The Art and Science of Joyful Suffering

Dear Ones, As you all are aware, we who have been called to follow our Beloved Messiah and been joined to the FMM family are in process of our corporate and individual Boot Camps… submitted to our Lord and Master as He refines us as silver which will allow us to accurately and adequately reflect Him to those around us. A number of months ago, our brother John Marquez shared a personal account of his Boot Camp experiences and what he is learning from them. The time has come for the rest of us Last Days disciples to learn these lessons as well. I offer the following from John and pray that we all can take to heart this mandate of being ever ready for whatever, and whenever, and whoever and however our Master may call us into the battlefield. May our hearts be as soft and moldable as John’s has been, so that when all is said and done, Yeshua will have been glorified to the fullest extent possible in and through our lives. In His Love and for His Glory, Your sister, Nancy

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“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; FOR IT IS GOD WHO IS AT WORK IN YOU, BOTH TO DESIRE AND TO WORK FOR HIS GOOD PLEASURE!” (Phil. 2:`12-13 NASB. Emphasis added.)

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “And He has said to me, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for (My) Power is perfected in (your) weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak (in myself), then (in Him) I am strong!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

Beloved friends… let me share some of my very personal, embarrassing experiences with you about what the Lord has required me to learn during my personal ‘boot camp’ training regimen. It has drastically altered my focus and mindset and life direction. It has ground what the world calls, ‘my sense of Self-esteem’ down to nothing! I am no longer the hero of my story nor am I the star of my own show. In place of the ‘me’ I used to like to think I was, and with which I once identified completely, Holy Spirit has been replacing that with our risen Lord, JESUS, OUR RESURRECTED MESSIAH. AND He is progressively taking over more and more of me, and whatever may pertain to the real ‘me’.

My flesh often resists, and struggles to survive… to avoid and eliminate the reality of the total death of my Self-life. But Holy Spirit is mercifully and persistently relentless in putting all of this back into its proper place. He keeps bringing back to mind the Reality that from now on, it must be Christ who lives and rules in me since my Self-life was crucified and died with Him when He died in my place. He is the awesome Blood Covenant Representative who died and took my radically independent spirit and existence with Him into Death. And now, since He is the only Human who has been raised from the dead and is alone, totally acceptable to, and accepted by, His Heavenly Father, from now on, only He must be my indwelling Life. His Perfect Presence, Reality, and Agenda must abide, prevail, and reign Supreme within my new regenerated Holy Spirit-filled spirit, and in my soul, and body, and whatever pertains to me!

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20 NASB.)

This type of ‘God lives in me, and I live out from Him’ boot camp training enables us to learn to walk and draw from and live by faith in Christ’s Resurrection Presence, Authority, and Power. This is what Holy Spirit must train us to become and do, in Spirit and in Truth. This constitutes our Exodus from Self-life to Christ-Life. And, as we experience the rigors of making this awesome transition from Self to living out from God’s Living Word, we experience tension between those two opposing forces. The fight between them in our inner being causes our fallen flesh, and its insane drive to ignore and bypass God, to feel fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and anguish when it is challenged and threatened. But the Spirit of God, abiding within, faithfully and relentlessly keeps drawing and leading us back onto the right path that leads us back in the direction of living in total oneness with Christ, which is God’s Eternal Land of Promise.

Beloved, the Apostle Paul wrote something in one of his New Covenant letters that has been burned into the very fiber of my innermost being. And I believe it is so essential and important for all of us to possess, that I’ll do my best to put it into words for you in a way that, hopefully, will brand its reality and meaning into your innermost being as well. Here is Paul’s text:

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond servants on account of Jesus.For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this TREASURE in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of THE POWER WILL BE OF GOD and not from ourselves… (and while we are empowered with Supreme Effectiveness from within, by His Power being given to us from within our spirits, our demonic enemies surround our bodies on the field of battle. And thus…)

WE ARE AFFLICTED IN EVERY WAY, BUT NOT CRUSHED; PERPLEXED, BUT NOT DESPAIRING; PERSECUTED, BUT NOT ABANDONED; STRUCK DOWN, BUT NOT DESTROYED; ALWAYS CARRYING AROUND IN THE BODY THE DYING OF JESUS, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR BODY! FOR WE WHO LIVE ARE CONSTANTLY BEING HANDED OVER TO DEATH BECAUSE OF JESUS, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR MORTAL FLESH.” (2 Cor. 4:4-11 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

The revelation God gives in this passage is exactly what all Last Days disciples will have to know and live by. In my estimation, this is what will prove to be the ‘life blood’ and spiritual Fire Power reserve that will flow and throb within each and every disciple that will faithfully prepare to usher in the Return of our risen Lord. And this is why I entitled this meditation, ‘The Art and Science of Joyful Suffering’. And it is also why I call the Last Days disciples, ‘The Stephen Generation’.

I give us all that title because like Stephen, we too will be called upon to embody what Paul wrote above, in very beautiful, amazing, and convincing ways. We’ll have to transform into ever-triumphant warriors that can withstand and push back against the evil and darkness that will be raging around us, thanks to the Awesome Divine Life that will be exploding out from within us. God’s Perfect Presence and Power will be flowing out from us into the world that is all around us. And our Commander and Shepherd will deal with each and every surrounding threatening force that will try to surround and overcome us. So our training, if we take full advantage of it, will make it impossible for us to take our focus off of our indwelling Lord and Commander because we’ll no longer have eyes or ears for anyone or anything other than Him!

“Now the Salvation, and the Power, and the Kingdom of our God and the Authority of His Christ have come (to reside in and work from within His Last Days disciples), for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love (that is, fret over, or feel compelled to preserve the life of) their (earthly temporary body’s) life even when faced with death! For this reason, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” (Rev. 12:10-12 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

And as we live by faith in Him, and not according to our own natural flesh-contaminated sight, He keeps demonstrating the awesome Fruits of His faithful Covenant Love and Mercy. When we live by faith in Him and embody Him, He is free to do in us and for us what only God can do. And this enables our Covenant Representative Champion to make sure that we receive credit for all that He is doing to obey His Father and fulfill His Plan in our name. So we can share His Heavenly Reward with Him, as His co-heirs… as if we were the ones who had done all of that work!

So not only is our Lord our Eternal indwelling Defender, but He’s also our Invincible Offense, our Fire Power and Weaponry that is always available for us to learn to use! And He’s our Impregnable Fortress, Inexhaustible Armory, and ever-available Storehouse of Provision! He is here to be Everything for us! And when a created temporary earthly disaster, cataclysm, plague, military attack, malady or setback tries to assail our temporary earthly souls and bodies, Almighty God Himself is with us to be our Inexhaustible spiritual Eternal Inheritance and Comforter who sees us through whatever we must face while we are serving Him in this world! And this is what was behind apostle John’s triumphant proclamation:

^“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world!” (1 Jn. 4:4 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Christ in us is the great ‘Treasure’ that Paul alludes to in his text. And He is the Treasure each Last Days disciple is in possession of at all times and in every situation or circumstance! The One who is always IN US is the Supreme Lord. He is our Answer, Remedy, Antidote, Rescuer, Solution and Resolution to every possible conceivable need any of us will ever experience! And our boot camp training is meant to drill this Awesome Reality and Blessed Assurance into our heart of hearts the way cattlemen brand the owner’s mark on the hide of a steer, cow, or calf. And once we’re permanently branded and our new Christ-in-us Reality becomes real and ever-present to us and in us, THEN we’re combat ready and battle trustworthy. And whenever the resurrected Commander of the Lord’s Hosts leads us into battle… we are blessed and reassured with the sure and certain knowledge that not only is He leading us, but He’s also indwelling, surrounding, and hovering over us and doing all the necessary work that pertains to our eternal wellbeing.

And He leads and brings us with Him into each battle to make sure we always have ‘front row seats’ so that we can be witnesses to the fact that He has already thrashed and completely conquered everything the satanic accuser of the brethren has vainly tried to use to harm and stop our Advance into the territory he usurped for a time, but must now surrender. In the years leading up to this FMM era of my earthly life, I never suspected that in my advanced ‘Golden Years’, I’d be so mentally fixed and focused on ‘The Last Days’, and on how desperately the Lord’s Last Days disciples currently need to receive this kind of specialized training from God.

But now my mind is permanently riveted onto the reality that we Last Days disciples must become eminently primed and readied for participating in the action that will suddenly erupt and spread all across the globe in the days leading up to the Lord’s long-awaited Return and His Total crushing Triumph over His satanic enemies. From now on His Absolute and Complete Takeover of all of His Creation must be our ongoing commission and assignment. And this is why His Total Takeover of us must first begin to be seen and experienced by others, as it works and produces its fruit from within us!

So what skillset is it exactly that we need in order to be combat ready and fit to fulfill our battlefield commissions and assignments? What is at the heart and soul of this training? What is the bullseye of the target at which our training conditions us to keep in the focus of our attention? What exactly finally renders us combat ready and fit to fulfill our battlefield commissions and assignments? Well, I will do my best to unpack it. It involves us, going through the discipline needed to completely update, upgrade, reconfigure and reprogram our brains and innermost mental equipment until we never take our eyes off of our indwelling Lord, but remain present to Him to attend to Him and His desires all day and all night, from now on. We must stop forgetting, ignoring, and bypassing His awesome Perfect Presence. God has given Himself to us so we could always abide in Him and interact continuously with Him in all things, at all times!

“Then they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My Name. And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold (because they still assume God lives in outer space a great distance away, and they are left alone and are responsible for every outcome of their lives. In that case, their satanic and demonic enemies will easily entrap and decimate them. )

But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Mt. 24:5-14 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

“But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. At that time there will be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left. “THEREFORE BE ON THE ALERT, FOR YOU DO NOT KNOW WHICH DAY YOUR LORD IS COMING! But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into! For this reason YOU MUST BE READY AS WELL; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will!“ (Mt. 24:36-44 NASB. Emphasis added.)

WE MUST BE FIT, READY, AND PREPARED TO RECEIVE HIM WHENEVER FATHER COMMISSIONS AND TELLS HIM TO RETURN TO EARTH! And now that I’ve been experiencing my boot camp training for a couple of decades, I can hardly focus on anything other than my indwelling Lord… in light of the Last Days events that have already begun to envelop us. What was so prominent to me in the 80’s and 90’s and the first part of this new century has faded and become dim. And now what our Lord is in us to be and to do in the Last Days has replaced the way I was and left me with a one track mind.

When my boot camp started in 2003, I suddenly began to be aware of this new direction seven full years before this FMM Ministry even began! That was when my heart’s focus started to change and fix itself on Israel, and His chosen people, and what yet had to happen in her regard for all of God’s promises to be fulfilled. I suddenly began to feel like I didn’t belong where I was. I began to feel out of place in my home congregation and in what I had been doing since my Teen Challenge days. And within the next year, the Lord provided me with a free trip to Israel, and He moved me into the Hope of Zion Messianic congregation that ultimately proved to be the birthing place of this FMM Ministry. And that association helped me to learn more about my Messiah and the Root Matrix into which His Father chose to place Him at His Incarnation.

All of that God-given revelation in Scripture reveals many aspects of God’s Son… His nature, character, mind, heart, and future fulfillments! And, because we’re running out of time, the time for all Last Days disciples to get to know their Messiah as He really is, is now upon us. Knowing Him will be absolutely necessary in our training and development into full-fledged, mature, combat-ready warriors that will be equipped to face and overcome the powers of Darkness amid the approaching times of tribulation, global conflict and local chaos as foretold in Scripture.

However, throughout most of Christian history, regardless of the denomination or worship style, this Last Days disciple training has not been given much notice or prominence. Much of the teaching and focus has been about us and our needs, But not enough has been devoted to Him and His Will and Plan and earthly purposes. And beloved, that imbalance must be corrected as soon as possible! The Follow Me Ministry began in 2011. And when I consider the mass of material I’ve written since we began, I can see that the material the Lord gave me is in keeping with what Last Days disciples are going to need. I didn’t desire, plan, or try to make any of this happen. The Lord just stepped in and did it. And this took me completely by surprise.

And now it occurs to me that the same kind of thing must have happened to Saul of Tarsus. Acts, chapters 8 and 9 tell us what he was like before the Lord confronted him on the road to Damascus. What an awesome ‘before and after’ transformation he underwent! Imagine what it must have been like for him after he had become a full-fledged New Covenant apostle! In former days, he had despised Yeshua and all He stood for! And he was a scourge to the Lord’s followers, a fire-snorting enemy, a hit man that hounded and persecuted any fellow Jew who would dare to believe and serve Him as Israel’s Messiah!

Formerly he was a bullet headed fanatical proponent of the Mosaic Covenant and the many man-made traditions of Judaism. And he despised those that were ‘different’ and ‘unclean’. And because of what he had been trained and groomed to be all his life, he would never have dared to associate with unclean Gentiles! So try to imagine the enormous difference in Paul, years later, after he had transformed into ‘His Messiah’s bond slave and His appointed apostle to the Gentiles’! Imagine how deeply his boot camp training and its outcome must have shocked and jarred the people that had known and been close to him in the old days! So will it have to be for all of us who are called to serve our Lord in the end of days!

A MASSIVE TURNING POINT EVENT MUST NOW TAKE PLACE IN EVERY JEW AND GENTILE ALIKE!

In his later years, Paul could have looked back and recognized a specific point in time and realized that it was his life’s personal ‘turning point’… the moment when something stupendous ‘apprehended’ him, and completely reversed the navigational headings of the rest of his days on Earth! So must it be for all the rest of us!

Before the Lord accosted Saul, what he would later be doing, saying, and teaching, as Yeshua’s servant, would have seemed like utter heresy and would have been impossible for him even to consider! But now, after his turning point event and his boot camp training period, he was a transformed man… who lived and thought in a way that would have been entirely out of the realm of possibility in his earlier years! That’s how much Paul had transformed.

It has been like that for me as well. My most recent turning point was the year 2003. I remember that in January of that year I began to have some very vivid dreams that made it very clear that I no longer belonged in the congregation where my family was currently worshipping. And in those dreams the Lord also made it clear that I no longer had any place in the world of official organized Church ministry, according to the common understanding. There was no place for me in the status quo world of organized religion that was common to the people who were around me at that time.

Suddenly I began to feel like a total misfit! But at that time, I had no clue as to why was happening or what would be coming next. And in March of that year, I heard a voice in my head that distinctly said: “You have seven years to build the army.” I really had no idea what that might mean. At first I thought it could be telling me I was going to die in seven years, but that of course proved to be incorrect. Nevertheless, as the weeks turned into summer, I had begun to get nagging premonitions in my head that concerned the Last Days… premonitions of really disturbing things that I really did not want to think about. They were glimpses of bad, disastrous, chaotic things, like natural disasters and economic meltdowns and political strife and warfare and religious persecution and civil disintegration all over the world. So in July of that year, I wrote out what I was sensing in an article that I entitled, ‘The Big Surprise’, which is posted elsewhere on this website.

Then in September, I was shockingly made aware of the dismal relationship and horrid historical events that had taken place between the Jewish people and the Gentile Christian Church. By temperament and personality, I was not predisposed or willing to dwell on scary, painful, or negative things. If at all possible, I would always try to avoid even thinking about such things. But now, I couldn’t escape or forget about the Last Days events and the horrors that are yet to come. And so a sense of urgency has developed within me because I’ve become convinced that the Lord’s Last Days disciples will desperately need to receive adequate preparation so they can be ready to face and deal with the horrendous things that will be enveloping this fallen world!

Seven Years to Build ‘The Army’

Concerning the disastrous historical events that took place between the Jewish people, and the Gentile Christian Church, I began to realize how much resentment and suspicion and mistrust exists between the two groups. Even today, the ancient Wall of Partition that Christ died to eliminate continues to be rebuilt and maintained by the terribly divided non-Jewish Church world, and the equally divided Jewish world as they are to this day.

Then out of nowhere, I was given an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, where I saw and heard things that I knew for certain the Lord had arranged for me to experience as part of my boot camp training and preparation. So I began to realize just how many things that currently exist in our individual and congregational lifestyles, both among Jews, and among Gentiles, would have to be crucified in order to enable us all to transform into ‘One New Man in Messiah’ as Paul envisioned in his letter in chapter 2 of his letter to the congregation in Ephesus. That ‘One New Man’ miracle seems, at present, to be way beyond our reach. Nevertheless God’s Word says it will be so.

So obviously, between now and the fast-approaching end of this age, some enormous world-shaking changes will have to take place! So… what kind of training will Holy Spirit have to give us… to predispose and prepare us to obey the Plan of our God? As I mentioned, the voice I heard in March of 2003 told me I had seven years to build the Ultimate Journey army. And sure enough, seven years later, my entire comfort zone was completely destroyed and my world was flipped completely upside down! In 2010, the seven years were up. And by that time I had become convinced that I no longer belonged in my current position with the Christ-Life Ministry and the Ultimate Journey portion of the ‘Last Days Army’ that was forming. I sensed that the Lord was divesting me of my official Christ-Life Ministry staff and governing board position.

But I had no other plans or desires. I’d been assuming that I would die at my Ultimate Journey post and would never move to another place or position. But on December 17^th. of 2010, the Lord spoke this into my heart: “I’m taking you out of where you are now. You’re finished building the Ultimate Journey part of the Army. It is in very capable hands, and it will do very well without you. The people in charge of it now are fully able to carry on without you. So stop doing what you’re doing. Submit your letter of resignation to the Christ-Life Ministry because I’m going to set you aside for a season… and show you what we’re going to be doing next.”

So suddenly I was ordered to resign and move out into ‘The Great Unknown’. And on that day the only clue about what would happen next I received was when the Lord gave me the name of the new assignment He was giving me. What we would be doing next would be called: ‘Follow Me Ministries’. At the time, that was all that I was allowed to know. So I spoke with the leadership of Christ-Life Ministries, and with my family, and with the leadership of the new congregation I and my family had recently joined. And no one among them put up any objections. I received nothing but lights. So clearly the Lord was telling me to follow Him into what I could only describe as, ‘The Great Unknown’!

The article to which Nancy referred to at the very start of this message, was originally written in 2016. But the Lord has given me more and more insights since then, so, to bring it more up to date, I edited the article and included some of what the Lord has been teaching me since it was first written. And I caution you: What I added to the article has made it to be lengthy and repetitive. But I never apologize for being wordy and repetitive. We are in desperate need of repetition. So here is a slogan our Follow Me Family needs to memorize and take to heart:

“Repetition is the mother of mastery and skill. Dabbling around is the mother of mediocrity and total failure!”

This being the case, I urge you to go over this piece repeatedly, and regularly. Break it up into small sections and ponder them not only in private, but also with a group of fellow disciples. If you do this, that process will begin to install new wiring into your brain and the repetition will reprogram and reconfigure your neurological and mental ‘onboard computer system’. And once new input is programmed and set into it with enough repetition, your onboard computer can gradually absorb more and more of the new data and will eventually, automatically, begin to use it to run you, and the way you operate, just like an ‘autopilot’ mechanism runs and manages and steers an aircraft!

In the beginning, the going is tedious. But with practice, it flows smoothly and eventually becomes like an automatic knee-jerk reflex. And that kind of ‘muscle memory’ automatic response is exactly what we’re after. Muscle memory is what combat ready warriors were able to develop during their rigorous boot camp regimens. All their disciplined drilling and repetitive practice created the muscle memory reflex reactions that work beautifully and automatically even amid the chaos, confusion, carnage, and terror of horrendous battlefield conditions.

So I recommend repetition for any of our articles that you study, including this one. This piece contains the heart and soul of what your Last Days disciple boot camp training is meant to instill into you and make of you – the image and likeness of your risen Lord. And so, having said this, I ask you to please apply yourselves. Get into the meat of the matter that Last Days disciples will really need to master in order to be ready for whatever the powers of Darkness may try to throw at us in the days to come. So here is the updated version of that article I wrote in December of 2016:

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“And He has said to me, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for (My) Power is perfected in (your) weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak (in myself), then (in Him) I am strong!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

Beloved friends… at this time I’d like to share some of my very personal, embarrassing experiences with you about what the Lord has required me to learn during my personal ‘boot camp’ training regimen. That process has drastically altered my focus and mindset and life direction. It has ground what the world calls, ‘my sense of Self-esteem’ down to nothing but powder! I am no longer the hero of my story nor am I the star of my own show. In place of the ‘me’ I used to like to think I was, and by which I once identified myself, Holy Spirit has been replacing that with our risen Lord, JESUS, OUR RESURRECTED MESSIAH.

And so Christ has been progressively taking over more and more of me, and whatever pertains to me. My flesh often resists and it struggles to prevent the reality of the total death of my Self-life. But Holy Spirit is mercifully, persistently firm and relentless in correcting, disciplining, and putting the workings of my mind and will in proper order. He keeps bringing back to mind the Reality that from now on, it must be Christ who lives and rules in me since my Self-life was crucified and died with Him when He died in my place. He is the awesome Blood Covenant Representative who died and took my radically independent spirit and existence with Him into Death.

And now, since He is the only Human who has been raised from the dead and is totally acceptable to, and accepted by, His Heavenly Father, from now on, He must now be my indwelling Life. His Perfect Presence, Reality, and Agenda must prevail and reign Supreme within my spirit, soul, and body, and in whatever pertains to me! “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20 NASB.)

This type of boot camp training enables us to habitually walk and act by faith in Christ’s Resurrection Presence, Authority, and Power. This is what Holy Spirit must train us to become and do, in Spirit and in Truth. It is our Exodus from Self-life to Christ-Life. And as we experience the rigors of making this awesome transition from Self, over to becoming as one with God’s Living Word, we experience a lot of tension between these two opposing forces. The conflicting tension between them causes the fallen flesh in which we must still live and operate at this time to feel fear, anxiety, anger, frustration and anguish. But the Lord remains with us to faithfully and relentlessly get us through the storms we encounter and He continues to lead and move us into God’s Eternal Land of Promise. The Apostle Paul wrote something in one of his New Covenant letters that has been burned into the very fibers of my innermost being. I believe it is so important for all of us that I will now do my best to share it with you in a way that, hopefully, will brand its meaning into your innermost being as well. Here is Paul’s text:

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond servants on account of Jesus.For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this Treasure in earthen containers, so that the extraordinary greatness of THE POWER WILL BE OF GOD and not from ourselves… (and while we are empowered with Supreme Effectiveness from within, by His Power being given to us from within our spirits, our demonic enemies surround our bodies on the field of battle. And thus…) WE ARE AFFLICTED IN EVERY WAY, BUT NOT CRUSHED; PERPLEXED, BUT NOT DESPAIRING; PERSECUTED, BUT NOT ABANDONED; STRUCK DOWN, BUT NOT DESTROYED; ALWAYS CARRYING AROUND IN THE BODY THE DYING OF JESUS, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR BODY! FOR WE WHO LIVE ARE CONSTANTLY BEING HANDED OVER TO DEATH BECAUSE OF JESUS, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR MORTAL FLESH.” (2 Cor. 4:4-11 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

The revelation God gives in the passage above will, in my estimation, prove to be the ‘life blood’ and spiritual Fire Power reserve that will flow and throb within each and every New Covenant Last Days disciple of our risen Lord. This text describes what they will be like amid the mortal combat with total precision and accuracy. And this is why I call Last Days disciples, ‘The Stephen Generation’. I give them that title because like Stephen, they too will be called upon to embody what Paul wrote above, in very beautiful, amazing, and eminently convincing ways. “Now the Salvation, and the Power, and the Kingdom of our God and the Authority of His Christ have come (to reside in and work from within His Last Days disciples), for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love (that is, fret over, or prefer) their (earthly temporary body’s) life even when faced with death! For this reason, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” (Rev. 12:10-12 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

Dear ones, God is making us aware of the great Secret that we Last Days New Covenant disciples have been equipped with and entrusted and commissioned to use… especially in the perilous times of battlefield-type conditions and situations. This Secret Weapon, Christ in us, is the great Gift of GOD! GOD HIMSELF abides in us, and He is continually working to fulfill His Plan and Commandments through us, and in our name! He makes sure that we get credit for all that He is doing, as only God Himself could do! So not only is He our Eternal indwelling Life Defender, but He’s also our Invincible offensive Fire Power and Weaponry! And He is our Impregnable Fortress, Inexhaustible Fortress and Armory, and Inexhaustible Storehouse of Provision! He is here to be all of this and more for our sakes! And so, whenever some created temporary earthly disaster, cataclysm, plague, military invasion, malady or setback tries to attack our temporary earthly souls and bodies, Almighty God Himself is with us to be our Inexhaustible spiritual Eternal Inheritance that will see us through whatever we may have to face for a time in this world! So no wonder the apostle John is able to proclaim: ^“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (1 Jn. 4:4 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Christ in us is the great ‘Treasure’ Paul alluded to in his text. And this is the Treasure each Last Days disciple must learn to interact with and receive everything from at all times and in every situation, event, and circumstance! The One who is always IN US is the Answer, Remedy, Antidote, Rescuer, Solution and Resolution to every possible conceivable need any of us will ever have to face and deal with! And our boot camp training is meant to acquaint us with this Awesome Reality and Blessed Assurance… and burn it into our heart of hearts the way cattlemen brand the owner’s mark on the hide of a steer or cow or calf. And once we’re permanently branded and our new Reality becomes real and ever-present to us and in us, THEN when it’s impossible for us to forget and ignore Him for long periods of time, we are finally combat ready and battle trustworthy.

And whenever the resurrected Commander of the Lord’s Hosts leads us into battle… we are blessed and reassured with the sure and certain knowledge that not only is He leading us, but He’s also indwelling, surrounding, and hovering over us and all that pertains to us to make sure we always have ‘front row seats’ so that we can be witnesses to the fact that He has already thrashed and completely conquered everything the satanic accuser of the brethren has vainly tried to use to harm and stop our Advance into the territory he usurped for a time but must now surrender.

In the years leading up to this FMM era, I never suspected that in my advanced ‘Golden Years’, I’d be so mentally fixed and focused on ‘The Last Days’, and on how desperately the Lord’s Last Days disciples currently need to receive this kind of specialized training from God. But now my mind continually focuses on the fact that we Last Days disciples must become eminently primed and readied for participating in the action that will suddenly erupt and spread all across the globe in the days leading up to the Lord’s long-awaited Return and Total crushing Triumph over His (and our) satanic enemies.

From now on His Absolute and Complete Takeover of all of His Creation must be our ongoing commission and assignment and destiny. And this is why His Total Takeover of us must first begin to be seen and experienced by others, as it works and produces its fruit from within us! So what is at the heart and soul of this training? What is the bullseye in the target at which it teaches us to keep aiming? What skillset is it exactly that will finally render us to be combat ready and fit to fulfill our battlefield commissions and assignments? Well, I will do my best to articulate what I believe the Lord has been showing me about this all-important matter:

“And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. For many will come in My Name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many people. And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pains. “Then they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My Name. And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold. But the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Mt. 24:5-14 NASB. Emphasis added.)

“THEREFORE BE ON THE ALERT, FOR YOU DO NOT KNOW WHICH DAY YOUR LORD IS COMING! But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into! For this reason you must be ready as well; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will!“ (Mt. 24:36-44 NASB. Emphasis added.)

This beloved, is what the Lord has impressed upon my heart with great urgency: WE MUST BE FIT, READY, AND PREPARED TO RECEIVE HIM WHENEVER FATHER COMMISSIONS HIM TO RETURN TO EARTH. And since I’ve been experiencing my boot camp training for several years, I can hardly focus on anything other than the Last Days events that lie before us. What was so prominent to me in the 80’s and 90’s and the first part of this new century has faded and become dim. And this new direction began to emerge in the year 2003, seven full years before this FMM Ministry even began!

And that was when my heart’s focus started to change and fix itself on Israel, and His chosen people, and what yet had to happen in her regard for all of God’s promises to be fulfilled. I suddenly began to feel like I didn’t belong where I was. I began to feel out of place in my home congregation and in what I had been doing since my Teen Challenge days. And within the next year, the Lord provided me with a trip to Israel, and He moved me into the Hope of Zion Messianic congregation that ultimately proved to be the birthing place of this FMM Ministry. And that helped me to learn more about my Messiah and the Root into which His Father chose to place Him at His Incarnation. So now it’s time for us disciples to really get to know our Messiah.

This intensely personal intimate interactive knowledge will be absolutely necessary to train and develop us into full-fledged, mature, combat-ready warriors that will be equipped to face and overcome the powers of Darkness amid the approaching times of tribulation, global conflict and local chaos, prophesied in the Scriptures. Throughout most of Christendom, regardless of the denomination or worship style, this Last Days disciple training has not been given much notice or prominence. But now that the Follow Me Ministry has been operating for several years, when I consider the mass of material I’ve written since we began, I can see that the material the Lord gave me and instructed me to post on this website is in keeping with what Last Days disciples are going to need. I didn’t desire, or plan, or try to make any of this happen. The Lord just stepped in and did it.

And I must admit that it has taken me completely by surprise. And now it occurs to me that the same kind of thing must have happened to Saul of Tarsus. Acts, chapters 8 and 9 tell us what he was like before the Lord confronted him on the road to Damascus. What an awesome ‘before and after’ transformation he underwent! Imagine what it must have been like for him after he had become a full-fledged New Covenant apostle! In former days, he had despised Yeshua and all He stood for! And he was a scourge to the Lord’s followers, a fire-snorting enemy and hit man that hounded and persecuted any fellow Jews who believed and served Him as their Messiah! Formerly he was a bullet headed fanatical proponent of the Mosaic Covenant and man-made traditions of Judaism, a ‘Pharisee of Pharisees’… a despiser of those that were ‘different’ and ‘unclean’. But consider the enormous difference in him years later, after he had transformed into ‘the apostle to the Gentiles’! Wow, that must have shocked him even more than it did the people that had known him in the old days!

A Massive Turning Point Event

Nevertheless it was true. He could look back at a specific point in time and recognize it as his personal ‘turning point’… the time when something ‘apprehended’ him, and completely reversed the navigational headings of the rest of his days on Earth! From that point forward, he was doing, saying and teaching things that before that turning point arrived, would have seemed like utter heresy and would have been impossible for him even to consider! But now, after a boot camp-type of training period after the Damascus event, he had begun to transform into, ‘the apostle to the Gentiles’, teaching and doing things that would have been entirely out of the realm of possibility in his earlier years! That’s how much he had changed, and I’m sure he must have wondered: “How did I get here? What happened to me? How did all that I am now, manage to sneak up on me so suddenly?”

That’s what it’s like for me. And, as I look back at my most recent turning point… the year 2003, I began to have some very vivid dreams that made it very clear that I no longer belonged in the congregation where my family was currently worshipping. And in those dreams the Lord also made it clear that I no longer had any place in the world of official organized Church ministry, according to the common understanding. There was no place for me in the status quo world of organized religion that was common to the people who were around me at that time. Suddenly I knew I was a misfit. But at that time, I had no clue as to why this had to be or what would be coming next.

And then, soon after I had those vivid dreams, I heard a voice. It was in early March of that year, and it distinctly whispered in my inner mind: “You have seven years to build the army.” Of course, at that time, I had no idea what that could mean. But I heard it very clearly. And as the weeks turned into summer, I began to get a nagging set of premonitions in my gut concerning the Last Days. They were premonitions of things I really did not want to consider or think about… glimpses of bad, disastrous, chaotic things, like natural disasters and economic meltdowns and political strife and warfare and religious persecution and civil disintegration all over the world. So in July of that year, I wrote out what I was sensing in an article that I entitled, ‘The Big Surprise’, which is posted elsewhere on this website.

By temperament and personality, I was not predisposed or willing to want to dwell on things like what is foretold for the Last Days. In the past, if it was at all possible, I would always try to bypass such unnerving gut-wrenching considerations and avoid seeing or even thinking about them. But now, I can’t escape or forget about what lies ahead of us. And the sense of urgency that makes me feel will not go away!

Seven Years to Build ‘The Army’

In September of 2003, the Holy Spirit began to rub my nose in the issue of the sad state of the relationship between Israel, the Jewish people and the terribly divided non-Jewish Church, such as they both now are. I never thought about that before, but suddenly it really began to bug me! I began to realize just how many mindsets, attitudes and lifestyles there are that are like ‘sacred cows’ in our individual and congregational lifestyles, both among Jews, and among Gentiles. And that status quo is riddled and comfortable with so much division, resentment, rancor and radical separation that all of our current comfort zones will have to be crucified and eliminated before any of us can become ready and willing to transform into ‘One New Man in Messiah’!

But at present, that miracle is still light years removed from our reach. But God says this is how things will turn out to be by the end. So what kind of training will Holy Spirit have to give us in order to get us ready to obey His Plan? I can’t get away from having to admit that everyone’s individual and corporate comfort zones, as they exist today, are all on death row! So the only option open for ‘believers’ is, PROFOUND REPENTANCE… RADICAL MIND AND HEART CHANGE! So all peoples must begin to learn to live with what Scripture foretells and to wait on the Lord to show us what He wants to do to us, in us, and in our midst. Everyone must learn to think, act, react, and interact as one with the risen Lord of Glory in this chaotic fast-approaching Era of Fulfillment… or else!

The voice I heard in March of 2003 told me I had seven years to build the Ultimate Journey army. And sure enough, seven years later, in 2010, my whole world turned completely upside down! I finally had to admit that I no longer belonged in my current position with the Christ-Life Ministry and the Ultimate Journey portion of the ‘Last Days Army’ that was forming. I began to sense that the Lord was transferring me out of my official Christ-Life Ministry staff and governing board position. But as of yet, I had no other plans or desires. I felt content and comfortable where I was. I had come to assume that I would die at that post and never considered moving to any other place or position. But suddenly I was ejected from my current comfort zone.

Then the Lord put this into my heart: “I’m taking you out of where you are now. You’re finished building the Ultimate Journey part of the Army. It is in very capable hands and it’s going to do very well without you. The people in charge of it now are fully able to carry on without you. So I’m stopping you from doing what you’re doing and now I will set you aside for a while… and show you what we’re going to be doing next.” This took place on December 17th. of 2010. Suddenly I knew for sure that the time for me to resign and move out had come. And that was the day the Lord gave me the name of the new assignment He was giving me: ‘Follow Me Ministries’.

At the time, that was all that I knew; but it was clear that the Lord was telling me to submit my official resignation from my position. So I sent my letter of resignation stating that in two weeks, effective January of 2011, I was stepping down and moving out. Of course I discussed this first with them, and with my family and the leaders of my congregation. And none of them put up any objections. So I received nothing but green lights. So I took the leap of faith and waited to see what would happen. What happened was that I was admitted to what I have since come to realize was my official entry into‘Last Days Boot Camp Training’, and the Great Unknown that always follows when the Lord says, “Follow Me!”, and you decide to dare to do it.

The Follow Me Ministry Begins

In January of 2011, the Follow Me Ministry was birthed. A few dear friends stepped forward to do whatever they could to help me, even though I still had no clear idea of what we were supposed to start doing, or how. One friend spontaneously stepped forward and promised to create and manage a new website for the new venture. That suddenly provided me with a ‘platform’ from which I could begin to disseminate whatever Father was going to give me to share. So now I knew that my new assignment would include another round of intense ongoing writing.

Then, after a few days, some preliminary ‘downloads’ began to come and I began to put them into words and post them on the website in earnest. And sure enough, the focus of those downloads was always somehow connected to matters pertaining to Israel and her God-given task of serving as priestly mediator between God and the rest of the human race leading up to the Last Days Fulfillment of God’s written Word and Plan.

Historically, the relationship that has existed between Israel and the Church from the earliest days to the present has been a disaster filled with rancor, mistrust, violent conflict, and intense disastrous suffering. So how are the Lord’s Last Days disciples supposed to be trained and prepared to do their jobs during the ever-increasing storms and troubles they will have to face and endure as the climactic finale of this age approaches?

Soon after I began to write and post the downloads on the website, I was contacted by a dear brother in Kenya, Africa. He is a pastor and he told me he had been surfing the web and had stumbled onto our website. So he and his congregation members read the few articles I had posted in those early stages requested that he and his people would be allowed to come under our teaching umbrella. That’s how our connection with our precious African brothers and sisters (who now operate a vast intercontinental distribution system that translates, prints and distributes our FMM material to countries on every continent and all parts of the world) was first formed.

And exactly two years after FMM began, my boot camp training kicked into high gear intensity. On January 1 of 2013, my wife Mary’s ordeal of serious illness and major surgeries began. I had been suspecting that something like this would begin to happen sooner or later, because the Lord had made it very clear that the material He was going to give me to share would have to be authentic and ‘laboratory tested’. Such vitally important and specialized training material has to be as real as the future dangers we will all have to face and overcome will be. So the Lord made it clear that it would not be enough for me to tell the people what the message is… I, and the other members of the FMM Family of disciples-in-training, were going to have to BECOME the message. And we would have to demonstrate the reality of it by actually living it out through our own timid and reluctant flesh!

In other words, the Lord was not going to permit me, or the others, to merely ‘tell’ our message to others. We would have to SHOW IT TO THEM! We will have to DEMONSTRATE AND PROVE TO THOSE AROUND US THAT WHAT WE PROCLAIM IS AUTHENTICALLY FROM GOD! And that could only be done by us… after having gone through the crucible of personal Last Days boot camp personal preparatory experience ourselves!

So, I had to be the first to enter His Last Days Follow Me Boot Camp. I will have to know exactly and precisely, from personal experience, that what I would be sharing with all other Family members and the rest of the world in the future, would be true, battle tested information that is in complete agreement and synchronization with God’s written and Living Word!

So the typical boot camp types of shocks, unexpected setbacks, disappointments, impossible challenges, overwhelming stresses and frustrating failures began to come at me from all directions. And that kind of training and discipline and toughening continues to this day! And this is precisely what all of the Lord’s Last Days disciples will also have to get used to. We must really know how to feast and rejoice in the Wonder of having almighty God Himself living and working in us, even as the hurricane of worldly events, conflicts and disasters swirls all around us. Now we must be equipped to operate amid the enormous spiritual stakes that will be placed before us – the ‘Winner takes All’ stakes between God, and His people, and the powers of Darkness!

Dying in Order to Live

So now I understand why the Lord has allowed me to live so much of my life having to stamp out an endless assortment of ‘brush fires’ and deal with a myriad of sudden crises, emergencies, setbacks, and seemingly impossible challenges. One major example was when I had to take Mary, my precious wife of 53 years, to an emergency room on New Year’s Day of 2013. That was followed by several major surgeries, and hospital stays and gradual health deterioration during the years that preceded her passing in 2019.

During those years, it was necessary for me to serve as Mary’s 24/7 caregiver. And so my whole life was filled with stress-filled situations, problems, challenges, unexpected occurrences, some of which were very stressful, puzzling, and at times, agonizing. It was necessary for me to undergo to these pressures and challenges because of all that the Lord has to cleanse from within my fallen flesh. My enormous personal limitations and inadequacies always require Holy Spirit’s close attention and supervision. So I will remain at this level of training until the Lord redeploys me to my assignment in Eternity! So I suppose that gives me the right to claim the title of ‘designated Follow Me guinea pig’ poster boy’.

YOU WOULD THINK THIS WOULD BE ABSOLUTE PURE MISERY… BUT THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE!

I know what I shared with you sounds really bad. At first, new fledgling disciple candidates may cringe at such a prospect and look for the nearest escape hatch! They might assume that no one in his or her right mind would want to sign up for something like this. But honestly, that would be a huge mistake. In all this time I have never had to wallow in misery, fear, anxiety or hopelessness! In fact, THE OPPOSITE HAS BEEN TRUE!

Disciple life isn’t endless gruesome torture and teeth-gritting inconvenience! It’s gloriously freeing and liberating! There’s a glorious paradox involved here… the same kind of paradox that we see throughout the Bible. In fallen Man’s Reality, what is seen to be happening or not happening in this fallen and ever-changing temporary world appears to be our ultimate Reality. And it is scary, often frustrating and miserable, and apparently hopeless. But for disciples, nothing about such a prospect should be cause for alarm! According to God’s ways and His Eternal Heavenly Reality and perspective, the Disciple Reality abides in God’s Eternal Heavenly Kingdom IN THE CONTINUOUS PRESENCE AND LOVE AND GRACE OF ALMIGHTY GOD! And in that exalted Dimension, the Glory of our Glorious God and His Everlasting Goodness and Overwhelming All-Sufficient Perfection!

In our fallen Sin-corrupted Self-adoring earth-bound world, everything is about us, being abandoned and left to our own devices. The order of each day is: ‘Every man for himself!’ So such people must obsess over survival issues in a competitive dog-eat-dog nightmare existence. And that beloved, is what the Lord calls ‘the broad path that leads to Perdition’! But disciples pursue a completely different path… yes, it’s arduous, but at the same time it is also gloriously joyful, light, heartwarming, and fulfilling! It’s true that God requires His Son’s disciples to continually move, climb, and struggle on our way to Eternal Life in our Heavenly Father’s Embrace and Favor. And the majority of the fallen human race insists on ignoring all of that. Instead, they scramble to find the broad path that leads to luxury, personal gain, ease, comfort, self preservation and temporary satisfactions.

But disciples are called to be truly free of what is created and temporal, so they can be continually alive to the One Who is Eternal! So we die to our original temporary earthly identities and radically independent self-adoring independent ways. And we learn to remain submitted to and covered by the Absolute Authority and Management of God’s Living Word, our Messiah. Scripture likens this to becoming our Master’s bond slaves! But what that really means is this: we must know Him so well that we’ll finally be able to trust Him so deeply, that we gladly surrender our entire past, present, and future over to Him and what He has provided in His Eternal Plan for our full Redemption and Restoration!

We don’t become His slaves because God is insecure and has a weak ego and needs us to pour ourselves out to satisfy His Self-serving needs and desires! No, we give ourselves wholeheartedly to Him because He is always so stupendously LOVABLE, GOOD, KIND, MERCIFUL AND TENDERLY AND ALL-SUFFICIENTLY GRACIOUS toward us! So our disciple training must make us absolutely and unforgettably aware of the Perfect Presence of this incredibly Good and Loving and Infinitely Faithful, Loyal Almighty God who now resides, abides, and operates from inside of us as soon a we’re ‘born again’ and spiritually regenerated!

You and your indwelling Lord have become ONE! He is in you and you are in Him… forever! And He now wants to become so real and alive and precious to you, that you can interact with Him living within you at all times… now and forevermore! He resides and works in you to blot out anything else to the contrary that may happen to be going on around you in this fallen, fleeting, Sin-adoring world.

When you’re born again, you’re equipped to live and operate in two completely diverse kingdoms and realities. One Kingdom abides in and around your God-given spiritual ‘Inside Reality’. And the other comes from the fallen Sin-corrupted world that is all around your earth-bound mortal body. So there’s always a battle going on between our ‘Inside Information, and our outside information’. Your inner Kingdom Reality can only be known, apprehended and experienced by the obedience of your faith in what God’s Word reveals to you. And the outer reality is known, apprehended and experienced by the tangible materialistic information provided by your natural God-given physical and mental faculties and surroundings. So here’s the critical issue: The Living God who gave Himself to make you His, requires His Word’s disciples to die to their former original worldly identities and self-adoring lifestyles, and realize that, from now on, Almighty God Himself is here to be your LIFE and your ALL!

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our Life appears, then you also will appear with Him in Glory.” (Col. 3:1-4 NKJV. Emphasis added.)

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Mt. 16:24-25 NASB.)

So, beloved, to be all that God intends us to be, our Self-life must decrease to zero in our natural earthly estimation so that Yeshua, who is now our one and only True Life, may truly be All in all… for us… in us… through us… and all around us! To be free to achieve and own the rewards of His Perfect, All-Sufficient Works of Salvation, Redemption and Resurrection Restoration, we must learn to stop thinking, reacting, acting, and interacting as if what He has already done isn’t ‘good enough’ and must somehow be improved and completed… by us! In other words, our God-given Inside Information must always take precedence over all the the outside information that operates in the world around us. We must be broken of that knee jerk instinct of ours that drives us to assume God isn’t real, and thus compels us to have to step forward, take center stage, grab the steering wheel of our earthly life and management and keep trying to direct everything in our own strength and by our own devices, as we think best!

We must die to those Godless habits so we can be free to practice and drill and develop the new habit of resting peacefully and rejoicing with God and deferring to depending on Him, and the ever-present Realities His All Sufficient Covenant Love, Grace, and Provision. “If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. SET YOUR MIND ON THINGS ABOVE, NOT ON THINGS ON EARTH. FOR YOU DIED, AND YOUR LIFE IS HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD! When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in Glory.” (Col. 3:1-4 NKJV. Emphasis added.)

We Must Be Ready to Receive Him When He Returns!

“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you must be ready as well; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” (Mt. 24:42-44)

It’s difficult to learn to live by faith instead of continuing to live by sight, touch, hearsay, and inner hunches. It is difficult because, this means we can’t merely be led by what we see, touch, feel, and assume. We must no longer rely on and trust in our own understanding and time-honored opinions, feelings, and biases. Instead, we must train ourselves to relish, revel in, and live by faith in the All-Sufficient Perfection of our God and Shepherd and Provider, who always abides within us. We must be trained to believe this, and more than that, we must vigorously and aggressively begin to identify with Christ who lives within us, and rely upon the Eternal Perfection of His utterly flawless, All-Sufficient, Finished Works of Creation, Redemption, and Restoration… knowing that He has already foreseen and provided for and paid for everything we will ever need that is covered by, and flows out from, these Eternal Realities! So we must make this enormous Exodus-like transition from our original natural, earthly, ‘my life’… to Yeshua’s Heavenly, Spirit-transmitted, ‘Christ in me Life’!

In other words, to possess everything God can possibly bestow… we must first release our grip on everything we once thought we were and owned and hoped to achieve on our own! And beloved, that happens as we go through the various stages of this Exodus Wilderness Boot Camp that leads us finally into God’s Land of Promise! This is the essential ‘weaning process’ that, admittedly, is difficult, shocking, scary, bewildering, and eminently frustrating… BUT WELL WORTH THE EFFORT!

The paradox is: I first have to die to myself once and for all. That is, I must be weaned of the habit of relying on myself, or anything else like me that is created. I must stop trying to strengthen, enhance, improve, or preserve and rely upon myself… so I can finally be free to become one with, and see myself as being totally one with My Perfect risen Lord and Shepherd. I must learn to continually allow His Holy Spirit to show me how to drink of and feed on, all that He is and rely on the Fullness of God that He contains within Himself in His Eternal Glorified State!

“So then the Jews were complaining about Him because He said, “I am the Bread that came down out of Heaven.” And they were saying, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of Heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop complaining among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who believes has eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.This is the bread that comes down out of Heaven, so that anyone may eat from it and not die.I am the Living Bread that came down out of Heaven; if anyone eats from this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I will give for the life of the world also is My flesh.” (John 6:41-51 NASB.)

So this is why we have to forget about ourselves and admit that when our Messiah died on the cross ‘as us’, and in our name, WE DIED WITH HIM! And once men die, then, for them, everything is utterly and forever terminated! After that, self-assertion, self-reliance, self-improvement and radically independent striving are completely out of the question and remain absurd, repugnant considerations! And God requires us to be convinced in our hearts that we have died so that our risen Lord may live in us from now on! We must always remain fully aware that, in ourselves, we are totally undone and are thus completely out of our own picture! It must be this way because our inadequacies, failures, blunders and rebellious criminal inner roots remain toxic and can never be successfully amended, corrected or improved. That’s why they must be completely replaced by the risen Son of God Himself!

The more we blow it and the more we’re blindsided and taken off guard and pushed over… the more we fail the tests and trials and surprise challenges that this boot camp keeps shoving in our faces, the more we prove that we’re dead in ourselves and better that is for us! And the more we forget about ourselves and our inadequacies, the freer we are to remain conscious of our indwelling Lord. And we can begin to rely on and draw from the glorious benefits of the Life-exchange with our risen Lord that has taken place in us!

God’s people understand this, but worldly flesh-driven people are blind to it. And this is why all of the Lord’s hyper-religious enemies were so offended when He kept teaching that all of their personal efforts to be ‘good’, and ‘spiritual’, and ‘holy’ by their Judaic pre-Christ efforts to keep the Law were, as Scripture had already pointed out, no better than a pile of filthy menstrual cloths in the sight of God!

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isa. 64:6 KJV.)

What I’m saying in this meditation really sounds crazy to people that do not know God or His New Covenant ways and who have a worldly non-Biblical and God-less worldview. Nevertheless, it is true that none of what God requires of us depends on us, or what we can do or how well we might manage to do it! All of that comes from our radically independent Self-life’ deceived mindset! But as soon as we die with Christ, everything we think we know and have and aspired to is totally out of date and obsolete! And now that old wiring and programming must be eliminated and replaced with new up to date pertinent data.

“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as 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 of your mind, so that you may prove 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.” (Rom. 12:1-3 NASB. Emphasis added.)

“So I say this, and affirm in the Lord, that you are to no longer walk just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their minds, 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 up to indecent behavior 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 way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new (Christ-in-me) self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the Truth.“ Therefore, ridding yourselves of falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, because we are parts of one another. (Eph. 4:17-25 NASB. Emphasis added.)

our Commander gets us ‘combat ready’ through the complete renewal of our minds and rewiring of our brains!. This renewing process trains us to rely exclusively on the Perfection and All-Sufficiency of what God has already done in the past, through His Perfect Finished Works. God’s glorious Living Word…. the Father’s beloved resurrected Son, became one with us in the Eternal Covenant! And that makes us to be one with Him, and also one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all of God’s Glorious Perfection!: “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Gen. 1:31 NASB.)

“And so the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their heavenly lights.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 on it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Gen. 2:1-3 NASB.)

So all of God’s Work is Finished, Perfect and utterly Complete! And that means He has already covered and provided for all of our needs, past, present and future! That’s why He commands us to join Him in His Perfect Rest!

“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 determines to reveal Him.” “Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, 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 comfortable, and My burden is light.” (Mt. 11:25-30 NASB.)

So… admitting and owning our blunders and failures actually helps to free us from our former habitual reliance on ourselves. We and our outdated brain wiring and programming and its personal baggage, keep getting in God’s way! So the Lord delivers us from that deadly humanistic ‘God helps those that help themselves’ delusion that we hear so often in this world. The Lord wants us all to be free of ourselves and to learn to enjoy and revel in this awesome Freedom that He has already earned for us all! As far as God is concerned, He only helps the helpless (those who are totally crucified and who know it!) He sends His Living Word and Spirit to cover those who know and admit that they are ‘poor, wretched, miserable, blind and naked! (See Revelation 3:15-22.) And from that point forward, everything depends on the Perfection and Fullness and Adequacy of what God’s beloved Son has already accomplished… in our name!

Ephesians 1:3-6

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Emphasis added.)

1 Peter 2:9-10

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

So the more I flub and fail… the more inclined I am to see through myself and get in touch with my utter bankruptcy and living dead state! And that drives me to realize how desperately I need my Master to take over. My failures help me learn to look to, and draw exclusively from, Him! And when I do that, He always pulls through and proves that all of His revelations, claims and promises are absolutely true! So this is exactly where we need to be in order to complete our Exodus trek.

So, the more I fail, the more I look to and draw from what is in Him. And the more I look to Him, the more everything, down to the tiniest detail, turns out great and in perfect order. And it’s blatantly obvious that I had nothing to do with it! The obedience of this level of exclusive faith, hope and trust in God’s precious Perfect Living Word, allows God to fulfill and manifest the Truth and Reality of His promises to the whole world. Faith and Rest in God’s Word opens to us a spiritual pathway from Heaven to Earth. And through it, Holy Spirit is able to keep transmitting to us God’s promised All-Sufficient Grace from the Treasury of the Word’s Finished Works of Creation and Redemption! Father joyfully provides whatever His Heaven-based Wisdom and Foreknowledge have already anticipated and provided for our earthly situational needs, circumstances, and challenges.

As I look back on all those turbulent years I and my family have experienced and struggled through, I can now honestly say in retrospect that there was not one moment in all of that where we were forsaken or abandoned or bereft of what we needed to be able to rest in God’s Joy, Peace, and Wellbeing. Never has the Lord disappointed or failed us! Never have we been abandoned or left to our own wits and devices. The Lord has always been with us in every event, situation, and set of circumstances… loving, protecting and providing us with every necessity!

All of this is ours as soon as Holy Spirit is free to begin to indwell our born again regenerated spirits. And all of this Fullness is contained in our Messiah, Yeshua! He is the wonderful, mind-boggling ‘Daily Bread’ Provision, Protection and Guidance that God’s Spirit is continually ready to disclose to us and with which He makes us to be one! This is what the Lord taught His trainee disciples to pray for continually in Matthew 6.7-15. If we know our Messiah intimately and personally, thanks to a lifestyle of abiding in and with Him that His Word, and our ‘Marching Orders’ that teach us to abide as one with Him teach us… we’ll be able to rest in His Perfect All-Sufficient Mastery of every situation… not by sight, but by faith in God’s Perfect and Indwelling Word. When we know Him like this, all of our old worldly erroneous viewpoints, biases, mindsets, and compulsive vicious cycles begin to dry up, lose their grip on us, and finally fall away.

And that enables and frees us to look to our Lord so He can empower and motivate us to persevere along our Exodus Journey through time and space here on Earth! As we continue to trust in and rely upon Yeshua’s All-Sufficient Perfection and Provision, step by step and moment by moment, God continues to testify to and validate His beloved Son and He proves to us that all of the revelations, claims and promises He gave through His Living and written Word, are absolutely True!

Matthew 8:23-27

“When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” He *said to them, “WHY ARE YOU AFRAID, YOU MEN OF LITTLE FAITH?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”

So now I’ve begun to see that, regardless of what I used to try to be and to do in my self-absorbed anxiety and striving… all that was irrelevant, and in the way! God only draws from the Treasury of what His Living Word has already done in our name! So I am being ‘weaned’ from looking to myself… BIG TIME! I am also getting to know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that the Lord is here with me, and with all of us… all the time! He’s abiding with us… to teach, train, prune, correct, discipline, amputate, drill, grind and crucify everything in us that still gets in the way of what Father sent Him here to be and to do to us, in us, with us, for us, and through us. So this is why we can all learn to rest with Father, as one New Man… One… in His Perfect Peace and eternal Satisfaction with HIS WORD… WHO IS OUR PERFECT, ALL-SUFFICIENT COVENANT COVERER AND CHAMPION!

Father’s Word and Holy Spirit serve as our utterly trustworthy, capable, and infinitely wise ‘Drill Instructors’. The Word is very firm, very thorough, and relentless in His obedience to His Father’s instructions regarding each disciple’s growth and development. So we don’t have to worry about whether or not He’s going to do a good job with us. We can take that to the bank! Because He’s infinitely, eternally Perfectly unchangeable. And because He’s unchangeable, His Perfection will manifest in us and for us tomorrow and forever.

So the more we realize how Complete and Perfect our God is, the easier it is for us to rest and rejoice and see through all the shabby false faith and hope we once placed upon ourselves and other created beings and things. Our gross self-absorption is the source of our bondage! It keeps generating pride, arrogance, presumption, lust, frustration, dread, and pressures of all kinds that overwhelm us! And… regardless of how much we fret and strive… nothing turns out to be right, nor can it last!

But now, the Holy Spirit is in us to keep us focused perpetually on our Messiah! He’s forcing all of that delusion and the feelings that flow from it, to drain out of us! So, the heavier the outer problems are around us, the lighter we can feel in our hearts! He fills us with a sense of relief and freedom because we’re not laboring under the enormous weight of having to be responsible for doing and accomplishing everything! Yes, we have earthly burdens; but when we present and place them before our Messiah, He takes over and deals with them as only God Almighty can do! Isn’t that wonderfully amazing?

I know that to the people of this world, all of this sounds absolutely crazy. To them, it makes no sense. But our boot camp training enables me to see that the Greatness and Goodness of our God is absolutely true! And now… I’m going to say something else that I know will sound crazy and out of whack to unbelieving people; but here it goes:

This gut wrenching, scary period of being taxed, stretched and pulled to the limits of human endurance… has, to date, been the most wonderful, glorious and precious and heartwarmingly JOYFUL part of my entire life!

See? I told you it would sound crazy. But I mean it! I say this because it is absolutely true that these days, thanks to my many personal limitations, I’m able to accomplish nothing. Yet I feel freer and more joyful and content and confident than I’ve ever felt before! I’m also saying these crazy-sounding things so that you may remember them in the future… during times when you too will desperately need to know the same thing. I’m saying this… so that it can be a wonderful encouragement to you in your most desperate times of need and fear and discouragement! Don’t stop pursuing your Exodus Journeys, beloved ones! Don’t heed the deadly lies of the demonic Truth-twisters. Stay focused. Keep going! Persevere! Overcome! You’ll never regret it! Those who know and trust their God will remain crucified and out of the way… and they will see all things continually working out for the very best… thanks to their God’s Perfect Finished Works.

Isaiah 26:2-7

“Open the gates, that the righteous nation may enter, the one that remains faithful. The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord, we have an everlasting Rock. For He has brought low those who dwell on high, the unassailable city; He lays it low, He lays it low to the ground, He casts it to the dust. The foot will trample it, the feet of the afflicted, the steps of the helpless. The way of the righteous is smooth; O Upright One, make the path of the righteous level!” (Emphasis added.)

“Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. I am the Vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, FOR APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING!” (Jn. 15:4-5 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Since we are all disciples-in-training, we must all receive this level of training to be ready for what’s coming. So know this – you will not be exempt. This is why I’m sharing these declarations and the Scripture texts from which they arise. I want you to know the good news and to expect to experience the glorious, wonderful side effects that your training will begin to develop within your very makeup and personal experiences. It will be vitally important for all of us to know just how much our precious Lord has us covered and how airtight His faithfulness and credibility and eternal trustworthiness really are! His Lovingkindness is Everlasting! He is infinitely, perfectly Faithful and True and Credible and Reliable! He will never leave or forsake or fail us!

Therefore… we have just cause for rejoicing in our Lord ALWAYS! We can afford to allow His Abundance to spill over and share it with others… endlessly! Because He is always standing by us… we can always stand by those around us… when world circumstances begin to take everything away from everyone. And although the world and its systems will falter and fail those who trust in them… the King of the Kingdom of Heaven will always be our Infinite, Ever-Perfect Shepherd, Protector and Supplier and Satisfaction!

Psalm 91:1-4

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust!” For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge; His Faithfulness is a Shield and Bulwark!” (Emphasis added.)

Philippians 4:4-9

“REJOICE in the Lord ALWAYS; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. THE LORD IS NEAR! BE ANXIOUS FOR NOTHING, but IN EVERYTHING by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God! And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of Peace will be with you!” (Emphasis added.)

2 Corinthians 4:6-11

“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of Darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our (darkened, mortally wounded) hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the(Eternal) Glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this Treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing Greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh!” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

If you learn your boot camp lessons well, beloved, the Reality of your indwelling Lord’s Perfect Presence will permeate every part of you and His Lovingkindness will ‘bleed’ into everything you’ll experience in the future. This will happen for you, if you’re willing to endure and persevere and follow directions while the Lord runs you through the courses of His awesome ‘Disciple Academy’. You already know (if you’ve been absorbing the FMM material) that I keep harping on our ‘Marching Orders’… and on learning to abide in the Perfect Presence of our Lord and to commune and interact with Him, at all times and in all things. I harp on depending on Him for everything… and drawing exclusively from the Eternal Treasury of the Perfect Finished Work of Creation and Redemption that He has already accomplished on our behalf.

I keep repeating that what He has already done is more than enough to cover everything in our past, present and future needs, cares and concerns. I’ve known it theologically; I’ve said it in my writings… but better still, I’m actually experiencing it in my every day circumstances and so can you! He is always Present. He’s closer to us than we are to ourselves! And how blessed are those who teach themselves to remain ever-aware of Him and to bask in His Presence continually! His Work is Perfect because HE IS PERFECT! But we are always utterly imperfect. We abide in mortally wounded, spoiled, failure-prone flesh at this point of our journey. Death is still always at work in us. It will not always be this way with us… but for now, it most certainly is. So here is the kicker: IN THIS LIFE, WE, IN OURSELVES, WILL NEVER IMPROVE! We will never ‘get the hang of it’. Nor will we ever become more capable or gain more skill in obeying and serving God so that we can begin to ‘go solo’ by and in ourselves! We’ll never increase in expertise and skill to the point where we’ll begin to need our Lord less and less, and be able to depend on ourselves, more and more. That will NEVER happen! So don’t even think of going there!

Personally, we will always be inept and bankrupt and stuck in living death in this world. So God’s Living Word will always have to be our one and only Source for everything! We creatures will never originate anything the way our uncreated Creator does! So… apart from Him, we are forever incapable of being and doing anything! Death will always be at work in us as long as we are on this earthly side of the Resurrection. So Christ must always be the LIFE that operates and works from within us and manifests the Lord’s Presence from within our mortal frame. We are being trained to learn and practice deferring to Him so He can live and act and meet our Father’s Perfect standards in our name! He is in us to burn the Truth and Reality of what pertains to Him into every aspect of our innermost being:

John 17:22-24

“The Glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My Glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (Emphasis added. Ponder the whole chapter!)

John 15:4-5

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am The Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing!” (Emphasis added.)

So how does this play out in my daily experiences? It goes like this: After all my years of boot camp trial and error and repetitive practice, my Exodus Journey continues to consist of an ongoing series of steps that keep taking me progressively from one point to another. It is an Exodus-like journey. And God has given us a destination to move toward, step by step. And throughout each step, we are to be utterly one with Him at all times.

But sometimes we forget or rebel and decide to take a step sideways or backwards. So we separate ourselves and change direction and go off on some side ‘bunny trail’ of our own choosing. But the main issue in all of this… is that one unique Messiah-in-me choice that must be at the heart of every step I take from now on. I must develop faithful consistency. Yeshua must increase to 100%… and I must decrease to Zero! That is the critical inner choice we must all finally master and stay with. We must clearly understand it is a Life or Death choice, a Spirit or Flesh choice, a Christ or Me choice. If we’re going to make this Exodus for real, we will always have to learn to make the correct, Messiah-Life choice, as we take each of our steps.

So this is how I would articulate that step by step choice for our understanding: “Who is going to be living and working in me as I take this next step? Will it be my radically independent self, or will it be You, my Lord? Will I allow You to take me along the course of this Exodus, and remain crucified to my Self-life, or will I insist on ignoring You and allowing You to be put back on the cross to I can remain free to take each succeeding step on my own?” You must consider those two options all along the way. And then you must choose and take your next step, and the next, and the next.

The Choice

This is the choice each disciple will have to make… incessantly. The first time we really make this ‘Yeshua choice’ will be the very first authentically real step of our Exodus Journey. Then, after that, our challenge will be to continue to repeat and duplicate that same first step, over and over and over again until we keep doing the same thing… all the way across the Exodus Finish Line that takes us into eternity. This is the only way we can back up our claims of belonging to the Lord and being His disciples and that He truly is our Lord, Master, Owner and Shepherd! We can continue to choose to operate as we learned to do originally, as worldly, humanistic, radically independent agents that might be extremely religious but know little or nothing of a personal God, OR… we can forsake (crucify) that ‘dead false self’ and choose to defer to our risen Lord so that He can live in us continually. In that case, we’ll be interacting continually with Him and drawing everything we will be and have and do from Him… throughout each step we will take in the future. He is the one that must take us Home. Only He knows the way because… HE IS THE WAY! “Jesus *said to him, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (Jn. 14:6 NASB.)

Beloved, I can’t stress this enough! The first true, God-approved step really happens… when we make the right life-exchange choice… when you defer to Your Lord and Master so that He may increase and take you over completely… He must be free to live His Life from within you. Stop trying to do things for Him, or like Him. People that believe He lives in outer space and watches to see what we will do next think like that. So they’re always getting in His way.

But to be a true disciple, we must be convinced that He actually lives and rules in us and we have no other life but Him! So we learn to be utterly convinced that He is in us and always with us. Then we’re able to defer to Him as we take each succeeding step. Thus He can continue to live in us and reveal Himself through us, and as us. He must increase in us until He becomes ALL in all that pertains to us! And we must correspondingly decrease and stay out of His way. That is the proper step we must learn to take for the rest of our journey. After we make that Christ-in-me step for the first time… then we must learn to do it again… and again… and again… and again… and again… and again until He leads us into our Heavenly Father’s Eternal Embrace!

Can you see what taking that correct ‘Christ and not I’ step will do to our flesh at each point along the way? It will keep our Self-life crucified and out of the way throughout each moment and phase of our journey! And the Presence and Reality of our risen Lord will shine brighter and brighter the further we go! This will keep opening the door for God to abide and work and reveal Himself to the world around you… from deep within you! And this is the way we can transform into ‘GOD BRINGERS’!

Fallen Flesh Can Never Improve

I’ve been trying to learn to cooperate with the Lord as He keeps training me to do this. And the massive repetition that boot camp always imposes gradually begins to change us on the inside. It conditions us to take that same step automatically, with knee-jerk spontaneous regularity and reliability. And it makes us ever more alert to what we’re up against and how weak and inept and flaky and unreliable we are in ourselves. And it rubs our noses in the changeless fact that, in ourselves, we are desperately needy, empty, bankrupt and in total need of continually drawing everything from, our Lord.

This repetition gradually drills and conditions us to draw endlessly from the All-Sufficiency of our Master’s Perfect Finished Work, His Infinite Treasury of Grace! At first, when I would slip up and lapse back into flesh-driven thinking and behavior, my natural reaction would be: “How can I be so stupid and inept? Why can’t I get hold of this? How long will it be before I can stay on track and be consistent?”

And sometimes I would hear demonic voices pouring tons of toxic guilt, shame and condemnation into my inner reservoir: “You’ve got to be the stupidest idiot on the face of the earth! How could you be so dense and phony? You are such a fake, such a failure, and fraudulent scam artist! Look at you! You claim to love and serve God… but the first chance you get… you violate and go against everything you teach and claim and try to palm off on other people! Everything you’ve said all these years is a total lie… You can’t follow Him! You’ll never be faithful to your commitments! You’re as hopeless as anyone could possibly be and you will never do anything but fail… just the way you did right now! So don’t you dare try to teach anything to other people. You can’t practice what you preach so shut up and go away!”

But now I know better than allowing that to grab me by my mental and emotional throat. Now I ‘nip it in the bud’. I simply ask my Lord’s pardon and immediately get back on track and continue to defer to Him as before. Experienced disciples don’t waste time wringing their hands and bemoaning the fact that they’re losers. No, they get back up, grab their weapons, and immediately get back into the fight, determined to overcome and prevail!

Speaking Truth to the Treadmill of Hopeless Thinking

During the early stages of our boot camp training, when we blow it and forget about our indwelling Lord and sink back into our old Self-life ways, the powers of Darkness immediately use that opening we give them and begin to berate, accuse and pummel us with guilt and condemnation messages: “You’re way off track! You just made another dumb choice. You are absolutely HOPELESS! But then Holy Spirit interrupts and takes possession of our attention: You did it because you’re still green and inexperienced. In that case, there’s nothing else you can do but make mistakes. Fallen flesh always does that! It can’t do anything else because, at this beginning point, Death is still always at work within it!

The enemy wants you to believe you’re trapped on the treadmill of hopelessness and failure. But if you fall for that, your dead flesh will become so aroused that it will be able to take over again. Don’t allow that to happen. Don’t identify with your flesh. That’s no longer what you are. It died and was buried with Christ. So the only life you can have now, is the Life of Christ who walked out of the tomb! So get back to focusing on and trusting in your risen Lord and Master. He is the only Human in existence that currently has and is able to live the Resurrected Life! So Let Him live it from within you… and if you do that… it doesn’t matter what your fallen flesh can or cannot do. That will be irrelevant from now on as long as you live with and in God, on the Resurrection side of the cross. Then, for you, to live is always CHRIST AND CHRIST ALONE! Our precious Drill Instructor, Holy Spirit, will whisper God’s Truth regarding His risen Word, into our hearts. And His Truth will cut right through all of that demonic chatter and static and dissipate it and enable us to get back into the fight. He will counsel you like this:

“Now you have a chance to make this Truth sink in even deeper! Now you can practice some more. Practice admitting that you still have that flesh in you but it no longer has authority over you. And affirm once more that your flesh and your past are dead and bankrupt and helpless. Then remind yourself that you are not putting any expectations on your dead Self-life ever again. And you can reinforce the Truth that from now on, you are free to admit that you’ll never have what it takes to be able to do anything that is good or right in your own strength! Now you can stop trying to bypass your risen Lord and be free from having to try to do everything yourself!

Now you know that when you keep expecting to do it yourself, you are putting your Lord back on the Cross instead of crucifying yourself and allowing Him to continue to preside and serve as your Life, in your name! Each time you look to yourself to do the job, you place yourself under an unbelievable weight and burden of obligation and responsibility that you’re not equipped to handle. And when you do that, Christ is not free to work in you, both to will and to do according to your Father’s good purposes. Don’t fall into that trap. You can choose either way of operating, but you can’t have it both ways. One of you must live and operate; and the other must remain immobilized on the Cross! It’s you or Christ! So come back to your right senses and get back on that Cross – NOW! CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE DEAD… SO THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE TO DEFER TO YOUR LORD SO HE CAN CONTINUE TO LIVE IN YOU AND REVEAL HIMSELF TO THE WORLD THROUGH YOU!”

This back and forth, trial and error process keeps appearing as I continue training. I’ve been at it for decades now! And although I never get smarter or more adept and skillful, and although I still struggle with the same flesh, I’ve gradually gotten used to remaining hopelessly bankrupt and crucified and out of my Master’s way. So I find that it is easier to be more consistent in forgetting about myself, and focusing exclusively on the Lord who is the Righteousness within me. This is true because, as we all know… ‘PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT!’

Romans 7:24-25

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I’m developing the habit of ignoring myself, and focusing on Him! And you already know how powerful our bad habits are, don’t you? Well, just wait and see what happens when you’ve developed this wonderful new habit… the habit of allowing the Living Word of Almighty God to be YOUR GOD AND YOUR EVERYTHING… all the time! Once you have that habit… the Serpent will be utterly devastated and ‘declawed and defanged’! I’m firmly convinced that this is how it will always be with me in this life. What is already dead can never improve or become animated and productive!

So I will never become so good at ‘being good’ or ‘holy’ or ‘spiritual’… that I will finally begin doing the right thing in the right way, on my own. I’ll never get to the point where, one day, I will be what My Master is, and get the hang of doing what He does, the way He does it… not as long as I still have to wait for my personal resurrection to take place. I could never ‘imitate’ Him. He is irreplaceable and unduplicatable. Nothing will ever be able to take His place! So when I begin to think in radically independent ways, I’m falsely assuming that I can reach a point when I won’t need my Lord to be and do everything for me in the future, as much as I need Him now. Obviously, that is an enormous deception and blunder! I will always need Him… today, tomorrow and always!

He will always be right here with me to fulfill His every promise and claim… every step of the way! Beloved, now I know for sure that my original addiction to ‘self-enhancement’ is a terrible sham and an unbearable burden. I will never ‘arrive’, and I will never ‘have all the answers’. My flesh will always keep trying to take over again. It will always become aroused by this or that unexpected, sudden thing that blindsides me. It will still keep trying to catch me napping and off guard in the future. When that happens, my flesh will struggle to pounce on the opportunity and all sorts of self-centered reactions will explode within me and blow up all my recent efforts to ‘grow up’ one more time. That will happen because my flesh will never change, improve, or become ‘wiser’, or ‘holier’, or more spiritual’ and ‘disciplined’. And the enemy will never stop trying to arouse it and use it to drag me back into that self-life bondage trap with his malevolent lies and self-centered accusations. But despite all of that, I now know that my Redeemer has already overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil! He has destroyed the power of all his works, as they relate to me. None of this is about me any more. From now on… it’s all about OUR RISEN GLORIOUS MASTER!

I Am Already Dead, So Satan Has Nothing Left to Grab Hold of!

So I, in this natural, Adamic state in which we all still live, we must learn to be ready to allow Holy Spirit to do what good Drill Instructors always do… speak into our ears, loudly and forcefully and make sure we realize that our flesh is getting in the way and goofing everything up! Holy Spirit will immediately get us back on track, and remind us to put our dead flesh back on the Cross, where it belongs. God doesn’t have to kill us in the future; nor does He expect us to commit suicide. That’s not what the Gospel is saying. The Truth is this: the New Covenant has made us to be one with our Messiah. And thanks to that awesome bond that the Covenant creates between God’s Word and His people, God considers His Word, and us to be one working unit! So, because we’re forever one… then, when my Lord was crucified… I was crucified with Him! It has already happened to me because it happened to Him. And once is enough! So, I am already dead, and Satan no longer has any hold on those who have joined Christ in the fellowship of His death and Resurrection!

“For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain!” (Phil. 1:21 NASB.)

Yes, our death has already been accomplished. And that death will eventually manifest itself in our mortal bodies. But God has promised to give us new glorified eternal bodies. And that will happen in God’s good time. So, as far as the Kingdom of Heaven is concerned, we are already dead! Our flesh has already been dealt with in God’s sight. So although we still have to live in these mortal bodies of flesh, and they keep ‘twitching’ and ‘contorting’ and trying to wiggle away from the nails, we must keep reminding ourselves that, “IT IS FINISHED!” We are already legally and essentially DEAD! But our Perfect Resurrected, Spirit-imparting Covenant Representative LIVES FOREVERMORE… in us, through us, and as us!

So, we can stop being shocked and disappointed over what our flesh residue always keeps trying to get us to do and think and believe. Since our flesh is already dead, then… when it twitches a little, we can simply remind ourselves that it died and we can put it back in its tomb where it belongs, and forget about it. We may have to remind ourself of this daily, many times over… because of our old out of date ‘brain wiring’. And our flesh will keep ‘twitching’ because it never learns anything new nor can it ever change. But Holy Spirit is always living in us, to keep things straight and continue to remind and empower us to keep making that correct Messiah-through-me choice. So, in this way, God’s Living Word will be able to preside within us, and He can become more and more recognizable and obviously present and active within and among us. So, for us to really and truly live… is Messiah Yeshua! And God is eternally pleased and satisfied with that! And we can be at total peace and rest with that! (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 1:21; 2:12-13)

John 16:12-15

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the Truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for, (we are one with each other and) He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”

I share my boot camp experiences with you so you can know what to expect as you go through the same training. To learn to remain ever-mindful of the fact that He is now your Life and you have no other, and to defer to your risen Lord at all times, will be the primary and essential gut wrenching lesson we will all have to learn and master during our training. So just imagine what it will mean to you in the future… when you’re faced with impossible situations and overwhelming problems and opposition… to know for sure that your risen Lord and Master, the Infinitely Perfect One… the Lord of all Creation… is abiding in you and working for you the midst of all that you will ever encounter… knowing His Perfect Presence and Lovingkindness can be trusted and relied upon in all things and at all times! What will that absolute certain knowledge mean to you when you’re engaged in the heat, chaos, carnage and terrors of the Last Days battles?

“Now when they heard this, they were infuriated, and they began gnashing their teeth at him (Stephen). BUT HE, BEING FULL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, LOOKED INTENTLY INTO HEAVEN AND SAW THE GLORY OF GOD, AND JESUS STANDING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD; AND HE SAID, “BEHOLD, I SEE THE HEAVENS OPENED AND THE SON OF MAN STANDING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD! But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked intently into heaven and saw the Glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” But they shouted with loud voices, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one mind. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning him; and the witnesses laid aside their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Then he fell on his knees and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” Having said this, he fell asleep.“ (Acts 9:54-60 NASB. Emphasis added.)

We will always be dead to ourselves, that is, we won’t be able to look to or draw from anything that originates with us. We will always be bankrupt. So we will always remain 100% in need of, and dependent upon Almighty God, our one and only Source! Our Heavenly Father’s Grace, Mercy, Compassion, Forbearance and Spirit-empowered Intervention will be the only Life and Provision and Protection available for us, regardless of what may be happening or not happening on this fallen earth. This is what He sent His Living Word and Holy Spirit to Earth to teach us.

This is what Yeshua was demonstrating to His disciples during their boot camp training! When our Master walked the Earth in human flesh, He had the Holy Spirit in all His Fullness. And He was perfectly Sin-less. But that cannot be said of us. We have the Holy Spirit too… but not the way He did! He and the Father and the Holy Spirit are always ONE in nature. God is totally Transcendent, and we will always be completely different in nature from our Creator. And in this life, we fallen children of Adam still remain trapped in our original state of living death. We won’t be that way when we finish the Journey and enter eternity. But we will always be dependent upon God, in Heaven, and for as long as we remain on Earth in this dimension of space and time. This is why God must give us the Gift of His Holy Spirit. This is how He can fill our regenerated spirits with the Eternal Life that is in His own Word’s Resurrected Humanity and keep us going even though we will keep forgetting and ‘blowing it’ from time to time along the way.

Experiencing God’s Peace

Yeshua is the only Human that has Resurrection Life at this point. We’re on our way to having what He now has, but we still have more ground to cover before we get there. So while we’re still en route, the Holy Spirit will have to continually prune our fleshly control compulsion urges away from us. He will always have to be with us, to correct and discipline and keep that dead twitching flesh in check so that Christ can serve as our God-given Wisdom, Holiness, Righteousness, and resurrected Redemption. So we are being trained to cooperate with Him, gladly, willingly, gratefully, humbly and continually. But… even though we must still inhabit ‘the body of this death’ in this life… thanks be to God, we can be delivered from the tyranny of guilt, condemnation, shame and Death… step by step, moment by moment, and choice by choice… by remembering that we died in and with our Messiah and He is abiding and working in us, through us, and as us, every step of the way.

I’ve been going through this specialized Last Days boot camp training for quite a few years now. And, like all the rest of us, I too have proven to be hopelessly inept in myself. Now I know from bitter experience, that I will never personally improve. Dead men do not get better! So, although my fallen flesh continues to cause me to stumble, waver, trip and sometimes ‘blow up’, nevertheless, the precious Holy Spirit keeps bringing me back… back to making the right choice, back to the ‘I defer to You, dear Lord, so you can live Your Life in me’ choice… even amid my flagrant failures, and maddening forgetful lapses and weaknesses. No matter what happens, Holy Spirit will not allow us to cave in and give up as long as we remain willing to submit to His Authority over us.

Hebrews 10:37-39

“For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”

Another delightful result is this: The Lord is letting me know experientially that He is here with me, teaching, training, correcting and filling me, more and more, deeper and deeper. He’s giving me this message: “Yes, this is what I want you to learn. This is the Truth! This is what FMM is all about and why Father created it in the first place! I am seeing to it that you come to know Me as I really and truly AM!”

Perpetually Enfolded

In the midst of all the boot camp flack, tension, challenges, and testing of this life, that never seem to end, I sense nevertheless that we disciples are called to live with God in the eye of this world’s Hurricane-like turbulence. We can abide there with our Father… perpetually enfolded by His Living Word and Holy Spirit in His total Rest and Peace and Lovingkindness. And because of this, we can afford to keep saying to our risen Lord:

“As long as You’re with me and I’m with You, dear Lord… I know everything is covered and I know everything is going to turn out first class and just right! So I will abide with You and I will continuously rest upon You and draw everything I will need in the days ahead, from Your eternally Faithful Covenant Loyalty and Perfect Lovingkindness. I defer to You to live in me every step of the way… to the very end of our Journey! Thank You for always being here with me. Thank You for setting me free from my former slavery to earthly circumstances and feelings. And thank You for allowing me to see that, just as You promised that it would be between us… so can I see that it is actually coming to pass! You are GOD… and I am not!”

Beloved friends, this training is gut-wrenchingly hard because our Self-life urges and tendencies die with great struggle and difficulty! There’s no use trying to soft soap and minimize this struggle. But it is well worth the effort to work through it with faithful endurance and perseverance. What the Lord intends to reveal to us and instill within us, is not some spiritual ‘bag of candies and gifts’. It is much more precious and powerful than that. The Lord of Glory is here to give HIMSELF… to you, to me and to all the rest of us! And, I am finding out like I never dreamed could be possible in the past, that… to have Him is to know Him… and to know Him is to possess… EVERYTHING!

It’s not about how much we know or how many tricks we have up our sleeve. It’s about whether or not we’re yielded enough to know Him as He really is. We’ll never pass Judgment by trying to improve and cultivate ourselves, or by relying on our little created fallen faculties and devices, or by striving to accomplish special things in special ways. The one true God is the sole Source of everything, whether we realize it or can figure it out, or not! It is His Glory and Responsibility to be Almighty God, not ours. All of the results depend on His Perfect Nature and airtight Lovingkindness! So our responsibility is to focus on Him and to sing His praises and rest in His Perfection and take care of each other as well as possible. We are to be God’s dependents and reflectors, His image and likeness, but never do we have to concern ourselves with trying to become His competitors or replacements.

Philippians 3:7-16

“But whatever things were gain to me (in my former radically independent, hyper-religious days), those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may (when I reach the destination of my step-by-step Exodus Journey) attain to the resurrection from the dead.

“Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God IN CHRIST JESUS. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)

Romans 8:35-39 “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us! For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” (Emphasis added.)