1. Suffering with Christ
We are beginning a short series of twelve lessons titled “Studies in Peter.” For the most part, the purpose of this series is to write the JS2 pages for 1 Peter. Nonetheless, we have several other purposes in this particular study. First, we want to expand our study to a more complete look at 1 Peter, similar to our studies of John.
I am also re-writing the final chapter of my life story, “All That I Am,” and this study is an excellent place to include work on that chapter, in searching for what it should include. Beyond that, I find a focus of the Spirit pointing me towards seeking a fuller understanding of the meaning and purpose of “suffering with Christ.”
God’s Purposes. We will not begin the JS2 pages until the next lesson, the first page being “Salvation Revealed through Me Now.” In this lesson, I want to consider the final chapter of my life story, for it is out from the hand of God upon my life over many years, pressing me in with fire and with thorns, never letting me go, from which comes the critical things I want to impart to you concerning your own “sufferings with Christ.”
I wrote the Chapter, “The Meaning of a Life” in the summer of 2022. From then until now, the impact of that account on my own knowing of God has only continued to increase. I re-read that chapter often, with tears. God has incredible purposes inside of EVERYTHING you have ever experienced in life, the good and the difficult. I want to show you what those purposes are.
Sharing Hheart Together. God’s larger and overwhelming purpose is to share Hheart with you, to make your heart and His heart to be one, even through the beating of tiny hammers, as the Mercy Seat, over every moment of your life. Inside of that larger purpose, initiated by God and filled with Pro-Determination, God has to do something for you that you CANNOT do, and you have to do something for God, that He cannot do.
You CANNOT remove contempt from your heart. God must do that for you. And God cannot make every moment of your life, every moment you have ever lived, to be for the sake of others, only you can do that for God. You have the right to become a son of God.
So Devoted to Me. But you cannot know that right to become a son of God and what it means, and you will never exercise your authority to call every moment of your life into God with you for the sake of others, until God has successfully, and by His own Arm, removed contempt from your heart.
When I think about that work of God in my own life, I am overwhelmed and can only place my forehead upon the ground in the presence of this One so Devoted to me. Moreover, I am looking at a very specific timeline, from March of 1976 to August of 1998, 22 years, filled with very specific hammer BLOWS designed carefully for me by my brilliant Savior. For not one second in all my days was the Lord Jesus not sharing all with me.
The Removal of Contempt. And yet, human difficulties are, in themselves, one big waste of time. You see, the hammer blows never came alone. Whether before, during, or after, any hammer blow struck me, sending me reeling in confusion and pain, God was planting His Word in my heart as well. You see, it was never me whom God was proving with fire, as Peter said, but His Word, faithful and True.
In my own life, God framed His removal of contempt from me by the story of the rebellion of Korah, in Numbers 16, as well as through Gene Edwards book, A Tale of Three Kings. In one way of looking at things, God’s removal of contempt from your heart will look very different from my own experience, but in another way, it must be exactly the same.
Jesus Real inside of Me. This process of removing “Korah” from my heart began in March-April of 1976 with two Words of Christ entering me, “”Ask for the fulfillment of any word and then believe you have received,” and “The Spirit will guide you into all truth.” These were accompanied by, “Will you surrender all that you are to Me right now?” Those harsher words were followed by nine hours of turmoil and agony and then the wondrous flow of the Devoted Spirit into my soul.
That particular process came to its completion in the summer of 1998, as we were considering leaving Blair Valley and the move. It’s completion was the slow, deliberate, and final decision inside of me that I needed Someone Else to help me. I needed a Savior, Jesus, to be and to do what I could not. Through these months, I made a firm and final decision that I would know only Jesus, refusing all else until such time as Jesus had become more real inside of me than anything else.
By His Own Hand. I now know that in some ways, the most important year of my life was 1996, or rather, from February of 1996 through March of 1997. And the most important moment of that year came in June, right after God spoke to me, “Son, you have a sectarian heart,” and I answered Him, “Yes, Father, You are right.” What happened right after? – God Himself, by His own hand, and with my full agreement, removed all contempt from my heart. From that moment until March of 1997, He then took me into every MOST difficult place in order to demonstrate to me what He had done, before declaring His approval of Jesus inside of me with, “Son, you passed the test.”
I NEVER try to remove that which does not belong, but I ALWAYS cast myself into a God who saves me, a God who, Himself alone, takes from me all that is not of Him.
The Suffering of “Surgery.” The details of that great surgery God performed inside of me across many years can be found in my life story, right alongside of every Word God was first planting in my heart. This “surgery” caused much suffering for me over years, but I can call it “the sufferings of Christ” because God was giving me precious word to carry in my heart all the way through.
Why must God remove contempt from your heart? And why must He especially do that now that you are receiving a True Gospel Word? Contempt is always towards God first, with the person or circumstance being held in contempt a far distant second. The flip side of contempt is always a lust for superiority, the delusion of being better than God.
Hyper-Contempt. Now, superiority is a mental delusion only, but contempt is real. Neither the knowledge of a God who is meek and lowly of Heart, nor a God coming through as Love for others can come near a heart in which contempt remains. This is a huge problem for us because contempt has become a core rope woven all through the web of Nicene theology. To remove “knowing evil” from God is considered the greatest of blasphemies.
The driving statement behind all of John Calvin’s hyper-Nicene thinking was, “When you see God, then you will know just how evil you are.” I think this is the greatest expression of contempt against God and the New Covenant in Christianity. This same man then burned Jesus at the stake.
We Need a Savior. And there also go you, except God remove contempt from your heart, a surgery that only God can perform.
Shortly before God spoke to me, “Son, you passed the test,” as if it was I who had done well, God crediting to me His own miraculous deed, God planted one of the most important Gospel commandments into my heart, something I had never noticed before. – Receive one another in just the same way Jesus receives you. I carried this word into Blair Valley, in wonder, and there it proved itself True through me in my relationship with a man who had bullied many, out from his own Nicene contempt.
Numbers 16, the story of Korah, is a horrible chapter, and fully relevant to everyone who seeks to approach God. It’s why we NEED a Savior.
Your Right. I want to return to my earlier point. I have given you the gist of God doing for you what you cannot do for yourself. Now I want to consider how you are to do something for God that He cannot force upon you. You have the right to become a son of God; you have the authority to call every moment and experience, circumstance and interaction you know, will know, or have ever known into Goodness, into God with you for the sake of others.
The question is, will you exercise your right?
Here’s the thing. I am actually attempting to write the final chapter of my life story, and what I am writing here will be easily adjusted to fit that context. But I want to understand the full meaning of all of God’s dealings with me.
The Seasons of My Life. I can divide my years of walking with God as an adult into four specific time periods with an exact bracket. The interaction between God and me was different, and had a different purpose in each. Let’s call the period from March of 1976 to August 1998 as “Word versus Contempt,” from September 1998 to May 2004 as “The Beginning of Healing out from Frozen Pain,” the period from June 2004 to May 2013 as “Word versus Evil,” and from June 2013 to the present as “Word inside of Travail.”
I am now beginning to understand. In December of 1975, inside the whole experience in which God spoke His first words to me, “My son,” God and I entered into an explicit agreement together.
God’s Agreement with Me. By speaking to me, “My son,” God agreed to bring His Word to me over many years, making it real and personal to me. In return, by receiving the words “My son,” I agreed to believe that God was telling me the truth. And further, I agreed to plant His Word in my heart and to carry it there.
I have just given the essential definition to being a son of God.
The interchange of this agreement between God and me defines the course of three of these time periods. When I entered “Frozen Pain,” I set every word on the shelf and I took to myself only one Word. – “Jesus is my Savior, living personally and real in my heart.” When healing had fully begun, this one Word brought the prior words back off that shelf, each in its season, but only those Truly from God.
A Knife’s Edge. The great Pain was from the surgery. The One Word carrying me through was from the agreement God had first made with me. But now I want to consider time periods three and four.
The time I am calling “Word versus Evil” is the most precarious time of all. My first chapter in The Covenant, which includes “My Experiment,” describes it perfectly. ~ “It seemed as if the ground on either side of me - and those walking with me, dropped away and I saw myself standing on a knife's edge. I saw all the ages of Desire standing on a knife's edge. Suddenly, the Way that leads to Life became very, very narrow.” ~ The “knife’s edge,” the great task entrusted to me, was the removal of evil from the definition of God.
No Darkness at All. When God began this task with me in June of 2004, two words of the Gospel were already planted deep inside my heart. I did not need to “look them up,” they simply ruled. Every good act of giving, and every perfect gift, is from above [from the Source], coming out from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of turning (James 1:17). – And this is the message that we have heard from Him, and declare to you, that God is light, and inside of Him is no darkness, not at all (1 John 1:5).
The final moment of this time period for me was when I read “Sealed in the Midst of the Storm” into audio, in May of 2013, and God sealed my mind utterly into Himself, such that I have never known since “God not with me.”
Two Big Questions. Now, I am still driving towards the two big questions God has placed in front of you. First – If God does for you what you cannot do for yourself, will you do for God what He cannot do for Himself in return? And second – Will you exercise your right to be a son of God, though it will cost you everything?
Let me explain. Not long after God and I together had removed evil from any definition of Christ, by December of 2011, 1 John 3:16 had pushed into my awareness and forced itself onto my page. It frightened me because I did not know what it meant. You see, 1 John 3:16 forces you, by the commandment of God in the Gospel, to be just like the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter how much you DO NOT want to be.
Pressed into Being Like Jesus. Only after God sealed my mind into His, in May of 2013, was 1 John 3:16 free to take its rightful place inside my heart. By this we know Love, in that Jesus set forth His soul for us, for our sakes, and we also, just like Jesus, are committed to setting forth our souls for our brothers and sisters.
I now understand that it was in that moment in May of 2013, that I turned around inside the Most Devoted Place, in full agreement with God my Father, and sat down, in my consciousness, upon the Mercy Seat, upon the Blood. The next two years remained a season of transition regarding Word, for God had to fill in some critical missing pieces, especially as I wrote The Feast of Tabernacles, but in March of 2015, when I wrote “Sustained,” the Word in me became all.
You Have Answered Me. All of my writing from “The Time of the Jesus Secret” until May of 2013 had been inside of Hope, Hope as in the expectation of God, that His Word must be True. All of my writing from “Sustained” and “The Season of Symmorphy I,” until now has been entirely out from KNOWING, full and complete inside of me. Yet that two-year transition could happen only inside of being turned around, specifically, that from May of 2013 on, I have never known anything other than “God, You have answered me” (Psalm 22:21b).
That brings us, then, to our answer to those two questions and to our final surrender to God, our agreement to be His Mercy Seat.
What God Cannot Do. Except we are not quite there, for most who read what I share have not quite made that final surrender, have not yet agreed with God to be His Mercy Seat. And yet we are there, for I am speaking of your willingness to do for God what He cannot do for Himself, in return for the wondrous miracle of removing all contempt from your heart.
God cannot enter your world except through you; and He cannot make your life His own, that He might do so. You must do that for Him. This is the True suffering with Christ of which I am speaking; this is the focus of our “Studies in Peter.” You are truly on a knife’s edge until that moment when you finally and fully turn around.
Your Worst Moments. I want you to think about the most wicked and evil thing that has ever been perpetrated against you. I want you to think about yourself in that moment. At the same time, I want you to think about the most wicked and evil thing you have ever done against another, during your Christian life. And I want you to think about yourself in that moment.
Where is God, in that moment? And where is the devil? And where are you? And what is the Salvation that is Jesus?
I’m not talking about forgiveness; I’m talking about God through you into your world. I’m not talking about condoning evil actions IN ANY WAY; I am talking about you and God synergeoing together, turning that which was meant for evil into the outcome of pure and intrinsic goodness.
To Be the Mercy Seat. Now, I do not want to speak this as confrontation, but as Joy, for you have the RIGHT to be a son of God. God needs you to give yourself inside of that moment to Him, all that is you, including your sin and your shame, so that He might share you with you, even inside that moment.
Yes, when every moment of your life belongs only to God sharing all with you, then when Satan comes, he cannot find anything belonging to him. But that is only incidental. The real meaning is you sharing Hheart with God for the sake of others, the Mercy Seat. You see, it is as the River of Life flows out from you and God together inside that awful moment that others are able also to say, “Oh, my Father, You have answered me.”
In Great Desperation. To illustrate, I want to go back again to that pivotal year from February of 1996 to March of 1997. I want to show you God. In February of 1996, after I had begun attending the eldership meetings “as” an elder, though not yet fully one, I kept watch over the logging camp by myself in the coldest time of year far from any other human. Sitting among the elders had triggered a great desperation inside of me, for I did not know what was wrong with me, or how I could ever be anointed as I perceived them to be.
In my desperation, in my cold aloneness, I cried out loud at the top of my lungs, “God can You not save even me?” Truly, this moment was linked to that other moment in February of 1998, when I lost all hope that I would ever please God.
If I Could Have Heard. Now here is the incredible thing. From that moment until I wrote “The Meaning of a Life,” some 25 years later, I actually imagined that God did not answer, not at all. But my blindness and ignorance could not prevent God. Here is what really happened. God answered me, right then and there, and He answered me more profoundly, more deeply, and more loudly than I can even yet comprehend.
Let me put into words what I would have heard if I had not been so ignorant of God, even as I read The Frontiersman. “My son, I entered into a full Blood Covenant with you that moment when you asked Jesus into your heart. You and I share life together, including this very moment, including all the desperation you are now feeling.
Inside the Blood Covenant. “My Son, you must place yourself into that Blood Covenant, the precious Blood shed for you, the great Love of Jesus for you, and nowhere else, regardless of whatever happens to you. For My son, you and I together are running through a great gauntlet of immeasurable pain, carrying inside ourselves the Word I have planted inside your heart.
“More than that, My son, we are carrying inside ourselves all these precious people, your brothers and sisters, who seem to be the ones striking the blows and inflicting the pain. We are carrying them with precious Word, inside the Blood Covenant we share together, all the way through the darkness and into all the Life of Christ. My dear son, I always answer you.”
God-Less and Devilish? Consider that moment again when evil was done against you, and you became bitter, and that moment when you did evil against another, and you became hard. We need only the two questions – Where was God? – And where was the devil?
If you see God far away from you in that moment, then you, right now, make that moment God-less. And if you see the devil as having his way in your life, then you, right now, make that moment to be only devilish. And if the worst moments of your life you make to be Godless, then so also are the “best” in all your pretending, and so also, when the devil does come in your difficult moments today, so you are actively giving him ownership.
Penetrating Through. For the Word of God is living and energeoing and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating through as far as the dividing of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is capable of judging the pondering and purposes of the heart. And there is no created thing unseen in His presence, for all are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom is our word of account [our story of self] in return (Hebrews 4:12-13).
I now see exactly what this “Studies in Peter” is and must be. Peter said that the completion of our faith is the salvation of our souls, our soul, our psyche, our person inside all our humanity, the account we give every moment, our story of self – made WHOLE, made utterly – Father with me.
Into Your Own Soul. I will bring the Word of God, particularly out from Peter, into your soul, to split your soul all apart so that you might know yourself, so that darkness and light might be split apart, so that you might find yourself only inside of the Blood Covenant, only inside of God. And I take you into your own soul by taking you with me into David’s soul, and into Jesus’ Soul upon the cross, and into my own soul, God with me over many years, and even into the souls of those who spoke God and the devil both into me, beating me with whips in this desperate run across a knife’s edge all the way into – My Father always answers me.
You have the right to be a son of God, a son offered by God for the sake of others. I want to show you what that means.
Into the Soul of My Son. Let me paraphrase Genesis 15:9-18 into God speaking personally to you. “Bring to me all the pieces of yourself. As you bring your soul to me, cut its pieces apart, but leave your flesh and your spirit whole, unharmed by your hand. Give to Me every piece. Allow no demon any claim to any part of your soul. I will take you into the deep sleep of Jesus’ upon the cross, into the very Soul of My Son in agony for you. There, I will cause My presence to pass as fire between all the pieces of your split-open soul, and I will bring you into My Covenant, the Blood shed for you. For you cannot walk as My Kingdom until you first live only as My Covenant.”
I can say now in quiet certainty that this is the story of my own soul for forty-nine years.
My Path Out. And so, I have a great need inside to make the path upon which God led me to be as clear as I can for others who might follow. As part of that need, I recently wrote a piece titled “My Path Out,” setting out eight levels of entering into the knowledge of God with several critical steps inside each level. I read this as God speaking to me over many years. This is, in fact, the actual path upon which He led me. I preface each line with “My son” as I read it.
These “levels” are not taking you “up,” but rather down, down to where Father is beneath of all, carrying all through the darkness and into Life, down to where you might share Hheart with Him. Follow the Ark of the Covenant into all the life of Christ.
The Most Important. I will attach that piece, “My Path Out,” to the Christ Our Life letter going out. As part of finishing my life story, I hope to expand on that, to make it even more personal. Yet in all, here are the two MOST IMPORTANT things I could ever give to you. Receive them from your Father.
First, from the moment Jesus entered your heart, God has always been speaking to you; agree with Jesus to BELIEVE that He always tells you the truth. And know that God has always heard your every cry, for He has shared the agony of that cry entirely with you. God has always answered you. And second, KNOW just how much you NEED a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ in Person, to be your help, to take from you what you cannot remove from yourself, and to make you just like Himself inside the presence of God.
Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled “Salvation Revealed through Me Now.” However, the last lesson on the present fight for our inheritance showed me the utmost importance that we take not one step except we walk ONLY out from Covenant. Therefore, my only intention in this study is to so wrap your soul with the Blood Covenant and the Blood Covenant with your soul, your mind, your emotions, and your desires, that you can sit down upon Mercy and go forth as the Ark, every step the sufferings of Christ with you for others.
For this reason, I want you to read, not only 1 Peter Chapter 1 in the JSV, but also A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards. If you don’t have that book, get it and read it. If you have it, read it again. It is “Saul-Absalom” God removes from you.