3. Rambling Back

I placed this chapter here as the third in The Kingdom of God. The next several chapters drop back in time a few months to the incident that I mentioned above that inspired me to take another look at the nature and being of this One we call God and Father. I wrote “Greater Love” and “The Prayer that Birthed the Kingdom” after writing these next several letters. God uses contrast to reveal Himself.

First, I want to talk about an incredible shift that is taking place on the inside of me. Now, my purpose in writing these letters is to serve as a trail-blazer. We are on a path no one has ever trod, save Jesus. We do not know the way - except we know Him. And so I take my role as a map maker very seriously. I want to mark the steps along the path I walk that I know are milestones.

There is an eastern saying that I like very much; it has been reverberating in my heart the last while:

When the students are ready, the teacher will come.

It is clear that the students are not ready. Most Christians are not ready to hear the revelation of Jesus Christ, not even most of those who rejoice in the grace word or ponder the third level/feast. The day is coming soon when they will be ready. God will do three things upon the earth to make them ready to hear the revelation of Jesus Christ. He will shatter the world; He will shatter the nations; and He will shatter heaven.

At that point the students will be ready - and their readiness draws the teacher.

Right now God is preparing you and me as that teacher.

And so I do not share the path God has me on in order to boast in or exalt myself, but simply to mark the trail, as clearly as I can, so that those who follow will have a safe path, clear milestones, a way to follow.

We have never in our lives been the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is all brand new to each of us and totally different than anything we have known or thought.

So back to the incredible shift I see taking place inside of me - except I must come at it again from a different angle.

In the summer of 2006, we began attending Lakewood church and I heard Pastor Joel say, "Speak what God says you are." Out of that challenge, I wrote the book, The Jesus Secret, that fall, 5 ½ years ago. So, for the last 5+ years, I have been speaking the words, in every possible form, to myself, over and over, especially in the night, especially when I feel my worst.

Christ is my life; I have no other life. Christ is all there is in me.

I have spoken this word to myself because I know that it is true. I have spoken it to myself to convince myself that it is true. Here is the shift. (But I must ramble again.)

I received an email from someone who opposed my talking about any form of human weakness - specifically the fact that I am autistic. He told me that "Christ is not Asperger's." He told me that Christ is some exalted being way high up and that I must look up to see Him and not in myself, and especially not inside my weakness. This man claimed to have read my letters all along, yet he must never have heard the only reason why I write any of it. That Christ has become us in all our human weakness.

I was so disturbed and angered by this wicked accusation against God that I wrote a series of letters at first titled: "Christ versus Superman."

But, as I wrote out of the passion of hurt and a desire to vindicate my Father, I realized that the thing that was at issue was our entire and specific definition of God Himself.

The definition of God forced upon Him by all of Christianity is not God. Thus He is not and cannot be known by Christianity or within any of those realms. Yes, God will attend faith in any part of what He says with His grace and His anointing. What man was more anointed by God than Moses? Yet God told him that all he would ever see of God was God's backside. He could not see or know God as He really is.

And so I tackled the task of showing exactly how the false definition of God came through Constantine, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine. But in the middle of doing that, I reached for the only definition of God - His face - that God gives us in the entire Bible and in all creation - the Man, Christ Jesus, in His passage from the garden of Gethsemane to His ascension on high.

This is the ONLY definition of God that there is, the ONLY way we can know who and what God is.

And thus I wrote these words that give us the picture of God as He really is:

- God always reveals Himself through weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state, limiting Himself by our weakness. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and we in Him. - 

Thus the Man, Christ Jesus, is God revealed. This picture of God in a moment of time IS God as He IS in His eternal state. Note that I have added the words: "limiting Himself by our weakness."

God did not "stoop" from His exalted state to show Himself in this way. This IS God's exalted state. This IS who and what He is.

It is by writing these words and by expanding on what they mean in my last few letters that I have seen this shift on the inside of me. I no longer tell myself just that Christ is my life; I have no other life. Now: I know God.

I no longer need to convince myself that what God says is true. I know Him who is true.

Please don't think to yourself, "Well, Daniel, I've known that all along, where have you been?" I know how I have "known" Him - and how you have known Him. It is not this of which I am speaking.

I have never known Him thus; and I know that no one I have ever known or heard or read has ever known Him thus. We must expect this to be so, after all, we are caught in the transition between two ages, in the revelation of Jesus Christ - the face of God as has never been seen or known upon this earth - many sons, just like Jesus.

I do not boast of myself - for I am swallowed up entirely in Him. But I do carefully mark the milestone, and thus attempt to describe to you what I mean. "When the students are ready, the teacher will come." I am not the teacher; the Holy Spirit who fills you right now with His glory is that teacher.

It is no longer just "Christ as me." The Lord Jesus Christ shows us the Father, not Himself. He is the Way to the Father, not to Himself. The One I know now is the Father - God Himself, in person, in me, as Himself. (This in no way "pushes Jesus aside," He is glorified in me.)

The Father is in me as a Person. Yet the map of God's Person corresponds 100% with my person in all ways and at all times. Yet it is He; yet it is me. I am the revealer; He is the revealed.

He is in me as Who and What He is. He is meek and lowly of heart. He is gentle and tender and kind. He regards me as His equal; He walks side by side with me. He never despises my weakness; He has become my weakness and my weakness is His throne. My weakness is His design, for through my weakness, He is able to be Himself. If I were strong, I could never know Him.

All who are strong can be anointed by God, they can know His backside, but they can never know Him.

The Person of God is 100% inside of my person; my person is 100% inside of God's person. His consciousness, His mind, is inside of my consciousness - my mind. Yet He is a distinct person, as am I, yet we are One.

Here is the shift. I no longer "tell myself" that this is true. I simply know Him.

I guess what I am saying is that, in the last few weeks, it's as if I have been born again.

I asked Jesus into my heart 47 years ago. I have known the Holy Ghost for 40 years, spoken in tongues for 36 years, rejoiced in the vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ for 35 years, known the power of God in immediate experience for 25 years, known that Christ is my life; I have no other life for 5 years - and just in the last few weeks the Father has found me, He has come to me, and for the first time I know Him.

Yet in knowing Him, gentle and tender and kind, I also know "about" Him, that He is infinite, and that the increase of His revelation in me will never end. Thus, in a critical and real way, my journey, my real journey, has just begun.

There is nothing in all creation, neither in all the heavens, nor in all the earth, more valuable, more precious, more beyond all estimation, than this precious and Holy Thing God is birthing now inside you and me - Himself - His heart - revealed.

I know Him, and in knowing Him, I know His kingdom. It is, in many critical ways, the opposite of most of what has ever been taught on "the kingdom of God." It is certainly and entirely the opposite of all the many and various "kingdoms" of men upon this earth.

And in knowing Him, His Person, filling me, my person, what is the first thing I know?

Abundance

That's not just a word, it is the fabric of His Person. It is the nature of His kingdom.  I can see at least two articles  under that title, "Abundance," which fit entirely inside this series on the Kingdom of God.

And what is the first thing I discover inside of me? Actually it is two things, growing side by side; it is impossible to know the first, without knowing, fully, the second.

I find, growing inside of me, a tender, real, personal love and caring for every single individual person, not only that crosses my path, but upon this planet. My regard and respect for individual people grows, pervasively.

At the same time, and to equal measure, my hatred of the world grows and grows. I hate the world as it presently is with all the hatred that fills the tender heart of God, sometimes so much that I cannot stand it.

When John used the Greek word "cosmos" in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world," he meant exactly what I find growing in me, a deep regard, love, and caring for each individual person, reaching out to draw them into myself, to carry them inside the God who fills me - all the way into life.

Every individual person.

When John used the word "cosmos" in 1 John 2:15: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him," he meant something entirely different from what he meant in John 3.

It is impossible to love people without hating the world. It is impossible to know the Father without the world making you absolutely sick at heart.

And so I must include, in this series on the Kingdom of God, at least two articles on the world. The Spirit of God, all through the New Testament, places the two in continual opposition to each other. To ignore "the world" is to treat God like dirt; how could we ever do that?

But I now see in my heart and on this page, that I should write about "Abundance" before I write further on the nature of the lies, the thefts, and the murders that are this world - and the shattering of the matrix by the very nature and being of the God who is so tender and kind and who fills us with Himself.

Abundance is the nature and being of God.

Let me ramble in another direction before I come to the final purpose of this chapter. So many precious brethren like to talk so much about "sin.

There is only one thing that dispels sin, wherever and whatever sin might be, and that is the revelation of the fullness of God. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit; every organ, cell, and molecule of my physical flesh is infused with the glory and presence of God Himself. God and sin are not roommates. I do not know God by getting rid of sin. I know God and sin vanishes from my sight and from my consciousness.

And at no point, not for one moment, do I know separation from the Holy One who carries me inside Himself and who limits Himself to my weakness, His Person inside of my person, arising from death into life and ascending on high, and I in Him.

It is this full and utter break with "sin," whatever it is, I know it not, that also breaks the final effect of sin, the death that yet remains in our bodies. I intend to live forever. That is the promise of God to me by the gospel.

See Him. See Him alone, He fills you with His glory. His Person always abounds inside of your person. (That word "abounds" is "abundance.") He always limits Himself to your weakness, your equal, your companion and friend. There is no sin in Him; He does not know it. We cannot even look at "sin" to know what it might be because we never turn our face from His glory inside of us.

He is meek and lowly of heart. He is tender and gentle and kind. His Person is in your person; His consciousness fills your mind. He always holds you in the highest regard and with utmost respect. And out of God the Father, in you and as you and through you, flows all provision, all healing, all life, abounding beyond what we could ask or even imagine. 

Abundance is who God is.

Finally, I placed this chapter here as the third in The Kingdom of God. The next several chapters drop back in time a few months to the incident that I mentioned above that inspired me to take another look at the nature and being of this One we call God and Father. I wrote "Greater Love" and "The Prayer that Birthed the Kingdom" after writing these next several letters.

God uses contrast to reveal Himself.

Now, understand that the next four chapters were written in great passion of soul. But as I wrote, the original angst lifted and the revelation of God, new every morning, turned away from some of the original things I thought I would share.

God uses contrast and the difficult things He takes us through to reveal Himself.