6. Father and Healing
By Covenant Bond, my weakness belongs entirely to God. And by Covenant Bond, God's strength belongs entirely to me. You see, if my weakness is not God's weakness, then I would remain forever in this insipid and awful negotiating story line with a far away God. Yes, I might see others win the healing lottery and even win it myself now and then, but God's strength could never be mine if my weakness were not FIRST His.
© Daniel Yordy - 2014
God is utterly with me and I am utterly with God.
God is on the inside of me with me; that is, ALL of God.
Our union at every point of our beings is by Blood Covenant. That Blood Covenant makes God and me equals at the level of Covenant.
Another way of saying that same thing is that the union between Father and me at every point of our beings is through the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit.
I am coming to know this God with me more profoundly than ever before as a result of writing the letter on the Day of Atonement, preceded by “The Form of God,” and followed by “Thinking Like Jesus.”
I was asked the following question by a new reader who came across my book, The Ten Most Important Verses in the Bible.
– It's so wonderful to know the truth. Now I want to know how to get rid of sickness in my body. As far as I know, I believe I Peter 2:24 (by whose stripes we were healed). I am reading healing Scriptures, confessions, crying out to God. I know He is a God who heals. I do all I know to do. I know God has the answer and I am searching for it. I don't believe, just because I am over 80, that I cannot walk in divine health. –
I shared with this reader that I am not a “power” ministry; although I most definitely expect physical and emotional healing as my inheritance as God arises within me with healing in His wings.
I expect God; that means, I expect all wholeness.
However, I also shared that I have always wanted something else FIRST, something far more important to me than physical healing. That thing I want first has two parts.
I want to know that God is with me inside my difficulty, and I want to know that God has great purpose through my difficulty, to cause it to be for the sake and blessing of others. How can the things I go through be without purpose? Yet many live in such a stupor of not knowing God.
As I was still sleeping this morning, God arose in me mightily in my dreams. I awoke with great strength inside coming out of the knowledge of God with me. I wanted to sit down and write the first line of this letter just as soon as I could – God is utterly with me and I am utterly with God –. The strength I felt was the strength to cast off bonds, to cast off the curse, to cast off all that limits and marginalizes Christ Jesus, King and Savior.
I do not know where all this letter on physical healing will go, but part of what I see as I ponder it now, is that one of the main blockages we have known regarding healing and knowing the fulfillment of God in the promises of the Covenant, practical things in our everyday lives, is the story line of negotiation by which we engage with God.
Negotiation runs along this line. “God, if I will do this, then You will do that for me.” We may phrase or express negotiation in many different ways, but it all boils down to the same thing. We see God there and ourselves here. And in this seeing, we attempt to persuade God to do something for us. In our attempt to persuade God to do something for us, we use everything we know, His word, our faith, endurance, and expectation; yet time goes on, and it just seems that God is reluctant to keep His end of the deal.
Now, some do experience healing from God inside this paradigm. That is wonderful for them in the short term, but not so much in the long term. They will get sick again, and still, they know a relationship with God that is little more than a series of negotiations. And their testimony of healing eggs the rest of us on to continue more fervently in our negotiation with God. It's almost like playing the lottery.
As I'm writing this, I know that I want to focus on the healing of the physical body, but Salvation means wholeness, wholeness in every part of our beings and experience. Wholeness must include all things, physical healing, emotional healing, financial healing, healing of relationships, the fulfillment of the dreams God has put in our hearts, the removal of the curse from off this earth, the defeat of death. It just doesn't end, this wholeness that IS our inheritance, but sweeps into it all things, the entire creation, as the Bible says.
And yet all healing is one big waste of time, temporary and of little account IF the most important thing does not become all that we are first.
Knowing the Father and knowing Jesus Sent in the Bond of the Covenant.
God is utterly with me and I am utterly with God.
Healing comes out from the river of life, and the river of life comes out from living turned around in the Holiest of All.
And yes, there is no question in my mind that no one can comprehend the New Covenant without knowing the meaning and application of the Tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness and the Feasts of Israel. People read bits and pieces of the New Testament, not having a clue where they fit, because it just doesn't dawn on most teachers of the word that the New Testament is written entirely to a people who knew these things and entirely upon the structure of the Tabernacle and the Feasts. And even those who do explore the Old Testament accounts fail to comprehend that all the speaking of God is the Lord Jesus Christ and that we are His body, flesh of His flesh, and one Spirit with Him.
Healing flows out of KNOWING the full extent of living turned around in the Holiest of all.
Here is what that means to me now.
God with me and me with God is on the inside of me, in my heart. This God with me and me with God is everything, including everything I am.
I once pondered whether the heart was a part of the human soul or a part of the human spirit. I ponder that no more. Yes, and yes, and yes. The heart is the center of the body, the center of the soul, and the center of the spirit. The heart is where all three are tied together. My heart is me.
Here is the most incredibly profound statement in the universe, the sum total of the gospel and all of Salvation; out from this statement flows all the purposes of God forever.
– Jesus lives in my heart. –
So here inside of God inside of me inside of God, I look out. My body is out there somewhere, my soul is out there somewhere, my spirit is out there somewhere. BUT God is not.
God is not “out there.” There is no God “out there.” Even my mind and emotions are “out there,” but God is not. God, all of God in fullness, is in here and utterly with me.
I do not negotiate with myself because I am one. Since all of God is entirely inside of that statement, “I am one,” I cannot negotiate with God UNLESS I would be schizophrenic.
Now, let's picture that.
Andy Serkis and Peter Jackson's rendition of JRR Tolkien's character, Gollum, cannot be improved upon and is a perfect picture to us of negotiating with one's self. My favorite chapter in all world literature is “Riddles in the Dark” in The Hobbit. Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman played that chapter so wonderfully well; their work is, to me, a gift to the human story.
Gollum was two: Gollum, the vicious one and Smeagol the endearing one. The two lived in a continual state of negotiation between each other. When around good people, the memory of Smeagol would often prevail, and the endearing Smeagol would hold the upper hand over the vicious Gollum.
This is called schizophrenia, split-mind, or, as James called it, “double minded.”
This relationship with God conducted by most believers, this negotiating story line going on in their minds and hearts, is little different. The picture of Smeagol/Gollum gives us a wonderful way to see that story line.
In that story line, we are the endearing one, the good guy, always trying to “please” this God who is “other.” And this “other” God who never seems to come through, must be the vicious one, at best allowing bad things to happen to us, and at worst sending those bad things Himself “for our good.” And in response to the seeming indifference of “the vicious one,” we try our best to be even more “good.”
This is the story by which most believers live with God.
Since I have known living turned around in the Holy of Holies, I do not know this story line any more.
God is utterly with me and I am utterly with God.
God and I together look out upon OUR body and upon OUR spirit. Whatever difficulty our body is enduring, God and I share that difficulty utterly together.
By Covenant Bond, my weakness belongs entirely to God. And by Covenant Bond, God's strength belongs entirely to me.
You see, if my weakness is not God's weakness, then I would remain forever in this insipid and awful negotiating story line with a far away God. Yes, I might see others win the healing lottery and even win it myself now and then, but God's strength could never be mine if my weakness were not FIRST His.
Being turned around in the Holy of Holies MEANS that I accept fully that my RIDICULOUS human frame IS the revelation of God, that Jesus lives in my heart, utterly with me, and that the Father lives there as well fully inside of Jesus.
The Father IS in me inside of Jesus and the Father flows out with me by the Spirit.
God is not three. God is One, the Father. And the Father lives in us in and as Christ Jesus and the Father flows out with us by and through the Holy Spirit.
This God who is utterly with me and me with Him, this God is ACTION, vibrant, invigorating, explosive, overwhelming, outflowing ACTION.
If you hear any word that would teach you passivity, either that a far away God is just taking care of everything, or that Christ as us is nothing more than us, or some combination of the two,go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, then feel perfectly free to turn such a teaching off.
When I was in college, at around 28 years old, the whole college took the same speech course together, the entirety of eight packed days of action led by an incredible husband and wife teaching team. At the end, we did a public presentation of what we had done, part of which was a reader's theater rendition of The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. But from that time, I remember a line from Lewis's Narnia Series, that someone had also done, a line that has stuck with me, deep in my spirit, forming and shaping me as the dwelling place of God.
It was the white witch speaking, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.”
All of the strength of God in me would cast that voice out of the church and from off of God's people.
Rest is God; passivity is of the evil one who wants no one to believe in the existence of evil heavenly persons or of the ungodliness of the curse, let alone see how easy it is to cast their hold from off this earth.
We cannot know healing, not for real, unless we know from whence it comes.
Yes, my difficulty is God with me, and God and I together turn all my difficulty to the benefit and blessing of others. But in just the same way and far more so, my Victory is God with me, and God and I together turn the triumph of my (“me” and “my” is always Jesus and I) – my Victory into even greater benefit and blessing for others.
By His stripes we are healed.
I want to know what this means in light of my present understanding of the Atonement.
It was Isaiah who said this, quoted by Peter. I would put all of Isaiah 53 here, but you have a Bible, you can read the whole chapter. I will give just the immediate context of this line.
Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 53:4-6
It is the revelation and gospel of Paul that puts you and me entirely into this Jesus as He walked this Path, not in our place, but we in Him. Isaiah did not see that; Matthew, Mark, and Luke could not refer to such a thing; it was only through Paul that this knowledge came into the human experience. An upcoming letter, “In Christ,” will explore more of what that means.
Healing, wholeness in all that it means, spirit, soul, and body, is our inheritance. We possess all right to all of that inheritance; we possess God.
We have turned, every one, to his own way is the picture of Smeagol/Gollum, turning living with God into a negotiation story, into God commanding and us hopping, all in order to convince God to do what He says by our being “good.”
God actively lays down His life for us. This picture of Jesus walking the Atonement, including the cutting stripes of the whips, is not something God did, it is God Himself, revealed for us to see, God as He is. God, this Atoning God, is not ruled by time; time is just the expression of this ALL NOW God in our lives every moment.
There is no passivity in laying down one's life. It is the most ACTIVE action in the universe.
It is the arising of life.
(I'm now writing several days later.)
Let's bring in the whole text from Peter.
For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: “Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth”; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 1 Peter 2:21-25
Remember that we are seeing the only view ever given to the universe of the Father. – He who has seen Me has seen the Father. – We know from Paul that we are inside this Jesus as He walks this path; that's the only possible way we could follow His example.
But what we see, and we are seeing the Father, is that He bore not only our sins in His own body all the way into death, but that He bore all of our unhealedness, our partiality, our brokenness, – ALL of our problems visibly in that same body. And then we see that we in Him arise into the righteousness, the wholeness, of life.
God is not interested in a negotiating relationship with us BECAUSE such a relationship is not who He is. Such a relationship is who the other guy is. If you find yourself negotiating with God for healing, you are still defining God as a cherub, another person “above” you commanding you and dispensing favors when appeased and curses when affronted, a “trick or treat” God.
This thing you are negotiating with is not the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Father has only one relationship with us: He is literally and substantially present with us in us in the core and substance of who and what we are by Blood Covenant Bond.
The Father and we are one.
God possesses all that we are and we possess all that God is.
Here's the deal. What good is any kind of healing if we don't know God? It may provide temporal relief, and that is always a blessing; we don't discount the goodness of God. But still, if at the end of your life you have been healed miraculously many times of many things, but still don't know the God who fills you full, treating Him still as if a cherub is His image and not man, then what was the point?
The title of this letter is “Father and Healing.” Healing is wholeness; wholeness is knowing God, knowing this Father of glory who lives in all of His Being in our hearts, utterly bound to us and we to Him in full Covenant Bond, sharing all that we are as His own and all that He is as our own.
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:17-23
Paul writes exuberantly, and his complicated sentences must be taken apart in order to see the full meaning. The core of this line is one thing.
KNOW the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That knowledge is intimate, personal, and entirely on the deep inside of ourselves.
Then, Paul extends that knowledge out to three things.
KNOW (1.) the hope of His calling, (2.) the riches of the glory of HIS inheritance in the saints, and (3.) the exceeding greatness of His power towards us.
The hope of His calling is one thing that has two parts. First, we hope that we will be exactly like Jesus in nature, in being, in substance, and in relationship with the Father, of His same kind. Second, that hope is fulfilled the very moment our physical bodies are transformed in the resurrection, swallowed up by life.
From the very beginning God determined that I would be just like Jesus – Romans 8:29.
But it is the middle line, the point of communion, that caught my attention last night through the hours of interacting with God towards the healing of my own body, healing that I very much need right now. You see, the exceeding greatness of His power is a given, the river of life flowing out of our communion.
But the communion is the thing.
The Father and I spoke together through the night.
Healing is Mmy inheritance. Sleep is Mmy inheritance. Not being bothered by what I eat is Mmy inheritance. A sound mind that can work well tomorrow is Mmy inheritance. Physical strength is Mmy inheritance.
God and I together cast bands of limitation from off of us, and we are not finished, not until all creation is utterly free.
You see, Paul first talked about our inheritance in Ephesians 1 before mentioning God's inheritance.
In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. 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 1:11-14
God's purpose is that you and I be the revelation of God to all creation. God's purpose is to be seen and known through us. He works all things towards our KNOWING God inside of us.
I always imagined that God's inheritance was one thing and our inheritance was another. I imagined that God inherited us and we inherited God.
That is true for starters, but last night I saw differently.
Last night I saw that the Father's inheritance and my inheritance are the same thing, for we are one.
My body is God's Body; my spirit is God's Spirit.
Is that not what Paul says? – The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Now, those who see God as an Other with whom to negotiate might say, “Well if your body is God's body, then why on earth doesn't God just heal His own body?” They think that way because they don't know God.
God is an ever-arising Spirit, springing up from within us as fountains of living water. God enters visibility, including our bodies, only through our faith. That faith is the intimate knowledge of God, WORD coming by Spirit and arising in our hearts.
Do you see those words: until the redemption of the purchased possession.
May I refer you back to my letter “Sacrifice: Redemption” in The Feast of Tabernacles.
The Father bought from me my weakness and all of my disability. The Father bought my sickness, my infirmity, my brokenness. Do we not see the stripes visibly upon the Father revealed? The Father paid us for these things with Himself. All of our lack now belongs to Him and never more to us.
Do you see the intimate Love by which Father binds Himself to you and you to Him?
How can we share what He is if we don't let Him share what we are? I don't want healing as a commodity. I want Father arising in me as light and life every moment.
Father is utterly with me and I am utterly with Father.
Physical healing, and not just healing, but wholeness, which means a body swallowed up by life, is our inheritance, Father and I.
I know that very soon people will be healed spirit, soul, and body as I pass by. Don't think that is a grand claim; that is the normal Christian life, the normal human life.
He who believes in Me out of his belly will flow rivers of living water. – I will not be surprised as it begins in outward visibility. Overwhelmed with the goodness of God, most certainly, but not surprised.
The body is Mmy inheritance, that is, the purchased possession. The earth is Mmy inheritance. The creation is Mmy inheritance. All things are Mmy inheritance, the Father and I.
I am meek; I am the revelation of a Father who walks beneath of all, carrying each one all the way into life; I inherit the earth.
It is Jesus who has won and who yet wins that inheritance for Father and I.
I am convinced that I will walk for a period of time, possibly three-and-one-half years, in this mortal body as the life of Christ revealed, as Paul said. That means, in part, that I know that my body is swallowed up by life, having already become the very physical body of Jesus, flesh of His flesh, BEFORE any outward appearance changes, yet in the wholeness of God.
That reality is the immediate context in which the Father and I walk together.
It's all about the body. God manifest in the flesh.
Do you need physical healing? Or healing of any kind?
Than I would strongly suggest that you go to my letter on “Father” in The Two Gospels and read out loud with all fervency of connection with the Father who fills you full, the rendition in that letter of Jesus' prayer for you in John 17. Be sure to speak your whole name in each blank, your first and last name each time.
Sure, God can heal you in a moment of anointed zapping, but I don't believe that's what you want. I believe you want to know Father always arising within you with healing in His wings. I believe you want healing to come in a moment of time, yes, and the difficulty pass into your memory, yes, but only inside of knowing Father now and forever Personal in you arising every moment.
Again, through last night, as I write in a new morning, I spoke, together with the Father, concerning our body.
I tell you what. I am finding Scripture just exploding in meaning. The depths of reality found in each line in the Bible is so vast and glorious, the increase of the impact of the reality of each Bible line upon us, received as Spirit and as Christ our only life and not as carnal intellect, will never cease. When we sever all bands of knowing God that are tied to past Christian expressions, receiving only those things from past saints that continue to reverberate with the present word of Christ and simply ignoring everything else, including all the constructs of Nicene Christianity, we find ourselves released to know the Father by every Word that He speaks.
My body IS God's Body just as my spirit IS God's Spirit. Is that not what the Bible says?
Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Do you see how knowing our Covenant Union with the Father transforms every word from distant and unreachable obligation to intimate reality, most precious and holy.
Paul said here, quite clearly, that my body IS God's Body and my spirit is God's Spirit. And he said that I glorify the God who is with me IN our body and IN our spirit. The price God paid ME for my body and for my spirit was God Himself.
I am not my own, and neither is God.
It was a straight trade.
Why do I live in my body?
And we know our spirit as our heaven body in just the same way as we know our body as our earth body, thus to say “body,” is to say both and for the same purposes.
Why do I live in my two bodies? Why would I not just pack up and go somewhere else?
Now, even those who have “out of the body” experiences, remain in their spirit body. To be truthful, however, I think that it could be possible that unregenerate humans who have lost their physical bodies and are wandering in the gray shades of Hades, also do not have working spirits and thus are little more than lost and expressionless souls in the shadows, knowing desire and knowing the similitude of expression, but never knowing any real action, either in heavenly substance or in earthly substance.
A body is where we live, and for us humans, we live in two bodies at the same time. All real interaction with all the rest of creation, in both heaven and earth, is through those two bodies, both at the same time.
No one will know you if you're not in a body, and you will know no one and nothing else. No sun on your face, no wind in your hair, no peace of God, no joyous singing. Hades is sometimes called “hell.”
Consider God's contradiction in the creation. “It is good, it is good, it is good,” repeated seven times, and then the most jolting, the most disconnected, the most unexpected – “It is NOT good – that man should be alone.” It is not good – that God should be alone.
Then this line: Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.
Then this line: In (Christ) the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
God is in Oour physical body (mine and His) for the exact same reason I am in Oour physical body. God is in Oour physical body to the fullest extent of all the reasons I am in Oour physical body. And God is in Oour spirit body (mine and His) for the exact same reason I am in Oour spirit body. God is in Oour spirit body to the fullest extent of all the reasons I am in Oour spirit body.
We share this body, utterly together, for the same reasons and for the same purposes, in full equality and in oneness of intent and direction.
If I intend a thing, God intends that same thing. If God directs a thing, I direct that same thing.
Yet “I” am not God, and God is not me. We are fully two; yet two always fully together as One.
Covenant.
God wants a body for the same reasons I want a body, and I want a body for the same reasons God wants a body.
God is utterly with me and I am utterly with God.
What I'm really trying to say is that, as I sit here in my physical body, knowing that I share this same body utterly with Father God inside of me, then healing looks entirely differently to me. Healing is no longer something far away from me that I am trying to persuade a reluctant God to do. Healing is now my certain right, flowing out of the Father always arising in me. Yet in just the same way that healing is my certain right, so all of my physical weakness and inability is fully acceptable to my Father as His own.
Do you know that healing, from that other dark way of seeing, was always a condemnation to me.
“You should be healed; God has nothing to do with your physical impediments.”
To the measure that my weakness belongs to the Father, to that same measure, His healing belongs to me.
And now I KNOW what Jesus meant.
And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. John 9:2-3
God – Action – in me – and me entirely in God.