Living in Our Heavenly Body
By Daniel Yordy - June 25, 2010
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For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free-and have all been made to drink into one Spirit." 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." Galatians 5:25

As Bonnie Morris shares in her latest article, Experiencing Love, which you really do need to read, the apostles, upon receiving the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of grace and salvation through Jesus Christ, were grappling with a brand new revelation of God and His ways that, although it was there in the Scriptures, it was hidden. They searched the Spirit within them for ways to share with others this brand new thing God was doing upon the earth, recasting their understanding of the Old Testament to unveil this wonderful salvation to the church.

The same thing is happening again today.

The life of the age to come is rolling out of our innermost beings in ever increasing waves.

We say that Christ lives in our hearts. We concede the fact that God says something about being filled with all the fullness of God and that it would be okay for us to speak those things that "be not" as if they are. But then we motor along as if we are just a little old me living our lives in this world.

I am aghast at how it could be possible that the Creator of the Universe, the King of kings, the Lord of heaven and earth, Almighty God, omnipotent, all-powerful, knowing all things, seeing all things, could FILL ME, and I have walked blind and oblivious to that overwhelming reality!

Everything else vanishes in the presence of God.

The presence of God fills me with all of His fullness. Almighty God flows out from me in every possible way. There is no other reality!

"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."

This omnipotent, vast, and overwhelming Being, this Person, who calls Himself my Father and says that I am born out of His loins, has joined Himself with me in an intimate, personal, and total way. When I look at my spirit, I can see only His Spirit, and when I look at His Spirit, I am looking at my own. There is no distinction.

To walk in the Spirit is to walk in the Being and Person of Almighty God. To walk in the Spirit is to walk in my own spirit, a body that is made of the substance of spirit in exactly the same way that my physical body is made of physical matter.

To say, "Get out of the way so that Christ can be seen and not you," is to speak meaningless nonsense that has no basis in the word or in reason or in reality. I am not two, I am one.

It is not that I am God. It is that I walk and live in complete, fused union with this incredible Being who is God.

He says He lives in you. Do you see Him?

How can you see anything else? That would be impossible!

Here is a further comparison between the life of this present age and the life of the age to come.

Now here is a fascinating puzzle. When you visit Christian websites devoted to exposing deception in the church and you look at what they have to say about "New Age" ideas creeping into the church, this truth that there is one Spirit in the body of Christ, that we, as believers, all drink of one Spirit and move in and are energized by the same one Spirit has no place in their thinking. They simply denounce the whole concept as pagan and flee back into the isolated individualism under the control of a hierarchy of external authority that the Bible does not teach.

I have noticed over and over on these "protect the truth" websites that their claim to be "Bible-based" always excludes huge chunks of the New Testament. To believe what God actually says is to make yourself a target. And whenever they claim "the Bible doesn't teach that," immediately, a number of New Testament verses come to mind in which God says exactly what they say He does not say.

But consider, if you will, the "pagan ritual" in the movie Avatar performed by the Navi as they placed hands on one another in a vast network in order to join together as one spirit with the same spirit that filled everything around them. This is the "new age" element most denounced in the movie. Then compare that with the top down authority structure of the humans, a structure that is honored and revered by most Christians both in the world and in the church.

Now, leaving aside the absence of the Lord Jesus Christ in both structures in the movie, which picture is more in agreement with the nature of the body of Christ presented in the New Testament?

We are one spirit with the Lord and with one another. That is not just a nice saying; our spirits are as real as our physical bodies and more definite in every way.

"And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" Galatians 4:6

This fusion, this union between our spirit and God's Spirit is who we are, it is Christ in us. It is Christ; it is me. It is me; it is Christ.

Spirit is greater and more real, if that be possible, than physical matter. Our spirit body is more significant to our lives in every possible way than our physical body whether we know it or whether we don't.

What do we know about our Sspirit body? And I used Ss on purpose. The Spirit of God and our spirits are fused in an organic union which knows no point of distinction. Understand that this organic fusion is 100% unique to human sons of God. All of creation lives and moves and has its being in God's Spirit. Angels enjoy a certain kind of relationship with the Spirit of God; even demons obtain their life and being from that same Spirit.

But those humans, created in the image of God, enabled to come into union with God, to receive His seed into themselves, to bear and bring forth His life out from who and what they are, those humans, both on this earth right now, and those waiting in the heavens, whom God has chosen to receive this incredible portion of Himself that He is even now placing within us, share a union with and knowledge of God that no other element in creation can ever know.

That does not make us "elite" in any way. The nature of God is to leave the good people and risk His life to seek out that one worthless creature that got its own self into so much trouble. The nature of God is to come alongside the helpless, the no-good, the reprobate, and to love them with a self-effacing love that never accepts rejection until it wins that first, weak, and tentative "Yes." The nature of God is to run at the back of the "special" Olympics, making sure that last rejected handicap makes it across the finish line.

That is the nature of the One who fills us full.

So, it is clear from the context of Scripture that this union of our spirit and God's spirit fills and is centered in that organ called the heart. We should not think that our spirit is found in our heart, but rather that it is centered there. Our spirit is the largest part of us. It encompasses in itself every other part of our being and extends beyond our body. What does it feel like when someone you don't know places their face two inches from your face? It is not physical proximity that makes you feel violated; they have invaded the space occupied by your spirit.

Man, the image of God, is the union between God and dirt. Out of that union, man becomes a living soul. Christ comes into man as a life-giving Spirit. But consider God's words concerning David. "David is a man after My own heart." It is by heart that we are most like God. Both Solomon and Paul urged us to protect and guard our hearts. Solomon said that out of the heart are the issues of life. The shaping of our hearts by God through a life-time of experiences, both positive and negative, is the most important part of our sojourn within this age.

In the books of Romans and Galatians, Paul places before us the dichotomy in which we presently live: flesh versus spirit. We can walk "according to the flesh," or we can walk "according to the spirit." If we walk "according to the flesh," we die. If we walk "according to the spirit," we live. Paul is not talking about the unregenerate in Romans 8:13, and he is not talking about the immature Christian. He is speaking a third feast understanding to mature sons of God.

I was twenty years old when I was introduced to this dichotomy in our lives, this vacillating between "flesh" and "spirit." "Get in the Spirit, brother," was a common injunction. We heard it all the time and in every way. The problem, of course, was that neither we nor the ministry exhorting us had any real idea of what that meant.

I have had no idea what Paul meant either. "If you (mature son of God) through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." To walk "in the Spirit" and to not "walk in the flesh" made absolutely no sense to me. Therefore I never ever tried to do it - because it made no sense. To try doing something that makes no sense is to pretend. And through the years of my life I had the privilege of walking and living closely with many who did try to do something they did not understand, who tried very, very hard.

I am absolutely convinced, by the experience of many years, that trying very hard to do something that makes no sense results in only one thing - madness. And it was the madness in the eyes of my brethren who were caught in that nonsense that persuaded me that it was time to leave.

Why did it make no sense to me? Because I am me. I am an organic whole. What is in my heart to do is what I do. Yes, my theology said that my heart was evil and that in order to live I had to hear something entirely separate from my heart and to force myself to obey that outward dictate. But whenever the thought came to me "God says do this," I have always rejected that impression immediately without thought. I have always known that whatever does not come out of my own heart must be nothing but a façade, a pretense - FAKE.

I hate fake; I always have.

I suspect that God hates fake more than I do.

I know, I know, that many will come along and say, "Dear Brother Daniel, of course we walked in the Spirit, we've known all along exactly how to walk in the Spirit. You were always walking in the flesh, that's why you don't understand."

I will say no more on that.

For the first time in my life, over the last few weeks, I have found a growing understanding, an inkling, a bit of light shedding itself upon what it means to walk "according to the flesh" versus to walk "according to the Spirit." That inkling comes out of the opening awareness in wave after wave that I am filled with God, that I live encased in God; and everything I see, I see out from God, and everything I am, I am out from God.

This is nothing other than the normal Christian life.

I continue to be a weak and tired has-been of a man sitting in front of my computer screen, but there is something inside getting louder and louder, "Not for long." "Not for long."

How is it that God can fill us with Himself, and we not see Him? How is it that Christ can live in our hearts, and we be utterly oblivious? These are staggering questions.

I can tell you exactly how that can be from out of my own life of seeking God in this world.

I could not see God in me because I did not value the blood of Christ and I did not value the cross of Christ. Oh, I would have argued that I did, I surely did. And that would have been true to the measure of my understanding at that time. But the fact that I could not see the God who filled me full puts the lie to my immature claims.

What do I mean?

When I saw myself as two, I could not see God in me. My eyes were closed tightly shut and I was blind. I saw myself as partly evil and partly good, partly fallen human and partly redeemed son of God, partly sinful and partly washed, partly flesh and partly spirit, partly up and partly down, partly in and partly out.

I saw myself that way because I did not believe that the blood of Christ continually removed all that separates me from God and I did not believe that the cross of Christ had already put to death all in me that once needed to die.

I did not believe these things for two reasons. First, I had received and been taught a false theology, a theology that ignored Paul's clear statement in Romans 8: "You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit." A theology that re-inserted that Old Covenant, pre-gospel position, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."

Second, I regarded my feelings as speaking something of consequence. I imagined that if I felt far away from God, rebellious, cut-off, brass heavens, and so on, then my feelings spoke the truth and I was in the flesh. My problem was, of course, that I felt that way most of the time. Then, I imagined that when I was lifted up in the anointing, feeling washed and clean and rejoicing in the overwhelming presence of God, that my feelings were also speaking the truth and I was in the spirit. My problem was, of course, that those feelings never lasted more than a few days at any one time.

Four years ago, I discovered that God's word in the New Covenant spoke the truth, not my feelings. I discovered that I was no more in the presence of God when I felt "anointed" than when I felt "rebellious," and vice versa. I discovered that the Blood is sufficient at all times and that the Cross is present perfect tense, that is, completed fully 2000 years ago and made perfect in my immediate and present moment. I discovered that everything I am Jesus carries fully in Himself at all times, and that everything I am is He living His life in me.

I discovered these words that I had read many times, but never known, "In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you are in Me and I am in you."

For every believer, it all boils down to this one question. Is the blood of Jesus Christ in part or in whole for you personally? Is the cross of Christ, right now, in part or in whole for you personally? You alone must answer that question and the path ahead is an entire watershed, a continental divide of difference for your life depending on your own personal choice of answer.

To choose "in whole" is to leave behind forever the idea that you are in any possible way or at any possible time separate from God.

I am not two, I am one. When I look at myself, at any time, and in any way, I do not see me here and God there. I do not see a spirit body over here and a fleshy body over there. I live in an organic union with God and He with me and that union extends out from me and includes you utterly and completely. We are one spirit together and with God. Yet I am a completely unique me and you are a completely unique you and God is completely Himself, whether revealed in us or not.

And my fleshy body, though it is still dying because of the curse of Adam not yet cast off, is enveloped entirely in my Sspirit, and the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead enjoys my mortal flesh as His chosen and holy dwelling place.

My physical body is holy, it is acceptable to God, and I love God through my body and through my spirit.

I can see now that what I thought I would cover in this letter will take two more letters. In the third letter, I want to explore what it means to live and walk in heaven in our spirit, our spiritual body, which lives and moves in heaven right now.

But in the next letter, I want to look at what actually makes the difference between living and walking "according to the flesh" versus living and walking "according to the spirit."

Our spiritual body shares very similar attributes with our physical body. Our physical body has eyes that see natural light; our spiritual body has eyes that see the light of heaven. Our physical body has ears that hear vibrations in the air; our spiritual body has ears that hear God speaking in the heavens.

But we have one bodily organ that is shared by both our physical body and our spiritual body. This organ controls everything. It sets the direction of our life, and the paths of our feet. It rules what we believe in our hearts and therefore what we see with our eyes. Out of this organ comes life; out of this organ comes death. By this organ hell vomits itself upon the earth; by this organ heaven rules triumphant in our lives.

I am speaking of the tongue.

There is a direct, immediate, and continual connection between the words that we speak with our mouth to our heart out of which are the issues of life to our eyes by which we see all things whether in heaven or on earth.

What I speak is what I then believe. What I believe is what I then see.

God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

"Who calls those things that be not as though they are."

Why have I been seeing God the last while more than I ever have (though even now just a teeny bit)? It is because it has begun to dawn on me that God lives in me!

And how has it begun to dawn on me that God lives in me?

Because God says that He does, and I speak what God speaks.

That is my right, you know, to speak what God speaks. It is my right, and nothing can keep me from it, nor can any voice entice me to speak otherwise.

I am filled with all the fullness of God. God flows out of me as a redeeming River of Life. By God in me and me in God, I prove the vindication of God in the earth; I cast down all voices that speak against His Word.

You do the same.

Speak only what God speaks.

In - and out from Him,

Daniel Yordy