A problem for which we have not yet been able to find a solution. The brothers start off with a real closeness with the apostle, but then over a period of time, they do not seem to be able to maintain that closeness and freedom. It is difficult for the brothers to feel his love for them. They seem to come into it and express it and experience it; then they go through a cycle—whether it’s two weeks or a month or a year—when they are back again to where they do not feel the oneness. They have to struggle again to attain that high-level freedom which seems to have been taken away from them. Everyone suffers under these periodic cycles of disaster, and struggles with them more than he realizes.
Much time and energy is taken from the ministry because we are always having to reestablish something in relationships that the enemy has eaten away over a period of time. Somehow we must move into a place where that will never happen again. As one brother put it, “Why should we try to deal with this problem or that problem, or try to help this brother or that brother? Why not just solve the whole thing by one ‘super-deliverance’?” The Lord is getting ready to bring a deliverance for this whole situation.
Recently we became aware of the positive breakthrough, the perfect state that we can live in. Then we asked, “Why the warfare? Why the repetitious struggle?” We want to see a deliverance come with a level of authority which is, as Paul expressed it, “an administration suitable to the fullness of the times” (Ephesians 1:10). The basic issue is one of trying to get His victory and walk in it, and to not waste so much time fighting the same battles over again.
Why do we have this level of battle? Why do we come back to the same problems? Why can’t we have a second book of Joshua—a war of annihilation? You don’t have another war if you have annihilated the enemy; that is what God was trying to teach us in the first place (Joshua 9:3–4, 6, 15). But somewhere the human element gets into the picture, and we do not see the finality of a completed work. We are not to overcome just to win points in this round, knowing all the time that when the bell rings, we will go back at it again—the same fight, with the same opponent. We want to see something final happen.
Let’s pinpoint this one area: Why is there this problem of oneness with me? If you start looking for faults in each situation—problems within each person, struggles that each one is going through—you face the fact that there could be a thousand different symptoms that you would have to try to treat. Instead of that, can we reach through in God to the one solution that will establish this oneness and this flow, and the confidence in it, once and for all time? That is what we are talking about. This is a serious problem, because the success in the intercession and everything else we do requires that we find a knockout blow to the things that hinder us, once and for all.
Maybe this is not a problem in your thinking; maybe we are just whistling up a storm unnecessarily. Do you see the problem? Do you have that problem? Certainly many of you do not.
I don’t see it as a problem, but I see it as a oneness that we are coming into, and have been coming into for several years. In fact, some of us spent several hours talking about how the Lord has slowly but surely brought us all together over this four-year period in order to bring us into a oneness. I feel that what is involved is even more than our relationship to you; it is our relationship to everyone who is being pulled into this oneness. I feel that it is a new level of faith.
We hit at the problem in the message, “Is There An Idol In Your Saddlebag?”* In that message you said that the most effective spirit of division is working when your brother tells you the truth and you don’t believe him. I think that God is curing us of a level bordering on suspicion, where you always have to “tune in” to people while they are talking to you to find out what is behind every word they are saying, instead of just dropping your defenses and taking everything at face value, with a candid faith in up-front relating.
The problem is in our communication with one another. It must be that when you say something to me, I know that what you are saying is exactly what you mean; that you are not saying one thing and meaning another, so that the enemy does not come in to separate us (Ephesians 4:14). He tries to get us to believe that you, or any of us, are saying one thing, representing ourselves one way, but that we really have something else in our hearts toward one another.
I think God is delivering us to a plane of spirit where we can be up-front with each other and say exactly what we mean. We will reach the place where a greater frankness and love for one another can be expressed, where we do not have to be as diplomatic as we have been. We will still have love, but not the dependency on diplomacy. I am really looking for this.
If this is what you are talking about, then we have been right into it, believing for a oneness where we can express ourselves to one another and have a flow in it. But the bottom line is this faith in the relationship with one another, so that we do not give in to the fear that the enemy tries to throw at us in our relationships.
In that message, “Is There An Idol In Your Saddlebag?” a statement was made about Rachel: Jacob served for her all those years, yet she never really opened her heart to him; she was still holding on to that fear, or anxiety, or something that would not allow her to give herself to the oneness (Genesis 29:18–30; 31:26–35; 35:16–19). I think that what the nephilim has tried to condition us to is this fear that holds us back—just a little bit—from committing ourselves to one another to create the oneness that God wants.
Here is an illustration of that: As long as you have to reassure yourself in a relationship, then you have not reached the level of commitment that God wants. When a couple fall in love, there is a reason why each one keeps asking if the other one loves him. They feel the necessity to have a constant reassurance, because there is not really a rest or a confidence in that love. After a while, the relationship becomes stable; then they come to the place where they may even take each other for granted, because they do not have to again and again express their love for each other in order to satisfy insecurity.
They express love because love expresses itself; they do not express their love to calm a fear. This oneness will be based, not on faith in an individual, but faith for an individual and faith in the oneness with that individual. There is a big difference.
The way I look at it is this: If I am walking as honestly as I can before the Lord, then no one has the right to reject me. This is what I base my oneness with the people upon. That is what removes the fear of rejection. How can you reject me if I am walking with God the best I know how? Even if someone tries to reject me, he cannot do it.
If there is some evidence of failure in our relationships now, it is either an isolated incident, or it is a provocation or something of that nature. If someone stumbles in a relationship—through a misunderstanding or anything else—that still does not become a valid thing to affect the oneness if you have faith for that oneness, instead of trying only to have faith in the individual and in his every action being right. Every action does not have to be right. There does not have to be a total agreement. You do not have to have your mind set on just one way of thinking; that isn’t oneness at all. It is nice if you do agree, but disagreement is often the necessary input in a relationship which actually makes that relationship worthwhile. To confront is often the greatest evidence of love.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Proverbs 27:6a.
If someone is a true friend, you recognize that he is a friend. You do not have to ask, “Are you my friend? Or are you doing this because you are not my friend? Why are you doing this to me?” You begin with the premise that you have faith in the friendship—even though you may not agree with what the friend is doing. In fact, what he does may irk you at the time; but you have to relate to it the way you relate to what God does. You have to start with the premise that God loves you.
And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. I John 4:16, NASB.
Hebrews 12:6a tells us, For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. This does not mean that you have to get a beating in order to know that God loves you; but just because He beats you, it does not mean that He does not love you. You have faith in His love.
“For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Hebrews 12:6–11, NASB.
That comes down to faith in His Word. He loves you because He said He loves you—no matter what the circumstances may seem to indicate (Ephesians 2:13; Romans 10:8). And I think we have to relate to each other like that. We have to bind each other to that same Word. If we believe this, then each of us will walk with an awareness that everyone in this group loves him and is committed to him. That is the basis of our oneness, and it is the thing that will really make life worth living. If we believe that, it will create a wall of fire against this divisive spirit that comes in (Zechariah 2:5).
Ever since we got together for this intercession, about eighty days ago, the thing of relationships has been a major underlying force behind what has been going on. This thing of being forced together in humble quarters and forced to relate has been a big part of what we have experienced. I think it is time that we simply set our relationship and our oneness together. Now is the time when we bypass all of these little areas where we have struggled in a slow process of step-by-step perfection. We simply bypass that process and move into a level where we start effectively bombing the enemy. We become an effective force, and start bringing forth fruit.
I have been really burdened for the fruitfulness of all these days of preparation and everything else that we have gone through. The enemy has come and the battle has come to rob us of our fruit; but it is God’s intention that we eat the fruit of our labors (Isaiah 3:10; 65:21–22). We have prayed that you be first partaker of the fruits (II Timothy 2:6). Since 1976 there has been a whole underlying emphasis on this fruitfulness coming forth. I think we are all agonizing in our spirits to leave the level of preparation and to get into a level of fulfillment where we see the fruit of what we have been prepared to do. We must start living and eating and being refreshed by the fruit of what we are producing. We are ready for it.
This must be settled in our spirit: we are one; we are committed to one another; and now we can bypass that whole level of warfare. You recently taught us about bypassing the levels of warfare and coming onto another higher level, and from there we bomb the enemy. That is what we are talking about: How do we draw ourselves out of the level of hand-to-hand combat with the enemy on all of these little issues? We have to make this step right now; it is very important for us.
This goes deeper, too, than even our personal relationships, because there is a relationship to the Word which underlies and goes deeper than any personal misunderstandings, personal conflicts, or misjudgments that come (Colossians 3:8, 11, 14, 16). There must be a predetermination to be one on the basis of the Word. There is a giving of your life to the Word, because the Word is right (Psalm 19:8, NASB). From time to time there may be mistakes; there may be problems that come. But all of that is relative to what was just said about rising above problems. The way you do that is through the Word—that is really what links us all together. That is why we are all together, really—the oneness with the Word. That is the connective tissue which holds us all together. Our relationship in this oneness is interesting: it is not something that makes us feel good or bad; it is not something to be exhilarated or depressed about (Galatians 6:3; Romans 12:3). You become almost neutral in many reactions, because of the Word that is our mutual life (I Corinthians 3:4, 6).
Again, it is faith for the oneness, rather than saying, “I believe in the oneness because I feel the oneness.” If oneness is a reality by faith, then you do not have to look for evidence of it. You do not view it as an experience: “Well, we experienced oneness. Now I hope it will last.” It is like anything else of the Kingdom—to experience it, you must have faith for it to grow and to increase. You take it as a living thing that God has done which will continue to grow. You start with the basic premise, “We will never be any less close than we are now; but with each day that passes, we will become more and more one.”
The other day someone told me concerning a brother, “I never knew him until I got a chance to be with him and work with him.” In so doing, something came forth which was not there before: an expression of faith. Now they anticipate that growing relationship together.
Oneness grows, because we believe it to grow.
While we are trying to express this oneness—our faith for this oneness—we might as well believe for everything that God has committed to us in the Word and believe for it. The last chapter of the book of Galatians is so real here. Paul said, But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Galatians 6:14, KJV.
We are still praying, again and again, “Let the cross be applied to me,” and we still bring one thing after another in our lives to die on it. This is something like an endless execution: we kill one thing after another, a little bit; and then if it revives, we hit it again! There has to be something more final promised in that verse.
It is true that Paul used the cross to die to the world, but he also used the cross for the world to die to him (Colossians 2:14). We can apply this to things that are outside of us.
Instead of engaging in an endless battle, let’s dare to believe that the cross of Jesus Christ provided the victory over the entire world so that it will never again be alive to us.
This is why we break human bonds—to prevent the wrong transference from coming through to us. But this could be an endless task. Do we have to find our way out of this world and onto the moon or someplace, and start a separate colony? We cannot look at it from this wrong viewpoint.
Instead we must also apply the cross to things that are outside of us. We have to see those things die. And they will die. It will be final; there has to be a way that so much just dies to us, once and for all. It has to be like Joshua’s war of annihilation. We cannot afford all of the wasted time and the wasted energy dealing with those Gibeonites—getting them out of trouble because we made a league with them (Joshua 9:15). We should wipe the enemy out in the first place. We should do what God said.
People say, “It looks like you are not pitying as you should; you are not sympathetic enough. You don’t have any love.” This is not true, but we do not get anywhere with the enemy by constantly reviving him; we have to kill him. God is wanting us to kill a lot that we struggle with. Let it die. Believe for a finished work. Believe that God will put an end to all of these things.
You cannot get along just trying to argue God out of your having to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:2); you will have to go through with it. Then you may get him back.
What about the brothers who seem to have defected, who have become Judases? It usually happened because they were holding the bag (John 13:29, KJV); they had the money or a material advantage. And when that was taken away from them, then they turned against us. Now that their kingdom is gone, what will happen next? Now we can begin to pray for those ones. Once they have been stripped of their moneybag, once they have been stripped of the private advantage they have had, then there is nothing left to serve Christ for, except to be a disciple.
There is no use in anyone shouting, “Divine order!” and saying, “I believe in the ‘New Testament Church,’ ” when all he really has is his own private enterprise, and he is putting the money in his pocket. Don’t call that a New Testament Church; that is nowhere close to it. When those people leave or exclude us because they did not have the right motivation, then we can pray for them. Now they can come in on God’s terms.
You must understand that no relationship can exist between any of us on our terms. Every relationship and true oneness exists on God’s terms; we must recognize that we all belong to the Lord. When it comes to someone in the Body of Christ, we must believe, “That person belongs to the Lord.” We relate to the fact that he belongs to the Lord; and we have faith for oneness with him on the basis that he is one of God’s own.
This is almost deeper than our having faith for oneness with that person. We have to just accept the fact that we are one with him, on the basis of his acceptance of the Lord and his walk with Him. We do not have a choice in the matter. In other words, we do not have to will it; all we have to do is open up to the provision God has made. We are one. In the fourth chapter of Ephesians, Paul talks about one faith, one baptism, one Father, one Body—that is the foundation. Then he goes into that whole teaching of apostles and prophets; but first he establishes the basis of our acceptance of one another.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4–6, NASB.
We all function as a Body on the basis of oneness (Ephesians 1:22–23; Colossians 1:18). His Headship over that oneness is the key. How do we move into it?
I think the answer is by an awareness of actually why we have to be one. Why do we have to be one? We may think, “I’ve got my own individual life; why can’t I just lead it my way?” The Kingdom is relationships, and God has really been dealing with us on that basis. But if you look at the very basis for our individual involvement with each other, you find that it is the love for the Word. It is His Word that causes, or brings forth, the demand for oneness. The Word brings forth the demand that we accept one another. I do not think that God—in the Word which He has brought through you, and through His whole workings—will allow an organization to function on into the Kingdom, and to reach the whole world, as a group of individuals. There has to be a yoking together in Christ.
It seems as if this whole question has been brought up because everyone is starting to really get into the Word. We must tap into that spirit which you have, and which you have tried to convey to us as you have spoken the Word. And that is totally death to the flesh and death to our individuality. We have to be aware that there may be different ways of doing things, but there seems to be only one way of doing them to get that spirit of oneness conveyed. That is what I feel God is doing with all of us in our relating to one another, in our relating through the Word. It is that spirit which we all have to grasp hold of; it is a oneness where we relate to you and to anyone else in this room the same way. We cannot relate to you one way, and then relate to one another differently. But we must relate in the spirit that you have; we must move into it. And that comes through a total death to our individuality.
That’s true.
“I have given them Thy word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
“I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. 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, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.” John 17:14, 20–23, NASB.
If I open myself to fear and unbelief, then assault will hit me. And if I look at you through my being hit that way, then I see you in a warped light, and you get hit because you react to the way I am looking at you. In other words, we can either try to work out our personality differences and keep reassuring and reassuring one another, trying to establish some kind of flow that way—or we can jump clear over that level and come into a place where we simply have faith in the oneness that God has created among us.
The perfect love that we appropriate will cast out the fear that leaves an openness for the enemy to come in.
And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If some one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. I John 4:16–21, NASB.
Here is something more about fear. Fear can also be expressed by an ambitious concern about your own welfare, or your own ministry, your own place. If that fear existed in me, I do not think that I would have a ministry at all. The ministry is based on my concern for the flock, for the people and for the brothers. My concern is focused more and more on the brothers, but to the ultimate end that they in turn minister to the sheep. I am becoming very much submissive to the ministry that each one of you has. When I say submissive to it, I may not need it personally as much as the people to whom you minister do; nevertheless, I am submissive to God for your ministry. I believe for it, so I become one with you in it.
An illustration of this would be the lives of one particular couple. When they first came to talk with me about getting married, it was in total submission that they laid their lives before the Lord, because he was very much aware of what she was and the ministry that she had. She has had to start from scratch and reproduce herself in a thousand ways; but he has not aggressively gone about to pursue any line of work or anything else that he could do, because he has been submissive almost like a secretary to her. But in that training, he is learning a great deal; and he himself is becoming very valuable in the ministry. Ultimately, because of his submission to her ministry and his oneness with it, she, in turn, will be one with what he is bringing forth; and he will have a fantastic ministry. So then, how do we get a thousand prophets who can outminister me? It will happen as I am very much concerned about being submissive to the ministry over each one of them, and they, in turn, are not only submissive to the ministry I have for them, but they also become submissive to the ministry that they have for me.
This is a mutual burden for each other which breaks down whenever it is poisoned by fear, doubt, insecurity, unbelief, or self-preservation. Insecurity leads you to look out for your own self. Our flesh has two sides: self-condemnation and self-confidence. And both of them lead to the ego trip instead of to following Christ. If Satan cannot get you to be cocky, he will try to get you into self-condemnation so that you are rendered ineffective. The Word says that the man who is lifted up with pride falls under the condemnation of the devil (I Timothy 3:6, KJV). That Scripture explains it all right there.
What we are discussing is important, because in this oneness God has provided an atmosphere among us for a continuous level of victory—if we will submit to it. If I am hit, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is because the enemy has distracted me from the Word and thrown me into a personal battle. That battle can be broken instantly if I come and submit myself to you or to the brothers and you tell me, “This is what you are; this is what is hitting you.” If that oneness is established, and I believe that what you say is a Word from the Lord and that you are truly speaking from your heart, then there is a provision in our oneness to defeat the enemy every time. Every time! We don’t need to doubt it; it is not a hard thing. So my first response, instead of hiding, should be to expose myself. We have done this before; we are learning that we do not have to go through a personal battle alone. Even if we do sin, we have a way out. God has given us a way to cleanse ourselves from the unbelief or from the fear that hits.
Yes; now add this truth. Instead of accepting fear, have faith which declares, “This is the way it is going to be.” You can tell that something is wrong if, when a brother makes a mistake and you hear about it, you respond with a question, with a suspicion—almost accepting a conclusion before you even know the evidence, responding without any compassionate objectivity (I Corinthians 13:6–7). That is wrong; you are not having faith in the oneness.
There should be nothing negative that we accept within our hearts about our brother unless the Lord reveals it, unless there is a discerning of spirit—because I do not doubt that God is going to allow all of us to look like villains at one time or another (Acts 28:4; I Corinthians 4:9, 11, 13; II Corinthians 10:10; II Peter 2:2). And this is an amazing thing: people have had to accept me, even though if they had listened to the persecutors they would never accept me. They have to have faith. They have had the Word; they have listened to the Word. Now they have to believe. They have to still have faith for me and for their oneness with me. They have to believe it; there cannot be any question in their mind. I have a feeling that the statement is true: love believeth all things; love hopeth all things.
Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I Corinthians 13:4–7, NASB.
And love is not suspicious. There should never be any suspicions. There should be discernment. You should know a negative thing only because God reveals it; everything should be based on faith and a Word from God.
We are talking about relating in the realm of oneness; we are not talking about relating in the world. We are not talking about the world, nor are we talking about the carnal Christian; we are talking about believers who have come into a oneness in Christ and have faith in that oneness.
Is this discussion getting away from the original problem that we started out to solve? Do you want to pull it back?
No! This is excellent. What we started off with at the beginning was only an illustration of the problem; but the answer that we were looking for is a principle that we can walk in. And that is what we are getting out of this.
Let’s appropriate this. I think that we could just open our hearts and declare with faith, “This is the way it is going to be!” It is this simple: If I set my heart, or open my heart to the Lord in such a way that I believe that what the people here are saying to me is what is really in their heart, that ends the battle. If I can overcome, so that I believe that they are not saying one thing to me and really feeling something different—if I can do that one thing—then for me the battle is over.
That does not necessarily mean that you know the person is right in what he said. And he may have feelings that are deeper than what he can express. But you do know that there is an honesty of heart.
The statement about faith in the oneness is the key we are looking for—we can live by that. It bore such witness to my own heart. It deals with this thing of suspicion. Our walk has been so shrouded with the thing of suspicion, and now God is breaking that. He is demolishing every tiny shred of suspicion. We are to live in a faith for people; then that thing of suspicion will break. If we can do away with that suspicion, and reject it in our own thinking every time it comes in, it will be broken. The cross has crucified suspicion to us, and we do not have a part in it anymore. We are free from it.
So much of our battle revolves around the fact that the enemy throws suspicions. That is how he came up in the first place, with that question, “Hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1.) He threw suspicion into Eve’s heart about God by saying, “Hath God said?” and immediately she doubted God (II Corinthians 11:2–3).
The serpent came on first and said, “Has God said that you cannot eat of any tree in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1.) He painted God out to be an ogre! Then Eve twisted what God had said. She responded, “No, God said that we could not eat of that tree, or touch it” (verses 2–3). God had not said that they could not touch it; He only said that they could not eat of it (Genesis 2:17). But you see, the suspicion had already gotten in her heart so that she was divided from the Lord, and that was the basis of her rejection. That is what the enemy tries to do with you. He tries to break that heart-bond—that thing of faith and love—and replace it with a thing of suspicion or fear. Suspicion is really just fear; it is just looking for an opportunity to reject someone (Zechariah 3:1; Revelation 12:10). But discernment is based on love. It would not really matter to me if I found out something wrong about someone here, because it still is not right before God to use that as an opportunity to reject someone. Instead, it should just be an issue to take greater faith for him.
I remember a service several years ago in which the revelation of the Judas spirit came. I looked at you afterwards and said, “I believe God that I will never flow in that thing of being a Judas.” You replied, “We’re one.” That is all you said to me: “We’re one.” I took that as a Word from the Lord, and by faith we are one. Since that time, I have never had a problem of feeling cut off from you. I have been tested on it, but I have never felt cut off. I have never felt in any way that the oneness was ever broken, because I took what was said as a Word—and with faith and love, I have lived that way! No matter what Satan has ever thrown me (and it has been a lot), we are one. That is a determination with faith. If we can tune into that with one another—taking our oneness, as you say, at face value—then there is no mistrust; there is only an establishing of our relationship: “This is the way it is, and this is the way we are going to walk.” Satan has no way to come in and break that.
Let’s take one further step. We not only declare that oneness and believe it absolutely, but we do not accept a synthetic oneness. Do not try to build, in the name of oneness, a human bond and call that “oneness.” Through the years, I have always tried to not relate on a social or human basis. I have always been careful, because I know that if I build that, then it will be washed away. I refused to let people get so close that they would feel that they were some “inside friend,” some “special friend.” If they left, they had to defect on the basis of the Word.
If someone were to come in tomorrow, a wonderful person who wanted to be a special friend to me, that relationship could not be. A friend is going to be someone who starts on the right level; that is the way the relationship has to be. It must start with the spirit. Paul wrote, “I pray that your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless” (I Thessalonians 5:23). We are not trying to work our way up to the level of spirit; the spirit level actually becomes the foundation of our relationship. We do not come up from the physical, to the soul, and finally reach the spirit. As we come to the end of the Church Age, Christ starts with the spirit as the foundation and the basic thing. Then comes the soul, the mind, and so forth; and then comes the physical relationship.
So the futility that is in the world is first overcome by our finding no futility at all in our relationship to the Lord or to one another. We cannot allow that futility. The whole division is solved by our oneness in the Spirit. That is why the cross has to crucify that fleshly level; suspicion has to be thoroughly dead to us.
Once this spiritual oneness is there, God still deals with us deeply, but our relationships are not going to be hurtful. No one gets ripped off then. But you do get ripped off if there is not a oneness (II Timothy 2:24–26). There is no relationship that is on an equal basis—in any relationship, there is someone who is taking more than he is giving—until there is a oneness before Christ. Then He takes it all. He is taking us all; He is taking us for everything He can work in and through us! And we are glad for that, because that is the cross we want. We belong to Him. And when I see that you belong to the Lord, I don’t feel that I am being ripped off if I back you up with every sacrifice, and if every church backs you up. I am not being ripped off in that; I am fulfilling something to the Lord. It really is unto the Lord, because of your oneness with Him and my oneness with you, and my believing for it.
The same thing is true now in all the relationships that are coming in to me. I know what Paul meant when he wrote the Galatians and reminded them of how they could have plucked their eyes out and given them to him in his need, so great was their love and their dedication. But what did he go on to say? “Have I become your enemy because I am telling you the truth?” (Galatians 4:15–16.) Something was wrong in the way they went about it. There was something fickle in it; so he had to send them an epistle and explain to them about being free in the Spirit, and about walking in the Spirit, and about the work of the cross.
The cross is mentioned several times in Galatians (Galatians 2:20; 3:1, 13; 5:11, 24; 6:12, 14). Over and over, Paul emphasized that thing. He said, “Be crucified with Christ,” and he had to explain the whole thing. Why? Because they got in the church on the wrong basis. People who come in on the wrong basis will leave. They come in with an ulterior motive: “What can I get out of it?” They work themselves in until they are the treasurer; they are the Judas or something. And always, the ones who have jockeyed for a position for their own personal advantage are the ones whom God blows on (Haggai 1:9). It is God who is blowing them out.
Just as we do not take to ourselves a personal responsibility for our own success, neither should we take upon ourselves a personal responsibility for what God does in disposing of situations and in sifting His people. We may do everything we can to bring someone in and expose him to the Word; but in the final analysis, the Lord is the One who knows whether or not that Word has any place in his heart. God is the only One who is going to judge that.
We are at a place where a great deal of faith will be required. But every time we start to break into that faith, and even into this oneness, something happens. After we said that the Lord was going to give an authority that is appropriate for the administration of the Kingdom (Ephesians 1:10), we asked, “How are we going to see that? How can we break into it so that we are there, once and for all?” When we come up to it, it is like someone coming up to break the sound barrier: there is a vibration. Everything vibrates; and if you stay there long enough, the aircraft falls apart. It is destroyed. You have to find some way in which there is a thrust through, so that you get beyond the barrier. That one barrier could be destructive. We have to reach a place where in the Spirit we go through this stress barrier. That is what this spiritual warfare is all about right now: it is designed to put stress on us, to put pressure on us. Do you see this? And if we stay under this stress long enough, it could destroy us.
This warfare has to be ended in victory. This intercession has to accomplish its purpose. We must find a way through the barrier. Have you ever watched these roller derbies? When a team is ready to score, they get into position, and one will take the hand of another and whip him or her through to make the point. We, too, have to find some way to almost double our efforts in order to whip ourselves through this barrier, or else be knocked down. And we are ready; we are ready to break the barrier down!
There must be a breakthrough into this that is revealed in Luke 13:24: “Strive as in agony to enter in.” There is some way in which the whole travail upon us will come with groanings of the Spirit too deep for utterance (Romans 8:26). We must break into it! We certainly are not going to be at ease in Zion, because everything is pointing toward intensity.
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force.” Matthew 11:12, NASB.
This is like Peter’s teaching. He talked about loving one another from a pure heart with a fervent love (I Peter 1:22). “Fervent” is actually a term which applies to heat. This could be a real focus of our intensity, even in relationship to our intercession. Our unity can bring this resurrection life. I think that the key of resurrection is in this shield that we create for ourselves—like Zion’s walls—and this is exactly what we are describing here. This is a fervent love which creates an atmosphere where God can meet us and God can move, and it ends the continuous dissipation from these leaks of fear and unbelief in our relationship.
I cannot reject your love for me without rejecting God’s love for me, because you are so one with the Word and because you impart Christ. As we are freed from false guilt we are open to the revelation of that love, because in the guilt is the element of fear, and he who fears is not made perfect in love (I John 4:18). As the false guilt is cleared away from us, we are open to receive and to give the perfect love that is ours from before the foundation of the world (John 17:24–26).
That is right. John expressed it so well: And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. I John 4:16a. We have no suspicion of it. It is settled. And that is what we have to have for one another.
Can I give another illustration of what we are talking about? You hit a certain level—whether it is this stress barrier, or whatever it is—and unless there is a good, decisive repentance and a faith which violently takes hold, you will find yourself shaken apart by self-condemnation or false guilt. Slowly but surely, it will destroy you.
A good illustration of this is I Corinthians 5 linked with II Corinthians 2, when Paul was dealing with a situation in the Corinthian church. In I Corinthians 5, he said, “I have already judged this man, though being absent; now you put him out of your midst” (verses 3, 11–13). They did it. Then when Paul wrote the second Epistle, he dealt again with that same situation. He said, “That man is going to be swallowed up by overmuch sorrow. So now reaffirm your love to him” (II Corinthians 2:5–8). It would have been a destruction. If that man had gone on and on and on he would have been destroyed, because there was no one to give him love. The church had been obedient, and the man was being repentant; but he needed the help of the Body to get back into the flow of things—something to get him through that barrier. He was being swallowed up by too much sorrow—overmuch sorrow. He grieved over the thing; he grieved to a point where he would have been destroyed by it.
God does not intend for us to go on repenting and dwelling in the area of problems. We have come to the place where God says, “Your warfare is accomplished. Now, it is time for the double portion. Let’s get with it! Let’s get into it!” (Isaiah 40:1–2.) Something has to bring an end of warfare. Conflict cannot be a way of life, or we will be destroyed; in time we will be worn out by it. Intercession may eventually be for other things, and be done in other ways, but we have to get the basic breakthrough that this oneness is for.
What we have been talking about is another one of those mysteries of oneness. The whole awareness of oneness does not operate unless there is an active faith. We have to take the initiative in order for the full awareness of oneness to operate and to be in existence.
I don’t think we are comfortable with what we have received. We are embarrassed by other people expressing love. We are too embarrassed to express our own love. The time should end in which we have to go around to our brother all the time and say, “Brother, I love you” to reassure him, and he responds, “Oh, thank God. I thought you were angry with me!” Nevertheless we freely express our love, not to reassure so much as to impart.
You may be sensitive to each other, but if you are not set on a perfect faith and confidence in the love and the oneness that is there, you question it. But once that is really established and the oneness is there, then there is a greater freedom to express love without a certain embarrassment. We have to get to the place where we are not hesitant to express our love to one another, where we are not embarrassed by it. There is an acceptance because we have such faith for the oneness that we act accordingly; we speak accordingly.
There is so much life in that love. Because the Corinthian church cut that man off from the love, they were literally projecting him into a death situation. When we come into a place of oneness where there is no fear or unbelief, but there is a rest, then that is where the resurrection life comes forth. I do not think resurrection life is a mystical thing.
Even reassuring one another of our love is not a bad thing, as long as it does not become a crutch in a relationship. In other words, if you are drawing someone into the oneness and you reassure him that you love him, the purpose of that is for the faith to grow in his own heart to the place where he does not need that reassurance anymore.
I know an illustration of this. Once a wise old pastor had someone come to him who was very critical of another person in the church. So the pastor said, “Okay, let’s get down on our knees right now and pray for him.” He got the old gossip to his knees and they prayed for the brother earnestly; and when they finished, the pastor had accomplished a purpose. He had caused the doubt and suspicion and the judging spirit to leave, and he had made the man express love. You can do the same thing. If someone comes to you questioning the love and questioning the relationship, you can turn that thing around—if you are wise—and not only reassure him, but pray with him over it: “Lord, show this to him. Make it real to him.”
Never try to just calm a man’s fears; establish his faith.
One thing that keeps us from really having enough faith in the oneness relationship, in the intercession, and in all that God is doing, is that God still insists that we are not going to have oneness just because we have our heads in the sand, like an ostrich. Doing that is not going to hide anything. As we are going through all of this, for us to think that we are not going to be exposed is wrong.
God never ministers to us or through us without still having it come the way it did in the book of Zechariah. God says, “Take the filthy garments off of him!” And there is that brief moment when he stands there naked, before you put the priestly robe on him (Zechariah 3:4). There always has to be that moment of exposure.
Everyone could stand back and say, “Well, here is Brother Stevens. We’ll all believe in him because he’s off there in the clouds someplace. Oh, he may have faults, but they are not too bad.” If you have that attitude, you are wrong.
You must realize that although Peter came along with a great revelation from God, moments later, in his rashness, he was mouthing something entirely different. The Lord said to him, “Get thee behind Me, Satan. You don’t savor the things that are of God; you are missing it.” Christ brought forth an exposure (Matthew 16:16–23).
In the Bible, God never makes an effort to hide the faults of His men. But we expect our contemporaries to be perfect before we believe in them, or believe for them. We are not looking to believe in a person so much as to believe for him. You have faith for him; you believe for him because you know the calling of God—you know the Word of God over his life. In this, it becomes very necessary for us to be able to confess our faults one to another, and to pray one for another, that we may be healed (James 5:16). It becomes very necessary. We must get accustomed to the idea that in the Kingdom, everyone lives in a goldfish bowl.
That then is why there has to be that continual initiative of faith to make the oneness work. On the human plane, oneness is established by a repetitive experiencing of one another without being let down too many times. It is a conditioning, more than anything else. We could try to work together, and have a certain amount of confidence in our “oneness”; but it would still be on the human level. God is putting before us this day of really aggressive faith—that violence of faith which makes this oneness that God has given to us a reality which really works.
You mentioned how at one point, the Galatians would have taken their eyes out to help Paul, because there was such a great love (Galatians 4:15). But when Paul wrote to them, he said, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1.) What had happened was that when Paul first visited them, they were open to an impartation of faith through love because they were relating to him on a right level. Then false apostles came in and threw a mistrust and a doubt into their relationship with Paul; and that threw the Galatians into a legalism and cut them off from the flow of the Word.
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Galatians 1:6–7, NASB.
That is exactly what has happened in this walk; and that is why this revelation is so timely, because now we are having to heal up. And God, through this faith and this trust that is coming, will open up a whole new level. That is the level on which we have to hear the Word. We have to hear the Word with a perfect relationship to you in order to receive it in such a way that it can impart to our hearts. We cannot have mistrust and doubts of you—and have you be the issue—and still hear the Word on the level in which it will create within us the nature of Christ. We are foolish if we think that is going to happen. The thing that happened to the Galatians is exactly what has happened as every Judas, every nephilim, and every Jezebel spirit has come in. The main purpose of Satan has been to cut the people off from this level of relating, and to make them mistrust and fear.
The moment people accept that lie, bitterness starts coming up in their hearts. The bitterness is a result of thinking, “I was ripped off!” The moment a person says, “I was ripped off,” then his motivation is in question (and perhaps the motivation of the one whom he is accusing as well). But you are not ripped off in your giving and in your service if what you have done was in discipleship and sacrifice, and in a oneness. All through these years, many people have given to those who were actually betraying them. Now these people are getting healed up. Some are bitter; but if we could get them to relate to the Lord, they would not feel bitter.
The basis of our bitterness is fear and unbelief.
The bitterness comes up because your heart was not wholly set to serve God. My only regret is that I have not had more to give to the Lord. I give Him my whole life. That should be the motivation behind our giving. You can’t make a man bitter if God has put things in his hands and given him the privilege of giving them, and he counts that a privilege. It is an expression of his oneness with the Lord.
All is the Lord’s. I am the Lord’s; everything I have is the Lord’s. Praise God! The more I can be used by Him and give to Him, the better. But someone who has other motivations but was “talked into” giving something can get bitter. How bitter they can be! Let’s make sure that everyone is taught, “Be sure that you want to give this, and then do it unto the Lord. Be sure that you want to serve. Be sure that you want to be a part of that which God is setting before us.”
In the self-struggle for your own independence and the initiative of your own life, your own individuality can prevent your yielding in a total way that God wants you to yield to Him.
Scripture Readings
Oneness—The Word and Love:
John 17:14, 20–23
Ephesians 4:4–6
Ephesians 1:22–23;
Colossians 1:18
I John 4:16–21
I Corinthians 13:4–7
Galatians 5:24
Galatians 6:14
Kingdom Proverbs
If Christ provided a perfect redemption on the cross, we should believe for a final work of the cross in us.
We believe for our oneness in Christ; we refuse division and suspicion.
Our love for each other may not need constant reassurance, but it always needs constant expression.
If our faith is not in an individual, it is nevertheless for that individual.
To confront a brother can be an evidence of love;
To confront a brother can also be an evidence of no love.
Oneness grows because we believe it to grow.
A brother’s need is discerned by the spirit; it is never to be the conclusion of our suspicions.
The futility and frustrations in our relationships are solved by our oneness in the Spirit.
A true repenter does not dwell in the area of his problems; he abideth in the secret place of the Almighty.
We freely express our love, not to reassure so much as to impart and bless.
Never try to calm a man’s fears; establish his faith.
Do not expect men to be perfect before you believe for them. Do not believe in a person so much as for him.
Bitterness arises in the heart that is not wholly set to serve God.