Exodus 20:16
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
We’ve seen that the true, ultimate intent of the Ten Commandments is to make us aware of our true state in God’s eyes so we can realize our desperate need for God to redeem and be to us what we can’t be for ourselves. Therefore, God’s living Word must be free to live and operate in us and through us, so He can fulfill God’s requirements for humanity, to Perfection – in our name. But, if the Lord is going to be free to operate within us, according to God’s Perfect Standards, we must learn to deal with the Whole Truth, truthfully and with integrity. Otherwise, we won’t be able to serve as His authentic embodiment on Earth. God’s image and likeness will obviously be pure and truthful, living in open, honest transparency on three inter-related levels. These are the levels: we’ll have to be honest and transparent: 1) with ourselves…2) with God…3) with the people in our lives.
1) With Ourselves – If we fail to be ‘real,’ honest and truthful with ourselves in our own heart of hearts, everything about us will be unreal and deceptive. Thus we won’t be able to interact with God, the Spirit of Truth, on His terms and on His Righteous Level. And, as we all know, our fallen flesh has an enormous handicap in this regard: the Serpent infected our souls and brains with his God-less lies to such an extent that our ‘onboard computers’ which control and direct our perspectives, thoughts, imaginations and desires, have been twisted, skewed and horribly disfigured. So it goes against our natural ‘grain’ to deal with the Truth, truthfully, just as God has created it. And so we struggle to deal with His Reality, realistically. That is a serious handicap, isn’t it? So we must remember the popular adage in cybernetics concerning bad or false programming and what happens when computers receive and try to use it in their operations. The adage is:
Garbage in…Garbage out!
In other words, you can’t achieve real, beneficial results…if the ingredients with which you habitually work are unreal and inherently defective. To do that is a formula for disaster! Real, beneficial, constructive fruit cannot emerge from roots that do not really exist! So if we make peace with falsehood and become sloppy in our efforts to eliminate it, we severely damage ourselves, and others. Our Master warned us about this most graphically:
Luke 6:47-49
“Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on The Rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Emphasis added.)
To operate in untruth is to operate in unreality or insanity! That always does damage to your soul’s mind, will, affections and success mechanism. It’s like trying to navigate through a strange new densely populated metropolis…using a map of an imaginary city that does not really exist! Obviously that will make sure that you will always be lost, frustrated and disappointed. So, the first area or level in which we must stop doing this kind of damage is to ourselves. We must be eminently honest and avoid these traps:
Do Not Deny, Mislabel, Minimize or Exaggerate the Truth About Yourself
Abuse and trauma victims struggle mightily with these things. In many homes and organizations of various kinds, and even in some entire religions and cultures, it is not ‘safe’ to be who you really are, or to tell the Truth. It is dangerous to be real accurate and precise. So the victims of such environments learn quickly to see Truth-twisting as an ultimate good. Thus they cover up their sins, faults and mistakes behind facades of lies. People that grow up in such environments suffer painful, fearful and devastating experiences in early childhood whenever they’re open and honest. So they grow up equating Truth with pain and danger, and they view Truth-twisting as the way to ‘save face’ and be safe, secure and insure their wellbeing. Their habitual fear of Truth and continual need for self-protection and survival, become so overpowering, that their minds soon become incapable of facing, or telling the Truth. As a result, the families, cultures, religions and nations that practice and encourage such toxic behavior, despite all of their chest-thumping and braggadocio, are doomed to fail in the end.
In addition to that, some of us undergo horribly painful, traumatic losses and shocking, terrifying experiences. When the pain is too great to bear, our minds tend to shut down to protect us. At first we can’t begin to process the experience truthfully and realistically. Hopefully, in due time, our minds will begin to process the reality of what happened. But for many, that never happens. The losses and the pain seem too great to bear. So they habitually push the Truth and the Reality away. And they develop mental ‘shut down’ mechanisms. At first there’s knee-jerk denial: “This can’t really be happening to me (us). It can’t possibly be true.” So they refuse to accept Reality in an attempt to avoid feeling the actual feelings that will engulf them if they admit, embrace and feel what is truly happening and are forced to accept the truth of their losses as they really are.
In that case, they try to ‘morph’ the reality into something different, something less traumatic, and not so frighteningly terminal. And they try to lessen their pain level by minimizing what happened or seeking some surrogate ‘scapegoat’ upon which to heap the blame. They think if they make it seem distant it will become smaller and less significant than it really is; thus they try to minimize their hurt and sense of shame them and lessen the impact of the consequences with lies. This is why people put false labels on things. Ineptitude becomes ‘bad luck’. Thievery becomes ‘cutting corners,’ criminal abuse becomes ‘protecting my rights’ or, ‘just kidding.’ Rage becomes ‘being concerned,’ vengeance becomes ‘seeking justice,’ horrendous emotional and physical mistreatment becomes ‘honor’ and ‘strict upbringing.’ And when the victims of such painful treatment feel utter terror, they too often mislabel it to avoid how it feels to face and process what is happening. They avoid issues that generate fear or anger by saying things like “It’s not that bad’ or, ‘I’m not interested in this” or, “I have more important things to worry about”, or, “I’m too busy to get involved” or, “I’m better off than a lot of other people”. Thus they avoid the fear of having to face what seems unbearable and avoid issues in ways that in their circles, are socially acceptable.
And in cases where a person is raging and violent, instead of admitting what they are feeling and doing, they often twist the Truth and blame their victim(s) for what is happening. “Do you see what you’re making me do? If you weren’t so stubborn and wicked and stupid, I wouldn’t have to do this! I have to do this for God’s honor and for your own good!”
Or if a person feels slighted or left out, the strong sense of outrage and deep, vengeful resentment they feel is disguised as being ‘tired’ or ‘sad.’ But such false input confuses their ‘onboard computers.’ The feeling part of their human equipment registers one thing… but the calculating, conniving, controlling part of their equipment forces them to mislabel the Truth and to try to transpose it into something that is muted and less impactful. But of course that does nothing to resolve what is truly happening nor does it heal the wounds that they try are trying so hard not to feel. Thus they ‘stuff’ the very powerful, potentially explosive emotional energy that is generated, keeping it trapped and hidden deep within their hearts. But that emotional energy is like powerful explosive material! If it isn’t properly and safely vented and resolved, it corrodes and disfigures the mental, physical and emotional health of the soul that is refusing to deal with it. Thus the issues and experiences and the trapped voltage that keep regenerating, can never be worked through, concluded and outgrown. Instead the voltage keeps recycling and building up, until eventually, it becomes too powerful to contain. Then some kind of powerfully destructive explosion takes place in the future, and causes even more damage to the person that is doing it and also to whoever is unfortunate enough to be nearby when the explosion takes place.
2) With God – If we refuse to have an authentic, Truth-based relationship with ourselves we won’t be able to have one with the real, true, living God, or with anyone else. How can we have a real relationship with the Spirit of Truth when we’re always denying Reality and trying to avoid the Whole Truth? The true, living God isn’t afraid of the Truth! How could we even think of such a thing? We are the ones that fear Truth and Reality! And when we twist Truth, the real God can’t heal or teach or correct us. Nor can He impart His Wisdom and show us how to face and effectively work through our issues and resolve them in healthy constructive ways.
So Truth-twisting humans are doomed to fail, because they keep trying to do two conflicting things at the same time…relate to God and to other people…while trying to deceive them at the same time! That inner conflict and turmoil will cause increasing emotional voltage, not to mention insanity, to build up and remain trapped within them. They will fail to grow and mature emotionally and spiritually, nor will they be able to gain in wisdom and relational skills, as long as they remain addicted to such crazy behavior and reaction patterns.
Do Not Add To the Truth About Yourself
People who struggle with chronic feelings of shame, rejection and inadequacy instinctively tend to add unreal things to their truth in order to ‘improve their self image’ to try to control and manipulate what others will think about them. That self-delusion may mute and deaden their feelings of inferiority for a short time because Truth twisting becomes like ‘emotional anesthesia’ that temporarily deadens our true feelings. During those deadening times, our troubles seem to disappear. But deadening what we feel is not the same as ‘doing well’ in Reality, or ‘feeling good’ about the Truth. Truth-twisting will never allow us to be at peace with God, or share and rest in His Truth, Reality and Perfection. When we numb ourselves, we don’t experience true good feelings. When we’re numb…we can’t feel anything! And because our mood-altering behaviors and the chemistry-changing substances do nothing to deal with our issues or resolve our conflicts, or solve our problems, all we get is some temporary anesthesia that soon wears away. Then, when we reawaken, the dreadful realities are still before us so we repeat and repeat the numbing process until it becomes a full-blown addiction! That of course creates even more problems…for us, and for anyone unfortunate enough to have to rely upon us in major areas.
When we create a false self to make people think well of us and admire and accept us, we are actually rejecting and abandoning our true self. We refuse to claim it as our own or be seen in public with it. And to the part of our soul that has to register and feel this rejection and abandonment, it is as painful as having to see your spouse commit adultery with another, right before your eyes! Only in this case, it isn’t your spouse doing this to you. It is you doing it… to yourself! You reject and hold your true self in contempt… and in place of it, you give what’s left of you, to another self… a phony, unreal self that you claim is better and more to your liking than your true self! And so the real part of your soul will register and receive wound upon wound due to your habitual betrayals. Thus feelings of being rejected, abandoned, wounded and hopeless will become habitual because you recycle them again and again. And so the shame, pain and anger voltage within your soul will regenerate and grow and deepen into a powerful destructive ‘time bomb’ that will be lurking within you. Since you refuse to assume responsibility for what you yourself are doing to yourself…you will have to find someone else upon which to lay the blame. Thus you will become a monster, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, blaming others for what you cannot stop yourself from doing.
Truth-twisting purchases future trouble for all concerned
When we subtract from, or add to, or mislabel, or ignore or deny the Truth about ourselves, we are refusing to abide in the world of sanity. Thus we enter the realm of Self-delusion or Unreality! This truly is the Darkness of the Serpent, and it puts us at odds with the Creator of all things who is Light! As long as we engage in such behavior, what we really do, and what is truly done to us by others, and the true feelings and fears we have, continue to be stuffed deep within ourselves. And none of that can ever see the light of day. This is the essence of demonic, Truth-twisting Darkness! Nothing can be dealt with in such a toxic environment and no problems can be resolved in Reality when this is our habitual practice. In this sense, we abuse ourselves by failing to meet our true needs. And that develops a chronic sense of being unimportant, unlovable, worthless and without hope, because we keep rejecting our true self and publicly declaring that we don’t know who that person is and will have nothing to do with him or her. That is like condemning the person we really are, to a life sentence in a solitary confinement dungeon, with no hope of escape!
And this carries over when we try to have a relationship with Almighty God. We can’t do it…because we keep offering a false self to Him, in place of the person we really are, the one that He created us to be. So we behave as Simon Peter (Shimon Kefah) once did when he denied himself in public. By denying his true self, Peter forced his Master Yeshua to feel the effects of seeing and hearing his beloved disciple disown Him in public. Peter rejected the living Word of God…the Messiah of Israel…in the Presence of God…out of the fear of man:
Matthew 26:69-75
“Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant-girl came to him and said, ‘You too were with Jesus the Galilean.’ But he denied it before them all, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.” When he had gone out to the gateway, another servant-girl saw him and said to those who were there, ‘This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ And again he denied it with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’ A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you talk gives you away.’ Then he began to curse and swear, ‘I do not know the man!’ And immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, ‘Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.”
Matthew 10:26-28
“Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
What Peter did to his beloved Messiah, set the tone, or created a precedent that many other Jewish people have followed throughout history. Out of ignorance or because of bad teaching, or because they fear what their elders and loved ones will think and do if they own up to the Truth, they keep rejecting and denying their Messiah! But Peter wasn’t ignorant. He knew better. The Holy Spirit of Almighty God had revealed the Truth to him concerning Yeshua. He knew who Yeshua was (See Matthew 16 and 17:1-8). And many of us in this generation know from the Scriptures and the insights received from the Holy Spirit who Yeshua really is. But, because we’re terrified of what our families or employers or peers will think, say and do to us as a result, we too sell out and push Truth away. We deny that we know and serve God’s living Word. In doing so, we murder our own souls, just to try to save our necks, or our status in this Titanic of a world and its flaky, treacherous, self-adoring society.
Peter didn’t deny His Lord because he did not believe. He didn’t do it because He hated His Master Yeshua. He didn’t disown the Messiah of Israel because Yeshua had wronged him. He did it because he was terrified of what his fellow Jews would think and what they would do to him if he let on that he was a close, personal intimate friend and disciple of the man that a group of elite Judean temple leaders were in the process of lynching! So, none of this was about Yeshua; it was about Peter’s fear of being real and faithful to God and to His Whole Truth and owning his true self in public. The danger forced Peter’s mind to link the Whole Truth with a sense of overwhelming shame and terror at the thought of severe injury or death. And so he fell into the Serpent’s pit of Darkness…and Unreality.
This incident also brought out a habitual character flaw that Peter struggled with – shame and fear of rejection in the presence of his fellow Jews. Because he knew they would reject him if he owned up to what he really was, fear drove him to resort to creating and projecting a false self, behind which he would hide at certain times (for another example of this see Galatians 2). Peter’s fear of man drove him (and those of us who do similar things) to disown and betray Truth… to the point of disowning his Covenant friend(s)…and his true self.
This is similar to what drives abused, neglected and abandoned children, as well as people who have undergone severe traumas of various kinds, and people that live in hyper-controlling, shame-based cultures and societies. They can’t feel safe unless they try to control their feelings and situations, and the thoughts of others, by indulging in similar shame-based behaviors. They fear the consequences of standing on Truth more than they fear the consequences of repeatedly betraying it and murdering their own souls. Abuse victims do this because they have never known anyone whom they felt they could trust! If they knew God, as He really is, they would be able to trust Him at all times and in all things, even when they have done wrong and committed gross sins! But when they do not know the true God, they are compelled to take matters into their own hands and strive to control and eliminate the tremendous amounts of fear, insecurity and suspicion they chronically feel, by developing unconscious automatic defense mechanisms… habits by which they try to ‘hide’ themselves and thus control the people with whom they must interact. They disown and betray their relationship with themselves, and with God, and with the people around them, and replace the Truth with all kinds of false fronts, disguises, aliases and smoke screens of misinformation and outright lies and webs of deception. Beloved, people that do that, live in total dishonor. They do not do it because they are upholding God’s honor and His Truth. They do it because they are the victims of the Serpent who has pulled them into his Darkness and continues to keep them trapped therein.
And, Peter, as soon as he heard the rooster crow in the distance, snapped out of his fear frenzy. Now the enormity of what he had done suffused his consciousness. Yes, he had probably saved his skin by denying Yeshua… but at what enormous cost? Now the fact that he had survived, no longer gave him any relief. It tortured him! The fact that he saved himself by betraying his Master overwhelmed him with gut-wrenching remorse! Now the guilt he felt over having turned his back on the one he loved more than anything or anyone else in this world, consumed him! Now he could see the monstrous Darkness into which he had fallen. Fear had driven him to tear his soul in two. The calculating, conniving, deceiving part of him tore away from the part of his soul that contained the real Peter, the true friend and disciple of his beloved Yeshua. Now he felt what Judas had felt. And although Peter didn’t kill himself, there was nothing left in him that resembled his former self. He no longer had a true self! His deception stripped him of everything that was ever of any real value to him. Now, his real self was nowhere to be seen.
Many of us do similar things for similar reasons. Our fears and insecurities compel us to publicly conceal, deny and twist what we really are and what really happened and what we suffered or did, into unreal configurations. We do it to protect ourselves from something we dread, something that seems so horrendous that admitting the Truth and facing the consequences become unthinkable. So we are tempted to betray the true Covenant Love and Commitment to God and to His people whom He intends to entrust to our care. And then, because the pain and fear become overpowering, we ‘medicate’ and ‘anesthetize’ our tortured souls with drugs, food, alcohol, pornography, sexual immorality, overwork, overachieving, religious self-righteousness, materialism, control-obsession, fame, exalted status and the mindless distractions provided by all of the loud worldly music and entertainment outlets that are now available.
But it is out of this tomb of living death that God’s Word summons us. He commands us to come out of that Darkness and into His Eternal Light! If we refuse to repent of what we are doing and continue to cave in under the pressure of the fear of man and the toxic shame we feel, we will continue to betray the Whole Truth. And, we will deprive ourselves of all the freedom and good effects we could have enjoyed, if we had dealt with the Truth, truthfully. As long as we allow our control addiction and our webs of deception to strangle and incarcerate us, we will never achieve and enjoy all of the stages of growth, maturity, refinement and true purifying love that can be ours if we learn and observe healthy, honest, boundaries, and take advantage of the honest, constructive feedback that our loved ones would give to us.
Even if people do disapprove and react negatively to us when we stand on Truth, at least we will know that we are being true to ourselves and to Almighty God. And that will set us free from our former bondage to the Father of Lies and the craven fear of man. In most cases, once we’re full grown adults, if we are faithful, humble and honest, open and transparent with the people in our lives, we will separate ourselves from Darkness and the people that maintain it. And we will gravitate toward new friends and companions that will give us honest feedback and mirror Truth to us, instead of lies. And if we’re wrong or immature in our dealings with them, we’ll be able to learn from their honest feedback and gain more of the skills we need to develop so that we can grow and mature and enjoy increasingly wonderful, healthy, productive and satisfying relationships. This is what will transform our lives and result in healthy, honest marriages, families, congregations, organizations and societies. But if we continue to give in to our feelings of fear, shame and laziness, we will murder our true selves and pollute our atmosphere with lies, and abide in the Darkness of the Father of Lies.
3) With Others – Denying our true self damages others too, especially our spouses, children and families. In true, healthy human relationships, people give of themselves to one another. There is give and take, mutual sharing and interaction. Each one gets to know the other with increasing intimacy and authentic accuracy. But when we won’t accept ourselves and refuse to be seen in public with our true self, we have no true self to give to the people we claim to love! We deprive them of being able to have a genuine relationship with us and they have no hope of ever being able to derive and enjoy the true fulfillment that would be theirs if we gave ourselves to them, just as we are. So when, for whatever reason, we only go through the motions of engaging in a relationship with someone, and the ‘self’ we give is a cheap manufactured substitute, we do a great wrong to our spouse, our children, other family members and colleagues and neighbors. And we will react very negatively whenever they try to get close to us.
We will never have a true friend if we can never be a true friend. Nothing we do or say in the presence of others will be real or authentic. A carefully crafted and maintained counterfeit substitute self may make it seem as if we’re interacting; but in truth, we are cheating the other people by keeping people at arm’s length and misleading them with our deceptions. We will force them to try to be satisfied with something that is as phony and unreal as a mannequin! We may not consciously intend to defraud and hurt them; nevertheless, we grossly cheat and short-change them by maintaining an unreal existence and meaningless interactions, while they keep trying to get close to us.
And of course we grossly short-change and deprive ourselves of the same potential benefits. If we place our toxic sense of shame or inadequate inferiority over the authentic love, affection, intimacy, joy, growth and fulfillment that would be ours, if we dared to make ourselves open, transparent and vulnerable to others, we too will be deprived and frustrated.
The Fallout of Being ‘Unreal’ with God
From the beginning of the Scriptures to the very end, the Gospel of God’s Righteousness always begins with this command: ‘Repent!’ Much is implied and required by that word. Only people who are real and honest in their hearts about themselves are able to repent and come to God in true humility and conviction of Sin. Only they can receive the grace He freely gives because they know and admit that they are utterly needy and bankrupt in themselves. We were not created to meet our own needs; we were created to be God’s image and likeness, to follow His living Word and receive everything from His Holy Spirit! We were created to abide with and depend on His Word to be our Fullness and Eternal Perfect Satisfaction.
Matthew 5:1-4
“When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and began to teach them (His disciples), saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’” (Emphasis added.)
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing (Word-embodying realignment) of your mind, so that you may prove (actually demonstrate by your life) what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Before we can trust God, we have to get to know Him… as He really is. His Love, Mercy and Compassion are infinitely Perfect… even as His Righteousness and Justice are Perfect. And because He is changelessly Perfect we can be sure that, regardless of what we do or fail to do against His Righteousness and Justice, and regardless of what happens to cripple, maim, disfigure and corrupt us as we make our way through this earthly existence, God, in His changeless Perfection, is ever able and ready to finish what He began. He gave each of us our true, image and likeness identity, purpose and destiny. Those things are our birthright and our calling; and God’s calling is irrevocable! Therefore, we can always count on Him to give us whatever we need to restore and reinstate us and give us what is needed to fulfill our identity, purpose and destiny, to His Perfect Satisfaction and Eternal Glory. No matter what happens… because He is Perfect… we can always trust Him and turn to Him and come to Him, just as we are, to receive what He has for us in the Infinite Treasury of His Perfect Finished Work in Eternity.
Genesis 2:1-3
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work, which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work, which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work James 4:8 which God had created and made.”
James 4:8
“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (Emphasis added.)
There’s no need to wallow in arrogant independence and phony pride, or craven mistrust, inferiority and inadequacy. None of that is necessary. God, in His awesome, eternal Perfection, will always add what we lack. He will be to us whatever we cannot be in ourselves. He will make right in us whatever is wrong or twisted or corrupt, as soon as we turn to Him and ask Him to be God to us so that we can share in His own Perfection. There’s no need to think more highly of ourselves than we ought; or to despise, reject or think lower of ourselves than we ought. God is ready to share His Perfection with all of us! We can always come to His living Word made flesh. Our Messiah and Eternal High Priest will always respond and share with us the awesome Perfection He shares with His Father, just as we truly need it to be applied:
John 17:1-5
“Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the Glory which I had with You before the world was.”
God’s Word is here to share all of God’s Perfection with us. We need not try to take matters into our own hands to try to meet our own needs or control what other people will think of us. With God, there is no need for shame or feelings of inferiority or shame-based ‘mannequins’ to hide behind. We simply come to Him to receive what is needed to enable us to share in His Perfection:
John 17:6-10
“I have manifested Your Name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your Word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.” (Emphasis added.)
Matthew 11:25-30
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
“‘Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.’”
By this we see that if we’re not open to the Whole Truth contained in the living Word of God, we won’t dare to come to God just as we are. And He won’t be free to cleanse, correct, and restore us. And if He cannot do that, He can’t abide within us and work through us. As long as we choose to remain under the influence of the Father of Lies, the God of Truth removes Himself because our spirits, souls and bodies remain closed to Him. But if we recognize our original living death existence for what it really is, and repent of it and are willing to forsake it and die to it, THEN we can open up and be real and honest with God and come to Him as we really are, with the full expectation of receiving from Him everything He knows we need, and that only He is able to supply. And He is always eager and ready and anxious to fill us with Himself!
John 4:23-24
“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Emphasis added.)
Notice that one of the Names that God gives to Himself in Scripture is ‘The Spirit of Truth.’
John 14:16-18
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (Emphasis added.)
Ephesians 4:17-25
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are (Spirit-bonded, Blood Covenant) members of (God and of) one another!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Our Human Relationships
Have you ever had to deal with a habitual liar? For a variety of reasons, they lie even when there is no apparent need to lie! It’s not so much that they decide to lie; it’s more that they are incapable of dealing with Truth as it is. Some pathological mechanism in their inner workings, a toxic, destructive configuration in their ‘hard-wiring’ gears and compels them to twist the Truth or add or subtract something before they can relay it to anyone. Even after they’ve been proven to be lying, and even after being severely punished for lying, they can’t stop doing it. For such people, there is no other pattern available to follow, no other way in which to operate. It’s almost as if there’s a demonic law burned into their brain that compels them to twist the Truth at all times. Thus they disfigure and alter what is true, and add an artificial, unreal twist to it.
When you deal with such people, you can’t afford to allow yourself to believe anything they say. You must always check and try to verify or disprove what they said. This is what shame-based people who feel compelled to control their situations and the thoughts and reactions of people in their lives are like. You can’t have a true love-based interactive relationship with them because you can’t trust or rely on them. There’s nothing real or substantial to trust! So there can be no true relationship. And if that’s what we feel compelled to do, any relationship we may try to have with our spouse, or our children or family members and friends or fellow believers, colleagues and neighbors will be a destructive fraud… something based entirely on lies and deceit.
Beloved, although we do these things out of fear and not malice or hatred against others, we are condemned to failure. Why is that? It is because the energy in us always seeks the path of least resistance. If we naively believe that the best, easiest thing to do is to hide and twist the Truth and try to control everything and everyone we deal with, that’s what we’ll do. But the damage this does is incalculable. People that do that have no future! If we were to see the horrendous fallout that comes from trying to work with false ingredients, we would realize that this is not the true path of least resistance at all! It is the way that leads to Death!
2 Corinthians 7:10
“For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to Salvation (Yeshua), but the sorrow of the world produces Death.” (Amplification added.)
How did Peter react to his disastrous episode of denying his Lord and Master in public? Well, he did the opposite of what Judas did. He came back to the Lord, just as he was, to receive what he needed. He came to the only one who could forgive, redeem, restore and reinstate him. That’s what we all need to do! Peter could have easily ended up the same way as Judas. But he didn’t! So what was the difference? Judas was filled with so much despair that it drove him to kill himself! That proved that he did not have a shred of hope in Almighty God’s eternal living and written Word in his heart. Apparently Judas did not know God intimately and personally enough to realize that he could always trust in His Perfect Nature and Character and Self-less ever-faithful Blood Covenant Love. He never caught hold of the awesome revelation God has given to us about Himself in texts like Genesis 3:15 and 21 and Psalms 46, 91 and 136. If he had only known that God, in His Eternal Changeless Perfection, can always be trusted, and that He is the Safest Being in existence to whom any of us can come, Judas would have automatically repented and turned to Yeshua to receive forgiveness, reconciliation and whatever reinstatement he may have needed. And God, through His living Word Yeshua, would have given all of Himself to him, wholeheartedly and completely.
But Peter knew His Lord intimately. And so the despair he felt was not absolute. It did not strangle him to death. Yeshua’s trustworthiness and Covenant Love were much greater than his own despair. He knew he could trust his Master, even in this. And this can be seen from the following texts that relate to what eventually happened. In the first text, God sent one of His angels to the devastated disciples soon after Yeshua had been executed. Now it was time for them to realize that He had also been raised from the dead!
Mark 16:5-7
“And he (the Heavenly messenger) said to them, ‘Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples AND PETER, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’”
This was another revelation that God’s answer to every one of our issues, situations and problems is… the Resurrection that is embodied and shared with us in Messiah Yeshua. He IS the Resurrection! He contains the Perfect Finished Work of God that is contained in His Perfect Acts of Creation and Redemption. This is why His Father sent Him to cover Adam and Eve! His Resurrection Life invades our living death and makes us one with Him! This is what the Covering and the Coverer are to us…Yeshua…our True Head…in Him is contained the Fullness of God! And that Fullness is what fills in whatever gap or blank we may have. He is whatever we are not; He supplies everything we lack. Somehow, Peter knew this and so he did not despair. He repented.
He was absent when God sent the angel to summon the disciples. He was so torn apart by what he had done that he had isolated himself and withdrew from the company of his fellow disciples. So God instructed the Heavenly messenger to tell the disciples to seek Peter out and tell him that the risen Lord had specifically included and mentioned him in the new ‘marching orders’ He was giving them. This reassured Peter that nothing had changed between him and his Lord. He was still included, still loved, still numbered among the New Covenant disciples and destined to serve as an apostle of Yeshua, the living Word of God. As is always true with Israel, regardless of how faithless and disobedient she may be… so was it with Peter… and all the rest of us: the call of God to us will never be revoked or taken back! Turn to Yeshua, and He will restore you!
Romans 11:28-32
“From the standpoint of the Gospel they (the unbelieving, disobedient Jews) are enemies for your (Gentile believers’) sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you (Gentile believers) once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
Knowing that God can always be trusted, Peter listened to his fellow disciples when they came to coax him out of his seclusion…out of Darkness. So Peter moved back toward the Light of His Master. He rejoined his brother disciples. He was real with them and admitted openly and completely what he had done. And they also admitted their own cowardice and betrayals of the Master, and so together, that healthy, transparent little family made its way to Galilee, to encounter the Lord, as He had instructed. And this is what happened:
John 21:4-19
“Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will also come with you.’ They went out and got into the boat; and that night they caught nothing. But when the day was now breaking, Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. So Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you do not have any fish, do you?’ They answered Him, ‘No.’ And He said to them, ‘Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.’ So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’ So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work), and threw himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about one hundred yards away, dragging the net full of fish.
“So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already laid and fish placed on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish which you have now caught.’ Simon Peter went up and drew the net to land, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three; and although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples ventured to question Him, ‘Who are You?’ knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples, after He was raised from the dead.
“So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Tend My lambs.’ He said to him again a second time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Shepherd My sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love Me?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend My sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.’ Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me!’” (Emphasis added.)
This was the beginning of the highly advanced stage of Peter’s ‘Boot Camp’ training, the portion that would forge him, and his remaining fellow disciples, into the New Covenant apostles, and through whom the risen Messiah would introduce the Last Days Fulfillment of Israel. God’s Salvation Outreach to the entire Gentile world was about to begin, in fulfillment of what God’s Word had originally revealed and promised to Abraham:
Genesis 12:3
“And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Acts 1:8
“…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
Failures are Always Redeemable in God’s Kingdom
We can learn much from the way that Peter and his fellow disciples handled this excruciating situation. Their cowardice and fear and Peter’s betrayal were openly admitted with their fellow believers…and with the entire world! Every Gospel tells us of Peter’s denials! No doubt Peter himself and all the other apostles that also ran and hid when the Lord was arrested, insisted on this so that the rest of us could be encouraged and reassured of how great our God truly is. So we see that the Lord and His disciples were a beautiful, healthy, first century Jewish family. They were open and honest and humble with each other. They loved and faithfully accepted and supported and helped each other regardless of circumstances. It was always safe for each one of them to be what he was. This was the nurturing relational climate and atmosphere that God’s living Word created and maintained with His own, for as long as He was with them in the flesh. Truth was never swept under a carpet. It was never twisted or distorted. It was accepted and dealt with by the family, according to the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit…in a very thorough, loving, mature and growth stimulating family way.
But this is what so many of us moderns, even within Judaism and Christianity, sorely lack! In place of God’s True, ever-faithful Covenant Love, people of today receive abuse, abandonment, neglect and outrageous injustice. Countless children receive twisted, demonic treatment and false teachings and an utterly corrupt example from their truth-twisting elders and denying, self-righteous, hyper-controlling families, teachers and leaders. Billions of people have to struggle to survive in atmospheres, societies, governments, religions, congregations and families where even the most respected elders and leaders and paragons twist the Truth for all they are worth. They spread and impose lies and they stifle, control and manipulate those over which they preside. The atmospheres they create entangle people in destructive relational entanglements that are a far cry from the healthy societies, marriages, safe homes and nurturing, mutually satisfying and fulfilling relationships that God truly requires and offers. Instead there is corruption, immorality, hypocrisy, mistreatment, exploitation, hyper-control and extortion tactics that drive people to develop life-controlling addictions and mutually wounding, toxic, shame-based priorities, rules and systems that produce an increase of the Serpent’s Death and Darkness, rather than Almighty God’s Life and Light.
So after Peter outgrew the worldly, self-centered, radically independent ways he had inherited from Adam and the fallen world around him, he grew and developed, along with his disciple brothers and sisters, into another level of human life that was altogether new and Heavenly and far removed from what we all learn originally in this world. Those disciples learned to be a New Covenant human Temple of God’s Living Word and Holy Spirit! And the risen Lord entrusted them with sowing the seeds of the future Fulfillment of the Family legacy that had started centuries before, between God’s living Word, and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now the living Word, who had revealed Himself to them in the Person of Messiah Yeshua, abides within modern day disciples and He continues to teach and train us by the Power of the Holy Spirit! God and His Truth never change! We must change, especially if we’re called to be Last Days New Covenant disciples. So Peter tells us:
1 Peter 1:13-25a
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’
“If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear (of God, not of man) during the time of your stay on earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with Precious Blood, as of a Lamb unblemished and spotless, the Blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him Glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring Word of God. For, ‘All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the Word of the Lord endures forever.” (Amplification added)
When Peter rejoined his fellow disciples, he was as open, honest and transparent as the day he was born. He knew that they all knew what he had done. And they all knew that in their own way, they too had given in to their fears and run and distanced themselves from the Lord. So together, in total transparency, they obeyed the Lord’s summons to meet Him in Galilee. And when they all approached Him, there was no pretense, no phony posturing, no shame-based facade or aliases.
Now We Too Can Learn More of the Ways of God’s Family
Our Master’s Exodus Pattern will guide and lead us into His Life-giving and Life-enhancing ways. The closer we get to our Destination, the more will the consuming Fire of our God who is Truth in Person, cleanse and purify us. As you already know, the Follow Me Ministry is dedicated to explore and share the ways that our Master taught to His New Covenant Israelite disciples. You can see from the writings of His New Covenant apostolic writers that He taught them what it will take to fulfill the revelations and promises that He was sent to give to Israel from the very beginning:
Genesis 17:1-5
“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My Covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’
“Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, ‘As for Me, behold, My Covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.”
It began with one man and his immediate family. And after several centuries, that family had grown to be 12 Tribes, numbering two or three million people. And then the time came for God to make them into His Chosen Nation, through which He planned to reveal Himself to the other nations of the world, and teach them all His ways. Thus He revealed His Exodus Pattern in progressive stages:
Genesis 1:3-4
“Then God said (through His living, creative Word), ‘Let there be Light’; and there was Light. God saw that the Light was good; and God separated the Light from the (demonic) Darkness.”
Then God separated one man from all the rest of men:
Genesis 12:1-2
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing…”
Then God created the nation of Israel and separated them from all the other nations of the earth. He did it through one of Abraham’s descendants, a man named Moses. And this is how God began revealing more of His Exodus Pattern through that man:
“‘Therefore, come now (Moses), and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?’ And He said, ‘Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.’”
As you see in the other sections of our Follow Me Ministry website, there is much material available. It is all intended to help us begin, maintain and complete our Exodus from Egypt to the Land of Promise. It takes training similar to the ‘boot camp’ training that combat troops need to become knowledgeable and skilled enough to transform from slovenly ‘civilians’ into tough, highly trained, combat ready warriors. We need training, drill, discipline and much repetition to develop the brand new ‘Messiah in us’ spiritual warrior programming, hard wiring and skill levels we’ll need to embody Him and allow Him to fulfill our Last Days commissions and assignments from within us.
So the Exodus Pattern must not only help us begin our Exodus and effectively embark upon it, but also to complete our Exodus successfully. Training that specifically addresses the needs we have at each stage of the trip, the beginning, the middle and the end, are essential. The Journey cannot be effectively completed if we fail to make an effective beginning. Nor can the Journey be effectively completed, if we fail to persevere and grow beyond what we learn in the beginning about leaving Egypt behind. Leaving Egypt involves things that differ vastly from what we will need to transform into God’s full-blown New Covenant Israelite Remnant! So we need material and training that will take us all the way… from start to finish. It’s one thing to leave Egypt. But it’s an entirely different matter to be able to enter into Israel as full-fledged citizens and administrators of the New Heaven and New Earth and the New Covenant Israel that God promised to make of us.
The Exodus Journey contains a series of stages. At the beginning, everyone, even every Israelite, is totally ‘Egyptian’ (that is, habitual, confirmed, self-absorbed, self-pampering, carnal, worldly ‘civilians’). We’re all born into that. And by the time our Exodus begins in earnest, we are already exclusively programmed and wired to be ‘Egyptians.’ So at the beginning, all the newcomers will go through the motions of embarking on their Exodus without exception. But actually, they will automatically and instinctively cling to and ‘smuggle out’ with them as much of their old ‘Egyptian baggage’ as they can. Their old ‘civilian’ addiction habits, comfort zone patterns, ingrained perspectives, priorities and lifestyles will remain hidden in the secret folds of their souls and brains! This is unavoidable because of the way minds and brains work. The Truth is: old habits and comfort zones die very hard.
So the beginning of the Exodus has challenges that are unique to the first part of the Journey. The danger is that if we truly do not effectively repent of our Egyptian identity, perspectives, thought and reaction patterns, and deeply engrained habits and lifestyles, we will continually drag them along with us into the future. In that case, we will never complete our Exodus. The past will contaminate and ruin the future. We cannot be Egyptians and Israelites at the same time. We must die to one or the other; but we can’t have both. If we do not really die to our Egyptian ways, then instead of crossing directly into the Land of Promise and learning its brand new ways, we will go into an endless orbit that begins in Egypt, and will continually take us back to Egypt.
At this time, the Follow Me Ministry is producing material calculated to help us grow and develop awareness and information and thought and reaction and identity patterns that will gradually transform us into New Covenant Israelite disciples of our risen Messiah. That material pertains to the transformation of those that once were full-fledged ‘Egyptians’, into full-fledged New Covenant Israelites. That’s quite a transition! And we need material that helps to prepare us for that destination part of our Journey. And that is what the Follow Me Ministry is trying to provide.
But if you are new to all of this, and you’re just now being exposed to the kind of material that is offered by the Follow Me Ministry, then you must make sure you deal with your Egyptian past first…honestly and thoroughly. In that case, you will also need some material that is more basic, fundamental and geared for those who are in the beginning stages of their Exodus. You will need material that will help you get started on your Exodus and help you truly get underway. That material will help you ‘take off your Egyptian self’ so that eventually, once you truly are free and clear of that, you will be in the proper position to begin learning how ‘to put on your new Israelite self.’
If you find that you still struggle with recurring pain, shame, anger and sadness from your past, and if you know you have addictive behaviors and deeply-engrained negative, destructive relational habits that continue to cause you and your loved ones problems, pain and frustration, you need material to deal with those things. Or if, despite years of church or synagogue attendance, and despite having accumulated a lot of religious training and theological head knowledge, you still can’t seem to connect with God in a real, electrifying way. Or perhaps you have not yet truly experienced His life-transforming joy, peace, rest and the outrageous confidence that comes from knowing Yeshua, as He really is, there may be ‘residue from Egypt’ still operating within you that needs thorough and effective attention.
If that’s the case, then you will benefit from the earlier material the Lord gave me to share during the early Christ-Life years. That is the material, which over the years, the Christ-Life Ministry has refined and developed for this purpose. It is available to help you deal with the issues and experiences and problems that pertain to the early stages of your Exodus Journey…issues that originated in the past…perhaps even as far back as your early childhood.
In terms of the Exodus, childhood issues are ‘Egyptian Issues.’ Unfinished relational and emotional business or ‘baggage’ from your ‘pre-God’ past that continues to haunt or plague or contaminate your life as a disciple. That is ‘Egyptian residue’ that remains programmed in your soul and wired into your brain. If it continues to recycle and repeat itself in the present, that is a clear sign that you still need help in effectively outgrowing and disconnecting from the old ways. You can’t develop mature adulthood patterns for the future, as long as your soul and brain remain preoccupied with and trapped in the old childhood patterns you developed years ago. Those worldly habits and perspectives have nothing to do with the Heavenly replacements that God wants to give you in exchange. They will not be allowed in ‘The Land of Promise’. God is not interested in ‘fixing you up’ or ‘retreading humans’ or reconfiguring the same old you and coming out with a new and improved version of the same old you. God is much deeper and more radical and thorough than that. His Salvation and Restoration will be Perfect! So He is here to make you into a brand new creation, not only spiritually, but mentally, emotionally and physically as well! That’s why God’s True Exodus Pattern is not about self-improvement. It is about radical Death… leading to total Resurrection! This is why our ‘Egyptian Past’ must be dealt with as effectively and thoroughly as possible.
There’s Extra Help Available If You Need It
In our Follow Me website, I have mentioned the first ministry the Lord and I founded. It developed into a ministerial organization called Christ-Life Ministries, Inc. The Lord created the seed for it and entrusted it to me to plant and garden it. And when the seed took root and began to spread and multiply, the Lord brought other very capable and skilled ‘gardener disciples’ alongside to help develop it further, from stage to stage. In the beginning, that seed was named ‘The Christ-Life Solution’. I developed a support group type structure that was modeled on the Exodus pattern God shows us in the Torah. And I chose that name to distinguish what we were doing from what the worldly people naturally do. The world uses the ‘Self-life Solution.’ But God requires us to repent of that and exchange it for His ‘Christ or Messiah-Life Solution,’ The Ultimate Journey title was given to the material to describe the Exodus to which God has called us. It leads people out of bondage to demonic Darkness into the Light of an intimate, bonded relationship with our loving Creator. That Ultimate Journey material is extremely helpful, effective and successful introductory material. It helps you deal with issues and problems that pertain to the ‘leaving Egypt’ part, the ‘unfinished business of childhood’ part, of the Exodus, and to become well-disposed and properly aligned to move into the more advanced stages of the Journey where we learn what is involved in actually embodying the living Word of God made flesh.
As we consider the Ten Commandments that God gave to Israel in the early stages of her Exodus, I want to point something out that God reveals about the Israelites of Moses’ day. The majority of them had tons of unfinished childhood business that they smuggled out of Egypt in the dark, hidden folds of their souls and brains. And, because they did not effectively deal with the habits and original identity and thought patterns and perspectives they developed from childhood, they were unable to grow and mature spiritually. So, the great majority died in the wilderness, instead of being able to join Joshua, Caleb and the next generation of Israelites in the final stages of their Exodus. They couldn’t finish what they started! They fell short of the Finish Line. And that is still happening to more Jewish and non-Jewish people than we could ever count!
Beginning The Ultimate Journey
So we need material that helps to equip us not only to start well, but also to finish effectively and successfully, on God’s terms. Both are equally necessary and important. So let me tell you more about that other material that I, and my dear friends developed initially, so you can avail yourself of it if you know you need more help in dealing with your past. I refer you to the website of Christ-Life Ministries, Inc. which has its headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.A. You can get all the information you need by connecting with them. The Ultimate Journey staff will work with you to learn all you need to know about the support group manuals and training material and teaching tools they have available. Here is the website address: www.theultimatejourney.org and the email address for information is info@theultimatejourney.org; we also have a link to their website on our home page.
Christ-Life Ministries, Inc., is under the capable direction of my life-long partners and precious friends, Jim and Kathie Hobson. They and their capable staff and board of directors have built and developed Christ-Life Ministries into an extremely effective, multi-layered instrument for helping people deal with important issues that are involved in the making of a successful Exodus Transition. Many Bible-believing congregations of various denominations all across the United States, including our own Messianic congregation, Adat HaTikvah Tzion (the Hope of Zion Congregation), use The Ultimate Journey support group training material to great effect. It educates and trains people to learn and grow emotionally and to develop proper, mature awareness levels and relational skills that are needed to develop healthy family levels of interaction. And it has assisted countless numbers of individuals and families to make the transition that crucifies what we were before the Lord summoned us to follow Him, and helps us to exchange that for the Spirit-transmitted Life and ways of our risen Lord Yeshua. This is vitally important because the Kingdom of God is all about interpersonal relationships of the highest quality and caliber imaginable.
The destination into which God is intent on taking us is that awesome state in which it is no longer we who live in our flesh, but it is the risen Lord Yeshua who lives and operates from within us. By the time His Life is free to prevail within us, we’re ready for the Lord to lead us across the finish line that will take us into Father’s eternal New Covenant Fulfillment of Israel and all of Creation. The material of both ministries is modeled according to God’s Exodus Pattern, and the Exodus naturally breaks into three phases:
Beginning – Middle – End or,
Egypt – Wilderness – The Land of Promise or,
The Past You (the Egyptian child) – The Present You (the born again believer in boot camp) – The Future You (the Messiah-embodying, fruit-bearing Disciple).
There must be a definite break in our perception, awareness and lifestyle between what we were in Egypt and what we start to become after we pass through the Red (or Reed) Sea, which is like Baptism (Mikvah). That part of the Exodus requires a real death to the old identity and lifestyle, and a true experiential rebirth into a new, God-given identity, citizenship, economy and lifestyle that comes from the Kingdom of God. If we’re going to transform into the image and likeness of God, we can’t expect that God will allow even a trace of our former resemblance to the Serpent to remain in us. So it cannot merely be a self-improvement progression. It must be a total Death… Resurrection transition:
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.”
Romans 6:8-11
“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the Life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to Sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Now, in the New Covenant era, it truly is possible for Jewish and non-Jewish people who love and believe and seek to know the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to learn His ways and allow Him to draw them into total union with Him, and with each other. But it is also true that many who begin their Exodus ‘get stuck’ somewhere along the way, for one reason or another. So they experience frustration, disappointment and grief when what is promised in the Scriptures fails to become a living reality in their experience. And this is where The Ultimate Journey and its material become a tremendous support and tool for people who are truly serious about answering the call of God.
If you wish to learn more, and if you truly desire to grow and mature so that you can become a vital part of the Blessing that God intends Abraham’s Family to be to itself… and to the rest of the world, check The Ultimate Journey website and see the rich array of material and learning possibilities that are available for you.
We will continue our discussion of our struggles with Truth and Reality in the next segment.