7. The Door
Audio Only7. The Door - for Notes
Jesus said to them, “I am the Door” (John 10:7 & 9). – Put on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14).
People do not understand the profound decision I made when I left the move-of-God fellowship. What do I want? – Here is what I have wanted from the beginning. – and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and will make Our home with him in intimate closeness (John 14:23).
By early 1998, I had come to the deepest understanding that if that fellowship was teaching me the truth, then I would never ever know Father at home inside of me.
I Cannot Be. And I based that terrible decision, to break from that outward entity to which I had committed my life without reservation, upon an absolute decision inside of me. This decision is fixed and immovable. People do not know how absolute and impregnable this decision is in me.
I cannot be a son of God; I cannot please God. I NEED a Savior. And the Savior I must know close inside of me is Jesus. End of story.
The violence of my decision would destroy anyone who disdains it, if they knew its true power.
A Beginning Knowledge. I will know God with me through Jesus, or I will not know God at all. I will know myself through a Jesus who is utterly with me, or I will not know myself at all.
John is very clear. The spirit of anti-Christ is that spirit that splits apart Jesus and “Christ.”
Yet here we are speaking of Jesus as the entrance into the Holy Place, into our beginning knowledge of Spirit realities. I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh (Acts 2:17). Spirit upon flesh is a recipe for disaster. That’s why it is the goat cut wide-open in Abram’s covenant with God.
Cows, Goats, and Rams. I know cows, I know goats, and I know sheep. I have worked with all three; I have butchered all three.
The cow into the outer court is the large, dumb, and obstinate belief that being saved, now, is all about me, the ideas in my head and the things that I do.
The goat into the holy place is in-between. It is a much smaller beast, but wily and tough. The goat is the belief that knows that salvation is of the Spirit of God but keeps hold of “me,” what I think and do, as well.
The ram into the Holiest does not resist or struggle but accepts. The ram knows that salvation is only of God.
A Place of Sifting. In a sense we could say that the Holy Place is the sifting between the goat and the ram inside our hearts.
It was easy to kill the ram. It stood there quietly. This metaphor is not the false cross, however; the false cross is the conniving of the goat. The ram is the full and final acceptance that “I am already crucified with Christ.”
These, of course, are the issues of the heart taking place inside the Holy Place. Let’s return to the Door and to God’s intention for us to move quickly into the knowledge that we live only inside the Holiest.
The Threshing Floor. He [Jesus] will immerse you inside of the Spirit Holy and inside of fire. His winnowing pitchfork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn… (Luke 3:16-17). – Indeed, we also inside of one Spirit were immersed into one body (1 Corinthians 12:13).
Jesus is the One who immerses you inside of the Spirit and He does so in order to sift you, to sift out and to sift in.
The Holy Place is that “threshing floor.” It is Jesus Himself who places you into the dealings of God and who carries you all the way through them.
Those Who “Ascend.” The one not entering in through the door to the sheep fold, but ascending up by another way, he is a thief [by stealth] and a robber [by violence] (John 10:1).
Notice that the one entering the knowledge of God through Jesus has no need to “ascend.” The one who is “ascending,” must do so in order to know the realms of spirit, because that one does not need Jesus. And so those in the Holy Place who do not want the Person of Jesus to be their life, are always seeking to “rise up” or to “get in the Spirit.” The result is endless displays of fakery.
We who enter through Jesus live quietly as we are, going in and out and finding only goodness.
A Pro-Active Savior. Salvation is utterly and only OF God. That means that, at every step and in every way, Jesus Himself, personally and intentionally, acts towards you in that step and in the manner needed to SAVE you.
To be saved is to know the Father through Jesus, to live utterly in the knowing of John 14:20, regardless.
If Jesus were, in actuality, “far away,” there could be nothing of salvation taking place, neither could anyone know God at any level. Yet we never separate between Jesus and the Holy Spirit, for they are always entwined together.
The Truth of Christ. We know that the Son of God IS presently and actively come and has given us an understanding, [a spirit-mind capacity], so that we might know [Him who is] the true; and we are inside of [Him who is] the true, inside His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 5:20).
The Holy Place is coming to know the truth of Christ.
I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one connects with the Father except through Me (John 14). – “through Jesus” is 100% literal, spirit, soul, and body, heaven and earth. – The words that I [Jesus] speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63).
Real to Me. By the time I left the move-of-God fellowship, I was so shattered inside that I was teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown.
In not wanting to fall over that edge, I reached for the strands of memory of my time with three men in that fellowship, Abel Ramirez, Don Howat, and Rick Annett. These men, though anointed of God as elders, treated me as an equal in the Lord. During my time with them, I was successful. All other times were mostly disastrous.
By remembering them, I was able to grasp the realization that I had not lost my mind. These men were real to me.
An Agreement of Heart. In leaving that fellowship, however, I turned to the Lord Jesus and I made an agreement of heart with Him. “You will be more real to me inside of me, Lord Jesus, than Abel or Don or Rick ever could be.”
That was over 21 years ago. God is a keeper of covenant. Except Jesus never comes by Himself, but always Father with Him, and thus the Jesus I now know and Father with Him, are becoming ever more personally real to me, as part of me and I, part of Them.
I am convinced that when Jesus and Father become fully real to me, at home in my heart, the ages will turn.
Desire through Trust. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him (Luke 11:9-13).
It is a question of desire moving through trust.
Arguments Against. The realm of the Spirit is part of normal human experience that is not known by those who do not thirst or trust God.
The New Testament is filled with verses describing the expressions of the Spirit through Christians. But when Bible readers ask their pastors about verses such as John 7:37-39, they are told two very specific things.
1. You don’t need those things.
2. Those who seek those things get deception and demons.
If you assess every argument put forth against the Baptism of the Spirit and the truths of Christ taught by those living there, those arguments are nothing more than these two.
I Stand at the Door. Here is the exact same reality of which Jesus spoke in Luke 11, except from the opposite direction. – Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone should hear My voice and open the door, I will go in towards him and will dine with him and he with Me (Revelation 3:20).
Jesus knocking on our door and you and I knocking on the door into the Holy Place are two views of the same thing. “It will open to you,” and “if anyone should open the door,” are two views of the same thing.
“I will dine with him and he with me” follows, then, as the immediate experience of full immersion in the Spirit.
The Pivot. Notice, then, the carefully defined and extraordinary PIVOT that is this Door.
Two groups of people refuse to KNOCK on the Door. On the one hand are those convinced they do NOT need what is inside AND that God cannot be trusted, and on the other hand are those climbing into “Christ” by the “Spirit” without wanting to know Jesus as Christ already in them.
Notice even more that Jesus, knocking on the door of your heart to get into your knowing, and you, pounding away on the door into God’s heart to get into knowing Him, are the same thing.
The Dividing Line. At every step along the way the issue is one thing only – What do you want?
As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. – Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and billows have gone over me (Psalms 42:1, 2 & 7).
David’s reference to God’s “waves and billows gone over me” is a reference to full immersion into the Spirit. And this is the dividing line between the Bronze Laver of washing and the Door into the Holy Place.
Thirst or Intellect. There are two types of people who remain in the outer court, those who sincerely don’t know and those who have willfully refused to know.
Nonetheless, look at the dividing line at the Laver. – If anyone thirsts, let him come towards Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will overflow out of his belly (John 7:37-38).
You and I saw these words and we beat upon the Door until God showed us what they mean. But the majority see them and find nothing. Instead, they turn “God” into a great citadel of intellectual theology.
With True Hearts. In the last lesson I said, “When you put Jesus upon yourself as the Gate, you stopped trying to control God.”
And yes, if all who “know” God with their natural minds would be honest with themselves, they would remember that there was a moment, when they said “Jesus, forgive me of my sins,” when they NEEDED God to save them. Yet in refusing the Door, they have regained their full control of “God.” Although they have what they want, they are profoundly dishonest.
But those with true hearts knock on that Door/open that Door. They have stopped trying to control what they “see” in the Laver because they want to know Jesus.
Knowing God by the Spirit. And now I understand this connection from the Laver to the Table, from word as ideas to Word as Life. Look again at John 7:37-38, just above. This is the best of many New Testament verses regarding Spirit reality.
When I read R.C. Sproul, I mostly agree with everything he says. Yet nowhere in his book is there any thought of thirsting and drinking and rivers of Spirit flowing out.
God placed the “Spirit verses” in the Bible to catch the desire of those who hunger and thirst. They are the ones who seek to know God by the Spirit. And when the Door Himself immerses them into His Spirit, the first thing they know is the Bible as the Bread of Life.