18. Thy People Shall Be Willing

You're reading this and you think, "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God." Reach up your expectation of faith. Let your hope rise, let your hope rise, let your hope rise. This willingness is for you. It is for you, if you want it.

© Daniel Yordy 2009

 

In previous chapters, I quoted from a number of verses, connecting them in a way that might be unfamiliar to many Christians. I said a lot of things, and I’d like to pose this question for your consideration. All of the verses I included have always been in the New Testament, and many more like them. All of these passages and teachings have always been there. So we must ask ourselves this question:

What is central and what is peripheral?

Many of the verses I referred to have played a peripheral role in the life of the church, rarely referred to, and if so, only in passing. Maybe something God will do in the future, but it has very little to do with us now.

I have said over and over that the major focus of Christianity for the last 1900 years has been going to heaven when we die, that everything in the New Testament we don’t understand will be fulfilled over there.

But what if we have had this completely backwards? What if that which has been peripheral is actually the center of the gospel, and what has been thought central to the gospel, the fact that God’s people do die and continue in heaven without their physical bodies, incomplete and waiting. What if that part of truth is actually peripheral? On the outside and not the main focus of the gospel?

You see, it takes a complete change of our thinking. As I include verse after verse from the New Testament, you begin to think, “Hey this is talking about some stuff I have never considered before.” And we have to ask the question, “Where have we been?”

You see, either Romans 8:29 is the central, driving, defining verse of the New Covenant – from the beginning God determined that I would be just like Jesus, conformed to the image of His Son – and everything else in the New Testament comes in to support that main verse to show how it is fulfilled in our lives, or not. Or not. But you can see how so many verses just seem irrelevant unless Romans 8:29 is the defining verse of the New Covenant.

Understanding must come bit by bit, over time; it has taken all of our lifetimes to be rooted in the thinking that the goal of the believer is to “go to” heaven when we die and all of the doctrine that goes with that. Until our minds are completely changed, so that a simple word like, “He that lives and believes in Me shall never die,” becomes simple, obvious truth that is central to the gospel of Jesus.

We are renewed in our minds. We change the way we think.

The history of Christian thinking is the history of an echo. Let there be light. — “Did God indeed say.” He that believes in Me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. — “Did God really say that? He didn’t mean you, He didn’t mean now.” He that lives and believes in me shall never die. — “Did God say it that way? He didn’t mean it. He meant ‘shall never go to hell.’ Go to hell, not die.”

All the way through the history of the Christian church, Christian theology has been built out of combining the first four words of God with the first four words of the serpent. Yes, the truth of God is all through Christian theology, but so are the words of Satan, equally accepted as received truth.“Yes, God spoke, but He didn’t really mean what He said. Yes, God said that, but if you believe it and preach it, you are in heresy.”

God said that the whole creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God, and along comes the echo and says “If you believe that, you’re obviously into some weird cult doctrine.” God says, Be perfect even as your Father is perfect, and you will find all Christianity arguing why He does not mean what He says.

Satan’s four words, “Did God indeed say,” fill Christian theology. That is why you can look at Christian theology and the history of Christian thought and you can find truth, it is there. But it is truth with an echo, always with the echo. Did God really mean it that way?

I leave you with that thought. It is something seriously to consider.

That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tested by fire may be found to praise, honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ (at the unveiling, at the revealing, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, when the cover is taken off.)

Whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith – the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:7-9

Up until now, we have been talking about the redemption of the body. Here Peter brings in the salvation of our souls – our mind, our will, our emotions. That topic comes in the next volume ofOur Path Home — Into His Image, the salvation of our souls. It is the in-between time. We were born again, our spirit was made alive, and now we are looking forward to the moment when our physical body is swallowed up by the life of our resurrection body.

But in this in-between place in the womb of the church is the salvation of our souls. The renewal of our mind, filled with His thoughts, our emotions filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and the believing that comes through our will, seized in the will of God. This is what God is doing inside of us.

Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you. 1 Peter 1:10

Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13

When we look at ourselves and at the history of the church in this world, we find that in spite of the truth of the gospel, extraordinarily, in a way that doesn’t make any sense, Christians still die; our bodies die and go into the grave. That doesn’t seem to be right when we read the words of the gospel, and yet it happens. The sad thing is that the church has used this “fact” to redefine the gospel to fit what their eyes see. But the clear expectation of the gospel is that the body live and not die, that our physical, mortal body is to be swallowed up in life. The wages of sin is death, yes, but we who live in the Spirit of life have the authority to defeat the law of sin and death and to bring the resurrected life of Jesus into the full experience of life in our physical bodies.

And yet — and yet, we still die.

Christians are dying right now. And many Christians who are alive today, the life of their physical body will cease, their body will go into the grave, and they will continue with the Lord without their bodies, incomplete and waiting, waiting for the redemption of the body.

And so we ask, how is this going to be changed? When will full victory come? Is there coming a power to us? We know that the word God speaks must be fulfilled in this life in this age in our physical bodies, it MUST BE. Otherwise God is a liar and He ceases to be God, and we know that cannot be so, and so we stand firmly on the absolute truth that His word must be fulfilled.

But we look at our own Christian experience. Many dear believers get excited about the truth of overcoming death, and the years go by, they get old and die, and their bodies go into the grave.

Then we look at 1 Peter 1:13 . . . rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The definition of “grace” in its essence means the enabling Presence of God Himself in Person. We go boldly before the throne to seek grace to help in time of need. Paul says I minister through the grace that is upon me – the enablement of God that enables me to move with God out of me as He has called, that lifts me up above the limitations of my human person and becomes the power of God through me doing the things God has called me to do.

God has called us to defeat death. Peter here says, very plainly, that there is coming a grace, an enablement, and he says, “Set your hope fully upon it.”

We are expecting that as God wraps this thing up at the end of this age, there is coming a moment when God will give us an enablement He has not yet released, an enablement that comes as part of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We set our hope, our expectations fully upon that grace. There is coming an enablement that gives us the power that we need.

We don’t know fully how the manifestation of the sons of God will dovetail in time with the resurrection, or with the unveiling of Jesus Christ, or with the birthing of those who are fully in the image of Jesus Christ, when we come forth in the full light of day.

We know that the last enemy to be defeated is death, and therefore all the other enemies have already been defeated. There is no way that death can be defeated while sin and Satan are still running loose. Full resurrection cannot happen while sin and Satan and the world are still moving in defiance of God. But the Bible does indicate that there will be a time period in between the grace that comes and the resurrection. That grace, that enablement, will give us what we need to walk this thing through to the finish; it will come before all these things are defeated.

God gives us what we need; we set our hope fully on that expectation of grace.

Much of the gospel is based on Psalm 110.

The Lord said to My Lord, “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.” The Lord shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies! Your people shall be volunteers in the day of Your power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth. The Lord has sworn and will not relent, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at Your right hand; He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies, He shall execute the heads of many countries. He shall drink of the brook by the wayside; therefore He shall lift up the head.

For verse 3 I prefer the King James: Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.

Thy people shall be willing.

This is a central part of the grace that is even now coming upon the church of Jesus Christ because we are at the end of the age. The Beast of Revelation 13, modern human government, stands fully open upon the earth. The image of the beast, television news, spews out its deceit and lies. And all people, including Christians, get their understanding of the world from the image of the beast as it teaches them. They give their honor and allegiance to the beast. Right now that beast is moving to bring death and destruction upon the earth. Those who rule this planet intend to reduce the population by billions.

God’s grace is coming upon His people like it never has before.

Psalm 110 is speaking to us of the moment, the time period of the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the Living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, “Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” Revelation 7:2-3

We need to know the importance of being sealed in our minds. Right now, with the building of microwave towers across this land, we live in a bath of microwave radiation. The technology has long been there for those who control the microwaves to make you think the way they want you to think.

With the radio identification chip coming to be placed in the bodies of every person on this earth, there exists the technology to use those chips to control people’s thoughts.

That is the extreme importance of this sealing. Our minds must be sealed to be protected from the evil intentions of the militaries of the kingdoms of Satan, especially from the Pentagon.

There is a grace right now, even as we watch the power of evil openly show itself upon the earth. The veil covering that evil from being seen is being ripped off. It is standing openly in all of its violence and evil. It doesn’t need to hide any more. We see the US government proudly proclaim that it tortures people, and we see Christians who have lost all knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ saying, “Amen.”

At the same time, right now, all over the earth, God is sending forth a grace, an enablement, a believing, a faith in His word. Right now, all over the world, there are sons of God, men and women, who find any desire for life in this world just vanished. All that they want is to be with Him in His glory. They are tired of Christian teaching that puts chains and shackles around God and what He is able to do inside of us.

When they read in their Bibles, He that believes in Me out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water, they want to know what Jesus means by that. They want to taste that river flowing through them.

When God said that we are filled with all the fullness of God, they want to know it; they want to see if for real.

When God says that by the blood of the Lamb we will overcome our enemies, they want to experience full and final victory.

When God says, I will crush Satan under your feet, they want to know what it means to have the enemy of Christ solidly under their feet. They want to prove God; they want God to prove His word in their lives and in their bodies.

Right now there is an anointing, an enablement, a sealing that is coming upon the minds of God’s people. All over the earth, Psalms 110:3 is being fulfilled right now. Your people shall be willing in the day of Your power. There is a willingness. All over the earth sons of God are stepping up, saying “I am with you, Jesus. I don’t care what it costs, do it in me, do it in me, do it in me.”

Behold I am your servant, let it be to me according to your word.

There is an anointing of enablement, of power, of grace, that gives us the ability to face death in our bodies and to defeat it. There is a grace that enables us to stand with Jesus as He moves through us to triumph over His enemies, to prove that the naysayer, the echo that comes along and says “God didn’t really mean that,” to silence it forever, to show that when God speaks His word, that word is fulfilled in this life, in this age, in these physical bodies, through us His people, on this earth, right now, right here, in me!

Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.

You’re reading this and you think, “Oh God, Oh God.” Reach up your expectation of faith. Let your hope rise, let your hope rise, let your hope rise. This willingness is for you. It is for you, if you want it.

Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you just keep on thinking about him. You . . . have crowned him with glory and power. You have set him over the works of your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.

Don’t ever again look at yourself and think of yourself that you are miserable, that you are nothing, that you are worthless. Those thoughts come from Satan; they do not come from God. There is within you life, the very life of God, the very Christ of God, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.

And God has chosen you to stand with Jesus in His glory. To be ready, ready and able and willing in the day of His power as He comes to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all those who believe.

The question for each of us right now is: Do I believe? Do I believe?

Because you see, the strength and the power is not in me, it doesn’t need to be in me. God has made me weak. The power is in the word God speaks.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.

Behold I am Your servant, let it be to me according to Your word.