Christ, the Word God Is Speaking to You
By Daniel Yordy

I am homeschooling my children again. Part of what we are doing is an Old Testament Survey. I am going through the Old Testament, teaching my children what it is and how it applies to the gospel and to our lives.

As usual, wherever you read in the Bible, God speaks to you inside the current word He has you in. Understand that when Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many dwelling places," He was not talking about mansions in heaven. He was referring to the truth that God has many different places for His people to live and walk in.

Here is a brother who has spent his life in inner city missions, working with people on the streets. God has placed him there and speaks to him entirely within that "dwelling place." Here is a sister in a nunnery. She leads a life of prayer and quiet communion with God. Maybe she works in the kitchen and never leaves her small space. God has placed her there and speaks to her entirely within that "dwelling place." Here is a brother to whom God speaks to carry a wooden cross on a wheel all over the world, proclaiming the good news of Jesus everywhere he goes. God has placed him in that "dwelling place," and speaks to him entirely within that place. Here is a sister whose heart is given to Christian community. She loves the gathering together of the saints daily, eating together, working together, praying together, worshiping God together daily. God has placed her there and speaks to her entirely within that "dwelling place."

The problem comes when we imagine that the "dwelling place" God has me in is a binding law for all others who belong to God. If they are not walking in my "dwelling place," then they are missing God. And so the brother who works in street missions "rails" against the nun who lives a life of solitary contemplation. And the sister who rejoices in the close fellowship of Christian community "rails" against the brother who carries a cross on a wheel through every country on earth.

I have heard this kind of nonsense all of my life. There was a time when I may have practiced it. We imagine - not that our role is to reveal Christ in the dwelling place He has put us in - but that God requires us to take what He is speaking to us and use it as a bully club to beat against other believers who are in an entirely different dwelling place from us.

John recorded a fascinating conversation between Jesus and Peter at the end of his gospel. (I paraphrase.)

Peter: "What about that guy? What is Your plan for him?"

Jesus: "What is that to you? You follow Me."

And so what I share, I can share only out of the dwelling place God has placed me in and I can share only out of what He is sharing with me. I cannot speak out of the dwelling place God has you in. However, God can speak to you from what I share. Inside of all that I share, the only things that are of any importance are those things that God is presently speaking to you. And what He is presently speaking to you may be entirely different from what He is speaking to another person who is reading this exact same email.

"I don't agree with that," or "Well, I believe differently," are utterly meaningless statements. There are only two things that are important. First, what the truth is. Second, what God is speaking to me, making alive, fulfilling in me, right now. Who cares what you or I "agree" with. Who cares what you or I "believe." Does our "believing" this or that, or "agreeing" with this or that create what is real and true?

I know I do not have all truth. I know I do not see things clearly. I know I am ignorant of many facts of reality. I expect God to teach me in a way that regularly overthrows what I thought was "true." I expect to have my ideas overthrown on a regular basis. I am coming out of darkness. I am coming out of deception. I am coming out from under the mindset of the curse.

And so are you.

I am writing this letter only to those who carry inside themselves a deep sense that things are not right. That Christianity in this world doesn't have it. That there is more, far more, to the gospel than anything we have ever known or experienced.

If you have not received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that is, if you have not asked Jesus to immerse you fully into the present power of the Holy Ghost, it is unlikely that you will be able to understand much of what I share because it is out of the infilling of the power of the Holy Spirit that I share. (And I am not speaking of that measure of the Holy Spirit that all receive upon being born again.) That is the dwelling place God has me in.

All of my life I have longed for more of God than I presently know. All of my life, I have been ready to cast aside my present "beliefs" in order to know what God is speaking. All of my life, I have searched the Bible, over and over, that I might know what it is He is speaking. I take what God speaks in the New Covenant as absolute life, not as a static word that I must "try to fulfill," but as a living Word, Christ Himself fulfilling in me all that God speaks.

If God speaks anything in the New Covenant, I receive it, I believe it for me, for all of its fulfillment in all that it means in me right now. And then I call those things that be not as though they are.

I have never understood anyone who reads anything God says in the New Covenant and does not want with all their hearts to see it fulfilled in their life in all of its fullness and meaning right here and right now. Those who are satisfied with their present experience and knowledge of God, will find little in common with the things I share.

I refuse to explain why God does not mean what He says. I refuse to try to "do" anything God speaks in myself as one who, separate from God, must try to do what God says. I expect that the Word God speaks has the power in itself to bring forth the life that is in it.

The very second that Mary said, "Let it be to me according to Your word," Jesus was conceived in her womb. That was the same Jesus who brought all the life of His fullness in all salvation to Mary, who would not ever stay apart from Him. Where He was, there she was. The disciples ran, not Mary.

There is something inside that will not let go of Him. I do not want to be found anywhere else but in Him in all of His glory as He reveals all truth in this earth.

Do you understand that when the lights go on, many things we think in this world are "good" will prove to be false. And many things we did not even imagine existed will prove to be what is true all along. We are living in the matrix. We are coming out from under a vast and general "curse."

I mentioned the baptism of the Holy Spirit, because all things from God come in their season. Hungering and thirsting after God is the only thing I connect with. "God, whatever it is you are speaking, fulfill it in me." I don't need to agree with it, I don't need to understand it, I trust God that when I ask for Him, in whatever He speaks, He will give me Himself, and not something false.

Deep calls unto deep.

God is sealing everyone in the place they have chosen. People love to "debate." I cannot think of a more useless thing to do.

What am I saying? Simply that God may speak to you inside the place He has you in from paragraph five of this letter, but paragraph 10 makes no sense to you. To another person, a thousand miles from you, who is also reading this same email, God may quicken a word to them within the context of His present dealings with them out of paragraph 10 and paragraph 5 means absolutely nothing to them.

It is an amazing thing to get two responses on exactly the same line. One person says, "That was God speaking to me, thank you so very much for being faithful to share." The other person says, "That could not possibly be God, what on earth were you thinking." They are referring to the exact same words.

Don't waste your time trying to tell God what He should or should not do with another. They belong to God and not to you and the only reply God will ever give you is what Jesus said to Peter, "Mind your own business." The problem in the church is, of course, that it is not God we beat against for doing what He wants with His own, but it is our brother we beat against for hearing a word from God that God is not speaking right now to us.

How we Christians tear each other apart. I have had two email conversations land in my box over the last few weeks in which people who love Jesus and belong to Him are doing just that. Beating against one another. Imagining they are called to "Declare the truth" by "putting their brother straight."

For whatever measure I have ever done that, recently or in the past, God forgive me.

I started this letter by talking about the study I am doing with my children through the Old Testament. We just went through the curse in the second half of Genesis chapter 3. I have never looked at "the curse" in this light. God is doing many different things with His own throughout the world. But one of the things He is doing with some who belong to Him, with whom He has been dealing with for years, is focused on the removal of the curse from off this earth. If that is what God is presently speaking to you, then you are hearing the same thing I am hearing. If God is not speaking that to you, but He is speaking something different to you, then I bless you in God's purpose and plan for your life.

Do not ever underestimate God, or assume that because He is not fulfilling something He speaks in the New Covenant inside of you that He is therefore not fulfilling it in your brother. When Jesus spoke of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, He was not speaking of the lost, but of those precious believers in Him who discover that God has fulfilled the Word He speaks, exactly as He speaks it, in their brother's life right here on this earth, a brother who made the decision to put no limits upon God. But they missed out because they refused to believe that God would fulfill that very same word inside of them. (And "believing it for heaven" is a declaration that God is somehow not here in this earth; a declaration of "not God," that is, of gross unbelief.)

Let me say this about the Old Testament. The first thing that Moses did with the law God gave him was to shatter it upon the mountainside. The Old Testament ends with a "curse." It was given to reveal sin and to bring death. Apart from the Holy Spirit, the Old Testament is one of the worst books ever written; God meant it to be that way. You follow the Old Testament, apart from the New, and apart from the Holy Spirit, and you will experience only darkness. There is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian." Judaism is and has always been the enemy of Christ. It is the rejection of the Messiah. Judaism is anti-Christ.

The purpose of the Old Testament for us is to enable us to understand the New. When we use the Old Testament for that purpose, by the immediate revelation of the Holy Spirit, suddenly, the entire book becomes alive and real and meaningful. And all of it applies directly to what God is doing with His sons today. We read it in an entirely different light.

I have filled this letter up, and so will have to share what God is speaking to me about the curse and about its removal next time.

Just this for now. The only possible way we can understand anything in the Old Testament in the light of Christ is to see it in that light and to take it immediately into the New Covenant, point by point. Without the light of Christ, people read "In the beginning" and get into a debate over when creation happened and how long it took. But when we go straight to the New Testament, we discover that Jesus is the beginning of the creation of God (Rev. 2) and then we know that "In the beginning" is not a time word, but a source word, as the "beginning" of a river. "In Christ, in the word God speaks, God created the heavens and the earth." The word God is speaking, Christ Jesus, is the source of everything that exists. "In Him we live and move and have our being." Who "upholds all things by the word of His power." (Acts 17:28 & Hebrews 1:2-3)

And so, it is impossible to understand Genesis 3:14-24 without also understanding Romans 8:18-23; 2 Timothy 1:10 (and context); and especially the entirety of Revelation 12, among other things God is speaking in the New Covenant.

I so want to share what God is speaking to me and fulfilling in my life through those passages, but it must wait another time.

Meanwhile, I call those things that be not - in all that God speaks - as though they are.