18. Spirit
Everything exists in Spirit. Everything is bathed by Spirit. Everything is energized by Spirit. When we say everything, we mean all things and all beings in both earth AND heaven. Heaven substance bears the same relationship to Spirit as earthly substance, yet earthly substance is continually coming out of, is being always acted upon, by heavenly substance as well as Spirit.
© Daniel Yordy - 2014
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. John 4
What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit never speaks of Himself, but always speaks of Christ. In following God's order in placing the Spirit last, we discover that we cannot know anything of God except by Spirit, and thus the Spirit of God brooding over the face of the waters was really the beginning of all creation. We also discover that this whole endeavor to treat the Spirit last, has served only to re-shift the order of importance.
In some ways we have built upwards in importance to the most important.
– Spirit.
In a recent posting on Facebook, Chris Welch linked to a typical explanation of the fulfillment of the “prophetic word” in the earth, that is, a discussion of nations and events and a single, individual Antichrist. Chris then made the following comment.
“The Eyes of Fire Series is important, because it turns our eyes to the spirit realities. The prophecies were born in the Spirit… and it is true… if we pursue the wrong spirit to the nth degree we will see everything in outward form… but Daniel describes very clearly how just about everything is already true and happening right in front of us, but we haven't mostly the eyes and eye salve to see it.”
Sometimes one doesn't really know what one is doing or saying until you can see it through the eyes and words of another. – Think of that, “Buy from Me eye salve so that you might see.”No one pays any attention; we just rush right on by imagining that we sure can see and have no need of eye salve. Thus all the non-seeing of John's vision.
Everything exists in Spirit. Everything is bathed by Spirit. Everything is energized by Spirit. When we say everything, we mean all things and all beings in both earth AND heaven. Heaven substance bears the same relationship to Spirit as earthly substance, yet earthly substance is continually coming out of, is being always acted upon, by heavenly substance as well as Spirit.
When Jesus said that God is Spirit, and when Hebrews says that angels are spirits, the two words denote some similarity, yes, but not entirely. The Spirit that is God and the spirits that are angels are of differing substance or quality or something.
What is the Holy Spirit?
I do not believe that God is a “Trinity,” though He is always revealing Himself in three different ways. Here is how I would say it, in conjunction with what God actually says.
There is one God, the Father, who reveals Himself in the heavens as His Spirit and in the earth as His Son. Yet this same God reveals Himself through many persons.
Is the Holy Spirit a distinct Person?
The Bible says, “the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit of God,” and “the Spirit of Christ.” Are these three different things? John saw seven Spirits of God. Where does that fit? Is the Holy Spirit seven Persons?
There is no definitive answer to these questions because God doesn't want His Spirit analyzed. Yet this same Spirit upholds and sustains all things.
I am convinced, though, that God is very big on “personhood.”
Science now knows that dolphins are much more advanced than we had imagined. They speak to each other with a grammatical language and call each one by his or her own individual name all their lives. They clearly demonstrate heart in their dealings with other creatures and with one another. There is no reason for us not to call dolphins “persons.” God's universe does not fit into our tight prejudicial boxes, nor is there any reason for it to do so.
There is only one Spirit, and yes, He/She must be personal. There are many spirits, billions and billions of them, including ourselves, and each one is uniquely personal.
There is one God, the Father, forever invisible, yet He reveals Himself through many persons.
I can say with all truth that the Father reveals Himself through me in precisely the same manner as He revealed Himself through Jesus. Certainly, Jesus is forever pre-eminent, the Atonement was His alone, He is our Beloved, our King, but we are of His same kind. I am as much a part of God as Jesus is, in fact, I am Christ Jesus revealed uniquely through my person.
I have always been inside of God; there is no other place to be.
I wrote the next bit (and the first bit) a couple of months ago.
– Pray without ceasing. Paul
I have never been a pray-er, though I have certainly tried. Since reading Norman Grubb's Rees Howells at age nineteen, I have been drawn to intercession, but never capable of doing it. Prayer lists make me very uncomfortable. It's not that I can't pray for people; it's that I can never sustain prayer. I have spent hours walking the woods in prayer, hours on my knees with others in the early morning, praying some, certainly, but most of the time thinking about something else.
When I do pray aloud, I can't pray for long. Eloquent, meaningful prayers out loud are not in my capacity.
One of the most wonderful realities about Christ living as me is that when I forget, when I think of other things, I don't worry a bit. I accept all my forgetfulness as Christ Himself living as me. The result? Since I spend zero time condemning myself when I think of Him, I actually think of and commune with Christ more often. The result? The time I spend communing with Him increases. And I never worry one second when I forget.
That doesn't make me a prayer warrior, however.
Last night, in the middle of the night, prayer became something entirely different for me.
Let me explain the primary difference between an Augustinian God and the God I have come to know. The difference is simple. But the knowing of all things out from that difference is giganormous!
The Nicene God is up there, out there, far above, and far away. He is superior to me. Prayer, then, is me down here, imploring this Entity up there somewhere in the divine Haze, to do something He is not typically doing. Most prayer to that image of God is rooted in a type of unbelief.
The Father of the Lord Jesus Christ fills me with all of His fullness. He is as much a part of me as I am. We share heart together. We walk together moment by moment as two Ppersons in one. I know God filling ME full.
Last night God and I prayed together.
Who does God pray to? He doesn't. “Pray to” is not and never has been prayer.
I've never prayed before, not once. Last night, for the first time in my life, I prayed; God and I prayed together.
~~ Now, I am a forgetful man, but as I shared, I worry about none of that. Our minds so easily treat God as the Nicene God, far away. We forget that He is not, that He fills us full with ALL of Himself. If God fills me full, then I cannot pray “to” Him, I can only pray with Him.
God and I pray together. – That's pretty cool.
But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 1 Corinthians 2:10-12
You who read my letters KNOW that nothing can be known of God except by an immediate, miraculous experience with the Holy Spirit. The “portal” that a reader mentioned passing through is that experience. We know that until God opens our eyes by His Spirit, we cannot see even when we are looking straight at something. A sister on Facebook was laboring over what I was sharing concerning 1 John 3:16. She could not “see” any of it because she was parsing the verse with her intellect, unable even to see the words as Christ.
The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is not an incidental and irrelevant practice of certain Christian groups. Those who do not know full immersion into the Holy Spirit CANNOT see Christ in His own Word, though they look straight at the words on the page.
Now, we already know that; thus, though I want to underline that reality, I also want to know this Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being more deeply and more experientially than I have known. I write that I might know Him.
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
Guarantee – an installment; a deposit ("down-payment") which guarantees the balance (the full inheritance).
Christ comes into me by the Holy Spirit. The Father comes into me inside of Christ. All of God is in me now, in all fullness. Yet there is far more to come in my experience. The Holy Spirit is the down payment, a very LARGE down payment.
The Holy Spirit teaches us Christ. Christ teaches us the Father.
Again, I am reaching to know – “What is the Holy Spirit?” So I will wait upon Him that I might know Him.
The Holy Spirit is that sending forth of God out from God and me praying together. (When I say “me” or “I,” you say it as yourself.)
As God and I pray together, the Holy Spirit goes forth to accomplish what we have purposed.
As God and I pray together, it is I, as the body of Christ, as God revealed in the earth, who goes forth to touch things in the earth. But it is also I, as one Spirit with God's Spirit, who goes forth to touch things in the heavens.
All things God and I do together are accomplished by faith, by speaking our prayer into the darkness, calling all things good, and waiting with full expectation for the full measurement of our faith to come back to us by love. Isn't that how it works?
Praying “to” God is unbelief. Praying with God, and then, with God expecting all that we have spoken to come back to us by love is faith. Faith works by love.
How this understanding changes everything.
The first part is always the Mercy Seat. As I draw that which offends and is offensive to me into my heart upon the Mercy Seat, above the Blood, and there set all things free to arise into life, I am dealing with the negative. (And let me tell you, this practice WORKS.) But prayer is the positive side of that same reality.
Prayer is the going forth of God (Spirit). But this God is never alone, for I am always inside of Him.
Our marriage union with Christ changes all things in the universe and all things in God in our perspective. Our marriage union with Christ places us as the actor upon all the works of God's hands. We can never speak or think of ourselves except the we are in God and God is in us. We are never thought of or seen or known separate from Him; we never act or speak separately from Him.
The Father and I are one. – I am God revealed.
That's not blasphemy; that's the normal human life, exactly what God created us to be.
Now, I used the word “negative,” just above. I was not speaking of the Mercy Seat, but of the elimination of the negative by the Mercy Seat. The sixth most important verse in the Bible states that our hearts are sprinkled with Blood. The Blood is absolute. The Blood is a Rock. There is nothing more substantial than Blood in God or in creation.
John saw the river of life, that it flows out from the throne of God. That throne is the Mercy Seat, sprinkled with Blood; that throne is our hearts. Yet that river of life is the sending forth of the Holy Spirit out from God in us. When we send forth the Holy Spirit in prayer together with the God who fills us full, that Holy Spirit proceeds forth from Blood, the Blood sprinkled upon our hearts.
This is a big deal.
Pray without ceasing. The Holy Spirit is continually flowing out from the Blood upon our hearts.
Now, both Son and Spirit are “Sent.” That is, both are the going forth of the Father.
For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10-11
This reality is true for both Son into the earth and Spirit into the heavens.
“It shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” IS God's faith in action, the expectation of God.
Faith is the mechanism by which God accomplishes all things. Faith works by love.
Faith works by love means God sets all things free of Himself. Then, by His expectation ALONE, all things, responding to that love, come back to Him.
Prayer. – Spirit. – Word.
God is in us as much as we are in God. There is no place inside of God that one could go without finding us there as well. The Holy Spirit is the down payment; all of God is our inheritance. Yet this same God fills us with ALL that He is.
If prayer is us with God, then prayer is also God with us.
God places His supreme confidence in His Spirit sent forth into the heavens to accomplish all He has purposed in the heavenly realms. God places His supreme confidence in His Son sent forth into the earth as the Body of Christ to accomplish all He has purposed in the physical realms.
The expectation of God is pure rest; the expectation of God is ceaseless activity. – Faith WORKS by Love.
So, let's get this picture clear.
You and I are God's Son in the earth, the Body of Christ. We are one Spirit with the Spirit of God in the heavens. Upon our hearts the Blood is sprinkled, making our hearts God's authority in the universe. You see, all these things are clearly stated in the New Testament and we know the words. We just have never considered what they meant, blinded by the Nicene definitions of God and man.
We never pray “to” God, for God fills us full. We pray with God.
Thus the Holy Spirit is that part of God that goes out from our hearts to accomplish God and our purposes in the heavens. As God and we pray together, we place our supreme confidence in the Holy Spirit to accomplish in the heavenly realms all that we speak. Yet we and God never push anyone around. The only reality we accept coming back to us is that which comes by love out from hearts moved by love.
God never expects an instantaneous response to His faith. His supreme confidence that love would come back to Him from the earth has taken the Spirit of God 6,000 years to work its way through the tangled world of the human heart, wooing, breathing, calling, inspiring, until our hearts, sprinkled with Blood, now engage fully with this God who fills us full. Rooted and grounded in love.
Unbelief is treating the Holy Spirit very badly. That is, though He is sent out, unbelief is “confident” that He will fail.
As I've shared before, Romans 8:28 is poorly translated. It should read: God and we together make all things good – those who are called according to His purpose. This is His purpose, to make all things new, to make all things good, to draw all creation into love.
God created the proto-universe by speaking His Word into His Spirit (prayer).
The serpent and Adam together marred that universe, both heaven and earth, by unbelief, by expecting both Word and Spirit to fail. They are totally wrong.
God is not just creating a “new” universe. Rather, by that same Word, this time in our mouths, by that same Spirit, this time flowing out from us, God and us together draw every single element in the old creation across the Blood upon our hearts, across the Mercy Seat, and by love, raise it up into the new creation.
God and we together make all things good. – We are the proof that Adam and the serpent are wrong.
Yet here's the thing. Since neither God nor us ever pushes anyone around, we must give the Spirit time. We must give Him our vote of confidence with patience. He is working as God and we speak together. But He is working upon hearts, and hearts can be won only by love.
We have all the time in the universe; we have forever. Because we know there is no such thing as the “next life,” we never fall into the evil reaction of thinking, “Well, it will all work out in the sweet by and by.” We are in life and life is forever. I plan on living forever; I see no interruption or distinction from my present life in God to a “next” life as if I am not entirely in God right now.
I see only the defeat of death; I am not planning to die. Living forever without dying is the promise of the gospel.
Now, even though Spirit is infinite and all-pervasive, it is not “ethereal.” Spirit is specific and definite.
So let's bring the Spirit into something definite, the vision of my heart that God and I are believing for together. Now, I am not tied to that vision being fulfilled at Blair Valley, an isolated valley in north-eastern British Columbia. I would be just as happy if God and I together brought forth its fulfilment in warmer climes, where there is plenty of water. Yet both Word and Spirit inside of me continues to hover over that unique place, wintry and isolated though it might be.
The vision of my heart is a school, a particular kind of school, centered in a Christian community in a rural setting. One distinctive nature of this school/community is that many can come from across the earth to gain from it a knowledge of Christ, and thus carry that knowledge in their hearts back to their own country. I see only a river in and a river out, a place of refuge and a sending forth.
That is, I see God.
Prayer is the sending forth of the Spirit in the expectation of faith. So what, exactly is the Holy Spirit doing right now concerning the prayer of God and me together continually sending Him forth?
EVERYTHING that is needed to cause the vision I carry to be fulfilled at that location is right now in the hands of other people. More than that, there is no way, at this present time, that I could “earn” any of it.
What, precisely, is needed to fulfill our vision? Three things: word, anointing, and money.
There is no community without people, the right people. And people are made “the right people” by the hearing of the same word. At this point in time I am sufficiently settled in the word presently flowing through me, that it is a word worth giving one's life for, and that others are recognizing and embracing that same word.
But in every instance, people + word = legalism. No thanks. Thus there must also be the anointing, that unction, that enablement coming out from Spirit that causes the Word to be alive, that abounds in hearts with love, that convicts of wrong, that joins all together in worship.
But, I tell you what, you can preach up a storm in the power of the Holy Ghost, and without MONEY, ain't nothing gonna' happen.
And that's where Father comes in. Father's the One with the dough. He's the wealthy Guy. The problem, of course, is that all of His earthly money is already out on credit, in the hands of people.
About thirty families came together in 1972 and 1973 to build Graham River Farm, the first Christian community I knew at the age of twenty (1977 – five years later). Most of them had sold everything they owned and put their moneys together to buy the property, build the buildings, and purchase all the needed equipment for a late 1800's style of rural agricultural life, with just a bit of modern, such as tractor, truck, welding shop, etc.
In the first two years, they burned through a couple of million dollars. Everything had to be bought until the farming was sufficient to provide the needs of a simple life. Two million in 1972 is more than ten million today. And when the money was gone, their life together was simple and limited, great fun for a twenty-year-old boy, but very difficult for mothers with little children especially, and with no ability to be a “river in and a river out.”
More than that, the nature of poverty works against the gospel of Christ for the simple reason that people tend to replace money with ego and elitism. In other words, “We're the true people of God, and we are poor. You people out there in the world with all your fleshy wealth are not as close to God as we are.”
I will not take my family back into poverty and the inability to be a blessing to others that comes with it. Such is not Father.
So how, then, does prayer work, this sending forth of Spirit out from Father and me in our full confidence in the Spirit's ability to perform all things well?
First, this same Spirit must be upon me before any Word coming through me will attract the right people. Different word attracts different kinds of people. The word that I write comes out from the Holy Spirit. You know, this is so neat. I can say that with all confidence and with no ego. The simple reason why is that I trust the Holy Spirit utterly to be upon all that I write. Yet at no time am I bound to any particular words, but am ready to edit them for any good reason, whether mine or others. Yet my desire for that which alone is REAL causes me to rest utterly in the Holy Spirit through me.
At the same time, the people who hear the Holy Spirit speaking to them by the words that I write are the only ones who continue to read. That may be disheartening at times (a writer wants to be read), but it is the only way I would have it.
But my present readers may or may not be the ones who will arrive at Blair Valley, sent by God to give their lives to the vision I carry in my heart. Wow. That's a big deal; I dare never take such a thing lightly. Yet there are individual people right now, across this earth, who will give their hearts and strength to the fulfillment of that vision. And there are individual people right now, across this earth, who will give their money to the fulfillment of that vision.
How does that happen? – Spirit.
All things and all people exist inside the same Holy Spirit going out from Father and me to fulfill our expectations. This same Holy Spirit is all the energia of their lives.
Faith works by love. The Holy Spirit's job is to win the heart of each individual person who has some role to play, large or small, in the fulfillment of this dream of mine. Okay. That sobers things up a bit.
Do you see how it is that great visionaries in the church who will “use” God's people to fulfill their vision as they see it, have done so much damage to so many for 2000 years?
The love of God HAS BEEN shed abroad IN our hearts BY the Holy Spirit who is given to us.
ANYTHING that comes by any other means from anyone is not God, though He bears with all.
So when we force spirit, we win by fair means and foul together. You know, that does describe Sam Fife and the Christian communities I lived in for eighteen years. The Holy Spirit was most definitely upon us, but at times “forced,” and most certainly fair means and foul together. So much goodness; so much ruin. God most definitely works inside of such a mess (otherwise there would be no hope for anyone), but only to teach us to flee the false and wait upon Him for the real.
We must wait upon the Spirit to do His work BECAUSE He wins hearts only by the wooing of love. And since everything I need to fulfill the vision in my heart is right now in the hands of other people across the earth, the only way it will ever happen is for the Holy Spirit to win.
You know, I've never cared much for “patience.” I always imagined some bold sort of faith that “makes things happen NOW!” There is no such thing. Oh sure, forceful human spirits can cause a spirit reaction of WOW and submission in other human spirits. It happens all the time, even with that which is “miraculous.” But if it's not the winning of the heart by the Holy Spirit up from within the person's own heart in full respect and honor of each individual one, it may be of use to some, but not to me.
I want only that which comes out of the full freedom and honor of love.
And thus prayer, praying without ceasing, and the expectation that the Holy Spirit is doing His task well, and possessing all things with patience are all three the same thing. – Spirit.
But the trigger is in my hands, the power switch, my own confidence that the Holy Spirit is indeed doing well right now all that the Father and I have sent Him out to do. As I am confident with the Father in the Holy Spirit, that He will come back, His work fulfilled, then He is free to do what He does best, win hearts by love. But when I doubt that the Father and I are together, when I expect that the Holy Spirit will likely fail (because people are too much for Him), when I am impatient and in my impatience seek to ram my vision through people's minds, emotions, and wills rather than that which comes up out from their hearts and from Christ living as them, then all I am doing is binding the hands of that same Holy Spirit so that He simply weeps and cannot win.
The Holy Spirit NEVER pushes anyone around. The moment there is any commotion, any striving, any manipulation of others, like a dove, He vanishes from the immediate. Yet the only thing eternal, the only thing of value, the only thing I want, comes out of that very gentle wooing of a welcome Holy Spirit.
Faith works only by Love.
You know, for myself, for my own understanding and walk, I think this is one of the most important bits I have ever written.
Everything we do and say we wrap in our hearts (the Mercy Seat) with the expectation of Spirit, that is, in conscious conjunction with that very personal part of God that woos all hearts with tenderness and concern. Every interaction we engage in with people, we expect the Holy Spirit to bathe with His wooing. You see, it has to be “wooing,” there is no other word for it, the winning of a heart to love. The Holy Spirit forces NO ONE. Thus, all work He does must come out from the tender willing consent of the person. And there is no “work” of the Holy Spirit on our behalf that is not on persons.
If we are led with joy to share a Galatians 6:1 word with a dear brother or sister in private, let it be bathed in the conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit's tender wooing both upon yourself and upon the other.
Jesus did not immerse me into the Holy Spirit until I had said “Yes, Lord” in response to His word, “Will you give all of yourself to me.” Up until now, I had imagined that my surrender was the removal of a barrier keeping me from God. Well, when we are far away from God in our imagination, it can't be anything else. But that's not what it was at all.
My surrender was simply the Holy Spirit honoring me with utmost respect, unwilling to force Himself upon me in any way, but waiting until I knew that I truly wanted Him flowing all through me.
Respect – Honor – Love.
Thus, having been treated with such utmost respect by this same Holy Spirit (who is so merged with my spirit that we are one, as Paul said), I/He continues to regard all others with that same respect.
All of Father's money is in other people's hands, on loan, yes, but nevertheless theirs. And I use the word “money” as a clear and practical term for all the provision of God. Thus no provision can come my way except from a person whose heart has been romanced and won by the Holy Spirit for that purpose.
The key to the power of the Spirit is to regard who and what He is and how He works. When Jesus said, “I am meek and lowly of heart,” He was speaking of all the fullness of God. God never moves in any other way in any part or expression of Himself. Even when He displays His wrath, and He does, it's just a face, angered by the rejecter of love for his or her own self-infliction of pain.
When Paul said that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us, he was speaking of the base of the Spirit's operations, heart calling to heart, heart wooing heart by name.
When we hear His voice, we hear our name.
When I look at the means by which so many imagine the “truth” must be spread, speaking endless words at people, I've never seen the Lord Jesus in that. The Lord Jesus is the One who romances one heart by name, wooing that person into Love. His Spirit works no other way.
That which has not been won by love has not been won by God.
Those who “persuade” people to support them and follow their ministry do not have God with them, though God uses anything and everything to work Himself in the lives of all.
Only a heart won by name, and that between that person and the Lord Jesus alone, with me just standing unseen in the shadows, only such a one would I have to walk with me and I with them. And I would have many such ones in a community of honor and respect as the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit flows forth from me, yet I always with Him, for we are one spirit and I am found in all places that same Spirit is found. By Spirit, Jesus and I call each one by name who has some part with me, wooing each one by love, honoring each one with utmost respect.
The Father and I pray together, and then wait in the full rest of expectation, knowing that our Spirit wins every heart in the universe, His elect ones first, and then, through them, all, each in his or her season of favor.