18. Seven Living Responses (Part 1)

Coming out from having completed The Flow of Gospel Word, I have gained several kernels of thought, one of which I want to share with you in this letter. At the same time, the next lesson on my list for Being a Witness of Christ is titled “Seized into His Throne.” This lesson, which will now take three letters, will set the stage for a personal and real application of God’s meaning for Revelation 12:5, seized into God and into His throne. Through these several letters, I hope to share the hand of God upon me through our recent trip to Lubbock.

Catholicism created something called “the seven deadly sins,” which serves only as a powerful distraction from the Gospel. To counter it is not to create the “opposite,” but rather something different. It was not hard to oppose “deadly” with “living.” Deadly means that it will kill you with damnation, but living means already all now and in every next step.

It was the final word that took some searching to find. I tried “virtues,” which could be good – if they were living. But I already did a layout of virtues in A Highway for God and did not want to redo that layout. As I looked for synonyms, I found nothing right under “virtues,” but my next thought, the word, “actions,” took me to the word “response.” I immediately realized that life for us is one thing only, our response to God, the continuous and active initiator of Life, Love, and all things.

Life, and all Salvation, is our response to God. And that Life, then, becomes a Flow through us to others.

Here are the seven responses worded as instruction to a new Christian or to a child coming of age. (1) Be honest, (2) Give thanks, (3) Put Jesus upon yourself, (4) Speak Christ, (5) Ask and believe, (6) Receive one another, and (7) Share Hheart with God.

I have these in a particular order for a purpose, that does not necessarily correspond with other lists of seven that we have studied. They are things we learn simultaneously over time. It is responding to God in these ways that brings wholeness to our souls. But then, after embracing #7, sharing Hheart with God, we turn around, and in turning around, these same responses to God that resulted in wholeness of soul, now become Salvation coming through us into our world. Thus we go through these seven responses a second time, but in reverse order.

It is in the turning around of these seven living responses, now God through us for others, that we find ourselves inside the real and personal experience of “being seized into His throne.”

As a side note, we will see that the true “seven deadly sins,” the responses to God that block all Life and Love, are each a different kind of refusal. It is not what one does that is a deadly sin, but how one refuses the God who leads us into Life.

As we consider each of the seven living responses in our first position, that of God into us personally, I want to run each through seven different things so that our understanding is parallel. Here are the things I will include for each response to God.

1. Definition – which does correspond to the seven pieces of furniture in the Tabernacle.
2. The practical impact zone – how this response directly affects our souls.
3. The enemies within – these seven can be non-deadly sins, for we never worry about failure, for Jesus always lifts us up. (The true deadly sins come in ministry to others.)
4. God coming through Jesus.
5. Jesus imparting Himself to us.
6. The enemies without. There are strong objections in Christian circles to these seven responses to God, objections that can become harsh and cruel.
7. Completion and fruit – when we respond to God fully, what kind of a life do we live now before the resurrection.

First Response: Be Honest.
Definition: God is first Light. Stepping into that Light with our mouths closed, guilty and WRONG, accepting God’s judgment without remonstrance, agreeing fully with His rebuke, is always our first response. We can do nothing of ourselves; we can never “get it right.” Neither is there any hiding, for passing unseen, escaping notice, is utter delusion. Honesty is humbling ourselves under the hand of God; it is removing our shoes for we are on devoted ground; it is the fear of God, the beginning of wisdom.

The Altar of Sacrifice requires silence. It requires honesty. It brings us to ground zero, the only place being made brand new can begin. Light is the first work of the Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and conviction.

Practical Impact: To say, “I am wrong,” and to say, “God, You are right,” are two sides of the same thing. We justify God in all things and blame no one. Blame is what must be silent. Light places everything we are and do out into the open, now seen by all. God alone is our source; God alone causes in us that which is pleasing to Him. The zone of impact is the silencing of all the contrary voices in our souls.

Enemies Within: Lying. And its close companion, pretending. The most dishonest words in the Bible are in Exodus 24:3, “All that the Lord says, we will do.” Lying is the primary entrance of demons into the soul and the first exclusion of God. Some hide hurting others and call it “grace,” but covering is found only in the Light. All self-defense, all excuses, all denials, all trying and lying and crying, these are for one purpose only – TO KEEP GOD OUT! Lying is the first response that drives the Spirit of Truth away from us.

This is the judgment, that the light has come into the cosmos and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds are evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, that his works might not be exposed (John 3:19-20).

God Now Come: The first entrance of God is Peace and its close companion is “I am clean.” The one who justifies God in all sees the Father first. God has our full attention, but we are no longer afraid of Him. Sufficiency out from God flows into no sufficiency in ourselves.

When God said to me, “Son, you have a sectarian heart,” I stepped fully into the Light inside my soul and replied, “Yes, Father, You are right.” I did not know that the immediate result was God Himself removing contempt from my heart. But when the test came several weeks later, there was nothing in me except the kindness of God. And when I left in defeat, I blamed no one. Yet I now see that moment as the beginning of the salvation of my soul.

Jesus to Us: “I can do nothing of myself” is the first part of Jesus making us to be just like Himself. Jesus does not eliminate our story of self; rather, He extends His own Story out over ours and receives our story into Himself, two stories now together as one. Then we have this principle. We forgive others freely as Jesus in us, because we are forgiven much.

Enemies Without: The enemies without are synonymous to the actual seven deadly sins. They are the ways we have developed to force compliance on other Christians and thus correspond to the cursing of the law. We wear masks to make other Christians think we are “getting it right,” because that is what we think they expect.  Lying inside one’s self is bad enough, but lying in the midst of the Church is even worse. Think Annanias and Saphira.

Completion: The first thing God does as He enters into us is to humble Himself. Honesty allows God to be Himself freely inside of us. Connecting our souls with a God who humbles Himself inside of us is the first cause of all peace and Glory. As the prophet said, “In acceptance lieth peace.” God is God, and we are His dwelling place. When we come back around to the Altar of Sacrifice, we will know God offering us as sons for the sake of all creation.

Second Response: Give Thanks.
Honesty, silence, causes us to know the Spirit, but giving thanks causes us to know the Father. In giving thanks, we acknowledge God our Father as all, that our existence, what we find ourselves to be, comes only out from Him, that our every circumstance is passing only through Him, and that the account we give every moment is always returning to Him. Giving thanks inside of all things does not close our eyes to evil actions. Rather, it places us only inside of God in spite of things that are wrong. Then, giving thanks for the sake of all things is what turns that which is meant for evil into the outcome of goodness. Giving thanks does not hide evil deeds, but rather, renders them ineffective. Giving thanks is the Eucharist, speaking good grace, the return of our story of self to the Father.

We then place giving thanks inside of all as the washing of the Bronze Laver. As I consider my life, it feels like I run the gauntlet all the time and that I am always struck down. I’m sure you have felt the same. Across the years, the only thing that brought the cleanness, my first love, back to me was when, after trying and lying and crying, I surrendered once more and gave thanks, regardless.

Practical Impact: Silence about ourselves, being wrong, is the entrance of peace, but giving thanks takes peace in our souls to the next level. Giving thanks is our active engagement with a God who keeps us and makes us devoted to Himself. Thankfulness begins with the way God made me. It means being at peace with myself, in all my abilities and inabilities, all my quirks and oddities, all my interests and failures. Thankfulness then reaches out to include all my circumstances and every next step. It’s most visible impact, however, is on my response to all interactions with others. Giving thanks places all into God our Father inside of power.

Enemies Within: Unthankfulness. All three of the temptations of Jesus upon the cross were annulled inside of Him in the giving of thanks, His response to God, out from whom He came, His response to Himself, and His response to others. The greatest enemy is hating what God is, that we are like Him, which then turns to hating ourselves, made as the very image of Jesus. Again, hating others is the visible component, the contempt that kills. Giving thanks is all costliness. Adam was innocent, yet he faced these three things immediately, even in the presence of Life. Jesus was without sin, yet the answer to these three things had to come before any Salvation.

I say that “the hand of God was upon me in my recent trip to Lubbock,” yet what that means is the opposite of what I would prefer. I would prefer blessing and anointing. What I found, rather, was the deepest places of exposure and personal failure I have known, light shining, not upon others, but upon me. I found the familiar agony of being like Jesus on the cross, yet I would not separate myself from God. I gave myself to my Father inside all of my awfulness, and I did so for the sake of others.

God Now Come: God humbles Himself always when entering into being known, thus His entrance is thanksgiving. God comes through the formation of pearls.

Jesus to Us: The most important gift Jesus has given to me (besides Himself) is the present knowing that His awfulness upon the cross was the same as every awfulness I have known. The realization that I can look at my screaming desire to curse God, my feeling of complete loathing towards myself, and my overwhelming desire to make other people hurt, means only that I am just like Jesus in His agony, and that I can do the same as He. I can give all that I am to the Father, and I can join my God with myself and others. Outwardly, I can be silent on the one hand, and then speak good grace and favor when appropriate.

Enemies Without: Isaiah’s words sum it up. “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men…” Christians hate being like God, and my last paragraph, “Jesus to Us,” is considered the grossest blasphemy by most. Instead, Christians lust after “being better.” They seek an image of heavenly superiority. Giving thanks is one of the most rejected commandments in the Bible. Hating the way God made us is pressed upon all as “virtue.”

Completion: Inside “the hand of God upon me,” I was ready to close out my website and to quit all my writing. Yet I placed even that agonizing anguish into God inside of thanksgiving. What I mean to say is that Jesus, by sharing my awfulness with me, proved no blockage against God inside of me. I am clean. My humanity contains no hindrance to the Father, as the Father wishes to express Himself through me, even in being humbled together. Yet I have no memory of loss. Instead, all I can see is a pearl of great value that God and I have formed together, an open door for many to enter into Joy.


Third Response: Put Jesus Upon Yourself
Definition: Putting Jesus upon ourselves is an action of faith, not an action of works always ending in failure. Jesus already shares every moment of our lives and every particle of our humanity with us. We have refused to know such a thing, and thus placing Jesus upon ourselves is an acknowledgement of what is already the only thing True. Putting Jesus upon ourselves is our honor of the Lord Jesus Christ. Giving thanks is the Eucharist, but putting Jesus upon ourselves is bringing Him into our minds. To do that, every moment of our lives must be brought into the Light, and we must be ready to give thanks inside of and for the sake of every memory of circumstances and interactions with others.

The next piece of furniture, however, is the Table of Set-Forth Bread, Jesus as our living manna entering into us to make us to be just like Himself, Jesus giving Himself in all that He is to us. The first two responses serve to place the negative of our souls into God, but this third response is the knowing of all the preciousness of the Lord Jesus now become us.

Practical Impact: Bringing Jesus into every moment of our lives, in our memories, is a two-edged sword. It is the Word penetrating deep and splitting us apart. On the one hand, it is the precious realization that Jesus shared even that moment entirely with me, Jesus in all that He is. But on the other hand, it means receiving that moment into thanksgiving. Healing began for me in December of 2001, but even after eighteen years of wondrous healing, eighteen being the number of years the woman whom Jesus healed had bled out, I was still unhealed in December of 2019. Healing came to me only in writing my life story, in bringing Jesus consciously and openly into every part of my life, giving thanks inside of all, and doing so publicly.

Enemies Within: Putting sin upon ourselves. The truth is, “I am a worm and no man,” along with all of its counterparts expressed by human rebellion, is the worst form of self-exaltation that there is. Jesus was saved in that moment ONLY because He placed Himself utterly into God regardless (see Hebrews 5:7). “I’m just little old me” is beating one’s chest in arrogant self-exaltation in the very presence of God. Accepting a Jesus who comes into union with me as I am, a Jesus who now lives as me, is the greatest surrender I have known in my life. Those who use Galatians 2:20 to say, “I’m just a dead man walking,” or “there is no me,” are caught in the same boasting exaltation of self. None of that is real, because self continues regardless of all the mental gyrations, and it is I who still pulls on my pants in the morning. Allowing Jesus to receive ME as I am, into Himself as He is, is True SURRENDER, the only real fulfillment of John 12:25.

In other words, claiming for myself my own crafted story of self, upon which I have labored my whole life, is the ENEMY of Jesus inside of me, teaching me to REFUSE any putting of the Lord Jesus Christ upon myself.

God Now Come: We cannot put Jesus upon ourselves except the Father come with Him, inside of Him, and now inside of us, making His Home in close participation with us. I had to write my whole life story before I could write “The Meaning of a Life.”  I did not write that chapter until 2022, after God had brought to me the wondrous knowledge of sharing every next step with God my Father out from John 14:20. Only after I had read “The Meaning of a Life” over and over, with tears, could I finally know that the same God who spoke to Abraham spoke to me across the whole span of my life, and that my Father has always shared my life with me. There is nothing else I would rather know.

Jesus to Us: As we put Jesus upon ourselves entirely through faith, through acknowledging that He already is, so we see Him as He is and thus can now become just like Him. This is the meaning of “dining with Christ.”

Enemies Without: Here is where all viciousness hurls itself against us. “Jesus is God and you are NOT” was written specifically to me. Duh! Yet, in putting Jesus upon myself, I saw only God as my Source, whereas the one screaming against my words saw only himself as his own source, his own “God.” The commandment to put Jesus upon ourselves is simply not known or considered inside all Christianity. Someone wrote to me with the argument that the Gospel commandment is to put the old man of sin upon ourselves, and thus my response of putting Christ Jesus upon myself was disobedience against God.

Completion: Putting the Lord Jesus Christ upon ourselves, upon all that we are, is the completion of our union with Christ. Thus when I am hit with my past follies in the faces of others, as I was this last trip to Lubbock, I can first bring Jesus into myself in that moment. Out from such a radical action, then, I can place all that I am into God, regardless. The Jesus whom I place upon myself has already carried me into God. Yet completion is much more than such a wondrous thing, for now I am able to place that same Jesus upon all with whom I interact, now and in the past. I am complete inside of Christ.


Fourth Response: Speak Christ
Definition: Speaking Christ is a further level of our response to the Spirit, a deeper meaning of walking inside of Light. “It is the Spirit that gives life. The Words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.” – “The Spirit will take of what is Mine and will show it to you.” To speak the words that are Christ Jesus, Gospel Words now made personal as us, is to be shaped by reality. In complete contrast, “to study Bible topics in order to learn about Bible things” leaves people in knowing only “about” God inside the tree of mental knowledge, the mind of the flesh. When we speak the words that are Christ now made personal as us, there comes a FLOW that can only be the Spirit, causing us to know who and what the Father really is.

We are speaking of the Lampstand giving light inside the Devoted Place. The Light of honesty, being resolved only inside of giving thanks, is the light of the agony of Jesus’ soul upon the cross. But this Light inside of Devotion is the Light of being made all the goodness of God. It is the Flow of the Anointing out from God.

Practical Impact: God Sent Jesus into us so that we might KNOW the Father. Thus the Light of the Spirit flowing through our speaking Gospel Words now made personal as us, becomes the Anointing by which we perceive the Father. Speaking Word as ourselves is the real “nitty-gritty,” the practical application of knowing God inside our souls. This is the only way that our story of self can now move with God’s own story of Himself with us. This response to Word takes us beyond healing and into being constructed as the dwelling place of God. Indeed, our souls cannot be made whole until our story of self is filled with our Father. Saying to myself, over and over, in the night watches, in the lonely places, “I am filled with all of Your fullness, oh God,” changed my soul forever.

Enemies Within: To speak against Christ, to speak “I, not Christ.” The enemy of speaking Christ is anti-Christ, the spirit denying that Jesus has come now inside of my flesh. Yet this speaking of “I, not Christ” is the very essence of the thinking inside Nicene Christianity. It is the fabric of the “Christian” story of self that God calls hades. The only alternative to speaking Christ  as Gospel Word made personal as us, is to speak out from one’s self, one’s own self-created spin on “good and evil.” Yet people place great value upon their self-crafted and delusional story of self. – “I am right.” It’s hating Jesus for no reason whatsoever.

God Now Come: The Spirit “hovering over the face of the waters” is the Spirit harmonizing our souls with Gospel Word as we speak Christ our only life. This harmonizing, singing the same Song, that is, worshipping God, must come before God can speak His Word, “Let there be Light,” into our souls. I was around 68 years old when I first heard God speak to me, “I have loved you, Daniel, with an everlasting Love,” which I perceived as including across the whole span of my life. Such a knowing can come to our souls only inside such harmony of the Spirit.

Jesus to Us: The riches of the treasures of His Word, now becomes all that we are. I have been editing the printed text of The Flow of Gospel Word, Volumes 1 & 2. The power and the glory of such Treasures of Christ now in my mouth is beyond all I have ever known. The Gospel Words of Christ now become us all through the fabric of our souls cannot cease increasing forever.

Enemies Without: The anger becomes quite ferocious. It was against my practice of speaking Christ that a “deeper truth” preacher hit me with “God does NOT hear you, Yordy.” Another wrote to me, “So, you think you’re a son of God. Well I have some sick people here, why don’t you come and heal them?” It is against my speaking of Christ my only life, the Jesus Secret, that all the “Christian” voices from my past assailed me. These are those who see only the human in outward appearance; they do not see God at all.

Completion: “The Spirit will take what is Mine (all that is God belongs to Me) and show Me as I am to you as you are.” This is the “middle” response to God inside of that Spirit Flow. Nothing we might do in our Christian faith makes the fabric of our souls complete in the singing of Jesus, the Song of the Lamb, as does speaking Christ, every Gospel Word, now made personal as our own souls, our own story of self. Jesus is all there is inside of me.

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I must place the break in letter length here. We will continue with Response Five: Ask and Believe, in the next letter. At this point, I am looking at three letters for this one “lesson.”

The thing is, when these thoughts first presented themselves to me, I envisioned a short book, written as wise counsel to present to adolescents coming of age, or to new believers into Jesus. When I attempted to write in that point of view, however, I quickly ran out of ability to do so. Thus I switched to this more systematic explanation to fit as the framework inside of which we can receive such incomprehensible things as being seized into God’s throne and being anointed inside the presence of the Lord of all the earth.

At this point, however, I now see what I mean to say much more clearly and would be more able to write these things in the point of view of “wise counsel.” The truth is, I wish I had possessed such knowing when I was first married, so that I could have raised my children in understanding these Living Responses to God. Yet even in that perceived “loss,” I give thanks, for God is always Good.