Chris Welch presented an issue on his blog and on Facebook this last week - the diagrams of the human makeup. I'm sure you've seen them - spirit, soul, body. Such things intrigue me, so I made up my own diagrams with comments. I must say that I really like what I came up with. You may enjoy it as well.

A Corrected Diagram of Spirit-Soul-Body (pdf)

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Rambling Thoughts

By Daniel Yordy – September 12, 2010
PDF Version for printing and distribution

So much of Christian teaching is focused on what's wrong with this guy's doctrine, or how this or that teaching is false. I do it more than I care for, yet sometimes it becomes necessary to answer a question or to give a backdrop for the truth.

But truth is the revelation of Jesus Christ - an entirely positive, forward-moving view of everything.

I am really less concerned with someone's lack of understanding than I am with knowing the incredible thing God is doing in the earth. After all, I am also deceived about many things, as are you. There are so many things that you and I believe that just ain't so. And we don't even know what those things are!

But I find absent from so much Christian teaching the knowledge and exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Mighty One sent from the Father to accomplish His purposes - living personally and real inside of every single one who belongs to Him. It's as if salvation does not belong to Him! It's as if His presence inside a human being, a simple heart who trusts in Him, isn't the most staggeringly awesome thing in the universe!

How can we circle around the King of Glory filling a little one, a least one, with His Power, and not see Him, nor make mention of Him?

And in the end, anyone trying to explain the truth without explaining Jesus revealed personally and intimately in us, is simply sidestepping the only thing that is truth.

I cannot reveal Jesus. Only Jesus can reveal Himself.

I am also convinced that there is too much focus on the death of the old me. Who cares about the old me? God has forgotten his existence, and so have I. Yet these phrases keep getting sent our way. "Dead men have no rights." Or "You're just a dead man walking."

These statements have no meaning, God doesn't say them, and they have no relationship with Jesus revealed in me.

"I am alive."

"I have the right to become a son of God."

Now, these two statements have great meaning, God does say them so clearly and more ways than one, and they are Jesus revealed in me.

So much of our "truth" is mixed with the extension of human reasoning. We read something God says, and then we extrapolate from that, that is, we process it by our own knowledge, by our reasoning and experience, and we arrive at conclusions. Yet so often, the conclusions we call "truth" end up no longer being what God actually says.

And so often we say, "Well, God says this." And we ignore the fact that God also says that. He says both. God says that He is always the same and He says that He is new every morning. God says He is LOVE. God says He pours out His wrath. And He said both through the same apostle, at the same time, the one, really, who knew Jesus best - and after 70 years of walking with Him. We so want to say, "Well, He meant one, but He didn't mean the other."

I read this on Facebook recently. "My Bible says that God hung the world on nothing!" (The brother was defending what he had learned in public school, but he didn't realize that, he thought he was defending the Bible.) Well, sorry, my dear brother, that is a line, I believe, from a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. A wonderful poem, certainly, but not "my Bible." God says that what is visible in creation comes out of that which is not visible. God says the all things are upheld by "Word of His Power." That word is certainly not "nothing."

"What God says" is filled with so many impressions that have come into us over the years, some from God, yes, and some from the traditions of men.

But that is a point I've said too many times.

God is huge; you can't box Him up, yet He reveals Himself in us! God is complicated; you can't simplify Him, yet the simplest heart can know Him. God is positive and negative, perfectly counterbalanced, forever entwined, yet always separate. (And by negative, I do not mean sin or evil or rebellion - yet these things have some role in God's expression of Himself, else they would not exist.)

To be filled with God is to be filled with love; He loves all things that His hands have formed; God loves all beings that inhabit His universe. To be filled with God is to be filled with hatred. God hates a proud and haughty heart; He hates manipulation and control, especially for religious gain; God hates cruelty.

The second witness of Christ is clothed with sackcloth - mercy and judgment entwined.

"Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

"The world hates Me because I testify against it that its deeds are evil."

Both words coming out of the same heart at the same time.

I just received in my inbox a note by Dan Stone. (I am on the mailing list sent out by Linda Bunting and Dee Dee Winter, something I would recommend you sign up for if you have not - you can contact them through www.christasus.com.) These thoughts are so precious, something we need to be reminded of daily. Let me share them here.

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God's Precious Assets
Dan Stone

Our humanity is God's asset. If we are meant to function on the human level, which is how God made us, we can't deny our humanity. We don't like things we think and feel, so we want to reject our humanness. But our humanity has to be part of God's plan; otherwise how can we express Him? He has designed us to express Him through our humanity. So denial of our humanity isn't the answer.

God joined to you, one spirit, is absolute, bedrock truth. But as God expresses Himself through you, He expresses Himself through you as spirit, soul, and body. Spirit, soul, and body is the means for the expression. You can't even talk without a body. It's impossible. The total you is involved in speaking your mind, your emotions, your will, your mouth, your vocal cords, etc. We are a total person. We express Him as total people. God says to us, ''I'm going to live in you, and other people are going to see you, but you know it's Me.''

What this tells us is that we can stop seeing ourselves as a liability. We can cease thinking that something more needs to happen to us spiritually before we can be an asset to God. If we keep focusing on ourselves externally, we'll keep thinking, ''He can't use me yet.'' If we focus on Christ living in us, we can put ourselves on the shelf as a liability and begin to see ourselves as an asset.

God takes those things that are fixations in us when we're flesh-centered and turns them into blessings when we're spirit-oriented. What I despised became a blessing in someone else's life. Finally, we are able to say, ''Lord, through my family tree and all of the circumstances I've come through, you've made me the outer person that I am. You live in that person and you set that person in the world in a way that's going to attract some people to You.

Thank God for your humanity. Thank God for your parents even for the difficult things that you inherited from them. God used them to help make you the perfect instrument you are. Thank God for your warts because He's going to make them a blessing in someone else's life. You come to a place of inner peace, knowing that the warts--the imperfections--that constitute your outer humanity are the very things that some brother, sister, boy or girl will be able to get a hold of. They'll be able to relate to that wart. And as they do, they'll receive the Life that lives in you. Take back your humanity as the dwelling place of the Most High God.

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Dan Stone gives us one side of the revelation of Christ in us, "He has designed us to express Him through our humanity." But there is always the other side, for He has also designed us to express Himself in power.

Christ is revealed as the human me, in daily simplicity.

Christ is revealed through me in all the power of heaven.

The moment we get caught up in Christ revealed in power, we forget the simplicity of Christ as us and soon fall into condemnation for lack of "commitment" or "faith" or whatever we think is holding that power back. The moment we settle into Christ revealed as me in the messiness of my humanity, we forget about the explosive creative power that fills us with all the fullness of Almighty God and we soon limit God and say, "Thus far and no more."

Christ is in me as me; Christ is in me as Himself. This is a great and unimaginable mystery.

I write because I must continually talk to myself of these things.

Power is of God and not of us. We cannot make power happen. Yet we can ignore power and thus prevent it. The key for us to power is the knowledge of His favor. Knowing His favor gives me the ability to expect His power.

This is so very important.

Knowing His favor gives me the ability to expect His power.

My wife and I need His power coming through His favor right now. We always need both from God, we are just more aware of our need right now. I'm sure you are in a similar place, or were recently, or soon will be. That is the nature of the journey we are on and the times in which we live.

God places us, over and over, between the cruelty of the Egyptian army and the impassable Red Sea. But He does so in order to show Himself mighty on our behalf. He wants us to dance in full confidence of joy on this side of the sea. God has always wanted a people who will do this all the time.

Jesus said, "Take no thought for yourselves, what you shall eat or what you shall wear, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need these things." Yet when push comes to shove, we find it so very hard to believe that this is what God would have us do - take no thought for how on earth we are going to pay the next bill! And most counseling from fellow Christians would exhort us that God most certainly does expect us to take thought on how we are going to earn the money to pay our bills.

But when we find ourselves in a real-life situation stuck between Egyptian armies and deep waters with nowhere to turn, we find ourselves inside an emotional roller coaster. God has provided so many times in the past, but we cannot see any provision right now. We believe with all of our hearts in His favor, but there's those troublesome eyeballs again, telling us, "Nothing in view!" And we wake up in the night in a cold sweat, our mind screaming that this time we are in big trouble.

And it comes down to, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him."

Power is of God and not of us; God fills us with all of Himself.

I think that what we do not see is the glory God finds in this point of extreme weakness.

"We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." "His strength is made perfect in my weakness."

"I know that the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us."

There is something taking place inside our faith inside our heart when we enlarge our heart to trust in God especially when we see no way. That something is holy beyond measure. Heaven sees what is happening, and their jaws are dropping at what they behold. Yet if we were to "see" it with their same view, we would lose the weakness part and abort the birthing of the holy.

There is no greater weakness in all creation than a woman giving birth to an infant. Both are so vulnerable, without defense.

Never before in all the history of creation has so much evil power focused itself so intently and with such great hatred and fear upon this holy thing that God is birthing inside our extreme weakness. I can assure you of this, all the powers of darkness and evil have forgotten about the vainglory of man and all the institutions of power in this world and all the debauchery, and all the cesspools of wickedness. No, their fear is pinned upon the weakness into which God Himself has placed you and me.

I believe with all my heart that inside the extreme weakness in which God Himself has placed me, the inability, the loss, the sorrow, God is birthing that Most Holy Thing from out of His innermost Being inside of me. I don't see it, but I believe it, because God says it is so. And everything God says I take for myself with all confidence of faith. Those words do not come out of strength; they come out of a face of tears, out of real loss, out of no visible hope for tomorrow.

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.

I want to speak of His faithfulness. His mercies are new every morning. His loving kindness IS better than life.

And so I place myself before Him sitting here in front of my computer screen this morning. My heart is stretched wide open. He has taken from me one whom I most dearly love and has placed her in the care of others - partly because I am unable to provide what she needs. I bless Him with all my heart for He is good.

Let me share with you a vision of what else is happening, here, as I sit before my computer screen feeling nothing more than weakness and loss and the goodness and kindness of God. I know this is happening; I do not need to see it to believe that it is so.

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The Wave of Pure Light

- written here in 2006

Annie Schissler - Ed Miller's spiritual daughter

While being just dedicated to love and worship Him again, He snatched me towards the spheres of light. When He received me in His presence, He invariably does it with those ineffable words that bring such peace and so deep security; He tells me: 'DO NOT BE AFRAID'.

I know that I would not be able to enter His Cloud of Glory if He did not give breath to me with His greeting, since the reaction that provokes the taking part in so high spheres of glory and holiness is tremendously overwhelming. He has to protect me from the effects of such grandeur and refulgence, for if it were not in this way, I would be devastated and I would not be able to stand it. He also covers me in His Cloud when He shows me His operations for this hour.

With tremendous strength and demonstration of purpose, The Lord talked to me about a great "now" when He would be gathering multitude of souls. In contrast with His chosen in whom He had been performing a profound work, this new operation would be carried out in a completely exposed way and with great clarity.

God showed me a new and extraordinary wave of heavenly pure light and life that He is accumulating to prepare the manifestation of the Great Harvest, that will develop underneath the storm of evil which is forming. He told me that He would not wait or retain this wave anymore, but that He would proceed to manifest it because His great "now" had come. While being released by Him, it would flow over the earth, returning multitudes of souls to the fold.

This new wave, full of powers and forces of light and life, was His instrument and had a double function: one opened as the incision of a sharp sword, and the other penetrated and went through beyond all defense and accomplished what God had proposed.

More about the wave of light in this new occasion The Lord told me: "you will see now", and immediately I looked and I saw a new and mighty pure wave of power that had began to work under that terrible storm of darkness of evil and persecution. While the storm of darkness still followed its course, this new wave of so pure light and life that had been prepared for this hour, suddenly started to expand in an explosive and magnificent way.

He showed me how this new wave operated: there were like gigantic arms that collected in an increasing scale countless multitudes of souls for Christ. In amazing operations of God, in great power and strength, thousands and millions were taken for Him.

However, there were differences between the levels and conditions of these souls that the wave of light had reaped regarding the elect ones who walked above the storm. The elect ones were obviously superior in development and light, but despite their inferior condition, the souls that gathered under the storm were more numerous and were equally precious to the Lord and He was especially interested in the harvest of this multitudes. With great joy and power He was intensively working to fulfill this.

The inferior condition of the new ones was detectable not by their appearance, but by their relationship with God. Those who walked above the storm had a very intimate relationship with Him, characterized by a great intensity, as if they were linked with the same fires and torrents of the divine nature.

When the new ones took abundant blessings from God, it was due to the fact that they rebounded from His chosen ones. The blessing of one had an impact as a blessing for another one.

Clearly the operation of God in this wave of light developed in the chosen ones through the purity and the holiness. This wave of pure light was working in the midst of great darkness underneath the storm. He showed me a especially terrible and gloomy area that offered no promise, where the wave had not reached yet.

Then He made me see that this light would expand in places where it had never been before and where the darkness had reigned without opposition. These places were many and were awaiting the manifestation of this work.

He said that He would take this marvelous wave of light and life to a certain state of development - up to the same threshold of its explosion. Although He desired this wave to burst in this explosive force of purity, something was still missing for this to happen. The moment of the explosion would be precipitated and lit by the elect ones who were above the storm.

Each one of them individually, had to open as if it were a door inside them and they also had to enter an even higher place of communication with Christ, which at the same time, would open their inner doors to the manifestation in great power of this force of light.

While opening these doors, that great wave of light would pass through them and would start to accomplish its purposes and works over the land of the final harvest. Although this wave, full of extreme power and force to the reaping, would gather multitudes, it would however gradual and progressively advance, taking its territory as long as the chosen ones moved forward and opened the doors to the new ones.

The ones who were under the storm, though they received great provision of light and life that God shed, nonetheless they were allowed to be moved, shaken and buffeted. However, through this, it would be provided the way in which the Lord would mold, transform and develop them. On the contrary, those who were above the storm of darkness, that is, the elect ones could not be shaken as they were rooted and asserted in their relationship with Christ

He told me that these sons that would give way to this new wave, must be extremely purified. This purification is of fundamental importance, not only for themselves, but also for these new ones that will be gathered. This high, complete purification of the elect ones is equivalent to the opening of the doors inside them that will rebound in a force of great life and light to those thousands that are still in darkness. (Emphasis mine - DY)

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John said, "He that has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure."

How can I purify myself? How can I be one of these sons, one of this elect, that the doors of God might be opened through me, that all the revelation of Christ might flow through me?

For thirty four years I have lain myself "upon the floor" before God that He would, somehow, make me one of these. Yet He has made me weak instead, and given me unending inability and failure at every point along the way.

How can I make myself pure? How can I make myself holy and clean?

And I am no different than you; God has made you as weak and as human as He has made me.

For God to be doing something through a people who walk now upon the earth as I do, and for me to be on the outside of that, knowing that I could have known Him in that same way, if I had wanted, that is inconceivable to me. For Jesus to stand upon the earth, to reveal Himself in glory through His elect, and I not be among them, that is something I cannot bear.

But I cannot even fix my computer that keeps shutting down on me, forcing me to carefully re-write what I just said and had not saved.

How can I make myself pure?

Dan Stone shows us Christ revealed in our humanity. Annie Schissler shows us Christ revealed through us in power. I am showing you faith in the word God speaks, believing that all that is Christ is made personal in us, though we see it not.

I can make myself pure. God would never have told me to do so if I could not. And how do I make myself pure? It is the fire of God that purifies and makes clean. Our God is a consuming fire. That fire is found there at the point between the Egyptian armies and the impassible waters, check out the story in Exodus, you'll see the fire there.

There is no part of me outside that fire. I am consumed by His fire, though I do not burn away. I live, yet it is not I, it is Christ living in me.

I glory in tribulation. I count it all joy when I fall into terrible and weird trials. I am excited when everything that can go wrong does go wrong. I enlarge my heart to believe God fills me with all of Himself in all power and glory - though I see it not.

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation (the unveiling, the apocalupsis) of Jesus Christ, 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 1:6-9

Here is the point of birthing. Here is the means by which God takes the High and Holy Essence out of His innermost Being, out of His very Heart, and makes it me.

How do I purify myself?

I rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, though I stand in utter weakness and loss, and though I see Him not. This is the Unveiling of Jesus Christ.