Dialogue on (Almost) Everything – Pt Three

By Fred Pruitt

(This below is derived from excerpts of a several week email dialogue with another seeker in Christ. We really did not cover “everything,” but we did hit on most of the basic questions and issues that come up as we are beginning to realize that “it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.” The dialogue was not “systematic,” in that we covered each issue one at a time, but more conversational, as we would talk in a living room. I decided to leave it in that format, rather than try to pull out things categorically, but just leave it as the Spirit worked it through my brother and I. One issue did remain on the table through the whole dialogue, and that was the “we should be healing …” and wanting those “greater works” that Jesus spoke of, which is a common issue for many.)

Inquirer:

Freely we have received – I want to freely give. The past sporadic ‘successes’ have been a cause for rejoicing and encouragement. We are thankful for those blessings. But Jesus gave Himself as the example and said that we would do the works He did and even greater works. I want to fulfill those Words. I’m sure the solution rests in the operation of faith. Jesus said, “he that believeth on me … works … also”. I do believe and I am not so naïve to think I have arrived at pure belief, without any doubt or corrupting thoughts.

Fred:

The One who lives in you has arrived at pure belief, without any doubt or corrupting thoughts, and He has made himself one spirit, one person with you, so that He operates and lives your life. YOU will never “arrive” as you have mentioned above, but the Holy One has already “arrived” in you, and you need only see His rising in you to overshadow all of you and be your will and intents and thoughts and heart. There is nothing outside Him. Your supposed “own will” is a deception, something that only exists in your imagination and is a holdover from the devil’s kingdom, and is part of our self-efforts. You lose your “own will” when you realize you and He are one person, and you now have only one will — His, again, something not to which you have attained but the simple reality of living as His bondslave. We have no will but His and no Lord but Christ.

Any confession outside that is not faith but unbelief, because in that denial we believe not the Lord’s work in us, and still see ourselves as grasshoppers in our own sight. When you find the totality of HIM having come in to be one with you, then you see HIS pure belief, etc. operating out of you.

It is a mistake to think we will ever “arrive” to some place in this life where we are beyond temptation, beyond any doubt or corrupting thoughts. Jesus was not spared temptation up until the last night of His earthly life, and surely, if He was tempted we cannot think we are going to be spared it. Those who teach that err. We experience temptation and the pulls of the enemy the whole time we are in this life, because faith can only be known when it swallows up doubt, joy can only be known when it swallows up sorrow. Darkness can only be known when you turn on the light, since light comes out of darkness as the scripture says.

God uses temptation to fix us in Himself and His work, as He did with Jesus in the temptation in the wilderness. Likewise, temptations come and propel us into our intercessions, as Satan was allowed to tempt Jesus to forsake His calling in the Garden. In Gethsemane, Jesus was tempted to doubt the Father’s plan and to believe, even contrary to all his previous confessions, that he had a “will” different from God’s, a false “my will.”

There is no other indication in the New Testament of Jesus speaking of having and living anything but the Father’s will. Where did this “separate” will come from? How could He have said, “I and my Father are One?” if Jesus had some separately functioning will of His own.  Jesus’ confession from the beginning of His ministry until that night was that He had come in order to be delivered up to death in Jerusalem. Yet on the final night, Jesus doubts what He has believed the whole time — that Calvary was THE plan of the Father, and that He would rise again which He knew by the Spirit and the scriptures.

He even had a mountaintop conference with MOSES and ELIJAH talking about the whole work of our redemption — and still in the Garden he faced doubt and fear and wondered if He had gotten it all wrong. And it was in that three hours of bloody sweat that the matter was finally settled. That which had been seen in heaven — the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, Who prevailed in order to open the book, and loose the seals thereof — and through that temptation and deliverance by the Spirit and comfort of God, we are here today having this discussion.

So let us join the club and be human, and cease trying to be the Godhead and get beyond temptation and the swirling chaos of this world. Only God cannot be tempted with evil, and that is God in His heaven beyond our realm. Here, we are tempted and continue to be tempted. However, though he may bring it, it is not the devil’s affair, but God’s, because it is all to the glory of God and the exercise of our faith, out of which comes the pure gold of the Spirit.

Inquirer:

Yes, I am looking for a key of sorts. I want to unlock the fullness of God within and do the works of Jesus, those works which glorify God in the earth and undo the works of the devil. I want my friend healed. I want to see him leaping and jumping and praising God. Medical science ‘miracles’, when they actually occur, are nothing compared to Jesus’ solution; nor do those medical fixes give glory to God, the Most High, Who is Above All and in all.

Fred:

They do with me and do with anyone else who recognizes where God is. I am not making the point of calling medical stuff miracles, but a point of being thankful and giving praise to God for what HE DOES, which is everything that is done. Because we see the working of the Father in all things, we drop the idea that some things are second best or somehow not worthy of being called “of God.” He has told us in a thousand ways to praise Him and give thanks in all things, and credit to whom credit is due. Therefore it is not just “fine” to give credit to doctors or auto mechanics or anyone else that performs a service, but it would be “more than just fine” to recognize God and Christ in them, even if they do not yet see it for themselves.

Those who live and walk with God know that everything that comes to them, even if by the opposition of the devil or man, is at the hand of the Father. Whatever it is that comes, we can know that it is not our enemy because we see in God we have no enemies, that no one or thing can essentially harm us. Even when there is havoc in our lives in this world, worked through devil or man, still we give glory to God who uses all things to bring forth the totality in each of us as well as the consummation of all things.

You are right, many who experience a medical blessing do not see it as something God has done, but many do, including many doctors. So it is a bit of an assumption to say that medical fixes do not give glory to God. People give glory to God through the joys and sorrows of their lives, and that is where we look to glory. And if we know of a medical fix where someone DID NOT give glory to God, well, we can do it for them, because are we not thankful that God ordained their lives to continue, no matter what the means, even if they have not yet seen where their blessing came from? But of course, we thank Him for everything.

Inquirer:

This is my heart cry. This is what I am pursuing, and I do expect to not only recognize but also exercise the faith OF Jesus Christ.

Surely this dimension or realm of understanding of Christ in/as us will open His intended Power in His Church. However, if we stop at the revelation of truth and only dabble in the gift of Christ dwelling in us by faith, then it will be like the charismatic and word of faith ‘movement’ which for the most part has become stagnant in a ‘bless me’ party that has resulted in a minimal glorification of God in the earth – minimal compared to what God’s Word has proclaimed for the Church in these times.

Fred:

As much as I see the church needing to be brought into the “Head” and for each individual to know that they are not themselves alone, but Christ in them, I see God’s true Church right where it is supposed to be. I see God working all things after the counsel of His own will, and bringing the Church along with the rest of humanity and history into His glorious consummation of all things.

None of us may possess anything that we have not received as a gift from the Father – there is nothing left out. Even where the church is stumbling and even where Satan is blinding people to Who they really are, i.e., Christ in them living as them in this CURRENT MOMENT (not waiting for one day when we get everything just right), still God is All in all, in all that.  And all I see in that, rather than feeling wretched because the church is so weak, powerless, ignorant, etc., instead I see fields white for the harvest.

He is purposely and actively working out everything to the good of those who are called according to His purpose – and we ask who is NOT called to this? He is even working in the church through all the apparent chaos, disunity, disagreement, so-called lack of power, etc., to see His Bride in her true adornment, and right where He has brought her to be in this current time in history.

Whatever we might call the church may or may not be correct, but God from the beginning has seen and known those who are His. Therefore, it is by His instigation and by His will, that they are gathered individually from the four corners of the earth and made one Body in Him. He finds her (His church) without spot, without blemish and a praise unto God.

The eternal members of this ecclesia have seen their robes washed totally clean in the blood of the Lamb, and have learned to the uttermost that their lives are not their own.  They have even abdicated the crowns of life they’ve been given, abdicating forever their own kingship over themselves, that the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb in the Midst of the Throne is forever Lord of Lords and King of Kings in each. And we proclaim right now this scene in heaven, to be the deepest reality in our innermost selves.

As far as all those movements and things you mentioned, God uses all those movements, whether they succeed or fail, to prepare His bride. I was certainly involved in things a long time ago that I would not be with now, but God honored such faith as I had then even as he honors such faith as lives in me now. So I am hard pressed to judge folks as “minimal” who, like me, have looked here and there, up and down, over and under, for a long time, until they by grace stumble onto the pearl of great price which is in us, and end up being given it as a gift since they’d lost everything and had nothing left with which to buy it. Don’t be so hard on everybody, starting with yourself. The fat lady has not sung yet.

End of Part Three