[The following is a letter I wrote to a friend, with a few edits for privacy]

Let me say this:  I appreciate your position, and I am not particularly in most of the camps that you might expect.

Summing it up, I hear about four main statements in your email.

First, there have been many different positions and view regarding holiness..  Which you cataloged quite well.

Second, you really don’t care which one is most doctrinally correct, but are sick of the compromise in your own heart and unless it can help with that, you’re not satisfied.   You said, “All I know right now is that I’m bound to sin and I don’t know how to get out”.

Third, You’re sick of the crap (scripturally, “dung”).  You want to know the experiential love, experiential forgiveness, and experiential cleanness of heart.  No more hypocrisy from yourself or others.  You want the real deal.

And, finally, the question of how to know anything arises.  “The only way I will know or anyone on this earth will know is if God shows us personally.”

I think some of these questions are proper place of a heart for your condition.  Let me remind you, however, truth is a person.

Let me present my Gospel, if you will…

I have been writing a bit in the past little while on what I might term “My Gospel”, which I believe is growing understanding of the Gospel of the Kingdom.  I don’t rely on my own efforts, but as the “Word of the Kingdom” of Matthew 13 speaks, it is a seed that grows.  His words are spirit and they are life.

My gospel I believe is harder than the one you presented to me when you were first cutting your teeth on Finney.  My gospel includes on the EASY end, Luke 14:26, unless you hate your life you cannot be His disciple, and as I am studying, the more solid position of “if you save your life, you will lose it, and if you lose it, you will find it”.  Most of these verses are interpreted into oblivion by modern commentary, and yet, as I like to put it, since Jesus is the Truth.  He therefore never lies nor exaggerates, so “hate” is the word He chose, so it is the absolutely, 100% correct word.  While most people then try to interpret it away and say you should use a different word, Jesus purposely CHOSE this word ‘hate’, and so I embrace it..   You will love one and hate the other, if you hate your life in this world, you will save it (John 12:25)….

The issue here is exactly what you have been pining away about.  The issue are sin and a transformed heart.  The Sermon on the Mount cannot be looked at as a new law, because if law could have done it, it would have.  Instead, I see it more of a picture of the life lived on the rock, Matthew 7:24.  If you are on the rock, you don’t fall, where all of the failures were morally described in the preceding 3 chapters!  If you are living by the Spirit, you are not fulfilling the lusts of the flesh.  Going all the way to the beginning of the Sermon, to the Beatitudes..  Again, not laws, but as I call it, the picture of the man in perfect faith.  The man in perfect faith in God is most happy all the time, not because of circumstances, but because God is his Father…  Keeping in mind that “most happy” sometimes looks like sweating blood in a garden alone, abandoned, and about to die…  Yet, why happy?  Because He knows that the Kingdom is His!

Why are we happy, according to the beatitudes?  If we’re poor in spirit, we’re happy right then because ours is the Kingdom. God’s power and provision are fully ours right then, even if we fail to recognize it.  We’re talking deliverance, salvation, miracles, subtle or grand, they are right there.  If we mourn, we will be comforted.  Future tense, but knowing that He said comfort will come, and the nature of the comfort will be greater than our mourning, we are actually happy in our mourning, because we know comfort will come and help us.  Onward with the rest of them, even with persecution for righteousness.  How do we get more Kingdom?  Do His righteousness enough, and we will get persecuted for it.  Once you realize that God’s power and Kingdom are there right then in the persecution, and that this is His will, all fear and intimidation will cease, because you know, whether it’s discreet and direct or a great power demonstration, His Kingdom is right there and is yours.    But, this only works in the place of living on the Rock, not in lawlessness.

So, flash forward today.  Jesus said to watch out for the leaven (yeast) of the pharisees and of Herod.  People say that this is legalism and lawlessness, but re-read Luke 12:1, and you see the first is NOT legalism, but hypocrisy, which is literally “below critique” (breaking it up into its roots, hypo and critic), hiding who you really are, or wearing a mask.  This is the essence of the work of us in the Gospel.  John 3:19-21 is all about living in the light, and why we choose not to.  The hypocrite is not just one who says one thing and does another, but presents a person who they are not, for whatever reason, because they believe the person who they really are cannot be shown.  For all carnal people, a person in legalism, unless they are weeping at the altar for their sin, is by definition a hypocrite, which almost makes the conventional interpretation correct. In order to be a legalist, you generally are a hypocrite.  But, consider this. We have today in the body vast swaths of people in either of these two ditches:  One says holiness is no longer necessary, the yeast of Herod, iniquity, lawlessness, etc.  The other says, “I am holy”, but denies the fact that they overlook their brother.  They deny the truth that they are, in actuality, depraved. They live like kings, they exercise their authority over each other, and so on and so forth…  We have today these two camps demonstrated almost exactly…

So what is the answer??  This is precisely the point, and is precisely what Jesus drives at….  Did you know that there are some universals?  After drawing for us the man of faith in the beatitudes, most happy all the time, we see them.  Are you angry?  Are you calling people names?  Are you in scorn and contempt for your brother without cause?  Yes, this is a New Covenant scripture.  Those Pauline-only people are what I call the thieves and robbers who deny the words of Jesus, and therefore try to enter the sheepfold another way.  Why call Him Lord if you’re not going to do what He says?

Have you ever found something in God, even if an idea, or a dream, or a vision, or a possibility, that made you want to lose everything and sell it?  Have you ever touched a realm in God, a part of who Jesus is, that was wonderful, you wanted to lose everything if you could have it all the time?  This is what I call Kingdom (Matthew 13:44, treasure in a field).  I have spent most of my time doing this for me, finding my own truth, rather than pointing at others mind you here.   I know that Jesus said the Kingdom is worth it all, He is. If you find it, you’ll know….  Yet, I’m quite sure you’ve touched things like this. But, the enemy does try to snatch it away, or at least confuse us with other things.  But, if it’s not worth everything, if it’s not better than everything in this Earth, it’s probably not His Kingdom, see?  I’m bringing this full circle.

If you are living the Kingdom, you are living Matthew 5-7, guaranteed.  What is this bedrock?  It is living by His Spirit within you, which is to say, Jesus Himself.  We’re talking about a person living in you, and you living in a person, in a realm of the Spirit.  I have loved worship because it takes me places. I didn’t usually have the language, but I have learned through various channels that heaven is a place I can live in now (John 3:13).  I feel it more than I see it in the senses right now, but I do get the glimpses.  That flutter you feel in an atmosphere or church that is active is the presence and activity of angels. The heaviness you feel in places is the demonic. It’s called discerning of spirits.  Just that alone requires you to leave most of the western mindset. There is a spirit-world, a 2nd heaven of conflict and a 3rd heaven above that that is wow.  We touch them sometimes in worship, but we don’t’ always understand–it takes some level of faith.

So, finally, the hate.  My Gospel says hate your fleshly life, and your soulish gratifications.  It says to live by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16).  I really grew a lot hearing the Banov’s talk about the finished work of the cross, and yet, I see such errors growing rapidly in that camp that I find it hard to even go there lately.  But, what I heard originally, that Georgian didn’t say but I saw that he LIVED, was that the whole thing hinged on ONE THING, and that’s the one word you wont ever really hear preached except in Pentecostal circles, and that is True Gospel FAITH.

People call their general religious bent “faith”, but that is not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about a specific, tangible (to the spiritual and sometimes natural senses), and real commodity, that is the proof in the spirit of the thing….  I had an extremely hard season the past couple years in terms of warfare, but I came away with one thing in particular, and that is “faith”.  You said you would not be convinced unless you were before the throne and He explained it.  Allow me to prove another way.  Faith *IS* the evidence of things not seen.  I’m not talking about an intellectual agreement with something.  They say “unbelief” is the belief in the senses. It is “apistis”.  Faith, Belief, Trust, are all “pistis” in the Greek.  Unbelief is a greater belief in the seen and the touched, the carnal and material, than the unseen.  But FAITH! is the substance of the thing only hoped for.  To have something by FAITH, true gospel Jesus faith, is to have the thing for real, even if it is not held in the natural.  It is not supposition or supplanting, but it is actually MORE real than the body you dwell in.  FAITH is of such a character, that to have FAITH in something, is to have the real.  “hypostasis” in the Greek, hypo being under, stasis being “structure”, it is said to be the underlying spiritual structure or foundation of a thing.  To have it *IS* proof.  This isn’t intellectual conjecture.  When you have TRUE faith, it stands..  How do you know it is TRUE faith?  It stands, and produces results. Faith without works is dead and Faith that doesn’t work isn’t faith.

Simply put, you cannot have the true spiritual substance of a thing that isn’t really there.  You can hope in a lie, but you cannot have faith in it.  Faith *IS* the substance of the thing hoped for!  Faith *IS* the thing in the spiritual dimension.  How can I be assured in this life, without seeing the throne of heaven (or believe me, even if I have?)??  BECAUSE of the Faith.  Faith IS.  If it is real faith, it stands up to anything.  And, according to Jesus, all you need is “any” (read, mustard seed), and do not be weakened by doubt and unbelief, and you will see mountains move.

But, the gospel I preach is this. Unless you hate the soulish carnal life of everyone you know and even yourself (which it sounds like you’re working at in yourself, but I say you need to hate it in everyone you meet just as much), you cannot be His disciple.  This leaves you bereft and alone in this world.  So, Jesus says He does not leave us as orphans, but gives the Holy Spirit.  You have now only one friend and one helper.  Your eye is single.  You can fellowship, but not as the world does.  Know no man after the flesh, but after the Spirit.  Fellowship in the Spirit.  Be one in the Spirit.  Live in and of the Spirit and in no way else.

Let me describe.  If I am in bondage to jelly-beans, what is the feeling that jelly beans give me?  What is the emotional boost that I receive from them?  Hate that.  Hate the false relief, false comfort, and flesh-propping up effect of it.  Hate everything to do with it, that feeling, that delight.  It is not God’s comfort, it is a substance.  Hate this life.  Even if you still eat some, hate the benefit, and only be consoled by heaven.  Set your belief to what we know is true.  Roll the truth of scripture around until, well, I usually feel faith. often in my belly.. a substance.  FEEL the life of the Spirit.  Even if you don’t get free, hate it.  If you have trouble fasting, HATE the relief from food.  If you’re playing cards and find yourself enjoying it, hate that soulish enjoyment. And then what?  What a miserable life is that?  Exactly.. It’s called the world is crucified to me and I to it.  I am the stench of death to the world.  In Jesus’ name.  I will live no other way.  But isn’t that miserable?  No. Because I have the Holy Ghost.  To do so without would be absolute orphan-hood.  To do so is to live by the Spirit, and let this world fall away.  And, it *IS* the treasure to do so.  Worth selling all for.

It is not to get super anointed and then have a breakthrough to enjoy life.  No, the only thing I will rejoice in is righteousness and hate wickedness, and therefore I will have joy above my companions.  I know that I am MOST HAPPY in the consideration of His Kingdom, and that it shows up when I run out an when I am persecuted (Matthew 5:3,10).  I will live in these places and be most happy all the time, all 8 of them, and the others throughout the Gospels.  It’s how Jesus lived, died, and why the Father raised Him back up.   The very things He preached.  I am dead to this world, and the thing that keeps me going in the right direction is to hate this world.

Come down to not being more loving.  Even anger.  Come right back to the beginning. God said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?  If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it (Genesis 4:6-7).

Did you know that you know the answer to your question. Why aren’t you more loving?  Because of the things in your own heart.  Fears, pains, wounds.  I have found that some of the inner healing stuff has helped, as well as deliverance, but I am not sure I would fully trust most of those camps as they are today.  Things like Theophostic have some awesome tools, but I haven’t seen it do all that I want either.  Especially without real faith.

But, the question comes back to the one God asked Cain.  What is the need to be angry?  Anger is always secondary to something else, it is a self-defense mechanism.  It usually covers a fear or an unfulfilled need.  But, what are those but places we have not trusted in Him?

If you try to live this life and get “your best life now”, you will never get there.  It is what you might call a “crucified life”, for it is, but it is also the treasure that is worth more than the other.  If we can see it enough with our Spirit, and believe it enough, it is better than the earthly life…

Ultimately, I don’t care if Finney or Mike B is right.  I want the gospel, and I want it by Faith.  The Kingdom is a person named Jesus Christ.  I do know that He loves me in my weakness, even when i don’t have a clue.  I call it “Grace to learn and discipline when we know better.”  Even punishment…

But even Mike B says that much of what is called prophetic today is really pathetic.  I have met many people in many camps, and while i have seen many fulfilled prophecies, I have seen many that were very messy, even if they were seeing something.  Someone’s interpretation of my emotional condition is not prophecy.  And a soulish, earth-based counsel, even if it seems to solve the problem, will only recreate the original problem at a higher level, one hundred fold as bad.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is of the Spirit is Spirit..

What is the solution I see in the Sermon on the Mount?  Don’t be satisfied with anything less than 100% obedience.  Even if you fall, get back up, but keep going. If it is the flesh, it wont last, and as you continue to cry out, refusing hypocrisy and lawlessness, He will SHOW you how to live by His Spirit, and by true Gospel faith perfectly…

The message I originally heard Georgian preach is absolutely right.  You are righteous only because of Christ in you.  Yet, the difference between him and most people is Georgian believes it by faith, and is preaching it to bring faith to the hearers.  Yet, it is the only way to be righteous.  By faith.  But, if you’re really in faith, you will not continue in it.  He was right in how I heard him first preach it, but only by the element he never mentioned, the substance of faith, the way in which we have access to this grace!

Why did it work for Finney?  Because his preaching brought faith to the hearers.  One of the reasons it doesn’t work as well today is because of the lack of repentance and the lack of preaching against sin.  Hebrews 6:1, and the whole mission of John the Baptist, repentance leads to faith!  If you don’t repent, chances are, you will miss true faith.  Even then, it took a while even for some of the twelve to get faith.  He knew which ones did not believe.  Phillip apparently got it right at the end.  “At last you believe”.  When you have faith, it is more real than the vapor you interact with in your life.  THIS is Gospel faith.  THIS is worth losing an earthly life for.  THIS is TRUTH.  So, we have the way, repentance and cleansing (brazen altar and bronze sea).  The truth, the Spirit’s illumination (candlestick) and the fellowship of the Spirit (loaves of shewbread), along with intercession (golden altar)….  And, finally, the life…  The final chamber, the holiest place, the kodesh kodesh, with the mercy seat and the ark and the cherubim..  This is eternal life, to know Him, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent John 17:3.  This is… This life….  There is no other!  Beyond this, there is no service, other than the one already performed.  I sometimes call it God’s easy chair.  He wanted to share the living room, but after sin, had to put up a curtain in front of his favorite seat.

What is the difference maker in the ages?  Some call it this, some call it that?  What makes theophostic work?  What made Finney’s preaching work?  What makes any of this work for us?

It is impossible to please God without one thing, and only this….  This is what made Abraham–not better, not this or that–it made him RIGHTEOUS before God… His FAITH.  Abraham believed, and it was credited to him as righteousness.  That belief in Him lets Him come in (thoughts are powerful, eh?  one good thought and Jesus comes right into the throne of your heart), and as we let Him, He rules our heart and life and produces his character in us….  Or brings it…

Again, deliverance has helped.  Inner healing has helped. Forgiveness has helped. But, if nothing else, continually crying out until God has showed me, piece by piece, bit by bit.  How do I know I’m right?  What’s my proof?  In the spirit realm, and for Eternity..  My Faith is proof.

Faith was my key.  Listening to people with demonstrated faith has helped.  Yet, through it all, it brought me back to one salient point upon which the whole thing turns around.  That faith at the beginning, when I heard and believed when I was very young.  That faith was sufficient.  I didn’t know or understand much then, but I believed, and it was counted as righteousness. It’s been many turns and mistakes later.  And, it’s been hard to get here.  And, I have had to fight doubt and unbelief and discouragement and fear.  But, it is that original faith, alive still now, that makes the difference.  It is the simple belief, and simple trust, not its perfection that brought me to Him.  And, I wish I was taught the truth and how to stand, but suffice to say, I’m here now.  Thank-you for His faithfulness.  And, as I’ve seen in my own personal struggles.  With strong demonic torments from hell.  Where spikes and needles and all sorts of arrays are set against you…  FAITH….  simple believing in Jesus with no doubt, stops every dart of the wicked.  Simple faith.  Faith is proof.  How do you stop a demon from charging?  Faith.  They try to twist and rip the brain to pieces to get you off that. But, the moment you drop into bare bones faith in the blood covenant of the Lord Jesus, every devil from hell breaks. And, sometimes, just to hold onto that, I have to do alots of things…. like fast… pray alot…  Stay very focused in my life…  Because the moment my heart is drawn into fellowship with something, it can begin to have access to me… whether they are people or things or even ideas… ideas are very powerful… You meet someone into communism these days and you know it’s a devil.  Thoughts are powerful.

But, the deeper and truer I get into it, while that simple faith is sufficient, and this is the testing of it that proves it genuine, it is that mask thing. That hypocrite thing. That liar thing. That coward thing that I run into the most, and that is the deepening of it.  Why is it so hard?  Because of what’s in my heart.  The desires for other things. The want for this life. All borne, ultimately out of a place where I don’t trust the Father enough for what He’s able to give.  If I knew He was my provider, sufficient, I would not worry about 2012. If I really saw that life as more, I would be content to die this moment. If I really sought the Kingdom first, I would not try to be the most up and coming minister on the planet, or be overly concerned with my latest book (which I have one, by the way).  The only thing a gift, which is temporary, does is to advance the Kingdom, and that is the only reason I want it. The moment I use the anointing to promote or elevate myself, I am in sin.  Marketing and trafficking.  I would promote a good revival campaign, and I would use and demonstrate whatever signs the Lord gives me, as a city on a hill, but the heart, the only one thing, is to please Him.  And, by His Grace, I’ll do it that.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life.

That is a living reality in the Spirit realm.  Each of those phrases.  Each of those parts.  Those words are a divine address, as are all the words of God, to a reality greater than ours.  As heaven is real, so are the places addressed by this little part.  His Only Begotten Son. That man. That Divine. Perfect..  As I look to those words, I can see words, or I can see Him.  Who Is.  The perfect one.  Spotless Lamb.  *I SHALL NOT PERISH*  For, as I looked upon Him as that snake on the pole, so I am healed.  *I SHALL NOT PERISH* is the address of salvation.  The salvation that is a real place.  *that whosover believes*, This is the eternal location of the requirement of this promise.  These are not words, but these are realities as real as God Himself.  They are divine majestics, assigned a place in glory, as Eternal as the cross.  These were penned before the world began by God Himself, to be our portal to their divine destiny.  It is not the words themselves, although it is, but it is the Eternal Radiance, the heavenly city to which they point to.  They are bigger than time itself, and as undeniable as the Almighty.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will NEVER pass away.

This is the essence of faith, at least by one expression.  What is the unifying glory of all of these camps?  Those who became holy did so by true faith in the Eternal reality of blood of the Lamb, my savior, the person Jesus Christ, crucified and buried for me, which I can know, as I know my own soul, by FAITH.  They saw the true light, and believed.  Why did one million Israelites leave Egypt but only TWO make the promise?  Because of their unbelief..  What is the light and easy yoke?  HATE this flesh, this life, and everythign of it. The things of this world distract, and deceive.  Live by the Spirit, and you will be free.

As for those on the journey.. It is not mine to judge by my own measure, but only to say, keep on going through faith.  Faith to faith, glory to glory.  Faith brought you in, faith brought you Him, so keep on going, until you’re glowing, and you’ll be His, completely.  Baptised into the sea and the cloud. Now let’s go beyond the Jordan, and see what is to be seen.  Take the Land!

And, do you want to know what the right measure of whether we are in God is?  1 John 4:16. if we abide in love, we abide in God.  And, you are right. So much as you are not loving, you are instructed to put a knife to whatever is in you life that would make you so.  But, I would caution you with this.  The religious spirit is intense and persecutes greatly, even in the thoughts.  What seems like love may not be, and what does not seem like love may actually be.  Would you help an adulteress and then still have the courage to warn her of worse consequences if continued?  Would you stop the dsiciples from calling down fire, but then decry woe seven times on the pharisees?  Would you instruct not to judge, and then proclaim coming judgements for sins?

You see, His judgements weren’t His own, and his proclamations weren’t His own.  He only spoke exactly what He heard His Father, and did only that.  Finney is right.  This is the call of every Christian, to give up everything.    This is life. And yet, even in my weakness, He still called me “son”.  And, in that, I will always be His.

I can’t bring you that faith, but the Word does, even as I have spoken it.  It has been, and will continue to do so.  Lights will “come on”, as they say.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

I can offer you this ray of hope though…  Even John the Baptist looked forward in faith to a Messiah he himself would baptize, but whose death he would would not live to see.  He had to die in the Old Covenant, not the new.  Yet, as great a man as he was, the greatest born of woman, he was used of God amidst his own sin.  He had this to his credit, above the Pharisees.  He cried out to Jesus saying, in effect, baptize me!  For I am unworthy.  The Pharisees, the hypocrites, stood as leaders despite their own depravity, and denied it.  The stood on the banks of the river, claiming no need for repentance, and were not baptized of John.

So long as you live as one cut off, saying you are blind, you are not guilty of your sin, according to Jesus.  And, as you seek HIm, you will find Him, as you seek for Him with all your heart.  You’ll find Him.  He’ll show you your own heart.  And, He will cleanse you.

And, one day, if you do not relent, you will stand only in the strength of His Spirit within.  We call this “bedrock”.  Flesh is sand, and the spirit, well, is the substance we live on.  If you stand in your own strength against any army, you will lose.  But, you plus Jesus wins every time.  We don’t get angry because anger is not our god.  We do not get bitter or hold offense or grudge because we do not worship them..  Get the picture?

Get free; Be free; Set Others Free…  Win the world for Jesus!

There is more in this life than meets the eye….

His.