are,” and that little Seed sprang forth as a great harvest inside of me. Yet for thirty-four years that Seed had buried itself deep inside of me with many tears.
Think about the Word that was planted in me when I was but nineteen years old – Ask concerning any Word God speaks and then believe you have received. For thirty years that Word waited until its harvest time.
We are in it for the long run. – And I am encouraging myself as well as you. The enemy is not demon spirits. The enemy is not false words. The enemy is the absence of the knowledge of God.
And only ONE THING brings forth the knowledge of God in full fruited-ness inside our brothers and sisters. That one thing is the Seed of Christ, many little seeds planted over time, springing forth in their due season. Little acts of kindness and gentle words of encouragement.
As gardeners, however, we get to experiment with many little kinds of good seed, good word, which we plant.
…For whatever a man might sow, that also he will reap. For the one sowing into his flesh [ideas in the intellect] will reap decay and rottenness; the one, however, sowing into the Spirit [Christ words in the heart], out of Spirit will reap age-unfolding life. And we should not grow weary in doing good; for in the right season, not having given up, we will reap a harvest. So then, as we possess the season, we should work good toward all, especially toward those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:7-10).
This is so cool, that so many good words find their way onto these pages and become mighty words of the victory of Christ through us.
Nurture the Seed.
We have been mistaken, I think, in this larger concern, which I have carried for some years now, of how on earth our brethren will hear that Christ is their only life, that they can let go of all the mental nonsense and know that Jesus already connects them utterly with the Father. I mean, it is right to have the concern, the need to understand, but we have never been “groping in the dark.” The only answer has been in our hand all the way through; we are gardeners, and Christ is what we plant.
Our fight is for the Seed planted already in our brothers and sisters, that it would grow into full fruitfulness.
Our brother is not set free from his carefully built prison cage because we cast down false spirits, as necessary as that is, but because of the Seed of Christ already planted inside. Our sister is not set free from her carefully built prison cage because we rip out false words, but because of the Seed of Christ already planted inside of her.
Nurture the Seed. Nurture the Seed.
And let the casting down of false spirits and the careful removal of false words be nothing more than necessary parts of the one task given to us, nurturing the Seed of Christ that it might bring forth what it is in its time.
The time of the Seed is not up to us. NO ONE who observed that fifteen-year-old boy, in August of 1972, hardening his heart against any knowledge of God and plunging into the enjoyment of wickedness, could ever have seen the result of “Give thanks” buried unknown inside his heart. NO ONE could have foreseen “sharing Hheart with God,” coming some forty years later, least of all me. But my Father knew it was there, and He ordered every moment of those many years towards the protection and growth of that seed.
The very tiniest of seeds became the greatest of treasures. Give thanks, though it was contrary to everything I imagined myself to be, became sharing Hheart with God.
We are farmers, and our battle is won in patience. Of truth, this is often how Lord Wellington thought, in his determination always to win, regardless. Patience, even to preparing for a massive retreat more than a year before it would come. Patience that won the victory.
Travail brings forth patience, and patience proof, and proof hope… Because the love of God has already been shed abroad inside our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.
Let’s Pray Together.
In this final lesson of four (combined into these two chapters), we continue to pray for ourselves, this time as gardeners, that God would cause this patience and this hope to be Himself through us.
“Father, we are so grateful that You are our God. We give You all thanks that Your Word is Christ Jesus and that You have caused Your Word to grow to full fruited-ness inside our hearts. Father, the privilege You have given to us, that we might share Hheart with You, is beyond our comprehension. Yet we rest in all Joy inside of You knowing that it is true.
“Father, You are the strength and joy of our hearts.
“Jesus, we ask You to be all the wisdom of God inside of us, that we would know how to stand firm against all false spirits and to gently pull out the false words even as we carefully protect the Seed of Christ inside our brethren.
“And Jesus, we ask You to be all the wisdom of God inside of us, that we would know that gentle and pure word, that alongside word of sharing and friendship, that would stir all the good Seed of Christ inside our brother and sister.
“Lord Jesus, we know fully that it is we who stand as allies of You, that Your Love for each of our fellow Christians is greater than the universe. Lord Jesus, we belong to You.
“Lord Jesus, we ask that You be all the strength of God inside of us, that we might know patience, that we might endure through the years, gently caring for the good soil, gently planting good seed, and always expecting the knowledge of God to arise in each one.
“Lord Jesus, we are Your body, we are Your hands and Your mouth, be all the gentle words of encouragement and little acts of kindness through us to those whom You love beyond our comprehension.
“Lord Jesus, all that we are is Yours; all that we are is You. Open wide the Door of our hearts as Father is coming through.”