The Grace That Is To Come (Part 1)
By Daniel Yordy

". . . Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:13

"For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." Romans 8:22-25

Hope is something that fixes itself upon what is not seen. But hope is not passive acceptance of "not seeing." Hope is eager anticipation with perseverance. Hope is groaning for something we do not presently experience.

Christ is all that God is speaking. It grieves me to the core when I see precious believers arguing that Christ is limited to just a few things that God says. They don't say it in so many words, but it is inherent in their argument.

I am audacious enough to groan for all that God speaks in the New Covenant.

Peter here claims that there is a grace that we have never seen - a grace that we should groan for, that we should wait upon God for, with eager anticipation and perseverance.

I live in a grace I already know. I have seen His grace in my life innumerable times in all the years I have walked with Him. I have seen His grace in the power of the Holy Ghost upon me and upon His people. I have watched Him heal physical bodies and deliver myself and precious friends from the agony of demonic assault. I have known His hand guiding my steps, preparing the way before me, bringing goodness and mercy into my life.

I have known His love in the midst of my bitterness, His strength in the midst of my weakness, His faith welling up in the night watches when all I could feel was loss and emptiness and missed opportunity.

I have watched Him deliver me from physical death, certain death that stopped without reason at the instant it touched my clothing - more times than once.

I know His grace that has never let me get away with anything that was not His purpose for my life, constraining me, blocking my way, cutting me off, keeping me from evil.

I have known affliction and sorrow and great grief, and in the midst of all of it - Jesus.

All of my life I have been seized in the grip of His determination; I know His grace.

But God through Peter places before us a grace we have never known. And God commands us to set our hope fully upon the coming of that grace.

This commandment of God is Christ in me and Christ in me is all that the Father speaks.

What is this grace that is to come? This grace that no believer in Christ has ever tasted?

First, it is grace.

There is a definition that says that grace is the passive state of receiving the gift of "going to heaven" even though we don't deserve it. That God looked down upon our lostness and decided to have mercy on us, to do for us what we could never earn.

I have written out every verse in the New Testament containing the word "charis" - grace. It's an astonishing thing, but I never saw that definition of "grace" anywhere in anything God says. I don't know where it comes from, but God didn't say it.

You cannot know what grace is without knowing the determination and purpose of Almighty God for the present state in which we were born.

God is determined to have many sons just like Jesus, a many-membered Christ through whom God Himself can be seen and known and handled.

Here is a profound truth that must tell upon everything that we understand about God and His ways: Jesus was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Everything contained in the salvation of God to us was found in Jesus before we sinned. Man was already fully redeemed before sin ever entered the universe. But that redemption did not apply to anyone apart from red human corpuscles mixing with the dirt of the earth. God requires Christ in dirt and sweat and physical, human reality.

Everything that is real and true eternally in God must find a specific outworking in the sweat, the tears, the agony, the hopes and dreams of the physical, temporal existence of life on this earth.

Why? God created angels that obey Him without question by simply speaking a single word. Yet we know that the son God will have is birthed through the agony of travail, through the tears and screams and pain of a woman giving birth.

If grace is just a passive acceptance of what is already true for us in Christ, then God would never have placed us in this vale of darkness, nor would He have ever placed the groaning of hope within our hearts. God is not a criminal; He does nothing or allows nothing except what is essential for the fulfillment of His determination and purpose.

Someone wrote to me that I am "nothing but a dead man walking."

Bunk!

I am the groaning and the travail of God birthing Himself out of His very heart into human flesh. I am born from above. I am more real than anything in the physical universe.

At the time Jesus walked this earth, there was a man, walking most likely somewhere in the dark forests of Europe, who was my forefather according to the flesh. That man died and his corpse was buried not too many years after Jesus' crucifixion. What concern do I have with that particular corpse? I have the same amount of concern for that of me that died in Christ 2000 years ago - None!

I am alive unto God.

God is determined to bring many sons into the glory of Christ; He is determined to conform me to the image of His dear Son. God created the universe, allowed sin to enter it, and made all of it subject to vanity for the sole reason that this is how He chose to birth that Son out of Himself, out of His very heart.

It is in this context alone that grace has its meaning.

Grace is the fulfillment of God in us.

Jesus said, "I am the door . . " So many who teach the grace of God and Christ in us want to camp out in the door. "It's all done; there's nothing else." But a door is for entering the determination and purpose of God.

I am convinced that there is a door into this grace that Peter claims is a grace that is coming, a grace that we have never known.

That door is found in two places in the New Covenant.

"Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh . . . Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was (is) in Christ reconciling the world to Himself . . ." 2 Corinthians 5:17-19

"Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:19-23

These two points of truth are like the two lungs through which every word God speaks - every breath He breathes - must pass to find fulfillment in our lives.

If you see yourself as a self separate from God, trying to come into obedience; if you see yourself as having two natures, one Christ, the other fallen human; if you see your "self" as something that "needs to die," having escaped death 2000 years ago and come back to haunt you; if you regard that which is dead; if you give credence to the Satanic deceit that God is lying when He says that all things in you are become new, all things in you are of God and that everything you are and everything you are going through is God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself - then you cannot know this grace that is yet to come, for you are unable to know it.

And if you allow in any part of your mind the consciousness of sin or sins or falling short or blowing it, any hint of regard for any possible effects of "sin"; if you draw back from the Holiest of all because you imagine you might be unworthy or might not make it or maybe, maybe someday; if you hesitate to speak and confess and declare your hope, that you are just like Jesus before God right now, though you see it not, because you imagine that would be "presumptuous" - then you cannot know this grace that is yet to come, for you are unable to know it.

We enter into the grace that is coming through the full revelation of our own utter weakness and inability and the sufficiency of the grace we have already received.

A friend of mine posted this statement on Facebook: "When God calls, there is always a required sacrifice: a cutting off of something dear to ourself so that we are able to focus solely on Him who purchased us......"

This is true. But there is nothing more dear to most religious Christians than having a self seperate from God, a self that has somehow escaped the death of the cross, a self that is fallen and human, a self that must be brought to obedience - with God's help, of course.

Always imagining that you must "die to self," always rooting around in your heart and soul and mind - the very dwelling place of Salvation - looking for sin and selfishness, is the exaltation of self. It is treating God like dirt; it is the carnal mind.

Christ is my life; I have no other life. There is nothing of myself that is not Christ.

"In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you are in Me and I am in you." John 14.

This knowledge in all of its fullness precedes the grace that is to come.

And what is the grace that is to come?

It is God proving His will in this earth through us.

This grace is not primarily the salvation of Christ, it is the vindication of God through Christ in us.

*****

All this last week I have pondered and meditated on this grace that is to come and what I would share in this next letter. I had much in my heart as I began to write, yet, as the Spirit does, He blew in a very different direction from anything I had thought. That does not mean that the other things filling my heart were unimportant. It just means that there are not enough books in this world to contain the account of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Part of what I must share with you is the time of this grace that Peter commands us to set our eager anticipation upon, that Paul says we groan for as a woman in travail.

On April 6, 2010, those who call themselves Jews in this world plan to offer a Passover lamb in sacrifice to "God" - the first since God destroyed that thing 1940 years ago. Christianity, utterly oblivious to the gospel, imagines that this is a good thing. It is not; it is the fullness of evil in this world. It is open mockery and repudiation of the Lamb that God sent. It is in your face, "Screw you God," rejection of His salvation. It is the beginning of open anti-Christ upon this earth.

When the Passover lamb was offered in AD 28, it was offered to God. When it was offered in AD 30, it was offered to Satan. God endured that blasphemy 40 times, and then He, not the Romans, destroyed it.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the Old Covenant containing the law are the same thing. Both were created by God, both were pronounced good by God, and both will kill you if you taste of them. Just as the serpent was wrapped around that which God created in the garden; so the very same serpent is entwined around the Old Covenant claim to the inheritance in our world today. God put him in both places. The age of folly has come full circle. And the woman - the evangelical church - is again enraptured with the claims of the Lie.

Just as God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, just as He hardened the hearts of the Pharisees, so He is doing the same again today, for this purpose - that He might show Himself mighty, that He might demonstrate His power and His glory throughout the earth.

Let us place ourselves before God right now with these words: "I belong to You; let it be to me according to all that You speak."

Christ in us is not Adam. And Christ in us will vindicate the Father inside the arena that the Father Himself has appointed and will deliver all creation from the bondage of corruption.

*****

In none of these things should we be fearful. On the contrary, our hearts are filled with joy and expectation, with contentment and peace. We are in the center of God's will. Always - remember Mary. She knew what she carried. Grace is what we need and grace comes to us exactly as we need it.

It is God who has us in His grip. There is no where else to be.

The Grace That Is To Come (Part 2)
By Daniel Yordy

". . . Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:13

Grace is, first, divine enablement. Grace and the anointing are very much similar. They are the ability of God Himself inside of us that enables us to do what we could not do without God filling us. Grace is inward, anointing is outward. Grace enables us on the inside to know and walk with Him, the anointing enables us on the outside to minister life and peace to others.

Grace is the normal state of being the image of God. As I share in the What Is Man series, we are God's superhero suit. We are the clothing, the skin of God that makes an invisible God visible. Without God, we are an empty suit, discarded and useless. Filled with God, all that God does He does in and through us. We make an invisible God known to His creation. That is our purpose. That is God's intention before ever He created the worlds.

Grace is the central dynamic of the revelation of God. Grace is the ability to be the dwelling place of Almighty God. Grace is the capacity to contain all the fullness of God; grace is the ability to release Him in a river of life that heals all things; grace is the power to bring all things into submission under His feet.

Grace has nothing to do with "going somewhere."

Grace, and the gospel, have everything to do with the One who is coming into us, to take up His full and eternal residence in us - as individuals, yes, but equally in us as a many-membered body - His temple.

Now, there is a fascinating dynamic in God. He is the God who is, who was, and who is to come. All three, all at the same time.

Peter speaks of a grace that is to come. Yet he also says that we, right now, have all things pertaining to life and godliness. Paul also says that we possess all things, yet he seems to contradict himself by saying that we groan for that which we do not have.

God is a dynamic tension. For all eternity, He will be to us the God who IS, first, then also the God who was, and the God who is to come.

Many of us don't like such tension, such contradiction. We would rather sew it up into a single bag so that we can say, "Aha, I've got it - and then write our systematic theology."

Christ IS in me AS I am right now in all of His fullness, in all of my weakness.

Yet, without leaving my full knowledge of that reality behind for one second, yet I cry with all expectation of hope, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

A million years from now, when my knowledge and revelation of God will be a million times more than it is today, yet still, He will be the God who Is, and who Was, and who Is To Come.

Most Christians know Him as the God who was and the God who is to come. They do not know Him as the God who IS. They know some things about what He did 2000 years ago, they pretend to look forward to going to heaven, yet if you offer them the opportunity to go to heaven, they will fight you to the bitter end to stay on this earth. They will even kill people who try to send them to heaven!

There is no faith in knowing anything about the God who was and the God who is to come.

Faith and grace and all joy are found only in the God who IS - in us, in our weakness, in all fullness, right now. One with Him and He with us.

Yet, the funny thing is that in knowing Him as the God who IS, suddenly, we look back and we, for the first time, truly know the God who WAS upon the cross, and rising out of the grave, never to die again. At the same time, we know He who IS TO COME forever revealing Himself anew in us right now with all joy and expectation. And death itself is swallowed up in the life of the God who IS.

So the grace that is to come, that the Spirit of God through Peter commands us to fix our hope upon, this grace that comes with the revelation of Jesus Christ, a divine enablement, to be the full revelation of God in the earth, this grace always is and always is coming.

It's like waking up out of sleep into joy. And again, and again, and again.

A million years from now, I will come back and look at what I am writing today. I will read it again, and though I will know Him and His ways in me and through me far beyond what I could possibly know today, yet I will be astonished that everything I know of Him then is found fully in what I know of Him now.

And so this groaning, this longing, this desire for more of Him, this asking and keeping on asking, this seeking and keeping on seeking, this knocking and keeping on knocking is never separated from the God who IS in us, in our weakness, in all fullness, right now.

The Grace that is to come is to WAKE UP! It is to arise out of sleep.

Yet grace is always grace, and the suit that we are is always useless except we be filled with God.

I learned a couple of weeks ago, at age 53, that I have lived inside the Autism Spectrum all of my life. I have had the neurological disorder called Asperger's Syndrome. I have never looked a person in the eye. I have never known how to answer people. I learned by much pain to keep my mouth shut, for I would never know the right thing to say, but even silence is interpreted as "pride," and so I learned to say, "Is that right?" Then they would think me strange, but at least it would be enough.

This diagnosis gives a full and complete answer to a lifetime of 10,000 unanswered questions that demanded an answer that never came. And so it brings with it much peace and settledness. To know that I have a neurological disorder that is named and shared by others who have faced the same unanswered questions I faced is to know that there is not some terrible, nameless thing wrong with me. A something that was always diagnosed by others with false and hurtful labels. I could never give them answer, because what they told me was my "problem" never made any sense, it had no connection with reality.

Just for instance, one of many, many similar difficulties, the Lord spoke to me that Maureen was the one He had chosen to be my wife. Yet, I was utterly unable to visit with her for seven long years after that, though for five of those years, I saw her nearly every day. This is Asperger's Syndrome - part of the Autism Spectrum. Yet, this part of that spectrum allows you to function fully in society, to learn to cope, to be able to give with all your heart, though, at the same time, being unable to connect emotionally with those to whom you are giving.

Many of those who changed the world for better had Asperger's, because we are able to focus our minds and to see patterns and connections that others miss. And this ability to see patterns that others may not see is the gift He has shared with me to give to you with the deepest joy and gratefulness.

Yet I continue in great weakness, physically as well as emotionally. The work world has always presented to me so many minefields that would explode in my face without warning and without reason. I am presently in a state of emotional shell shock, and I cannot fix myself. By God's grace, my last employer was a gracious and kind man who gave me much room to give what I had in the classroom without requiring me to do what I could not. But I could never connect with that school or that church and they could never connect with me.

Why am I sharing all this?

Because here is where grace is found.

Inside of 50 years of pain, there was always God, teaching me of Himself, His kindness, His mercy. It is in my weakness now that I cast myself utterly upon His life in me.

At my lowest point, having packed my wife and family into our little car in icy winter, leaving all our possessions behind, and driving 5000 miles without really knowing where we were going or why, I sat in a convention listening to a precious Bible teacher sharing a word. In the middle of his illustration, God spoke to me. He said, "Son, you passed the test."

"How can that be," I answered. "I failed totally, everyone knows that."

He said, "No, son, in all things, you justified Me, you declared Me to be right and true and you found no one to be at fault, including yourself. That was the test that I gave you. You passed the test, son."

It is there, in utter weakness and failure - and sometimes God sets up for us the greatest possible weakness and the greatest possible failure - that we find this that God calls GRACE.

"And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

A million years from now, filled with all the fullness of God, I will be just as weak as I am right now.

If you think that you are going to do what God says, that you are going to put your flesh to death, get it under your feet, if that is still your mind, then you bar yourself from knowing this grace that is to come.

This grace that Peter tells us to expect with hearts filled with expectation and joy is a sealing of our minds, it is the nature of God written upon our foreheads. Expect it with all expectation.

I expect that the Lord Jesus will appear to me visibly, any day now, and to many of you as well, just as He appeared here and there after His resurrection. He is alive, you know. The time of His appearing is now. Yet, though we may not now see Him visibly, we rejoice in full expectation in all that His appearing in us means.

The time is now. The GRACE that IS to come is now, unfolding, revealing, glorifying Christ in us.

God always leads us to celebrate with all joy, dancing, and celebration, the victory of God in us, though we do not see it. Yet we will see it with our eyes.

Victory over physical death, victory over sin, victory over the beast, in this world, in this life, in this age, in us now. We will see it with our own eyes.

Yet, now, in our great weakness, in our utter failure, in our total inability to do anything for God, or even for ourselves in this world, we see Him victorious in us in all glory.

There is no greater "high," no more glorious experience in all creation, than that moment when we, standing here upon this earth, experience our dying, mortal body being swallowed up in the life of His resurrected body. That is the moment of our fixed expectation. That is the experience Paul tells us we groan and long for with all fervency. All of humanity's ages of desire will be fulfilled in us in that one experience.

Yet before that comes, we know a grace upon our minds, upon our bodies, a keeping grace, a sustaining grace, a grace that lifts us up above the wreckage of the world around us, a grace that enables us to give all that He is in us to those who belong to Him who have no idea what is happening to them.

Yet for some whom God has chosen, and He places everyone in His temple according to His sovereign choice, the grace that is to come is the GRACE of the vindication of God.

"Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Revelation 19: 11-15

This also is Christ IN US. We are not the horse He rides upon, we are not the armies that follow Him from heaven, we are He revealed in all of His fullness in us.

Do not ever limit God, nor remove from your hearts any word that He speaks, for His word is Christ.

Christ is Redemption. But the path of the redemption of all things lies through the judgment and vindication of God.

We set our face to the wind; and all the wildness of an uncontrollable God, a God we cannot understand, blows over us and in us and through us.

This is the GRACE upon which we set our expectation with all joy.