The Flaming Sword

By Daniel Yordy – October 10, 2010
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"So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life." Genesis 3:24

"To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." Revelation 2:7

"For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" 1 John 5:4-5

There is no glory without victory; there is no victory without a fight; and there is no fight without an opponent.

We live in a world at war, and that war is targeted against us. God says that the greatest forces of evil array themselves against the birthing of Christ inside of us. They will do anything they can to keep us away from the knowledge of Christ in all victory revealed through us.

More than that, God Himself has set a guard, Cherubim, the greatest of all heavenly beings, and a flaming sword, to keep the way to the tree of life.

Nothing that I teach about Christ living as us in this world is presented in any way to condone sin or to allow wicked acts against others. I know that those who read this letter do not take the teaching of grace in that way. Yet, if we do sin, if we do treat our brother cruelly for our profit, and God opens our eyes to our opposition to Him, we do not act as those who do not know God. On the contrary, we place ourselves in His presence, in the ever flowing cleansing of His blood. And we are clean.

But those who hate, those who participate in the wars and thefts of this world, have no life in them. And hatred is not something we "feel," it is something we do or participate in. The growing hatred against Muslims among Christians in this country concerns me deeply. It is of a similar spirit as that which descended upon Christians in Germany (Germany was as Christian as England) in the 1930's.

Can one who is redeemed by the blood of Christ and infilled with the Spirit of God turn and once again become motivated and directed by the spirit of Satan?

God warns us about just this reality all through the New Testament. I really don't think He would do that if it does not happen. We do not judge ourselves or our brethren; we always lift up Christ. We know that regardless, God is working even our turning away from Him towards our good in the end - as He is doing for all men. Sometimes a person just needs to see the fruit of departing from God to learn that he does not want to live separate from God any longer.

God has a full and necessary purpose for evil. The purpose of Satan is that we might defeat him, that we might know our enemy under our feet. The purpose of the curse is that we might cast it off, both off of our own bodies and off of all creation. The purpose of the world is that we might overcome it. God never says anywhere that we are to "win the world" or to "make it a better place." We are to defeat it in the victory Christ has already wrought.

This is how God has ordained the revelation of Christ through us.

There are many who want the revelation of Christ as us in our humanity in this world to be only sweetness and goodness or to be entirely limited by our present humanity. I was asked once why I teach victory in battle when Norman Grubb and others taught that there is no battle.

Norman Grubb's book, Rees Howells: Intercessor, along with Watchman Nee's, The Normal Christian Life, were the foundation of my walk with God. The teachings of Sam Fife shaped my thinking and the course of my life. I draw from these all the time - I actually often consciously draw from Watchman Nee as I write.

But I do not look back, nor do I look sideways. I am done with any other source of truth except the Spirit of God through the New Testament. To what measure any other teacher of the gospel helps me to understand God in the New Testament, to that measure I will draw from them. But I am determined to know all that God speaks in the covenant I signed with Him.

And God speaks victory in battle. God speaks defeating our enemy; He speaks gaining the victory over the beast in this world; He speaks clothing ourselves with immortality.

I want to tell a story - my version of a parable of Jesus.

[After I wrote this "parable," I realized that I am being overly melodramatic about my story. I won't make many changes to fix that because I have a purpose, and if I am successful with my purpose, then the melodrama is excused. What I share here is the truth, it's just not the whole truth. I had many good and wonderful experiences in Christian community; I loved large elements of it. I am writing another article in which you will see an entirely different view of my life. But don't shed tears for me, I mostly held my own, and there are many who also had need to forgive me.]

I took a walk one day out from Jerusalem down the long, steep slope to the town of Jericho at the north end of the Dead Sea. On the way down, I was attacked by robbers. They stole my innocence, they stole my light, they beat me and left me wounded and helpless, lying there in the ditch by the side of the road.

I was 9 years old.

I lay in that ditch for 36 years, with unhealed, open, and bleeding wounds. I could not get up; I could not heal myself.

During those 36 long years, I watched an endless parade of Christians walk by me down the road. Some hurried by on the far side; I have no quarrel with them. But many came over to look upon me and my pain and confusion, my unhealed, bleeding sores. Not one of them knew how to bring healing to me. Not one.

Among that endless parade of faces were those who were kind and tender, who offered me a cup of cold water, a smile of encouragement. I remember every one of those. A brother who reads these letters, I would often pass on my way to work, hurting and confused. He would smile at me, a bright, generous, friendly smile. I will remember those smiles forever. They meant so much to me. But these who stepped into the ditch with me, who offered me kindness in the small ways they could give, who poured a little soothing oil on the hurt, these were a decided minority.

Most of the faces that came to look at me came with the intent to fix my problem. They came with their own ridiculous-looking Band-Aids, their "thus saith the Lord"'s. And they would apply those Band-Aids in all the wrong places, claiming discernment. The Band-Aids never ever fit the wounds; they were just stuck onto me here and there. Then, the face would stand back and watch. More often than not, when they saw that I was not healed, they would kick me sharply, wounding me yet again, adding even more to my confusion because I thought they represented "God," and go their way down the road.

Meanwhile, the original cutthroats continued to come out of the rocks when no one was around and cut and slash at me again, many times over the years.

I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 7. I was filled with the Holy Spirit when I was 15. At age 16, I overdosed on LSD. As the horror hit me, I saw a vision of the Holy City of God. The gates were closed and barred against me and I was on the outside without hope. I spent the next 8 hours lying on my bed in stark terror, believing that I was forever damned.

For the next 15 years of my life, pain and fear gripped me all through my innards every single day.

I walked with God; He spoke to me. I sat under awesome anointed word; I worshipped God together with others in tremendous rivers of praise. God taught me from His word mighty and glorious things.

And every single day, pain ripped through my guts like a knife. The only way I could survive was to cling to Him with all my heart on the one hand and to hide in my own imaginative fantasy worlds on the other. I was a walking skeleton.

[Understand that I came into community in this dark shell. God used Christian community to bring me out of it. Yes, community increased the pressure, it works like a furnace; it was far easier living at home in Oregon. But easiness would never have set me free. Had I not gotten back up, more than once, and returned to community, you would not have heard of me today.]

Many, many people, passing by me, told me what I needed to do to be free. They waved their Bibles, talked about Christ in me, about "pushing out the devil by walking in the Spirit," and passed on by.

Until one day, one day, a woman named Jane Miller passed by down the Jericho road, a woman who had known torment and who knew the power of God setting her free. She saw me, lying there wounded and hurting, unhealed, full of pain. She came to my side of the road, got down in the ditch with me, and went to war. She taught me about demons, that they were NOT me, she showed me in full reality the gospel of Jesus Christ - the DEMONSTRATION of the Spirit and POWER.  She turned the lights on.

I was 31 years old.

Christ is come into this world as us. He has not come into this world as the demons that still project themselves onto our emotions and into our minds pretending to be us.

God took me through an exercise between Him and me of my surrender to Him over the next few months. Then, one evening, I stood in one of the most anointed services we had among so many in the community where I lived. There was a Presence and Spirit of deliverance and power upon the congregation. My heart was lifted up in praise and in the anointing. In that moment, God took my mind right back to that night 15 years previous when I lay on my bed in stark, raving fear. I saw, as clearly as I had felt it then, that fear and terror. As I saw it, something wrenched loose inside of me like a great hornet's nest, buzzing around and around. I could almost feel it physically in my chest as it rose up like a whirlwind. I raised my hands toward heaven and cast myself utterly upon my Savior. Pow! The thing shot out of the top of my head and was gone.

From that day to this, I have not known that particular pain, pain that was as familiar to me as my own breath every day for fifteen years; I have not known it once since. I cannot remember it.

I think you can understand why I have a bit of a problem with "Christ as us" teachers who wave their "ideas" at people as they rush on by down the road.

People live in pain. That pain is real and it is caused by demons. Those who shout Christ and heavenly goodness and positive thinking never stick around, never bring the immediate power of the Lord Jesus Christ into the picture, never get down into the mud and the blood and the grit on the side of the road alongside the broken soul.

In fact, "Christ as us" can be just one more pile of condemnation, one more ridiculous bandage we tack onto people and then wonder why they don't get up out of the ditch healed "like us'ns." But we don't wonder long, because we're right on down the road on our glorious way to Jericho.

I was partly healed, as a result of Jane Miller's ministry. I could hobble down the road, finally. I didn't need to escape into my imagination any more. I could talk, now, to the one whom God had told me would be my wife. For seven years, I could not say a word to her, she the gentlest of all people. Now I could.

And then, they rushed out from behind the rocks again and kicked me and beat me as severely as they ever had, hoping, I think this time, to really finish the job. And there were so many unhealed wounds from all the years before, wounds that had scabbed over or scarred, hidden all through my body and soul and heart.

I'm talking about life in this world.

We Christians are so good at pretending. Pretending it doesn't hurt; pretending that we're "just believing God." Pretending that we're "going right on to glory." Pretending; covering over the hurt and the pain and the bleeding ulcers so that no one can see them. "If they see my unhealed wound, what will they think? I'm supposed to be living in grace; I'm supposed to be Christ as me in this world; I'm supposed to be happy that everything is just working out for good. Glory, glory! Speak Christ!"

I walked with God; I heard His voice; He taught me of His ways; He was close to me, all through those years.

But right alongside the knowledge of His presence with me, I was numb and cold and frozen inside. Nothing worked. Nothing got better. No help came to me. This is how so many believers live, even though you see nothing but smiles on Sunday morning.

When I first learned deliverance for real at age 31, I learned to fight. I didn't like to fight; it was not my inclination or nature. But I could not live under that shadow, and so every time the lying feelings of despair and separation from God came over me, I fought. I fought by every means available to me in the Spirit. Sure, sometimes I fought out of condemnation; actually most times I fought out of condemnation. But I fought; I fought - AND I WON. So what if they're back again a few days later. Fight again - and win again.

I did not, and to this day, I do not, accept any sense of separation from God. I fight. Today, I fight in faith and confidence in the goodness of God. But I fight.

I do not understand people who say that the heavens are brass and that God "feels" far away. I am no judge. I do not know anyone but myself. But I know that for me, if there is a sense of any barrier between me and God, that "feeling" is a DEMON. And I do not, I cannot, allow a demon to remain anywhere in my heavens. I used to believe that they got in because I had done something wrong. I know now that they assail me because Christ is revealed in me and they are terrified. But I don't care why they are there; I don't care what they are. They will not block the light. They will not stand as a shadow separating me from the love and joy of my Father. I fight. I fight. I fight until they are gone and joy and peace comes flooding back into my heart and I KNOW His closeness for real.

Nowadays, the fight lasts not very long at all, sometimes just a few minutes. I have discovered the best weapon I have ever known. They hate Christ in me. When I embrace Christ my life in all of my humanity, in all the wrenching "feelings" that assail me, they don't like it. They high tail it out of here as fast as they can.

But I fight. Entering into His rest is a fight. It doesn't happen because it sounds good or somebody gives a convincing argument from the Bible. It happens only because we accept no other place to live.

To say that feeling far away from God is just a normal part of Christ living as us in this world is BUNK! You can accept it for yourself if you want; I am not wise enough to judge. But for me - NO WAY. I don't care what it takes; I cannot accept any demon standing between me and my Lord, casting any form of shadow upon my feelings or my thoughts.

I fight! And I quickly win. And the next time, I fight again without condemnation, with all joy and assurance of faith. But I fight and I win. And joy floods my heart again.

Back to the Jericho road.

I was 45 years of age. For 36 years, I had lain in that ditch, wounded, bleeding, unable to heal myself, enduring the unending array of well-meaning Christians on their way by with all their, "If you just believed in Christ, you would be A-OK!" Their, "The curse causeless does not come, brother. You must be doing something wrong, else you would be healed like ME!"

And then the inevitable kick, right in the ribs, as their great wisdom accomplished nothing for me.

When I was 45, God took me away from all of that, took me away to a quiet place, a set aside place, out of the hubbub of Christianity and well-meaning people. And there He introduced me to one of the best friends I have ever known in my life. I have never met him, I know him only from his books, but he is as dear to me as anyone I have known face to face.

His name is John Eldredge, a Christian PYSCHOLOGIST from Colorado Springs, Colorado.

For four years I walked with John Eldredge.

The first thing he said to me was, "Daniel, you were born into a world at war. The arrows of your enemy were shot all through you. It was not your fault."

"IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT."

You have no idea the balm of healing those few words were to me. It was John Eldredge who taught me, who allowed me to say "My heart is good! My heart is good and there is no falseness in it." It is good because it is brand new and filled with Jesus. Christ lives IN MY heart.

Jesus, through John Eldrege, gave me permission to step aside from shame. Through all those years I was so ashamed of myself, so ashamed. It was not my fault. There is no shame in me.

For four years, as I read his books over and over, his words pierced through every single wound in my soul, opened that wound up, and brought the Lord Jesus Christ into that dark and hurting place. I got down on my knees, on my face on the floor before God. Every "answer" to my "problem" given to me by all those passing by on the Jericho road was refuted over and over by the real answers of Jesus Himself as He met my needs.

The answers from Christian psychology brought to me by John Eldredge were ALWAYS the very opposite of all those who had waved their Bibles and spoken Christ at me through all those years. His answers were real and true to actual life in this world, they were not airy-fairy pie in the sky. They brought meaning and understanding to everything.

I still see the airy-fairy stuff in the "grace" word. "You don't need inner healing, all you need is to know that Christ is your life. Get your thoughts into the heavenlies. Stop thinking about your feelings. It's all grace and goodness."

And they leave people crippled in their pain; and they do not bring them help or healing. On the contrary, people in pain respond to a grace word, their hearts reach out to a "Christ as us" word, and when you pass on by and the pain remains, they look at themselves and think, "It must be my fault; there must be something terribly wrong with me. The pain is still here."

I just received a letter from a dear sister who reads all that I write and who lives in unanswered pain. She said, "I wish I could know the Lord like you do." I want to cry.

The "grace word" is not the gospel. The "Christ as us" word is not the gospel.

The GOSPEL is the word of grace and the word of Christ, joined fully and always with the DEMONSTRATION of the Spirit and POWER. No power, no getting down into the ditch alongside of people in their pain, in the broken places of their hearts, no demonstration of the deliverance and light of the Holy Spirit, no oil of healing, and what you have is nothing more than a bunch of nice sounding words, old men going around talking, but not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am whole today because of Jane Miller and John Eldredge and others like them who treated me in my pain with respect. People who showed me with power the way out.

I know full well that Christian "psychology" and deliverance ministry are abused and misused all through the Christian experience. So are grace and "Christ as us." So is every single bit of truth found in the Bible.

Christianity is the most violent, aggressive, war-mongering religion on earth. We stomp across the earth, fighting and killing one another, taking our wars into the lands and lives of people who have nothing to do with us, and all the time we "pray for the troops," and say, "It is the will of God." My goodness, Islam is a religion of peace and gentleness next to Christianity.

Should we throw out Christ because of the foolishness and wickedness of Christians?

This is a real problem we Christians have. We discover that there is error in our thinking and in our practice. So what do we do then? We throw out everything, both the truth and the error, all at the same time. I've seen it happen over and over. That's why Jesus said, "Don't pull out the lies, not now. If you pull out the lies, you'll pull out the truth at the same time. Let them grow together until the time is right."

Now is that time.

Every word God speaks has two sides - a two-edged sword. Those two sides always seem to be in contradiction to each other. They always cut in opposite directions. Grace and jeopardy, rest and battle, love and wrath, power and trust, abundance of provision and contentment in lack, word and Spirit. And what we have done in the past is take one side against the other. Christians find it so "irrational" to hold both at the same time. But God speaks both all the time.

I just read someone say that Paul did not teach abundance of provision for every good work, that he taught poverty and lack. Hogwash! He taught both the abundance of provision and contentment in lack, both fully and all the time.

So let's get back to the revelation of Jesus Christ.

God's people are attacked by demons all the time. God, together with us, is always working what was meant for evil into our good. But the pain does not come from Christ. And when we dismiss our brother's pain with a "oh, it's all Christ as us," and do not bring the power of the Holy Ghost to his help, we mock the Lord Jesus in how we treat our brother, rushing right on by his pain because there's another meetin' down in Jericho.

God did not place us in a dance through a daisy field. He willfully and purposefully placed us into a world at war, into the wreckage and deceit and pain of a cursed planet. He placed us into an arena of unending assault by wicked spirits. And there, He birthed Christ inside of us.

In that arena of pain and violence, God gave us the doorway into all the fullness of Christ. The door into Christ, the birthing of the son of God's heart, is found on earth, inside this arena of pain and darkness; it is not found in the sunny bliss of heaven. As Paul commanded us, "Do not think you're going to go to heaven to find Christ - He is a Word right now inside of you."

"Count it all joy when you are tempted by terrible pressures and mind-numbing tests." "Get excited when everything that can go wrong does go wrong." "Glory in all hell breaking loose."

"Stand in the evil day." "Endure until the end."

"If you suffer with Me, you will share My glory."

"Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth . . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born." Revelation 12:2-4

So why did I share this "parable" from my life with you in the way that I did? Three reasons.

 One: I want to hit my own self right in the forehead with a two by four. Yordy, don't you dare simply to extend to people nice-sounding words and wonderful ideas. The gospel is power right alongside the word. To say to someone who is in pain, "Well, it's all just Christ living as you in this world," and then to go on one's way, convinced that we have done for that one all that we can is a CRIME. We have not! We have inside of us the very power of God and that power is part of the gospel.

So what if setting people free takes hours and hours of battle and months and years of walking together, seeking healing? At what point does the fact that someone has not yet found full healing give us the right to back off from extending the actual healing power of God to them? After all the years of healing I have known, of all the deliverance in power I have experienced, still, finally learning about Aspergers at age 53 is the key that has answered everything for me and allows me to move back into some form of Christian community, which is where my heart resides.

People say, "Well, the same people keep lining up at deliverance and inner healing seminars over and over and they don't get healed." As if that's a reason to keep one's pain and stumble on in life unhealed! Healing comes from power, and power comes through battle. Power comes through those who refuse to accept anything less than full deliverance.

People say, "Well, Jesus just spoke a word and the person was healed. So spending time over someone's healing must not be God's way." But here is the problem. For that person, that truth about Jesus gives them the EXCUSE to walk on by down the road and leave the one who is hurting lying there unhelped. It can be nothing more than a disgust at getting one's hands dirty.

Yes, there was a time when we battled in ignorance, in a limited faith. But those times were stages of healing for me. Now, I see healing come more quickly as my confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus, in His oneness with me continues to grow.

Two: The second reason I have shared this "parable" of my life experience is to put before you two possibilities.

This is part of the story of my life. The pain was real. The agony of years is not exaggerated. Yet through all of it I was a son of my Father. I was a son when the darkness and shadow came over me at age nine. I was a son through the teenage years of despair and sin. I was a son seeking to know my Father and He was close to me, leading me, speaking to me, teaching me of His grace and kindness.

Why?

Possibility 1: It was all just an unfortunate series of events. So sad. But it's over with now, thank God. No reason, really. Bad stuff happens to good people.

Possibility 2: From before the foundations of the world, God appointed my frame and my path. He saw the son I will be, and He placed me in His chosen limitation, knowing the pain I would pass through and knowing that I would not rest until I knew Him in all of His glory. All of His ways concerning me are perfect. Not one moment of my life was separate from His hand. He appointed the difficulty not for "my good," but for my glory. That I might know Him, and that I might extend His goodness to others in like need.

Because glory comes from victory and victory comes from battle and battle comes through fierce opposition.

"If you suffer with Me, you will share My glory."

Possibility 1 has never entered my mind, not once through all those years. I justify my God. All of His ways concerning me are perfect.

Three: The third reason I have shared this "parable" in this way is that it is my hope that some who read this letter, who also carry unending pain and difficulty either in their physical bodies or in their hearts and emotions, that some will see a reality and a hope of the power of God towards them. They will see it, they will grab hold of it with all their might, and they will fight, fight, fight until they see Him in glory in their flesh.

"I will not let You go until You bless me." Jacob, as He wrestled all night with God, refusing to give in, refusing to quit, until God Himself had transformed him.

I cannot give you calculated argument. But I testify from my knowledge of God's word and from my own experience of Him and His ways, that this is the path God has ordained for the bringing forth of sons.

"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 apocalypse, 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

The flaming sword keeping the way to the tree of life?

Look at the sword. The sword is the Word God speaks - Christ. It is the shape of the cross, but double edged, always cutting both ways at the same time. The fire is the power of the Holy Ghost.

The sword is not there to keep us out. It is there for us to embrace, to be filled with, to become. It is the entrance into all that is life. That flaming sword is our life, it fills our beings, it is who we are.

"And a sword shall pierce through your own heart also that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed." Spoken to Mary as she brought forth Christ into the world.

The flaming sword is the most precious thing to us that God can give. God wanted you to share His glory; He sent you suffering so that you could. What a precious, precious gift from God.

But here is the critical thing. Suffering and pain are not something we bow down to. They are not something we stagger along under the weight of. There is no glory in suffering. Suffering is not worthy to be compared with glory.

Suffering is what we press through with determination, with battle, with perseverance. Suffering is the passage way, it is the birth canal. By casting off pain and suffering, by seeking healing for our broken hearts and finding it, by never letting go until all of God is revealed in all of us, by that means the power and life of God is worked into every particle of our being and we soar in the heavens with Him.

"Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth . . . And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne." Revelation 12:2-5

My face and heart are set. This is the only thing I see.

Be blessed in the Lord,
Daniel Yordy