29. The Wasted Years

There can be no holes in our lives, either in our present thoughts or in all the memory of our past, no places not filled by Christ and finished by the Atonement. If there be evil, let it be filled with His was dead, if there be human failings, let them be carried utterly by the Father. If there be sin, let it vanish into the annihilation of God. There are NO wasted years or days or moments, for Christ is all in all.

If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. 2 Timothy 2:12

When we viewed ourselves as an isolated and lonely self separated from God and bound to “make it” ourselves by our own “obedience” out of a hell of aloneness we could in no way escape, we saw the endurance as something we did “over here,” in this dark and fallen world, and we saw the reigning with Him as something we will do “over there,” when all endurance is gone.

And it is true, those who dwell in God's city will know sorrow no more. Those who seek such a place will certainly find it. I do not seek such a place, for I seek one thing only, the Heart of the Father beating now in me.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

When we viewed ourselves as empty of Father God, Someone way off over there, when we lived the life of a “Christian,” we saw this paragraph on love as a description of the qualities of a loving person, set before us as an ideal, something to strive for, but not something we would know absolutely in this life.

Now that we live only and entirely in John 14:20, every Word God speaks takes on for us an entirely different perspective. The speaking of God comes to each person at their level, in their language, according to the present condition and desire of their heart. That same speaking now comes to us as we are the faith of the Son of God.

Let me define living in John 14:20: KNOW that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.

Let me explain again the buffer. The Father is too much, everlasting fire that will zap anything not-Christ coming near. Thus the Father comes to us only inside of Christ Jesus and we come to the Father only inside of Christ Jesus. Christ is the buffer between God and man. If Christ is in us, then the Father is in us inside of Christ. If we are in Christ, then we are in the Father inside of Christ.

Thus our primary concern is “you in Me and I in you.”

Let me explain again our relationship with the Word God speaks. We can do anything we wish with it. Anything. We can crucify it, we can place it on a pedestal, we can qualify it, we can fit it into our human thinking. But we are also perfectly free in God to treat the Word that He speaks as absolute and true in all ways and in every direction. We are perfectly free to call that Word, “me” and to speak it as ourselves.

You see, there is no certainty of Covenant if the Word is not written, no knowing of Covenant if the Word is not Spirit, no application of Covenant if the Word is not spoken, and no fulfillment of Covenant if the Word is not Christ Jesus in Person now filling our hearts full and living as us.

And the amazing thing is, even after all of that to exalt His Word to us, God speaking certain and sure, it was not enough for God. Thus He, for our sakes, made that Covenant also an Oath, sworn upon Himself.

“Me in Jesus and Jesus in me” is not metaphorical or symbolic. It is not figurative or “heavenly” (only). “Me in Jesus and Jesus in me” is absolute; it is literal and concrete. I am in Jesus and Jesus is in me spirit, soul, and body. My body is His literal resurrected body, by atoms and molecules, the same body that came out of the grave; I am flesh of His flesh. My spirit is His Spirit, the same Spirit of Christ that raised Jesus from the dead. My soul is Jesus in me, Jesus filling my heart with His glory. Jesus is my only self; I have abandoned all thought of any “self” of my own. I cannot remember such a thing any more, just like God cannot remember.

At every point that is Jesus, literally and concretely, at every point Jesus is, there I am, that is me. At every point that is me, literally and concretely, at every point that I am, there is Jesus, that is He. Yet we are two; yet we are one. Union, communion, expression. And always in Jesus is the Father, and always we in Jesus, in the Father.

Inside John 14:20, then, I look again at 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and I see something entirely different.

I see the definition of God.

I see the definition of the Mercy Seat. – I see the definition of my own heart.

And I know what my own heart IS because I know what the Mercy Seat, the throne of God is.

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things – the very throne of God.

Do you see how important the patterns of the Old Testament are to us? Some use those patterns, the patterns of the law, to define and describe the revelation of Christ in the New, thus they never actually see Jesus, for they do not seek for Him. We do not use the Old in that way. Rather, seeing out from Christ alone, we look back at Christ revealed in the New through the lens, the framework, offered to us by the Old, and we see wonders.

The book of Hebrews places the Mercy Seat of heaven at the center of the New  Covenant. Then, looking through the mercy seat of the old, we catch a glimpse, once again, of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. And suddenly we see something we never saw before. We see God, we see His Heart beating now as ours. We see this One who bears with all, suffering long with each one, this One who believes the best in all, this One who hopes the best for all (and God's hope is never thwarted), this One who places Himself under to carry all (the meaning of the word “endure”).

And we see that “endure” is the full and released expression of the authority of God in the universe, the nature of His heart. Do you see that phrase “all things?” It's that Greek word,panta, again. It means all things.

In “The Obedience of God,” I gave a definition of the glory Jesus knows with the Father separate from all creation. You see, the Father always knows all things for all things come out from Him.

Glory is communion.

– Glory is the capacity to put your arm around a hurting, confused, and lost individual in full compassion, BECAUSE you have been there, and then show them your heart, and the absence of all their fault, there inside your own heart, the throne of God, and then to affirm to them that they also are loved, that they also are respected and honored just as they find themselves to be. – Notice that I said “capacity.” How could we love just as God loves if we have not suffered with those who suffer, just as God does? –

In “God's Heart in a Man,” I made the following claim.

– Here is where David fits. The next letter I have titled “The Wasted Years.” I want to bring us into the broken heart of David, the sorrow of Jesus, the worst days of our lives. There I will plant a flag of testimony. –

– Here is the birthing of the Heart of God in the breast of a man or a woman. –

~~~

Do you see that word “capacity” in the definition of glory? Capacity is the shaping of the human heart to contain the Heart of God. This is utterly a work of God's hand.

Then, we see much more clearly now another verse fitting itself into our picture.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Romans 8:16-19

Let us continue, then, with the broken heart of David, the sorrow of Jesus, and the worst days of our lives.

You will notice that I have not been using dates with David. In college, I took a course on the Old Testament and another on the life of David from a wonderful Bible teacher, Ernest Watkins. From that teaching, I came away with a definite layout in mind of David's life. However, as I look at the “dates” that Edward Reece, in Reece's Chronological Bible, chose for the life of David, they do not connect.

Thus I use Reece's dates, that David was born in 1055 BC and was anointed king in 1025 BC at the age of thirty. What I will not use is Reece's dates in between. My understanding is that David faced Goliath at age 16 and then spent his years from 20 to 30 on the run from Saul. Reece places David's facing Goliath at age 26, giving David only the next few months to marry Saul's daughter Mical and to flee from Saul that same year, then running from Saul for less than four years.

If I were doing a series on the life of David, I would study out the dates issue and then use my conclusions in the story line. Since my focus is elsewhere in this series, I will leave out the dates.

More than that, we see the immediate and continual connection, point by point, between the patterns of the Feasts inside the journey of Israel and the revelation of Jesus Christ now in our day, and we are amazed. But David speaks of heart, thus it is not God's intention for us to speak of David as a framework, but as the capacity of a man, of the human heart, to contain and to reveal the very Heart of God.

Thus, I want to speak about David's wasted years, the years of running and hiding, the years of sorrow and loss. In those years are also found the “wasted” times of David's rule, when he fled from Absalom, seeing out from Jesus' eyes upon the cross in his sorrow, and when he displeased God again in his old age and bought the temple site as a result.

David, the boldest man on this earth save Jesus, spent so much of his life running away.

Will God break your heart as well?

~~~

After writing that question, I hit a wall in this letter. I attempted some directions, but then erased them. We cannot include the whole story of David in this study; it is too long. The question is, which are the critical points? What are the primary events the Spirit of God wants to connect between David, Jesus, and us, now in the going forth from the Atonement to fling open the Doors of Tabernacles?

What is the center of the judgment of God by which He plants His Heart in the breasts of His own?

Heart transplant is a desperate operation with the sternum sawed in half and the rib cage stretched wide by cables. There is the old heart beating away, sick and deficient, yet still pumping its issue of blood into the body. The new heart is prepared, there waiting, ready. (I have NO medical experience and am thus writing from very limited bits of knowledge). The surgeons have less than three minutes. The old heart is cut away and removed, the new heart is planted in the cavity and the blood vessels sown onto it. Then, by electrical jolt, the new heart is coaxed into beating, back into life.

One could easily argue that the old died and the new came to life. For us the new replaces the old instantaneously; never are there two hearts inside of us.

I now see clearly the place where God plants His Heart in a man or a woman. I see the judgment of God. Let me bring in the verses first.

When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people, He permitted no one to do them wrong; yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes, saying, “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.” Psalm 105:13-15

I have become a stranger to my brothers, and an alien to my mother’s children; because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me. Psalm 67:8-9

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I am zealous for Zion with great zeal; with great fervor I am zealous for her.’ Zechariah 8:2

When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.” John 2:15-17                 

Zeal for Your House has eaten Me up!

The first Day of Tabernacles, the flinging open of the Doors, is the revelation of the House of God.

There are three things in this picture. First is the refusal to touch or to speak against or to malign God's anointed regardless of their outward performance. Second is the zeal for the cleansing of God's house. And third is the absolute love of rejoicing together with all the congregation in that House. The third has a name in this series; it is called the Tabernacle of David. We will look at that briefly in an upcoming letter. Here we want to look at two sides of something terrible, the cutting open of the human breast and the removal of a deficient heart followed by the planting of a terrible Heart in its place, a Heart filled with zeal.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I am zealous for Zion with great zeal. . .'

After I returned in 1995 with my family to Blueberry, a Christian community in northern British Columbia, during the summer of 1996 I was digging a tunnel through the soft sand under our cabin in order to install water lines. As I rested momentarily in the coolness of the sand, God spoke to me in a matter-of-fact voice without prelude or reverberations, just an uncalled-for statement of fact.

“Son, you have a sectarian heart.”

I looked at what He was referring to and said, “Yes, Father, You are right.”

I know David, for I have seen the hand of God upon me in the same judgment. As Saul pursued David to kill him, twice David held Saul's life in his hand. David was not unfamiliar with killing people. And I have not been unfamiliar with speaking evil against people.

Read the stories, in 1 Samuel 24, after which David wrote Psalm 57 – read the Psalm to hear David's heart. Then, read the second time David refused to raise his hand against Saul, in 1 Samuel 26.

Listen, Saul is the primary picture to us in the Bible of a man anointed by God to lead God's people who took that place in God and used it for the purposes of his own earthy and limited heart.

If we might think that this or that person, anointed by God in a place of ministry, is leading God's people falsely, that person must be less than Saul in hardness of self-will. More than that, the problem just might be, not that anointed ministry whom we are condemning with harsh words, but our own selves, our own hard and sectarian heart.

I have never before connected that word God spoke to me in the cool quietness under my cabin with events happening immediately after during the most difficult year of my life. I had reason to find fault with God's anointed, with a man who had blessed and covered me and my family for many years, a leader in God's house. I did not open my mouth nor ever give voice for there was no scorn in me. Years later, this same dear brother shared his apology to me, an apology he had shared with many. His heart was as much in God's hand as mine.

Yet had I given voice to evil against him, or even harbored it in my heart, you would never have heard of me, for God would have turned away from my knowledge.

David passed through a third related experience just a few days before he was crowned king.

First, the story of the destruction of Ziklag and the theft by a group of Amalekites of David's family and possessions and the families and possessions of his men is found in 1 Samuel 30. This is the lowest point in David's life. Edward Reece states that Psalm 4 might fit here. Read 1 Samuel 30, then Psalm 4; it is a simple psalm of quiet and certain faith.

The third proving of God comes in 2 Samuel 1. David has just returned from destroying the Amalekites and retrieving what was stolen. He hears that Saul and Jonathan have been killed in battle. A man comes to David, imagining that if he tells a story, David will honor him. So he tells David that he had killed Saul, something he had not done. – David orders the man to be executed.

So David said to him, “How was it you were not afraid to put forth your hand to destroy the Lord’s anointed?” Then David called one of the young men and said, “Go near, and execute him!” And he struck him so that he died. So David said to him, “Your blood is on your own head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, ‘I have killed the Lord’s anointed.’” 2 Samuel 1:14-16

I have spoken in my letters against the teachings of Buddy Cobb, the primary ministry in the move of God for many years. I have stated that I have a right to do that for two reasons. One is that his teaching, similar to the teaching of all Nicene Christianity, is heard by many. The other is that his teaching held an enormous sway over me for many years. Yet I have said, more than once, that I have no right whatsoever to speak against Buddy Cobb personally or concerning his relationship with Jesus. Buddy Cobb is a dear and kind man, meek, and anointed by God.

An individual who has read my letters began to speak evil things publicly against Buddy Cobb, whom this person has never known or met. When I confronted this person about those words, the reply was “Oh, I thought you didn't like him.” (My paraphrase, I can't remember the exact words.) There was no apology, no heart-felt sense of wrong, just an attempt to lay the cause of the evil-speaking upon me. 

Those who speak evil against God's anointed, against those whom God has placed in leadership in His house, without regard for their own iniquity, have cut themselves off utterly from me. And you know what, I include the Pope as a leader in God's house; in fact God includes Satan in that same high regard.

Zeal for Your House has eaten Me up!

The Heart of God is a Heart of Judgment.

Love suffers long . . . love . . . bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

God will plant His heart in His own only as He proves Himself through them by placing them in the worst, the darkest, the most lonely and terrible places in their lives, whether it be returning to a devastated Ziklag for David or sitting in a circle of elders for me as I knew that something was not right, but was unable to know what it was. (The same dear and anointed man of whom I spoke, sitting in that same circle of elders, years later apologized to me for the very thing I knew was not right, but could not identify.)

Will you speak against others or will you BE SILENT before God?

It is a simple choice. It is a human choice. It is the heart of God or the voice of Satan.

Those who will speak evil against anyone cannot ever know the Heart of God.

Let the silence of God be upon your lips; let His fear crown your forehead.

We speak with strong emotion against false theology that keeps God's people from knowing the glorious One who fills their hearts and carries them all the way home. We speak only with gentleness and regard when we speak of any human being, but in particular those anointed by God as leaders in His house, regardless.

But there is a place of terribleness in God's judgment. I suspect that God does something similar to what I do when a subscriber responds to something I have written with accusation and no grasp of Christ Jesus as our only life. I simply remove that person from my email list and erase all their emails.

I am convinced that any accusation against God's anointed, regardless of their actions, putting one's hands to the Ark of the Covenant to manipulate and control out from a heightened and delusional sense of self-righteousness, causes God to do the same thing. He quietly removes their email address from His list of those who would know God, and they continue on their way not even knowing that such a thing has happened.

God has bound Himself in Person to us and to our persons by a Blood Covenant. This Blood Covenant is not an agreement. God does not agree to “do” some things for us. A Blood Covenant is a sharing of the same heart, the same blood, the same life. A Blood Covenant is a perfect, complete, and most intimate binding union of two Ppersons utterly together.

God cannot trust us to open Himself to us in that way until He proves Himself through us in the most difficult places of our lives. What will you do when someone throws a spear at you?

God has to know the answer to that question; we have to know the answer to that question.

Jesus lays down His life for the spear-thrower; God would do the same again through us.

Saul intended to kill David. He attempted to do so over and over. For us, the spears are not usually so life-threatening. Yet David continued to entreat Saul as a father and to hold in the highest regard the anointing of God upon him.

God is much more bound to us than Siamese twins are bound together. Siamese twins are attached, usually, only by a strip of flesh or even by a shared organ; yet that attachment requires that they live their lives utterly together, even if one gets married. But God shares with us entirely the same Bbody, the same Hheart, and the same Sspirit. Thus we have to get along, you know. How could we ever reveal God if we were not just like Him?

Love suffers long . . . love . . . bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Zeal for Your House has eaten Me up!

Rather than look at further instances in David's life, I want to take this same inquiry into the life of Jesus and then connect it to us, to what we must do to know the Heart of God.

“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? Hebrews 12:5-7

“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek”; who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. Hebrews 5:6-8

The obedience Jesus learned was the obedience of life, not the obedience of good and evil. The obedience of life comes only out from union, “The Father and I are One,” and it never contains any thought of cursing. There is no curse in life. God never curses or denies Himself or that to which He is bound.

I want to look briefly at the sorrow and the zeal that Jesus bore for His Father's House through the time of His ministry. We understand without question that the stone building constructed by Herod was NOT and never could be the Father's House. God does not dwell in a house made of stones.

When Jesus drove out the merchants from the temple court, He did so still inside the dispensation of the Old Covenant, thus that temple represented for all Israel the Father's dwelling place, where He could be approached and known. Yet He also said that the real temple was His body, which would rise from the dead. We are His Body, the dwelling place of Almighty God.

Jesus' heart was broken over the Pharisees, over the Priests, over the Jews, over the coming destruction upon Jerusalem, over the unbelief and hardness of heart found even in those who loved and followed Him. We can be certain that Judas coming to Jesus to kiss Him distressed Jesus more deeply than we can know. Peter's cursing that he never knew Jesus hit Jesus like a blow to the gut, taking the wind right out of Him.

When Jesus wept, He was not pretending. He carried fully the sorrow of all, especially of those whom He loved.

Jesus was not bothered by sins of the flesh. The only problem with sins of the flesh is the harm they cause the one bound by them, yet for that harm He sorrowed. Jesus was very bothered, however, by those who used their place in God to treat others badly, with religious manipulation and control. Offences must come, but woe to those through whom they come.

Although Jesus' sorrow was real, however, He did not live by that sorrow, but rather by the faith of the Son of God. He lived by the God who bears all things in hope. Thus Jesus' task was to open the Door to the Feast of Pentecost, to the infilling of the Holy Spirit. His task was to allow God to plant Him in the earth for three days and three nights, that is, for the three thousand years of His Church, that He might live as us, living us all the way into life.

I want to present here a calling, a task, before you, that is even now weighing upon my heart. It is the task of the Melchizedek calling, the task coming upon us as we have forever turned around in the Holy of Holies.

Just as Jesus' task was two-fold, so also is ours. Jesus' task was first to prepare Himself to be the Atonement for all and second to prepare a people for the Day of Pentecost. Our task is first to be the Atonement fulfilled and second to prepare a people for the Day of Tabernacles.

Tabernacles is not about us; it's about many.

The Atonement is about each one of us individually. Tabernacles concerns only the entire House of God, of which each one of us is a member, a living stone of that House.

Let me refer you back to the letter “Defining the Apostolic.” What do we do when someone throws a spear at us? We justify God; we blame no one; we give thanks for all things; and we speak only blessing and goodness into all others. This is the outworking of the Atonement through us.

But as we look upon the entire Bride of Christ right now upon the earth, we see an outward appearance that is just awful. We see precious dear ones, beloved by us, exalting the head of the Beast, the head wounded to death, the pretend nation of Israel. We see precious friends calling for the Beast to kill more people in order to “save the church.” We see an almost spell-bound infatuation with the non-things called “governments” and “nations.” We see our brethren drinking lies spoken by the image of the Beast like water.

Almost all of our brethren, reading through this series, would reject out of hand the things that I share. Almost all of our brethren, as we come to them in the name of the Lord to lead them into the knowledge of their Beloved, will reject us as heretics and blasphemers.

Almost all of our brethren define God with the definition belonging to a cherub, that is, as outwardly displayed perfection and power, and not as the Lord Jesus Christ, a Man on His knees to serve, and they define salvation and the gospel by Nicene darkness. When they hear us speak the Covenant out from the text of the New Testament, they believe we have become like the devil.

Yet God would open the Doors of Tabernacles for them, for as many as desire, for multitudes rushing in. God would open those Doors by us.

We are the friends of the Bridegroom. It is all those out there who belong to Jesus who are the Bride, though they are caught by the lies of this world and are laboring under the darkness of the serpent seed sown in the church.

We do not go into Tabernacles by ourselves. We take a people in with us.

I have been pondering this fact. I am so limited. You who read this letter are limited as well.

But God can change our outward form in a moment. Jesus went from unknown to known in just a few weeks.

When God has a people who KNOW Him as He IS, then He will gain the attention of many. I continue to work at placing the word God has given me onto the Internet in as many accessible forms as I can. Few access it now. Yet should God anoint me as one of many in the second witness of Christ, suddenly millions of people could become very interested in the things I share.

My whole desire, the desire of my heart from the time I was a boy, is that God would somehow use my life and the difficulties He has carried me through as a clear path, as a wide open doorway, that many, many might enter into the Joy of Tabernacles.

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!” Says your God. “Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double (the Atonement, Blood, Life) for all her sins.”

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Isaiah 40:1-5

Jerusalem is the Bride of Christ; the glory of the Lord revealed is the Great Day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Our calling is to lead a people into the first Day of Tabernacles, that they might be the establishing of God's House upon this earth and in the universe. Our calling is to make a clear path, a smooth road, a highway for our Father running from one direction and many sons running in from the other.

One final thought: what must we do to know the Heart of God as our own heart, that is, beyond calling those things that “be not” as they are?

Jesus said this: “The prince of this world comes and finds nothing in Me.”

There can be no holes in our lives, either in our present thoughts or in all the memory of our past, no places not filled by Christ and finished by the Atonement. If there be evil, let it be filled with His was dead, if there be human failings, let them be carried utterly by the Father. If there be sin, let it vanish into the annihilation of God.

There are NO wasted years or days or moments, for Christ is all in all.

We must see Christ in every circumstance of our life, Jesus in Person, the Atonement complete.

Your brain remembers every instance of your past as if they just happened, even though you cannot recall all things. Learn to place Christ into every instance that comes to mind and into every present circumstance as it happens, in the seeing of your mind.

KNOW that I am in My Father and you in Me and I in you.

We walk in utter and complete union with God; we put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

We walk in the Atonement fulfilled.

We open the Doors of Tabernacles for many.