2. Union AND War
There is a Man who lives inside of me, a Person who fills my heart with His glory. This Man is the King of the Universe; He is the righteous vindicator of all of God's purity and truth; He is the judgment against all iniquity. This Man, who fills my heart with His might and dominion, is my best Friend. I love Him.
© Daniel Yordy - 2014
A charge sometimes laid against union with Christ is that it allows an individual to sin wilfully and continually, pursuing wicked actions that lead to misery for self and for others, actions that bring railing accusation against the Lord Jesus Christ, and then justifying that iniquity by saying, “Hey, it's just Christ as me.”
This is the same charge laid against Paul's gospel, for indeed Paul's gospel is union with Christ.
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? – What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? God forbid! Romans 6:1-2 & 15
But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? God forbid! Galatians 2:17
I want to zero in on exactly what is taking place here.
With the pure You will show Yourself pure; and with the devious You will show Yourself shrewd. Psalm 18:26 – A perverse heart shall depart from me; I will not know wickedness. Psalm 101:4
The King James uses an excellent word here: froward, meaning deceptive or deceitful. Thus the King James says, “With the froward You will show yourself froward.”
Froward means dishonest. Perverse means dishonest. Devious means dishonest.
Jesus said it this way: 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. Matthew 7:7-8
Jesus was saying the same thing David said in Psalm 18.
Everyone finds exactly what they seek. Everyone receives precisely what they want.
What do I seek in all that I write?
There is a Man who lives inside of me, a Person who fills my heart with His glory. This Man is the King of the Universe; He is the righteous vindicator of all of God's purity and truth; He is the judgment against all iniquity. This Man, who fills my heart with His might and dominion, is my best Friend. I love Him.
This Man has a name, the Lord Jesus Christ, the revelation of the Father.
This Man has commanded me to put Himself upon myself in every way at every moment in every part of my being. I obey Him.
Why do I obey Him? – Because I WANT to know Him.
I seek to know this Man alone, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, because this Man, God revealed, who fills my heart with Himself, honors the Father and takes me to the Father, and shows the Father to me. Then for His sake, I also know the Father.
But my heart belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ in Person and to nothing and no one else.
This same Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, IS every word spoken by God including every word on the pages of the Bible. I do not read anything in the Bible EXCEPT to know this Person who IS the only One that Word is.
And this same Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, IS the Mercy Seat of God filling my heart with Himself.
And this same Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the mighty Warrior, the Victor of God, the defeater of all God does not know, all wickedness, all deception, all iniquity, all dishonesty, all cruelty, all mistreatment of others.
When I speak of union with Christ, I am NEVER speaking of an idea or a principle or a way of living. The only thing I am ever speaking of is a PERSON, the Lord Jesus Christ, God revealed. And I am speaking of KNOWING this Person inside of our person.
I want to talk about dishonesty.
When I sit here looking at the words of David in Psalm 101, I know those words, for I have woven them into my letters from the beginning.
– A perverse heart SHALL depart from Me; I will NOT know wickedness. –
Here is one way I have said it. – You can do anything you want with the Word God speaks, anything at all. Jesus will not defend Himself. –
When I speak of human weakness and foolishness and my propensity to make mistakes; I am not necessarily speaking of “sin.” Now, the propensity to sin is most certainly part of the weakness of which I speak. Thus there are times when I have wilfully engaged in things I know are abhorrent to the Lord Jesus. Before I speak of any particular, I must say this about those actions.
The actions of sin, even when I might do them, are as reprehensible to me as they are to Jesus. For some years while writing these Christ Our Life letters, I have on occasion been hit with deep discouragement. Those times were always demonic attack. In those times I may have done things that are reprehensible to me.
But – as I say over and over. KNOWING Christ Jesus in Person in me is the only thing that causes the desire to commit sinful actions to vanish away. I must KNOW Jesus first as my all and my everything, I must be able to call Him so, before I will ever know full and final victory over all sin.
I do not call Jesus my only life so that I might continue in sin.
I call Jesus my only life so that I might be free of all that displeases God forever.
And those times of demonic attack resulting in overwhelming discouragement have faded into a distant memory, especially since I read “Sealed in the Midst of the Storm,” into audio in the summer of 2012.
Now, Peter did NOT say for us to confess our sins one to the other. He said, Confess your faults, that is, speak of your weakness and failure. He did NOT mean “list your sins.”
I boast in my weaknesses that I might know the power of Christ (in Person) resting upon me.
When I see someone listing their sins, on the other hand, I am struck by the sense of one-upmanship, of a boasting in the flesh, “my sin is bigger than your sin.”
However, for the sake of the clarity of the gospel, let me state one thing I did, even while I wrote these letters, but before I have come to KNOW the Person of Jesus always carrying me, as I have done over the last couple of years.
There were a few times, in moments of discouragement, when I viewed what could be called “mild” pornography on the Internet.
Let me explain exactly what was happening. The desire to look upon a woman's beauty is inside our construction, crafted entirely by God in perfection and honor. Yet for this time of human folly, God has limited the fulfillment of that desire entirely to the marriage bed. As Solomon said, “Let your own wife fulfill all your desires.” In the marriage bed such joy is pure and holy, filled with God Himself.
Now, when I say, “for this time of human folly,” I am speaking of nothing beyond this time of human folly. I have no idea what God's reality of pleasures forevermore means in the expression of incorruptibility.
All sin, except envy and scorn, is turning that which God created for goodness into the wrong direction.
(One could even say that envy and scorn, forged entirely out from the heart of the serpent and not simply God's creation turned in the wrong direction, are the violation of the first commandment of the Ten. Sin is the violation of the remaining nine.)
There is no such thing as sin without demons. Heaven and earth are intrinsically intertwined. Nothing can happen in the earth without heavenly involvement. If you are a person and if your heart is turned towards iniquity, then demons who are persons are enjoying your iniquity with you for by your actions they can mock and ridicule the Lord Jesus Christ.
Desire is not sin. Viewing pornography, even “mild” pornography, is sin. You cannot view pornography without conducting an ongoing agreement with demons. And they push you to it because you hold onto bitterness and unforgiveness of some kind that you keep tightly separated away from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The times I viewed pornography, it did not last long. I knew, in my sin and iniquity, that I was hiding from Jesus. Hiding from Jesus is a greater awfulness to me than anything in the universe. I cannot hide from Him for very long, not at all. I cannot live without Jesus; I cannot breathe without Him; I cannot survive on my own. I NEED a Savior, every moment.
After that period of time, knowing that Jesus will not know wickedness, I broke. I could not keep my heart hidden away from Him. Therefore I took ALL of my sin, all the horror of self-lust, all the darkness and perversity, all the despair and discouragement, and I RAN with all of it into Jesus, into the Holiest place in the universe, into the Mercy Seat of God.
I placed all of my sin upon this Jesus who bears all of my awfulness in His own body upon the cross.
And then I looked to Him in faith, knowing that He alone is my life; I looked to Him to cause this awful evil to be turned, somehow, to goodness, as He says He does together with me. And in that moment, the Lord Jesus in Person arose in me, and I knew the sin and darkness not at all. And I worshipped Him and gave Him thanks.
Then, immediately after, I received an email from a brother caught in the same thing, and I was able to speak Christ to him in humility of heart without condemnation.
God had turned even my short time of hiding from Jesus into His reconciliation of others to Himself.
My heart is not dishonest before God. – I do not share with you from perversity.
Sin and self-righteousness are bosom buddies. You will never find one without finding the other just as much. A sinful man will always proclaim himself righteous. A self-righteous man will always be conducting secret sins, hidden away in the darkness. Good and evil cannot ever be separated. Those who want one will always have the other in full measure.
And neither the sinful man nor the self-righteous man (both always the same man) want anything to do with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I communicate with people over time, I look for and sometimes wait for the visible engagement in their words of their own hearts with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have found people who will proclaim union with Christ as an idea, but who never once engage with Jesus inside their heart inside their words.
And over time dishonesty will always show itself lurking in the background of those whose hearts do not utterly belong to Jesus.
And here's the thing. Those readers whose hearts belong to Jesus find Jesus singing in their own hearts through every letter I write. But those whose hearts do not belong to Jesus never do regardless of what is taking place in their minds.
– A perverse heart SHALL depart from Me; I will NOT know wickedness. –
BUT!!!
There are some that are in-between, sitting on the fence, seeing joy and reality and being drawn to it by the Lord Jesus who does carry them, yet because of the places of dishonesty inside of themselves that they keep tightly separated from Jesus, they subject themselves to the demons over which they rule and go back and forth between the sorrow of iniquity and the joy of Jesus in their hearts.
For those whose hearts belong to Jesus alone, my words are true and clear. Never does it enter their minds that I might be “justifying iniquity.” They find what they seek.
But for those who imagine that the urgings of demons are anything more than a sick horror, those who give some weight to the demented cries and the lying deceitful wails of demons longing to be fed, those who can persevere for days and weeks without knowing Jesus in purity and holiness and joy inside their hearts, yet who are carried by Jesus and also find inside a contrary desire, a desire to know Him alone, are often times confused by what I say, just as they are confused as they read the Bible.
These are our brethren, and Jesus loves them.
The froward will do what the froward do, and God will deal perversely with them. I am not speaking of those, but of those of our brethren who do know the Lord, but whose hearts are not yet won by God.
Jesus wants to win your heart.
He does so by laying down His life for you even while you do wicked and deceitful things.
It costs Him everything, you know, and He willingly and with great joy pours Himself out just for you.
I say it over and over, the Bible is a Door. A Door is for two things. A Door keeps the dishonest heart out and a Door welcomes the pure heart in.
A pure heart is NOT someone who never stumbles and falls. A pure heart is one who is honest before God, running with sin into the Presence of God and placing ALL of it, ALL of it, into the very Heart of God, the Mercy Seat, placing it there alone that it might be forever gone from them and for ONE REASON ONLY. Because they want to know Jesus alive in their hearts above all things.
People who pursue iniquity do so for one reason. Adam stated it as the first words of darkness coming out of his mouth. All who live with him are never found anywhere else but inside these words.
“I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
People who pursue iniquity ARE attempting to “hide” from God, something that can never be done.
BUT!! Then these same people pick up the Bible. What do they then do with the words on the page? Even the words of Paul?
The same thing. They take those words and separate them from Jesus living in their hearts. They turn those words into word on the outside of them speaking accusation against them.
Why? – To hide from God.
Sin and self-righteousness, reading the words of God, even the words of Paul, as something other than the Lord Jesus in Person living in them, is for the sole purpose of this insane “hiding” from God.
When their eyes do open, they will see just how silly they have been, and how pointless their hiding.
Sin is a useless attempt to hide from Jesus.
Reading Jesus, that is, the words on the page, as accusation spoken against you, is also to hide from Jesus and for no other purpose.
Sin and self-righteousness are two sides of the same thing. One who is engaged with one is always engaged with the other, turning even Jesus into the tree of good and evil.
Why? Why? Why?
Because they believe that demons are telling them the truth. They really do. They take the mutterings of demons whispered into them from afar as truth and Jesus in Person inside of them as not.
Union with Christ IS WAR!!!
But union with Christ is real war; union with Christ is Victory.
From the moment that “I” disappeared into Jesus in the seeing of my spirit, from that moment on, I have been engaged in more brutal warfare than ever before in my life. And in that WAR, I always win. That is, Jesus arises in my heart in Victory, and all darkness and all lying voices vanish into the nothingness they truly are.
I NEVER accept a lack of communion with Jesus as any part of “me.” I never call any sense of being “cut off from God” as “Christ as me.” I never tolerate it. I cannot, I will not live apart from the immediate knowledge of Jesus my Savior filling my heart with Himself.
I fight. – I fight and I win.
But my fight since I began writing these Christ Our Life letters has been only with the weapons of God, that is my full and complete union with Christ. And using my being utterly clothed with Jesus in Person, spirit, soul, and body, as my only weapon always wins total victory.
I will not stop fighting until God has made Jerusalem, all who belong to Jesus, a praise in all the universe.
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. 2 Corinthians 10:3-6
You see, Paul's words are clear; union with Christ IS the weapon of our warfare, and ignorance of that union is the mighty stronghold of evil that we cast down.
I speak Christ my only life for one purpose only, to bring every one of my thoughts into the reality of Jesus alive in my heart.
To be found only in Him, that I might know Him alone.
I want to talk, just a bit, about these arguments, these high things that seek to darken the unfolding of God into visibility through us.
They are demons.
Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 5:10-12
Let me tell you something, you are NOT at war with your flesh. There is NO civil war inside of you.
It is also clear that “put on the armor of God” is just another way of saying “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Anyone who separates anything “of” God from the Person of the Lord Jesus filling their hearts with His glory and living now as their ONLY life, is caught in the darkness of the evil one.
We fight against the powers of heaven.
And we fight BY our full and complete union with Christ.
The demons are lying to you. The serpent lied in the garden; there is nothing of truth found in his words there. Demons who poke and scream at you, pretending to be you, pretending to be “Christ as you,” are no different. They are NOT telling you the truth.
You do not cast them down by engaging with them.
You cast them down by the KNOWLEDGE of God filling you full with all of Himself.
Notice the words “mighty in God,” and the words, “the power of His might.”
The purpose of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of speaking in tongues is that we might learn the reality and essence of the Power of God in the heavens. So what if many do not use God's gift for God's purposes. We have no mind for that. We desire ALL that God speaks, that all that God speaks might be fulfilled and revealed through us, that is, Jesus.
I want to get personal, now, with you as a close friend, one on one.
You may imagine that "you are different from me," meaning I am inclined to stay with the Lord while you are inclined to follow temptation. I don't presume to "know you," but I do know myself, I know people, and I know spiritual reality.
Deliverance from demons does not deliver us from demons, and Christ as us in no way takes us out of the heavens and all the big guys targeting us, rather it increases us as the target of necessity.
I doubt that you suffer as much demonic attack as I have, yet I don't minimize the awfulness of any assault against you. Outward appearance varies considerably, but the root is all the same. You are under demonic attack because they are terrified of you. They have no choice but to hurl themselves into the fray against you. For them it's do or die; they cannot allow you to know the joy and certainty of your continual union with Christ.
If you do, if you KNOW the Father and Jesus Sent, they are toast and their time is over.
Now, there may be a difference between you and me in this way. God has taught me to fight. There is a whole lot inside that statement. Let me explain.
During my years at Blueberry, I learned spiritual warfare. I did not want to fight; I am lazy. But I hated sitting under demonic stupidity MORE than I hated fighting. And so I have learned to fight.
Now, fighting is very specific. I don't call it that in my letters, though it is certainly there, including in my very first letter, “Faith Makes Christ in Me Personal.” I don't want to scare people off.
Deliverance does not deliver anyone. But deliverance does two things that are of critical importance. First, deliverance shows a person the dividing line between self and demons and between God and demons. Most people don't have a clue. Most people allow demons to inflict unending pain upon themselves because they imagine that's just them. Worse yet, some imagine the demons are “God speaking to them.”
Second, deliverance shows you that you can fight and you can win.
A difference that might also be between me and some is NOT the extent and depth of the assault, whether temptation, accusation, or pain. The difference is that I fight, I fight, I fight, I fight, I fight, I fight, I fight, I fight. And I do not stop until I have won.
A second difference is that sometimes some believe what the demons tell them. I don't. Demons are sniveling cowards who tempt you just so they can masturbate when you yield and who inflict pain on you just so they can gorge themselves on your suffering. But what really gets them excited is when they can use Bible verses on the outside of you to throw at you so that you think it's “God speaking” and not some stupid demons.
The only “God speaking” there is including every verse in the Bible is nothing other than Jesus and He lives in your heart and carries you through that path you CANNOT traverse yourself.
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.John 5:39-40
That's exactly what they did with Jesus, they threw Bible verses at Him, pretending to be the voice of God. One half of the testimony that Jesus was "the Son of God," came from demons. Jesus shut them up. A demon speaking a verse as a word of “righteous” judgement against you is NOT God speaking. God speaking is Jesus only, the One who lives in your heart.
Now, I have had 27 years of continual training in spiritual warfare. I have shared in my letters how I win victory by the most effective means. I do not waste time with useless tactics. I fight to win and I win quickly.
For instance, last December, when a man I had called my friend sent a letter around to many denouncing me, when I read his words, they were like ice cold fire cutting me to pieces. I awoke in the middle of the night with condemnation assailing me like I have rarely known. The demonic screams were overwhelming.
Here is what I did, instantly. In my mind I reached up and took Jesus' face in my hands. I looked straight into His eyes as I said, "Jesus, You are my only life. Jesus, You are my only life." When I had repeated those words twice, all the demonic wails vanished as if they had never been.
Now, you need to know the ferocity of my resistance. I DID NOT hear those demons. I refused to hear them. I violently and absolutely rejected every element of their savagery. I did not turn to regard them. I did not rail against them. I did not flail my arms in the air. I defeated them more savagely then they had attacked me.
I refused to regard them. My refusal to give them any heed, knowing that they were NOT me, knowing that they were NOT God, knowing that they were LYING, my refusal to hear them inflicted more blinding pain and confusion upon them then they had ever known. Because I refused them by regarding Jesus alone, everything they had unleashed against me to rip me to shreds came back upon them as Solomon said.
Whoever digs a pit will fall into it.
Temptation is another matter because they use what you imagine you "want." And they are able to succeed when they can convince you that your desires are evil. The desires of your flesh are not evil. The problem is that you are turning them in the wrong direction. Every one of those desires is made for God for real. And the revelation of Christ in you fills those desires with real satiation far more than you know. The problem is that some imagine that a mud puddle, the pleasures of sin, is more real than the ocean, the pleasures of God.
It's simply not true.
More than that, some allow the sin to work its way inside of false thinking to stand as a wedge in between them and God.
David took his sin, I suspect far worse than ours, into the Holy of Holies before the Mercy Seat. Yet that Mercy Seat is inside of Jesus who lives in our heart. Try it. It works. – But only as you are honest.
Why am I so careful to treat each person with utmost respect? Because I have seen how horrifically awful the other thing is, both in myself and in the destruction such cultic wickedness brings into the lives of so many precious people. What I may once have regarded as "pleasure," now makes me shudder.
It's called fearing God. The fear of God goes in one direction only – how we treat other people.
Now, let me share with you what I continue to do.
All things that come my way are the Father and I sharing it together. Inside of that Covenant Bond, God makes use of me for the sake of others. Thus the need of others to fight against the lies demons tell, effectively and continuously, has turned in me into my own similar need. I have been actively fighting the physical weakness of my body. Something is different for me. I have been saying over and over, "I want my strength back. I want my strength back." Again, I always see myself as Jesus and I together, always.
Now, this has stirred up a lot of things in me. I became weak partly as a reflexive defense against circumstances in community of overwhelming powerlessness, the inability to stand up for myself and for my new little family when I really needed to. Thus I have been placing Jesus into those things and them into Him, that He was there fully with me, sharing all that with me, taking the brunt of the difficulty Himself. At the same time, I have been speaking the Blood against the darkness, standing against it, calling forth the arising of God in the full expectation of God.
Now, here's the deal. In all of my warfare, I have joined you with me and me with you. If I am fighting for myself, I am, at the same time, consciously fighting for you. And if I am fighting for you, I am, at the same time, consciously fighting for my own deliverance. Thus I am, in all ways, in your same boat and to the same measure, you are in mine.
I do not stop fighting until I have won. Yet I never fight in condemnation nor do I regard the demons. I fight by union with Christ alone.
And here is the final thing you must know. Demons use parts of you, things that are actually you, that they claim as their own property. Those things are what gives them the leverage to overthrow you. You must reclaim every part of yourself as Christ alone. That is NOT an easy process. You will know Jesus is doing just that when you find yourself face down on the floor in tears - way more than once.
You are likely filled with open bleeding wounds, all the many times and places when you were savaged by others, and including all the many times and places when you savaged others yourself.
Union with Christ, PUTTING ON the Lord Jesus Christ, must go into every single one of those places. Only when you take the bitterness, the hatred, the hurt, the confusion of every circumstance of your life, inside the gentle waves of the Spirit, and by the faith of the Son of God place those things into Jesus and Jesus into them, do they become the acknowledged possessions of Christ and can no longer be falsely claimed by the demons.
Forgiveness. – Giving to Jesus all He already purchased from you.
God used John Eldredge's books for such a time for me. He will use for you whatever is right for you.
In my next letter I want to give a specific account from my present reality of what I mean. When you or I hold any memory far away from Jesus, then demons use our mistake to lay false claim upon us. We may not even be cognizant of that unhealed wound, but when the chips are down, when we are discouraged, suddenly it's there and it sinks us under.
In that moment the very worst thing a person could do is to take the words of the Bible, even the words of Paul, rip them out of the Person and Heart of Jesus who lives in all glory in our hearts, laying His life down continually for us, and force those words out into the savage realms of the heavens where the same words become the accusations of demons afflicting us with the hopeless belief that God requires of us what we are not producing. That's how Adam “heard” God.
God requires Jesus, and He requires us to be found ONLY in Him who is ALWAYS inside of us.
Here is Jesus' response in the exact same situation, the loudest words in the universe.
Here am I, I and the children whom You have given Me.
Union with Christ is not an idea or a doctrine. In fact, I have found it to be, not only all out warfare, but I have found it to be certain and total victory.
His name is Jesus.