Here is a Kingdom Proverb: It is one thing to be living tissue in the Body of Christ. It is another thing to be a wooden leg that can be strapped on and off. The issue is: Organism or Organization?
Slowly but positively we are moving into the oneness—into being one. It is so important to us. We have started in this by such an act of faith, and every day we find ourselves continuing to reach into more and more aspects of it.
Let’s examine a passage of Scripture in II Corinthians chapter 6: Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians—we are hiding nothing.
This is so important. We have been talking so much about hiding, about people hiding from each other, closing one another out. They do it.
We are hiding nothing, keeping nothing back; and our heart is expanded wide [for you]! II Corinthians 6:11, The Amplified Bible.
This is the same idea and thought found in Isaiah 60:5, which tells how in the days of the great Restoration in the coming of the Kingdom, men’s hearts will be enlarged. Paul continues this thought in chapter 7.
Do open your hearts to us again—enlarge them to take us in. We have wronged no one; we have betrayed or corrupted no one; we have cheated or taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to reproach or condemn [you], for I have said before that you are (nested) in our hearts, [and you will remain there] whether we die or live, it will be together. II Corinthians 7:2–3, The Amplified Bible.
This is beautiful, isn’t it? We realize that we cannot close the door on one another. But even more than that, we are seeing that we can by faith bang on our brother’s door until it opens up to us. Take a battering ram of love to it; make him take his walls down and open his doors to you. This is really what the Lord is saying.
As I began to think about this truth and pursue it, the Lord brought the wisdom that opened the door for us to follow through. For instance, you can determine, “I am going to see that my brother is open to me, and that I am open to my brother; and there is only one way I can do this—I will confront him.” If you do that, then you will come up against the fact that when someone confronts you, you either open up to him or you shut him out. If you shut him out, you develop certain responses; and though you may later open your door to him, you still keep the memory of the encounter. You think, “So-and-so confronted me,” or, “I confronted So-and-so. And it was a good thing; a lot came out of it.” But do you also remember negatively the confronting of each other and the banging down of the doors? “Oh, that was a terrible day, the day he knocked my doors down! But I thank God he did.” Yet were you a little offended in your heart by the one who did it, and do you hold that memory in your heart?
We have to relate to one another with a preconditioning to forgive and to forget. If we do not have that in our spiritual nature, then our old nature—which has the memory of an elephant that never forgets—will recall every offense. Whenever you speak of an incident or a confrontation, how do you remember it? Do you recall it by a response and a memory out of the old nature? Or do you find that the memory has already been baptized in love, and that you respond with forgiveness?
You would be surprised at the number of good things that have been done to you in your life, and the many wonderful experiences that you have had because people confronted you; but you never responded right. Your responses were wrong. And so if you ever get discouraged, the first thing you will do is reflect on your memories and responses of those old things that happened; and you can be bitter over what was actually a good thing that happened to you! You can become bitter.
In the times of persecution that we are in now, I am amazed that the few who have withdrawn have become bitter about things which were the most loving, wonderful things that ever happened in their lives. The bitterness was in their hearts. They were just waiting for an opportunity, it seems, to respond with the old nature. It is as Christ said, “For which of the good deeds and which one of the miracles that I have done are you going to stone Me?” (John 10:31–32.) The rejectors had picked up rocks to throw at Him in spite of all the people who had been healed. And that is how people respond.
Shepherds can be forgiving and blessing people, confronting them and shepherding them; but when a sheep goes berserk, that sheep will turn on the shepherd who gave it a correction where it needed one, and pulled it back in line. Do you see that even the memories of these encounters must be right?
If I go into my brother’s heart to throw out his rubbish, I determine that I am also going to have enough faith to throw out the wrong response that he could have to that encounter.
I must have faith that if I am going to do a perfect thing in my brother, then I will not stop until even those little roots of the old responses and conditionings and unforgiveness are gone. In other words, you not only get into your brother’s heart, but you change it. But do not be surprised if your brothers have to do that to you, too.
If you think there are families in the church who have fried preacher every Sunday for dinner, you are right. But there are also some ministers’ homes in which they have fricasseed church members for Sunday dinner, I have noticed how many times it has happened that an offense would occur, and years later that person’s name would be brought up by a pastor; and I would think, “Is that good shepherding, that you remember all the sheep’s past faults in detail so well?” The pastor had forgotten all the good things that person had been trying to do in walking with God, and he remembered one time when that person did something which the minister felt was an aggressive action against himself.
No one can find bitterness or a wrong response in me. When I confront a person and give directives and prophecies over him, love for him comes forth; and the people who were ready to confront him go away saying, “I didn’t think that was the kind of treatment he was going to get!”
But, you see, love has to be predominant. When you go to kick someone’s door down, you had better have a Valentine or some flowers in your hand!
We received a letter of gratitude recently which said, “Thank you! Every time we have talked with you, you made real again the love God has for us.” I thought, “That is glorious—the banner over us is love” (Song of Solomon 2:4). God puts that canopy of love over us and protects us. And even when He is frowning, there is a big cloud of love that conditions it.
The wrath of God is kindled against the sin world; and it will be kindled against us too if we are unrepentant.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Romans 1:18.
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds. Romans 2:4–6.
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. Colossians 3:5–7.
Very definitely, we are not losing our sense of values when it comes to sin and unrighteousness and the way God would deal with it. We are only talking about people who love each other and want to be one in the Spirit, and who want to fulfill the will of God. With them, it is quite another thing; there is the love that covers.
Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. I Peter 4:8.
One Scripture tells us how the Lord removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:10–12.
Another one says that He will not remember them against us anymore forever (Jeremiah 31:34). We read also how He blots them out as a cloud (Isaiah 44:22–23). As I read these passages, they came so alive for me, and I thought, “That is the way the Lord deals with me!”
“I have wiped out your transgressions like a thick cloud, and your sins like a heavy mist. Return to Me, for I have redeemed you.” Shout for joy, O heavens, for the Lord has done it! Isaiah 44:22–23a.
The truth behind this is found in a parable in Matthew 18:21–35, about two servants who were in debt. One servant owed the king much money, and the king forgave him. But that servant went out and found his fellow-servant, who owed him a small debt, and he prosecuted him to the full extent of his debt. When the king heard about this, he said, “In the same way that you treated your fellow-servant, I will treat you,” and he handed him over to the torturers until he should pay all that he owed. Likewise, God turns to us and says, “You wanted Me to open My heart to you, but you will not open your heart to your brother. If you are going to respond that way, then I will treat you exactly the way you have treated your brother” (Luke 6:36–38). I think that we had better be very merciful, and then we will obtain mercy (Matthew 5:7). We had better be forgiving.
Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?”
Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. And when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. The slave therefore falling down, prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.’ And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt.
“But that slave went out and found one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ So his fellow-slave fell down and began to entreat him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ He was unwilling however, but went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow-slave, even as I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:21–35.
Some have made harsh accusations against me. Yet I do not want to accuse them of the same things they are accusing me of, even if they are guilty of those things and they are just transferring their own guilt to me in their accusations. I do not ever want to be guilty of raising accusations like that against anyone, because I do not want to be unforgiving and unwilling to just leave it in the hands of the Lord. You may say, “But they are not even repenting!” Perhaps not. But remember, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Romans 12:19b, KJV. In other words, I remove the offense out of my heart. I forget about it, and I know that God is going to work things out. On the other hand, if I keep holding on to that thing, God will in turn hold me accountable for some things. I have never made a confession any greater than this: I want to forgive everyone as much as I can because I want to be forgiven of everything myself (Matthew 6:14–15).
Suppose God says to you, “You’re guilty!” And you say, “But Lord, I repented of that!” Then He replies, “Yes, you did; but your brother repented too, and you did not forgive him.” Where does that leave you? “When you pray, forgive men their trespasses as they have trespassed against you; for if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15; Mark 11:25–26).
It will not work for you to say, “God, I am going to live in Your heart and You are going to live in my heart, but I am also going to hold this grudge against my brother and remember his offense.” When you are unforgiving, oneness is broken between you and God and between you and your brother simultaneously.
I John 1:7 says, But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Note that it says, “We have fellowship with one another, and the blood cleanses us,” as though the two belong together. If I am walking in the light, I will have fellowship with you; and if I have fellowship and oneness with you, I will be cleansed from all unrighteousness. Oneness is related to perfection.
“And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity.” John 17:22–23a.
Everything in our future depends upon the way we really open our hearts to one another. I think that we have already done this with simple faith; but we should give a little more thought to it and begin to search our hearts for the grudges and the places in which we feel people have wronged us. You may have gone through difficulties and come out of them admitting, “That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Look at how all things are working together for good because I love God (Romans 8:28). I came out of it walking with God. I never would have had a walk with God like this if I had not gone through that.”
But do you look back at the brothers and sisters who were the catalysts, who said things or caused things to happen that you reacted to or became bitter about? Afterwards, do you remember what these other people who were instruments in the hand of God did or said that offended you? If you do, you are missing it by having that unforgiving spirit and the inability to just open your heart to your brothers. Do you see that in our oneness, we are the instruments of one another’s perfection?
We are the instruments of one another’s perfection in our oneness! Rejoice in that!
If I love you and bless you, but you stumble and then the rumors come back of all that you have said against me, I cannot hold that against you, because I am raised up to perfect you (Ephesians 4:11–16, ASV). And you are raised up to perfect me (II Corinthians 1:3–14). What you say about me may be a very valuable tool in uprooting something in my life. You must see that whether someone does the right thing or the wrong thing, or whether he is for you or against you, God will use him as an instrument for your perfection. And after that is worked in you, you will be an instrument in his perfection. This works back and forth. It is a beautiful, reciprocal operation. If you love me and you come through strong, I have to take it. When I love you and I am coming through strong to you, you have to take it.
And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ. And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me. Colossians 1:28–29.
And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us, you also joining in helping us through your prayers, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed upon us through the prayers of many.
For our proud confidence is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and godly sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you. For we write nothing else to you than what you read and understand, and I hope you will understand until the end; just as you also partially did understand us, that we are your reason to be proud as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus. II Corinthians 1:7–14.
This goes beyond what is said; it goes into the spirit. It is not what someone says or does not say; it is what comes through his spirit. You mentioned that the fourth generation would be a people of spirit, and that would be the way they would relate. This is the process of getting there. We have to get beyond what is said, and move into just relating in spirit.
One of the best illustrations of this is family life with your parents, or your own marriage. Through the years, you do not realize how many things build up in your mind as offenses that happen to you. What do you remember about your father? “I remember how he beat me one time when I wasn’t to blame.” What about all the times that he put food on the table and encouraged you to get an education—how he taught you everything he could teach you and tried to instill good things in you? “Well, I didn’t think about that.” We tend to forget those positive things.
Husbands and wives do that to each other, too. God has not created any better way to teach us than marriage, even if it is full of adversity.
You will be a better person for it, because a marriage is more than just relating; it is reacting. How do you react—with the old nature or with the new nature? There is no place like home to show how we react to one another. If you want a perfect picture of the old nature, get a perfect picture of a person’s home life. And if you want a perfect picture of the new nature, get a perfect picture of the home life. It is both. And that is the way you tell how much of the old is dead and how much of the new is taking over—by the way you respond to each other.
We will look at some verses from I Corinthians chapter 13. These verses hit us deeply, dealing with all of our responses in the old nature, because this love they are describing is the perfect, holy love. Concerning this love, at the end of the chapter it says, “Then shall we know, even as we are known” (verse 12). You need to have a lot of love to know your brother just as he is; and he has to have a lot of love to know you just as you are. Having that kind of love will give you revelation of the person as well as love for him. When you have revelation of him, you will see not only his bad points; but because you love him so much, you will see what God has for him, and you will be ministering in faith to help him into it. Isn’t this the whole key? Rather than just saying, “I have perfect revelation over someone,” we had better say, “I am believing God and moving in much more perfect love.”
The Scriptures tell us that we are to be loving, and they show us how we are to respond. We read, Love endures long… I Corinthians 13:4a, The Amplified Bible. Do you say, “If I forgive my brother seventy times seven, that is all that is required of me”? (Matthew 18:21–22.) Fine. But if you still have a grudge against him, then you are still in trouble if you have not forgiven the other man his trespasses. God will not forgive you.
Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy; is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited—arrogant and inflated with pride; it is not rude (unmannerly), and does not act unbecomingly. Love [God’s love in us] does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it—pays no attention to a suffered wrong. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances and it endures everything [without weakening]. I Corinthians 13:4–7, The Amplified Bible.
That is enough to convict the conscience of us all! When we move as one in love, then we will come to know each other even as we are known (I Corinthians 13:12). But we know what this love must mean. It cannot be with any resentments. Resentment and bitterness, jealousy, vindictiveness, vengeance, grudges, and even the remembrance of a wrong—all of these things must be blotted out. If they are not, they will poison the flow of pure love to a brother or sister.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:31–32.
Only this deep love of one another in the Spirit will enable us to change our past conditionings and responses which were formed under the negativity of our own independence and individuality.
Let me explain this further. Suppose that in the past, when two people walked separately and not in oneness, something was done by one against another. The person against whom the wrong was done is the one who might endure the lasting injury—not because of what was done, but because of his response to it. The way he allows his old nature to condition his attitudes to judge and become harsh, without love in the whole situation, is the real damage that is done.
Suppose I borrowed fifty dollars from you and promised you faithfully that I would pay it back in a week. However, at the end of the week I completely forgot about it. You know how your old nature could respond to that: “Well, a man is just as good as his word. You cheated me; you lied to me.” The responses that you could have would be many, and those responses would cost you much more than the fifty dollars you lost. That conditioning could leave you with a permanent response in your heart that was wrong; and every time you saw me or thought of me or heard of me, you would think, “Fifty dollars, fifty dollars, fifty dollars.” The fifty dollars would not be the issue. The issue would be your standing before God, your oneness with me, your openness to me, and the way you responded in the old nature.
Do you see this? We are not going to love each other and help each other until we enter into this forgiving spirit, this loving spirit, and we determine to break our own conditionings of the past which we have built up.
If you have the experience of seeing someone fail over and over again, and you say, “He is never going to change,” that is negative. That is old-nature thinking. If someone has always made promises and failed, does that mean he is hopeless? No. The grace of God can change him. If you respond in the new nature, you say, “He has failed a thousand times; but I will stand with him this time, and he will make it because I am going to have such love for him. I will bring him through. Although he has this fault in him, I will have faith to help him.”
Of course, another difficulty is that usually there is some human problem in a person who has a great spiritual ability. If someone has the courage and the boldness to come up to you and say, “Here, this is what you’re doing wrong,” you may see one little wrong thing in him, without seeing his faithfulness as a prophet. God has always let His prophets look like nothing. In sheepskins and goatskins they wandered around in caves, and the world was not worthy of them (Hebrews 11:37–38).
But we do not read that they made a good image to the world, either. It takes Satan to do that. Satan is a very religious spirit: he appears as an angel of light, and all of his ministers appear as ministers of righteousness (II Corinthians 11:14–15). The devil and his crowd are always going to look better than the brothers in Christ look to one another, if we judge by that kind of religious standard. But if we want to get into the true heart in the love of God, that is another thing.
We want to get away from the conditionings and the responses that were formed in us when we were independent and moving in negativity, when we were negative people. We want to get into the Body responses and respond to one another as members of Christ (I Corinthians 12:12; Ephesians 4:15–16). Oneness will bring a great change of attitude.
Now here is another point: In the final analysis, opening your heart to another will begin open-heart surgery for both parties. To open your heart to one another is really to begin open-heart surgery on one another.
As an illustration, if someone has a clot or some obstruction bothering his heart, he can have open-heart surgery. It is amazing how surgeons can cut right into the heart and sew it up again. Usually the operation is successful. For a while the patient may have to be watched carefully; he certainly does not want to run any races right away and burst the stitches! But soon his heart will heal up, and what he must realize is that the thing which was the impasse to his life has been removed.
Paul said, “Our hearts have been opened to you; now you open your hearts to us, because this will work back and forth” (II Corinthians 6:11–13). It is a fair exchange that we work back and forth to perfect and to help one another. So you must stop withdrawing away from one another. You must be faithful.
Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians, our heart is opened wide. You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections. Now in a like exchange—I speak as to children—open wide to us also. II Corinthians 6:11–13.
Make room for us in your hearts; we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. I do not speak to condemn you; for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. II Corinthians 7:2–3.
“Well, I see something really wrong in one brother. I was going to reject him, but I have decided rather to go and rebuke him.” Okay, but get some love first. Go to him in love. When you go to him in love, he will respond to the love and he will hear you. But if you do not love him, he probably will not listen to you.
I succeed in telling people exactly what they need, and they listen to me. I am forthright; I am honest; I am open and objective. I do not spare people; I lay it right on the line. Yet most of them do not become offended because they know that I love them. When you love a person, he listens to you. In fact, some almost welcome it and say, “Rebuke me—tell me what is wrong with me.”
Some people are a little bit masochistic in their spirit—they like to be beaten down. We do not want that either.
We want the positive attitude and approach: “Show me what is wrong, so that I can remove this impasse and I can love you more. If you see anything that is keeping me from loving, take it out because I want to love. I want to be one, and I want to flow any way that I can with my brothers.”
Do not say, “Well, this is a self-discerning trip; show me what is wrong with me. Go on, give me the worst. Tell me how bad I am.” People can do that to themselves; they do not need any help with that. Instead they need someone to approach them with love and say, “There is one important thing here; let’s get rid of it. Then when we have broken the impasse, the flow will again be in perfect love.”
This message is showing us how to relate in real love to one another. The bottom line is this: If you start opening your heart to one another, be prepared for open-heart surgery, because everyone is going to flow in this love. The door of our heart is open, and the love will be strong enough that you will get rid of many, many things. And you will help your brother to do this too.
“Well, if I approach this brother and he gets mad at me, he will remember forever what I have said to him.” No, not if you stay in there in his heart and heal it up.
Here is one word of advice about confronting: If you are going to confront a brother about something which is wrong, be prepared to love him and stay with him until the problem is solved; otherwise, you have not confronted him in the Spirit. If I want to confront you about a need, I am going to love you and stay with you until it is healed. This is the only way we will be able to do this so that there are no misgivings. We do not hit and run! That is illegal in the Kingdom, too. If you are going to knock down the door to someone’s heart, be prepared to live inside that heart.
The Word “Thy Priests Cometh” came during the same time as the message “Kingdom Construction,” which dealt with the principles of confrontation. The Lord is bringing us into being His priests—His Kingdom of priests on the earth (Exodus 19:6; Revelation 1:6). The function of the priest in the Old Testament was that he had the ability to be the Lord to someone, and to take away his sin. He also had the role of transference—he would transfer the sin away, and then also minister the Lord to the person. And this is what we are involved with in this confrontation. The Kingdom style of confrontation is that we not only confront, but we also minister the Lord. This is foreshadowed in what the Old Testament priests were. They had that capability of forgiving. Can the ability to forgive be imparted to us?
Forgiveness is not a characteristic that is natural to the human race. Memory is the arsenal for conflict.
This is why wars probably would end if we would stop teaching history and traditions for one generation. One thing that keeps a lot of prejudices alive is the movie industry of Hollywood. They have used propaganda through the years to keep nations fighting against other nations. A lot of things that are unfair are done, but we prefer to remember the offenses of the enemy and to forget our own offenses.
So where do we get the capacity to forgive? How does it come? It is not a natural trait. It is not a racial trait. There is no race on God’s earth that tends to forgive anyone anything. As long as Hawaiians are Hawaiians, they are going to remember what the haoles did to them. As long as Americans are around Pearl Harbor, they will remember that the Japanese bombed it. History has been indelibly written on our minds, and it is human not to forgive. Then what is the answer? Forgiveness has to be born by the Spirit. When you are looking for impartation, take that ability of spirit to forgive. God will give it to you.
I am deeply disturbed when I observe how people in a moment of stress will cling to some old attitude—probably completely misinterpreting the facts. They may be facing some of the facts as they were, but interpreting them with a negativity and a despair without faith. They will bring up what happened, again and again. And you realize that they do not forgive; that has to go.
We must keep trying to heal up these old wounds. One of the greatest answers I have found has been to lay hands on people’s heads and heal the memory banks of the mind.
Also, I have taught people how to “shoot ducks,” which is an illustration that came in the School of Prophets teaching so many times. When an old memory comes up of bitterness, or of something disturbing that happened, shoot it down with the grace of God. It will go back into the memory banks, but it will never come out again the same way as it did. You will always respond, “Well, this and this happened, but God, You were in it.” Bang! You shoot it down!
Satan would constantly bring up the memories of the past to hold you in an attitude that is so vindictive that you cannot know what grace is, for yourself or for anyone else. So you shoot ducks. Every time one harsh memory comes up, go “bang,” right at that duck. Sometimes it is not one duck; they may come in a whole flock. Shoot them all down! Don’t miss one of them!
Make your memory of the past like a shooting gallery. If the memories were accumulated under days of negativity, days of responding in the old nature, then when they come up, say, “I will not view anything in my past the way I did before—no matter how objective and honest I tried to be in my attitudes—because God can turn it all around and make everything work together for good (Romans 8:28). Even the things that I thought were devastating I can come to view correctly.”
Didn’t Joseph say that about his experience with his brothers? He said, “While you meant it for evil, God meant it for good to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:20). God used Joseph, but He also used the jealousy of his brothers. They would have killed Joseph, but they finally sold him as a slave (Genesis 37:4–28). Then he went through many difficulties. But he forgave them, saying, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” He could not have it in his heart not to forgive them. He would even go out quietly and privately to weep for them, because he loved them so much (Genesis 42:24; 43:30). That is love.
That is love when it extends even to knowing that someone shot at you intending to kill you, and you were wounded; and after being in the hospital six months, the person who shot you says, “I’m sorry,” and you say, “Forget it. Just forget it; I forgive you.” Do you say, “I can’t do that”? Then let’s lay hands on the memory banks. Let’s start forgiving.
How does it all start? It starts by our opening our hearts to one another. Everything beautiful that we are getting into now, we came into because we just started opening our hearts to one another! It seems that I have received so much by just opening up my heart and saying, “Come on, climb in! There is room enough for everybody.” And you are saying the same thing too: “Just move right into my heart.”
We have just started, and we do not know what we are going to face. But one thing is certain: This trip into one another’s hearts will be a lot easier than walking in the past through a wilderness to get to a land of promise. This is far down the road beyond that; this is the place of fulfillment.
This is where God makes it real for you. But as He does, you may open your heart to someone and he opens his heart to you, but you continually remember what he has done to you in the past. That is when you start looking to the Lord for that perfect love that forgives when there are trespasses. And you get rid of your trespasses, too. Do you see that it has to be a mutual thing of the heart? You forgive before God—you forgive your brother. And God forgives you, and your brother forgives you too.
You say, “We are talking so much about forgiving. Are we all that bad?” Yes, we are. We are that bad. We have all walked in too much of the flesh and in too much of the old nature. It is a fleshly response.
“But I never really responded that way.” Maybe not, but did you get an ulcer from suppressing it? Then the response was there. The flesh was responding in one way or another. You may have put on a smile as though you were a sweet little person, but you knew better. You knew in your heart that you were like a seething volcano ready to blow up, but you managed to put the lid on it. Well, you will not put the lid on this now, because everything is going to be laid open before Him with whom we have to do; even the thoughts and intents of the heart are going to be discerned.
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:12–13, ASV.
And the difficult thing about this is that your heart will not be discerned just by God, who has His X-ray “Superman” vision on you and can see everything that is in you. It is going to be much more than that: We are going to see what is in one another, as well as what is in ourselves.
Sometimes your brother will see what is in you before you do. That is the aggravating thing. If only you could see it first, before someone comes along and says, “Do you know that you have this in your heart?” Then you could answer, “Yes, I know, I know.” But it so awful when someone has been knocking and pounding on your door for six months trying to tell you something, and all of a sudden you realize, “Oh, Lord, help me—it is true!” That is the difficult thing! In the past, you may have walled yourself off in order to survive; but you do not have to do that now. In fact, if you do not open up now, you will not survive. Come on, open up. Open up!
This is one of the most important steps we can ever take. Just open up! Take the medicine. There is a little bit of sugar to help it go down, but not much. Nevertheless, it is sweet. This is the fellowship (I John 1:6–7). This is where we create one another in God.
Comment: God is giving us an open door with this Word. He is giving us the very tools to know one another. It is actually the key that will enable us to live in one another and to throw off all of our past conditionings. Certainly we all know exactly what this Word is about!
And we ought to believe God for that forgiveness, for a healing of our own memory banks, because if we insist upon being in our brother’s heart, we had better not carry in any wrong conditioning about him. We want to have a forgiving, loving spirit. Believe for that.
Lord, we lift our hearts together in faith! This is the step in love we have waited for. It is the release that we believe You to work in each one of our lives, the healing of the memory banks. We would not boast of anything except that Your love fills us.
Prayer: We are reaching into Your provision, Lord. As You are reaching into our hearts, we are declaring that every response that comes up is given over to You. We are laying aside everything of our old conditioning. We are throwing off the memories of years of conditioning. Lord, we will be able to open up to one another’s hearts. And when we see the negative thing, we will not be offended by it, but we will love and we will have a greater faith for one another than we have ever had before. We appropriate this faith. We take this love. We are moving into the same manifestation of the sons of God that is coming forth in every one of us (Romans 8:19). We are taking faith for one another, and not just in confrontation. But we are seeing that we need to have a great deal of love to see one another through and be one another’s strength. We open up our hearts to one another, Lord, again and again. We refuse to be limited in how much we forgive one another. We are determined to see Your grace upon each and every one.
Do you remember how the Amalekites came down and attacked the children of Israel when they were vulnerable, attacking the little children and the flocks, and so forth? (Deuteronomy 25:17–19.) And you remember that when Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses, the Israelites prevailed against them. That was when God said that He would have war with Amalek forever (Exodus 17:8–16). Do you remember the sin of King Saul, in the days of the monarchy? He was to go down and kill the Amalekites; but instead, he saved some of them alive. God still held it in His heart that those Amalekites were to be destroyed (I Samuel 15).
We have to remember that God can be totally unforgiving if there is no repentance; and so we had better be open and repentant and broken before Him.
There is another passage of Scripture in which Hosea prophesied that God would take the Valley of Achor and make it a door of hope (Hosea 2:15). The Valley of Achor was where Achan was stoned because he had sinned and brought defeat and death to some of the soldiers when Israel attacked Ai after Jericho. Achan had stolen things contrary to the Word. The people stoned him and piled up rocks over him, and they called that place the Valley of Achor, which meant “trouble” (Joshua 7). But God says He will take it and make it a door of hope.
Do you know what we must believe for? We should even go so far as to believe for those who have betrayed—the Judases, the Korahs, and so forth—and to say, “God, it may not be Your will that these be judged as people were judged in another dispensation. It may be Your will to still salvage some of these people with love, to take a Valley of Achor and make it a door of hope. O God, You show us, for we want to open our heart to what You want, to what You think.” We do not want to hate a Saul as God’s enemy if tomorrow he is going to be turned into an Apostle Paul.
For I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. I Corinthians 15:9.
For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it.
And I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” And they were glorifying God because of me. Galatians 1:13, 22–24.
We want to be open in our heart for the kind of love that does not say bitterly, “Why, that Saul threw some of my relatives in jail and had some of them killed. He’s a murderer! I’m going to hate him as long as I live!” (Acts 26:9–11.) No, we cannot do that. We must say, “God, You are able to do anything. Show me how to think. Show me how to feel. I refuse to respond with the negativity of the carnal, soulish nature. I pray to respond only as You teach me.”
We will live in one another’s hearts and help one another. We will help people to the place where they will repent. We can do a great deal vicariously, as we stand in faith and stand in love for them. But when we say that we forgive men their trespasses against us, this does not necessarily mean that their problem is over with until God has finished with the situation.
However, you know that you have no standing before God, that you will not break into oneness and live in one another’s heart, until you do forgive them. We have to be open!
When we forgive even the ones who have been ruthless as enemies, it seems as if it cuts a tie they have with us. As Christ said, He was not coming to judge the world, because the world was already under judgment (John 12:47–49; John 3:17–19). People who have that bitterness, by the very description of this Word, are locked into their own hell. No one needs to put them there; they are there. In this predetermination to forgive, you so totally wipe the slate clean that there could be no greater dealing put on anyone. By your forgiveness, you yourself have stepped out of the conflict; it rests completely and totally upon their own soul. We want to be there to help them out, if they want out; but they are in jail. They have put Christ in jail in themselves so fully and completely. They have done it to themselves.
“And if any one hears My sayings, and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.” John 12:47–48.
We must stand in readiness to forgive all because we love the Lord so much. Whatever we are to be, we stand before God to be that. No one hides anymore. In the Kingdom, we have a sanctified hide-and-go-seek. If someone is hiding, we go and seek him out.
Just by faith, minister this to yourself, saying, “I take the anointing of this forgiving spirit. Even as God buries sins in the sea of forgetfulness (Micah 7:19), so I do too! I bury every wrong, hostile, bitter thought in that great sea of God’s love.” Claim it! It is yours! Otherwise you carry on your back all of the wrong conditionings and responses that you picked up during all of your past life.
Comment: Jesus said that if you judge, you will be judged (Matthew 7:1–5). You are under the same judgment because of the thing that is within your own heart. A judgment of God is exactly what is going to flow forth. Within the Body, if we still have a bitterness or a judgment or a memory, it cuts us off from the oneness, because a bitter memory is still a judgment that we have made.
Yes, our negative opinion and reaction to something in the past was a judgment. We carry the memory of that circumstance, and that makes it an active judging, which we should not do. We are judged by that.
God is meeting us. He is really meeting us! Day by day, we are really opening up our hearts. Tomorrow you will open up your heart even more, and the next day even more. You are more open today than you were yesterday. We are constantly opening up. It is a progressive openness that is coming, and we are just loving one another. We are becoming one, more and more.
Actually, we can become more aware of our oneness. I do not think that there is any practical, functional oneness without an awareness of it. I have to know that I am one in God, and one in Christ, and one with you, in order to function in that oneness. I have to believe it and be aware of it. And we are coming into the awareness of our oneness, so that when we bless one another, that openness is there.
“If we walk in the light we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Christ cleanses us” (I John 1:7). It seems that we are entering into a continual state of the Communion through this oneness, where the activity of the cleansing is continual. It is really a rest in the Lord (Hebrews 4:9–10).
The preaching in the past has been like the baptism of John—“unto repentance” (Matthew 3:11, KJV). But then the real thing came in Christ. Because of a certain preparation of heart, out of John’s disciples came several disciples who walked with the Lord—Peter, Andrew, John, Philip, and Nathanael were all disciples of John the Baptist (John 1:35–51). We have experienced the same thing: Everything we learned is opening up; now we are coming into an experience of the Kingdom. For over thirty years I have said that the entrance into this level of the Kingdom will be a very distinct experience, different from any we have ever had. But it will be an experience. And this is what it is. We do not know how it is happening, but we have been led through Communion and the laying on of hands and the impartation of oneness.
This message is like John 17, because Christ said that they could all be one. He used the example of how He was one in the Father, and God was one. And the forgiveness is a key. You know how a memory can go over and over in your mind? Suppose the Lord confronts you through a brother, and you know it is the Lord. Then the memory of that encounter lives and the enemy tries to create a root of bitterness in you. Can you go back into a situation and relive it? How does that work?
We “shoot ducks.” When the troublesome memory comes up, shoot it down by faith once and for all. Then the whole memory and the whole experience goes back into the memory banks, but it never will come up again with the same negativity or response or conditioning. You have taken an event that you remember, or a person, or something that was done or said, and you have changed your response and your conditioning to it. If nothing else, you have just become neutral to it.
It takes the sting out of the memory.
It is very important. It is more important than people know. We have been talking about changing our responses and conditionings to past memories. Now I would like to tie that in with the Communion. Jesus said, “This you do in remembrance of Me until I come” (Luke 22:19; I Corinthians 11:25–26). God is saying of the past, the present, and the future that in the Communion, it becomes effectual at that moment. We take the memory of the Last Supper and activate it into a present experience, just the same as we can take a past experience and obliterate it by the same process of faith.
In I Corinthians chapter 11 is the story of the Communion. The whole purpose and function of reading it is not to give you the details of how the Lord took the wine and the bread, but to make very real to you, in your own thinking, what our partaking of that ordinance means to us now. We do it to show the Lord’s death until He comes (verse 26). The death of the Lord will be shown every time we take His Communion. We will manifest it.
You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Galatians 3:1.
The revelation of Christ these Galatians had was very real; it was as if they saw Him crucified. And we could come to the place where we take Communion, and we find that what was a memory recorded in the Scriptures—a history, a past fact—becomes a present fact and a present reality. It could be made so real to you that you seem to partake of the efficacious dripping blood and the body at the foot of the cross while Jesus dies. This is the reality of Communion: You do show His death. You manifest it until He comes. It becomes a reality.
For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim (manifest) the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly (the oneness of the Body is what this really refers to). For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world. I Corinthians 11:23–32.
Let us face exactly what we want to grasp in this. The death of Christ on the cross was made into an ordinance before it even happened. This was done before Jesus was crucified. Granted, hours later He was on the cross; but He said, “This is My blood,” before it was ever shed. Afterwards, Paul received this knowledge by direct revelation. It was so important that Paul had to receive it directly from the Lord Himself, who told him what it is to be (verse 23). Paul was not even one of the disciples who had been with Jesus at the Last Supper.
When you take Communion, you take a memory of a thing past, and it becomes a very real revelation to you in the present. You bring the effectiveness and the fact of it into reality at that moment, and you do this until He comes.
But I think it is also significant that three accounts of the Communion in the Gospels record Christ saying, “I will not partake of the fruit of the vine with you again until I drink it new in My Father’s Kingdom” (Matthew 26:29; Mark 14:25; Luke 22:18). This indicates that while all of this was making real what Christ was, there would also be a future time in the Kingdom when there would be a newness of this participating together. Frankly, I think we are in an overlapping period, in which we are reaching forward into the Communion of the future and bringing it back to our present, and the Communion of the past we are bringing up to the present. The crucifixion is in the memory of God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ. We can go back and bond to Christ as real as if we were right there at His cross at that moment. We can do all that in remembrance of Him.
We have been speaking about the power that can be created through a memory. We see how powerful a bitterness, a wrong conditioning, or a response to a past event or person can be. It can be very powerful. We can activate it afresh in the present. We can also reverse this process by going back to a positive memory of some time with a person who may have broken fellowship, drifted away, or withdrawn. By searching out a memory of closeness with him, you can make a positive bond with him of prayer and faith at that instant. I am more effective in getting through to a person if I do not just pray for him in relationship to the present moment when he is remote, but if I go back to a relationship with him when we were one in the Lord. I bless him and pray for him from that state and relationship. It may also be necessary for you to reverse that process of prayer, when it involves people who have had strong bonds with you and who are detrimental or harmful to your spiritual walk. When you begin to pray for them, the first thing you should do is break your bond with them.
The breaking of bonds has been difficult for some to understand, but let me tell you how it started. There are those who are persecuting us and saying, “You excommunicated people. You have no right to do that!” No one excommunicated anybody. The breaking of bonds began with a group of Timothys coming up to me and saying that they wanted to break their bond with me. Because I had brought teaching to them, they could see that they carried a certain reserve, a gulf between us in some way that they could not reach over. They wanted to break off everything of the past relating and have a fresh input in the Spirit. When they did that, immediately they effectively reached me, and I could effectively reach them. Even little children would come up to me, after the breaking of bonds, and express that they were not uneasy around me. They sensed that what had been overawing them was gone; in some way God just wiped it out.
So then, you can either blot out the bonds so that they do not affect you presently, or you can be effective through prayer and faith by going back and remembering certain things. The Lord is in that. This is why, when God gave the Law, He said, “Put these Words in a little pouch and bind it around your head, and on your wrist. Write these Words on the walls of your house and on the doors, so that you will hold in remembrance what I have spoken. Keep it alive. Keep it powerful” (Deuteronomy 6:6–9; 11:18–20). This is what we do with the Word. We constantly review the Word, not just to try to retain a memory of it, but so that it comes through stronger than ever. That is why people take careful notes of the Word as it comes. Later they go back and review those notes prayerfully. That Word will come alive and they will remember it. In fact, the Word becomes so alive that it grows and expands in your mind; and you start thinking of things which are the next steps in the spiritual unfolding of that truth.
As you take the Communion, do it with this idea in mind—that it becomes very real to you now. What was history becomes a present experience to us by our faith, and we all partake of it in a oneness of the Kingdom. We are determined to do that. We let the blood cleanse us from all unrighteousness, even seeing that our own thoughts will be cleansed.
At that first Communion service, there was a reality that the disciples had received. Those disciples later went through many testings, but you notice that they never did go back to the past things; rather, they remembered the past Words and blessings. All along Jesus had said, “I speak this Word to you now” (John 14:25–26). And later the Spirit brought back to their mind what God had spoken to them, and they remembered what the Lord had spoken (Luke 24:8; John 2:22; 12:16).
God can activate the memory, so that even when you go through things that you do not understand, the Holy Spirit, especially in an hour of Communion, can make alive and real to you Words that you had received from the Lord.
And they remembered His words. Luke 24:8.
Many times while people are taking Communion, I am writing notes, because things that I am to remember in the Lord come to me readily during that time. You should do the same thing; just open your heart to the flow of the Spirit. It is important. This Word we are receiving is going to be made real and alive to us. It is not going to slowly diminish. In fact, it will not diminish at all; it will be increased.
So we take the Communion. As soon as you receive it, just start eating and drinking. A little pinch of cracker and a little sip of wine was not the way the first Communion was. They used a big cup which they all drank from. That may not be as sanitary as it could be, but while you are receiving an impartation of divine nature, I don’t think that you are going to catch anything else! And as we partake we know, “Lord, You are real to us now. And we are one in You.”
If a thing is real to your soul, there is often emotion with it, and you may feel tearful or very joyful. However, when a thing becomes the purest form of faith, which is your spirit reaching for reality, it is often without the emotions of the soul because it is lifted above the soul realm into the Spirit.
As you take Communion, believe that Christ is right there, and that you are in Him and you are eating of Him. You do not have to feel it emotionally; let your spirit know it. It is absolutely the truth. These services generally are filled with a portion for the spirit, some for the soul, and some for the body. But when you get into this, suddenly everything fades except for one thing: It is spiritual fact. It is reality. It is real, and we believe it with real faith.
Remember that the Scripture says: Drink ye all of it. Matthew 26:27b, KJV. Some interpret this to mean that none of the Communion should be left over. Others say that the right translation of that verse is that “all of you are to drink it.” But whether we drink all of that which represents the body and the blood of the Lord, or whether all of us drink it, it is a total picture that we all completely partake of the totalness of Christ.
I cannot take Communion anymore as just a sip and a crumb. I like to sit and feel that I am feasting on the Lord. We are feasting on the Lord. I love the Lord so much. Don’t you love Him so very much?
We are saying: “Thank You, Lord, for this grace that blots out the past but makes You real in the present. We are being released now from every memory and conditioning that is wrong, and Your pure love will flow. Praise Thee, Lord!”
It is one thing to be living tissue in the Body of Christ; it is another thing to be a wooden leg that can be strapped on or off.
The problem of relating to one another is often what we remember about one another.
We overwork the words “forgive and forget”; let’s use the words “forgave and forgot.”
How often have the past responses and reactions kept God from working great things in your spirit?
If you confront your brother, and kick the door to his heart down, you had better have a lot of love in your own heart, and some flowers for him in your hand.
When you break oneness with your brother, you usually have difficulties with the Lord also.
In our oneness we are the instruments of God for one another’s perfection.
If I confront you, I will love you and stay with you until you are healed. We do not hit and run. That is illegal in the Kingdom also.
If you break down the doors to someone’s heart, be prepared to live inside that heart.