Welcome to Boot Camp!
Beloved friends… let me to share some very personal and somewhat embarrassing thoughts with you about the ‘boot camp’ training I keep mentioning in the FMM material. The first thing I want to tell you about is how drastically my focus and mindset have changed in recent years. For me, that was shocking and totally unexpected! In all my years leading up to this FMM era, I never suspected that I’d be so mentally fixed and focused on ‘The Last Days Era’ and on how desperately the Lord’s disciples need to receive adequate, specialized training from God so they can be primed and ready for action in the days just prior to the Lord’s Return.
But that’s what happened. Now I can hardly focus on anything else. 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. This new direction began to emerge in the year 2003. That was the year my heart’s focus started to change and fix itself on Israel, and His chosen people… and when 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 Adat Messianic congregation that is now my spiritual home base. And it was also during that year 2003-2004, that I began to think continually about what it would take to train and develop disciples into full-fledged, mature, combat-ready warriors who would be equipped to face and overcome the powers of Darkness in the approaching times of tribulation, global conflict and local chaos, as prophesied in the Scriptures.
Before & After
And now that the Follow Me Ministry has been operating since January of 2011, as I consider the mass of material I’ve written since FMM began, I find it hard to believe that I’m the same person. I don’t recognize myself anymore! As I take inventory of what is going on inside of me, everything is different and nothing seems to be what it once was! I didn’t desire, or plan or try to make any of this happen. It just happened. It took me totally by surprise.
It occurs to me that the same kind of thing must have happened to Saul of Tarsus. Do you remember 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 was very much like what the murderous, self-righteous religious terrorists are that dominate the news reports of our day! Saul despised Yeshua and all He stood for. And today’s terrorists harbor a murderous hatred for all Jews and Christians and all that they stand for. And Saul spent his time and attention doing something very similar to what they do. He was doing his utmost to stamp his enemies out of existence!
That was the religious spirit that drove Saul of Tarsus and his fellows. They were a scourge to the Lord’s New Covenant Jewish followers, fire-snorting enemy hit men that hounded and persecuted any fellow Jew who dared to believe and proclaim that the rabbi from Nazareth was the long-awaited Messiah of Israel! The man that became ‘the apostle to the Gentiles’ had formerly been a fanatical ‘bullet head’ proponent of the Mosaic Covenant and a rabid protector of all of the man-made traditions of his form of Judaism. He was a ‘Pharisee of Pharisees’… a despiser of those who were ‘different’ and ‘unclean.’ But it was a spirit of fear and insecurity that drove him in those days. He felt that his position that he had spent so much time and effort developing and establishing was being threatened. So his fear drove him to rabid violence. So it wasn’t a true awe and reverence for God that motivated him… it was the terror that hits a man when suddenly he’s not so sure of himself… the terror that comes when what you proclaim to be the Truth, might actually be dead wrong!
Fear vs. Love
But then consider the enormous difference in him after he had transformed into the Spirit-filled writer of much of the New Covenant writings. Wow, what a shock his journey of transition must have been to him! Now it was no longer fear of being wrong that drove him; it was a supernatural Love of the Supernatural Reality of God’s Word, that was inflaming his heart and compelling Him to act. To those around him who were able to see his before and after transition, it was clear that after Yeshua encountered and confronted him, Saul was never the same after that. And, as Paul would reflect upon what had happened, and recalled the events of his journey, he could look back at that specific point in time and see it as his personal ‘turning point’… the moment in time when His awesome Lord and Master ‘apprehended’ him and turned his life’s direction completely around in a new and totally unexpected direction that Saul could have never imagined to be possible.
Toward the end of his days on Earth he was doing, saying and teaching things that, before that turning point arrived, would have been utter heresy and impossible for him to even consider! Now that he was the apostle to the Gentiles, he was saying and doing things that would have been entirely out of the realm of possibility in his earlier years. That’s how much he changed! And I’m sure he wondered at times: “How did I get here? What happened to me? How did all that I am now, manage to sneak up on me so suddenly?”
Turning Points
That’s what it’s been like for me. I look back at my turning points: first it was when the Lord first revealed Himself to me at the end of 1981. Then there was that point in the spring of 2003, when He began to show me things I had never expected to see. And now, as I consider those two points in time, and the changes that have taken place in me, I can hardly believe what I see. I remember that in January of 2003, I began to have some very vivid dreams that made it clear that I no longer belonged in the local congregation where my family was currently worshipping. And, although at that time I was a staff member of a well-known Christian ministry, those dreams made it very clear to me that I no longer had any place in the world of official organized Church ministry, according to the common understanding. Suddenly I began to feel like a total misfit! But at that time, I had no clue as to what I should do about it.
And several weeks after I had that dream, I heard a voice. It was in early March of that year, and the voice distinctly whispered the following words… down in the depths of my heart of hearts: “You have seven years to build the army!”
Of course I had no idea what that meant. But I heard it very clearly. And as the weeks of that year turned into summer, I began to get a nagging premonition in my gut concerning the Last Days. It was a premonition of things I had never considered before. They were things I really did not want to think about. They were little glimmers and flashes and glimpses of bad, disastrous, chaotic things, like natural disasters, economic meltdowns, political strife, deadly warfare and religious persecution and civil disintegration… taking place all over the world. So by July of 2003, I felt compelled to write out what I was sensing. And that evolved into the article we offer elsewhere in this website entitled, ‘The Big Surprise’.
By temperament and personality, I am not predisposed or willing to dwell on anything like what I began to see at that time. If at all possible, I always try to bypass such things and avoid even thinking about them. But now, all of a sudden, I could not escape or forget them… and the sense of urgency they always make me feel… that the Lord’s disciples desperately need to receive adequate preparation so they can be ready to face and deal with the horrendous things that are coming, would not go away. And it has been that way ever since.
The Church & Israel
Then in September of that year, 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 non-Jewish Church, such as it is. I had never thought about that before either; but suddenly it really began to bug me! So I had to learn to begin to live with these things, and wait on the Lord to show me what He was doing and what he wanted to do with me, in relation to what I believed, for some reason, that He was showing to me.
The voice I heard in March of 2003 told me I had seven years to build the army. And sure enough, seven years later, my whole world turned completely upside down! In 2010, I finally had to admit that I no longer belonged in my current position with the Christ-Life Ministry (now The Ultimate Journey). I began to sense that the Lord was easing me out of my official staff and governing board position, but I had no other plans or desires. There was no other place or position by which I might support my family to which He was drawing me. I just knew that I was about to be ejected. So, of course I began to beg the Lord to show me, clearly and specifically, what He was doing and what He wanted me to do and where He wanted me to go next. But at that time, this was all He said:
“I’m taking you out of where you are now. You’re finished building the Christ-Life Ministry army. That ministry is in very capable hands and it is doing very well without you. So you are no longer needed there. Now I’m going to stop you from doing what you’re doing and set you aside for a while, so that I can show you what we’re going to do next.”
A New Ministry
That’s all I knew. It was the middle of December, 2010. And suddenly I knew for sure that the time for me to move out of the ministry I had helped to found, had come. And at that time, the Lord gave me the name of the new venture: ‘Follow Me Ministries.’ That was all I knew. So I had my new orders. I was to submit my official resignation to the ministry and that is what I did. I submitted my letter, stating that in two weeks, effective January, 2011, I was stepping down. Of course I had discussed this with some of my colleagues in the ministry and with my family, and with the leaders of our Messianic congregation. And they all seemed to indicate that it was okay for me to do that, in their estimation. So I had the green light… and I jumped out of the plane I was on… and pulled the ripcord of whatever ‘parachute’ the Lord might be providing for me. And then I landed in what I later came to realize was my ‘Last Days Disciple Boot Camp Training Area.’
In January of 2011, Follow Me Ministries was officially birthed. And 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 would be doing. One friend created and managed a new website for the new venture. That provided a platform from which I could begin to share whatever Father was going to give me to share. Then, after a few days, the ‘downloads’ began to come. And I did my best to understand, process and articulate them. And the focus of those new downloads was always somehow connected to matters pertaining to Israel and her God-given task of serving as His priestly mediator between God and the rest of the human race, and also to the historically disastrous relationship that has existed between Israel and the Christian Church from the earliest days to the present.
And underlying all of that, was the haunting sense of urgency I had developed concerning the Lord’s disciples… having to be prepared to do their jobs during the troubles of the Last Days! And soon after I began to write and post the first few files on the website. And after I had posted about five articles, a dear brother that lived in Kenya, Africa stumbled across our website and he, and his local congregation began to read what I had written. And they felt compelled to contact me. And we began to interact, and that’s how our connection with our Africa FMM Family began. Through them, our material began to be translated by a cadre of volunteers. And the translations began to be printed into booklets and the booklets began to be distributed to many other countries and given away to all takers, free of charge. Thus the FMM world-wide distribution system for our material came into being in the fall of 2011.
A Personal Boot Camp
Then, as many of you already know, on January 1, of 2013, my wife Mary’s ordeal of serious illness and major surgeries began. At that point, my personal ‘boot camp’ training kicked into high gear. I knew this would happen sooner or later, because the Lord had also made it very clear that the material He would give me to share would have to be authentic and ‘laboratory tested.’ Such vitally important and specialized material would have to be just as real as the future dangers ahead of us are going to be. The Lord made it clear that it would not be enough for me just to ‘give’ the message and tell our FMM people about it… I was going to have to BECOME the FMM message… so I could demonstrate the reality of it to all those future members of the FMM Family that He was going to begin to create in the days to come. The Lord was going to demonstrate His ways… through my very timid and reluctant flesh!
God will not permit our Last Days family of disciples to merely ‘tell’ the world of His resurrected Son’s awesome Truth! They will have to show them, that is, demonstrate the Reality of His Presence, in front of them, in living color! So, that’s why I had to be the first from the FMM Family, to begin to learn this. I became the first FMM enrollee in the Lord’s Follow Me Training Boot Camp. As I’ve said, there are many others in that camp that come from other backgrounds… but from our FMM Family… He saw to it that I would be brought into it first. And now He is forcing me to know what I’m talking about… precisely, deeply and personally. I will not be allowed to speak until He is free to demonstrate the message clearly and vividly through my crucified flesh. He must do this… so that those whom the Lord will bring alongside, may know for sure that what I say He is giving me to say and write… is absolutely true and authentic and substantial and is clearly being backed by Almighty God Himself.
So the days of superficial religiosity and shallow levels of commitment are apparently over for me… and for anyone that is called to be part of the FMM Family. Now, the typical boot camp types of shock, unexpected setbacks, disappointments, impossible challenges, overwhelming stresses and frustrating failures are, apparently, going to be a steady part of the daily routine. The tests will come from all directions, in steady relentless streams… day after day! This is precisely what every Last Days disciple will have to get used to in the days to come! We will all need to have a clear understanding of what the enormous spiritual stakes will be at that time, when Almighty God and His demonic enemies have their final showdown!
So now, thanks to my new lifestyle that was brought on by my wife’s serious illness and drawn out recuperation, I am kept busy stamping out endless unexpected ‘brush fires’ and experiencing sudden crises and emergencies and disappointments and setbacks and seemingly impossible, overwhelming challenges and problems of many kinds. And so, this boot camp preparation is all I can think about these days! Ever since I had to take Mary to the emergency room on that New Year’s Day in 2013, my whole life has been filled with nothing but boot camp-like stress-filled situations, problems, challenges and puzzles! I have been at this level of training since that New Year’s Day of 2011, when FMM began. And there’s still no end in sight! I can honestly tell you that I am ‘the official, designated Follow Me laboratory testing animal… the ‘guinea pig’ that must experience and be able to survive, what all the others will have to deal with. And this boot camp training I’ve been going through has been, and continues to be, the scariest, most gripping and difficult set of challenges I have ever had to face in all my years. But beloved… even though all of this sounds really, really bad and scary… the opposite is true! There’s a glorious paradox involved… the same kind of paradox that we see throughout the Bible:
Death to Self
According to God’s ways, if you want to win, you must first lose; if you want to be absolutely alive, you must first die… to everything you originally started out to be. If you want to be free from bondage, slavery and endless toil, you must surrender yourself completely to God’s Living Word, your Messiah, and become His bond slave. If you want to be 100% of what God intended and created you to be, you must personally decrease to zero, so that Yeshua may become All in all, for you. And if you want to achieve the reward of the Work of Salvation, Redemption and Resurrection Restoration, you must learn to stop working and begin to rest entirely upon God!
This is the huge Exodus transition… from ‘my life’ … to … ‘Word of God Life.’ Thus in order to possess everything God can possibly bestow… we must first give away everything we are and have and hope to achieve on our own! And that’s what happens to us in this Last Days Follow Me boot camp! This is the paradox I’m experiencing: I must die to myself. I must be ‘weaned’ and ‘detoxified’ of the habit of relying on myself. I must stop trying to strengthen and improve myself. In fact, I have to forget about myself and surrender to God, everything that pertains to it!
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” (Romans 12:1)
Freedom through Failure
And how does this happen? Well, God sets me free from slavery to myself, by my endless personal failures! My freedom and sense of wellbeing come about as a result of all of my endless personal blunders and failures! The more I ‘blow it’ and ‘goof,’ the more I’m blindsided, taken off guard and pushed over, the more I fail the tests and trials and surprise challenges that this boot camp keeps throwing at me… and the more I prove how hopelessly incorrigible I truly am… the better, stronger, freer and more confident I feel! Isn’t that amazing?
I know that, from a worldly standpoint, this really sounds crazy. But it’s true! I’m learning that none of what God is after, will ever depend on me, and on what I can do, or how well I can manage to do it! All of that self-derived kind of initiative has to be broken and extracted from the picture! So my blunders and failures are helping to set me free of self-reliance, self-absorption, continuous introspection and habitual pressure-packed, performance-based anxieties! Those are the things that keep getting in God’s way! So the personal failures I experience deliver me from that deadly humanistic delusion that says: ‘God helps those that help themselves!’ As far as God is concerned, He helps those who are dead and helpless… and willingly come out of their ‘I’m Number One’ closets and openly admit the truth: that where they really are is at Zero! When we can finally get that real, we’ll know how profound the Real Fact of Life truly is… the Fact that absolutely EVERYTHING depends on the Perfection, Fullness and Adequacy of what God’s Word (His beloved Son) truly is, and what He has already done… in our name and what He actually means to each and every one of us!
“And He has said to me, “My Grace is sufficient for you, for Power is perfected in 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, then I am strong!” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
Therefore, the more I flub and fail… the more able I become to see through myself and get in touch with my utter bankruptcy and true living dead state! And that drives me to realize how desperately I need my Master to take over, all the time… for everything. So my failures compel me to learn to look to Him and to draw everything I am and have and do… 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!
Looking to God
So, beloved, the more I fail, the more I look to Him. And the more I look to Him, the more everything turns out great and perfect! It’s done with incredible timing and ingenious, unforeseen twists that make it blatantly obvious that I had nothing to do with it! Regardless of what I used to try to be and to do – it always turned out to be irrelevant and in the way. That’s because of this fact: God’s Spirit draws exclusively from the Treasury of what God’s Living creative Word has already DONE in our name! In other words, what God has for us must come to us from the Resurrection side of our Master’s Cross, which abides in God’s Eternal Dimension. Nothing will be used by God that comes from our, fallen flesh side of that Cross, in this time and space dimension. We must have what can only come to us from the Eternal Nature of God… exclusively through our risen Messiah! That’s what He will always be applying to us exclusively, just as Father directs. That’s the ‘Good Fruit’ that the Lord’s disciples are commissioned to bear for Him. So, since it’s God who has already done all of the work, I am being ‘weaned’ and set free from the bondage of always having to look to myself, or other people that are just like me, for results. And that is an enormous, BIG TIME CHANGE! And it’s totally supernatural!
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 here to teach, train, prune, correct, discipline, and even amputate, drill, grind and crucify everything in us that still stands in the way of what Father sent Him here to be and to do with us, for us, and through us… And He’s doing it so that we can learn to rest with Father in His Perfect Peace and Total Satisfaction with His Living Word… who serves as our Perfect Covering!
The Lord’s Word and Holy Spirit are also serving as our utterly trustworthy and capable and expert Boot Camp ‘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. And the Holy Spirit is ever faithful to keep directing our attention to the Son of God made flesh, and to nothing else! So we don’t have to worry about whether or not God is going to do a good job with us. We can take that to the bank! Because He’s infinitely, eternally Perfect, He is unchangeable. And because He’s unchangeable, the Perfection He manifested yesterday and today is the same Perfection He will manifest tomorrow and forever. And since the Holy Spirit is commissioned to apply to us all that God’s Word has done for us, we can be in constant touch with God’s infinite Almighty, All-Sufficient Power!
So the more I realize how Perfect God is, the more I realize how puny and impotent my independent efforts truly are. And I’m less and less prone to place any more false faith and hope and vain expectations on myself. Now I see that doing that was the source of all my former bondage and the cause of the terrible dread and pressure I always used to feel when I would assume that things weren’t going right. But now, I know that as long as I live in my Lord and am drawing everything FROM my Lord, I can’t fail! I also can’t fail because I’m already dead! You can’t make the dead responsible for what is going on, can you? So… all of those former ‘personal responsibility’ delusions and the feelings that flowed from them are being effectively drained out of me with each ‘stab wound’ that my personal failures inflict on my ego! Now, the heavier the burdens are, the lighter I feel, because I know that all the responsibility belongs to my Master and Shepherd and the burdens are being very capably borne by Him, at all times! And that always leaves me free to rest in peace, under the shadow of my Master’s wings. And I can rejoice always in His Eternal Infinite Perfection! Isn’t that wonderfully crazy?
“For thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, (by My Living Word and Holy Spirit) I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land. I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord God. ‘I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.” (Ezekiel 34:11-16 Amplification and emphasis added.)
“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise You, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this Way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you Rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find Rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light!” (Matthew 11:25-30 Emphasis added.)
To the world, I know that all of this sounds absolutely insane and doesn’t make a bit of sense. That’s because people of this world that buy into its humanistic system, keep viewing everything through that old demonic set of ‘eyeglasses’ that serve as a, ‘You can be like God’ delusion-inducing ‘mental filter’. So it’s as if they are wearing eye-glasses that have a fatally wrong and misleading false prescription ground into the lenses!
The Joy of Boot Camp
But this FMM boot camp is gradually, relentlessly, removing that filter from my eyes. And it is proving to me that the Greatness and Goodness and All-Sufficiency of our God are absolutely true Realities that those lenses kept preventing me from seeing! And so now… thanks to that… I’m going to say something else that I know will sound outrageously crazy and out of whack to worldly unbelieving people; but nevertheless, 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 period of my entire life!
See? I told you it would sound crazy! But I mean it, because it is absolutely true that these days, I’m able to accomplish less and less. Yet, I feel freer and more joyful and content and confident than I’ve ever felt before!
But I’m also saying these crazy-sounding things so that you may remember them in the future – at times when you 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 beloved one! Don’t heed the demonic lies of the satanic Truth-twisters. Stay focused on Him. Keep going! You’ll never regret it! Since we are all His disciples-in-training, we must all receive this level of training to be ready for what’s coming. So you will not be exempt. This is why I’m sharing these declarations. I want you to know the good news.
We’ve Already Won!
Now I know for sure, that this boot camp training will train you to expect to experience the glorious and wonderful aspects and side effects and results that your Lord and Master has already provided and waits to impart to you, step by step along the way. This training will begin to develop that essential, deep, gut-level reassurance within your personal makeup that will change the chemistry and outcomes of your future experiences. This is vitally important for all of us to know. We must know for sure just how much we can afford to give away… and still not experience any fear or outrage or sense of loss!
We need to know that when world circumstances begin to take everything away from us – everyone and everything that is temporary and created – that won’t matter! Our awesome God, The Uncreated One, who revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, will always be with us nevertheless… to sustain, protect, and supply us with the Infinite, Eternal Fullness that is in His Perfect, Infinitely Abundant, All-Sufficient Living Word! So even when it looks as if we’re losing… WE’VE ALREADY WON!
“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.” (Philippians 4:4-9; See also Psalms 18, 23, 73 & 91)
“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 theLife of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” (2 Corinthians 4:6-11 Amplification and emphasis added.)
If we learn our boot camp lessons well, the Reality of our indwelling Lord’s Perfect Presence will permeate every part of us and His Lovingkindness will ‘bleed’ into everything we’ll experience in the future. This will happen for us, if we’re willing to endure and persevere and follow directions while the Lord runs us through the courses of His awesome ‘Disciple Training Academy.’
If you’ve been reading my FMM material, you already know that I keep harping on our ‘Marching Orders’… and on learning to abide in the Perfect Presence of our Lord and communing and interacting with Him at all times and in all things. I harp on our need to depend 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. 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. Here is the hardest lesson we must all absorb and accept at this point of our ongoing journey:
IN THIS LIFE, WE 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, in and of 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 try to go there! In this worldly existence, we will always be confined to existing in a body made up of Sin-corrupted flesh that is dying. Thus we’ll be terribly limited and inept and spiritually bankrupt and stuck in our state of living death! So God’s Living Word will always have to be our one and only Source for everything! We will never originate anything the way He does. So… apart from Him, we will always be incapable of being and doing anything that is able to meet and satisfy Almighty God’s Perfect Standard of Righteousness! And, because Death will always be at work in us, God’s Living Word must always be the only valid LIFE and the only SOURCE that will be available to us. He is the one that must always be working in and through us, and pleasing His Father in our name!
“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.” (John 17:22-24 Emphasis added. Ponder the whole chapter!)
“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!” (John 15:4-5 Emphasis added.)
Day to Day?
So how does this play out in my daily experiences? It goes like this: After five and a half years of boot camp trial and error and incredibly repetitious practice, I see my Exodus Journey as an ongoing series of steps that keep taking me from one point to another. God has given us a destination to move toward, which is to be utterly one with Him at all times. But sometimes we forget or rebel and decide to take a step backwards, or to change direction and go off on a side ‘bunny trail’ of our own choosing. But the main issue in all of this is the choice that is embedded within each step we take. That inner choice is the critical one. 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 this choice before we take each step. Here’s the choice:
“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 my risen Lord Yeshua? Will He be able to take me along the course of this Exodus, or will I keep trying to do it on my own?”
Across the Finish Line
This is the choice each disciple will have to make. The first time we really make ‘the Yeshua choice’ becomes the very first authentically real step of our Exodus Journey. Then, after that first authentic choice is made, our challenge will be to continue to repeat and duplicate that first step, over and over and over again until we keep taking the same step, all the way across the Exodus Finish Line that takes us into eternity!
We can continue to choose to operate as we learned to do originally, while we were worldly, humanistic, radically independent agents that knew little or nothing of 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 and move us to take the next step in the direction of His Land of Promise (to which only He knows the way). As I said, 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 He may increase and live and take over in you, completely… and you can correspondingly decrease and remain dead and out of the way completely. And once you’ve made that first step… then you do it again… and again… and again… and again… and again… and again, etc. etc. etc., persistently and consistently, with Blood Covenant level faithfulness, jack-hammer-like repetitive obedience and ongoing trust… until He takes you all the way across the Finish Line!
So, do you see what that will do to our flesh? It will be crucified and removed, every step of the way! 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 us… from deep within us! And the powers of Darkness won’t be able to do anything to stand up against the Lord who has already defeated them… nor will they be able to get past Him and get to us!
My Need, His Sufficiency
As the Holy Spirit has been trying to train me to learn this… the massive repetition that boot camp always imposes has gradually begun to change me on the inside. It is training me to be able to take this ‘Not I, but Yeshua’ step automatically, with an ever-increasing knee-jerk reaction level of spontaneous regularity and reliability. And it’s making me more alert to what I’m up against and how weak and inept and flaky and unreliable my fallen flesh really is. And it’s rubbing my nose in the changeless fact that I am forever desperately needy, empty and bankrupt. I am in total need of remaining endlessly dependent on My Lord and must always draw, at all times, from the All-Sufficiency of His Perfect Finished Work!
So, as I do my best to take the next Christ-in-me step properly and correctly, and when I suddenly step on some kind of hidden explosive device that takes me off guard and blows me up… I forget everything I learned. And when I make some other kind of blunder, the unexpected explosion it causes shocks me and throws me for a loop. Each time it happens, I’m left stunned, clueless, and sometimes, writhing in the dust. Every time it happens it’s so sudden and unexpected and disorienting, that I even forget where I am or what my name is for a while. I forget all the things I’ve been learning and suddenly I automatically snap back to what I know best… my old instinctual, reflex, Death-ridden self-life flesh reactions! In the blink of an eye, I lose it all… and suddenly I realize that I’ve taken several steps backward, back in the direction of ‘Egypt!’
Direction on the Holy Spirit
At first, whenever that would happen, it would be maddening and utterly discouraging to me. My natural reaction was: “How could I be so stupid and inept? Why can’t I ever get hold of this? How long will it be before I can stay on track and be consistent?” But then my precious Drill Instructor, the Holy Spirit, whispers into my heart:
“You’re way off track! You just made the wrong choice because that’s what fallen flesh always does! When will you finally admit that you have that flesh? When will you finally admit that you’ll never have what it takes to be able to do anything that is good or right when it’s up to you? When will you stop trying to bypass your risen Lord and keep trying to handle things by yourself?
“Don’t you realize that when you expect 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, God’s Word is not free to work in you, both to will and to do, according to His Father’s good purposes. So wake up and get back on that Cross – NOW! As soon as you do that, I will make Yeshua alive and real and actively fruitful in you… once more!”
This has been happening, over and over and over again… I have been falling down and getting back up again and again… for over five years! But even though I never become smarter or stronger or more adept and skillful, and even though I keep struggling with the same dying flesh that I always have to drag around, I am gradually getting used to being, and remaining, hopelessly bankrupt and crucified and that is helping me to remember to stay out of my Master’s way! My failure is becoming a habitual reality to me. So that helps me to learn to ignore myself, and remain ever focused on deferring to Him!
A Godly Habit…
You already know how powerful our bad habits are, don’t you? Well, just wait and see what happens when we develop the habit of allowing Almighty God to be OUR GOD… personally… all the time!
“At the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people; and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s portico. But none of the rest dared to associate with them; however, the people held them in high esteem. And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number, to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets, so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them. Also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed.” (Acts 5:12-16)
So, at this point, I am firmly convinced that this is how it will always be with me in this life. I will never get to the point where I get so good at ‘being good’, or doing the right thing in the right way, that one day I’ll be able to be what My Master is, and get the hang of doing what He does, the way He does it, in His place. When I think like that, I’m falsely assuming that I can reach a point in the future, when I won’t need Him to be and do everything for me as much as I did in the past. Beloved, that is pure delusion. And now I know for sure that such a thing will never happen. My flesh will always be trying to take over again. Even though my flesh is legally dead… it is always liable to be revivified and newly aroused by the flesh that is in the people around me! And that is what hits me so unexpectedly and so easily takes me off guard. It hits me from my ‘blind side’ and then my flesh explodes within me and blows up all my recent efforts to do well, time after time! But I’m learning: my flesh will never change, or improve or become ‘more holy or spiritual’ or ‘disciplined.’ It will always be what it is. And the flesh in the people around me will always be what it is. And that is why we all are in such desperate need of our Redeemer and Covenant Representative… at every step of the way!
So, as long as I remain trapped within my natural, earthly Adamic flesh, I am always going to have to allow the Holy Spirit to do what good Drill Instructors always do. He will speak into my ear, loudly and forcefully and let me know when my flesh has goofed up again. And He will immediately get me back on track by reminding me to put that dead thing back on the Cross where it belongs. God doesn’t have to kill us in the future; nor will we one day have to commit suicide! That’s not it. The Truth is that the New Covenant has made us all one with our Messiah. And because we’re one with Him in that Covenant, when He was crucified, we were crucified with Him! So we are already dead in Sin, and we are already dead to Sin… in our Messiah! My flesh has already been dealt with in God’s sight. So, even though it continues to twitch, contort, and try to wiggle free of the nails so that it can take over again, I have to remember that it is legally and essentially DEAD! And, in that sense, I can stop being shocked and disappointed over how it always continues to reek and disintegrate and twitch, etc., etc. And since it is already dead, then when it twitches, I must remember that it is just another sign of the death that has always been in it and so… I put it back in its place on the Cross, where it belongs.
A Constant Choice
I have to remind myself to do this daily, many times over… because flesh keeps twitching, and precisely because it is dead… it never changes or learns anything, nor will it ever improve! So it is always up to the Holy Spirit in us, to keep things straight and continue to empower us to make that right choice – the choice to defer to and to worship and elevate our Lord and Master. And that consistent choice keeps us in deference to our Lord and Master so that He can be preeminent and preside within us and act for us, being and doing what we could never be for do for ourselves. He must always do, in our name, what our fallen flesh will never be able to do for itself. That is how it will be for as long as we remain on our Exodus through this fallen world.
“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 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.” (John 16:12-15)
So, I share my own experiences with you so that you’ll know what to expect. To learn to defer to our risen Lord is the primary and essential, gut wrenching lesson we will have to learn during our disciple boot camp training days. My flesh condemns me to perpetual ineptitude and failure. I will never be able to get better. I will never improve. I will never ‘get the hang of this.’ Therefore, I will always be at the zero point. I will always be dead to myself, and will always remain 100% in need of my Father’s Grace, Mercy, Compassion, Forbearance and Spirit-empowered Intervention. And the same will always be true for you too.
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. But in this life, the flesh of us fallen children of Adam always remains in its original state of living death. So the Holy Spirit has to be given to us to fill us with the Eternal Life that is only in The Word’s Resurrected Humanity. Yeshua is the only Human who has that glorious Resurrection Life at this point. Because He is our New Covenant Representative… we know that we are also on our way to having what He now has! But we still have more ground to cover before we can ‘catch up and get there.’ So while we’re still en route the Holy Spirit will continually prune our fleshly control compulsion urges away from us. He will always be with us to correct and discipline and keep that dead twitching thing in check.
Father wants us to learn to cooperate with His Spirit… gladly, willingly, gratefully, humbly and continually. But even though we still inhabit ‘the body of this death’… thanks be to God! We can be delivered from its tyranny, step by step, moment by moment, and choice by choice… by deferring continually to the Life and endless Faithfulness of our Covenant Friend, our risen Messiah, Yeshua, our New Life!
I’ve been going through this specialized Last Days boot camp training for five and a half years now. And I’ve proven to myself beyond all doubt, that I am hopelessly inept. Now I know I will never personally improve. My fallen flesh continues to cause me to stumble, waver, trip, and sometimes ‘blow up’ entirely, but 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. Yes, I blow up repeatedly and I fail and stumble just as much as ever. But even though I never improve or become more suave or slick or skilled at being good or holy in myself… the more I fail, the more I’m learning to remember just how desperately I need my Master! And that incessant failure is the very thing that forces me to remember to make the right choice with greater frequency and consistency!
And the more I make that right choice… the more consistently I feel and sense and experience God’s awesome Peace, Rest, Joy and everlasting Wellbeing! Now I’m so busy focusing on how much I need my Lord, that I’m repeatedly prompted to make that right choice, over and over and over… it’s becoming an automatic, knee-jerk reaction habit pattern within me. When you know in your innermost being, just how bankrupt and needy you are, it’s very easy to forget yourself and look elsewhere… to Someone who is Infinitely Rich… your Covenant Shepherd! It isn’t that I’m improving in myself, it’s that I’m developing a new good habitual response pattern that opens the door for the Lord to remain in charge at all times. And because He’s Perfect, and even though at this point, I’m still grossly unfit and unfinished, I know that by the end of this Journey, what He has been doing in me, and in all of us, will turn out to be absolutely PERFECT IN OUR HEAVENLY FATHER’S EYES! And that is why the thought of Judgment Day makes me joyful and excited, instead of dread-filled and terrified.
Mercy and Faithfulness
Another delightful result of this training is this: Apparently, things about me are changing in ways about which I personally do not have a clue. I only notice my flaws and my neediness and my desperate need to remain ever-focused on my Shepherd. But once in a while, somehow, some other person will notice and feel the Presence of the Lord as He continues to fill my emptiness and come to my rescue! The Lord is always demonstrating His Mercy and Faithfulness to me in my desperation, but at the same time… He makes Himself known to someone else… through my twitching flesh! And He never shows that part of it to me, because He knows what my arrogant, self-adoring flesh would begin to do with that!
So He leaves me to struggle with being amazed at how hopeless my flesh is… and He only shows Himself to others in the midst of that… in ways I know nothing about. So, once in a while, another person will say something to me that gives me some kind of a vague hint that what is happening in my sphere of desperate neediness is revealing something about Him to them, as they observe my struggling and twitching! And I know nothing about it and so I am kept out of the Lord’s way! How wonderful is that?
So, in that indirect way, the Lord still lets me know, by subtle little hints, that He is here with me… teaching, training, correcting and filling me, more and more, and at levels that are much too deep for me to comprehend. Nevertheless, in that way, 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. And yes… I am making progress… in My resolve to sustain and develop what pleases Father… in you… despite your hopeless, endless bankruptcy!”
So beloved, that is how His Fruit can and will appear in our desperate neediness. This is what He continually demonstrated to His disciples… and this is what they began to become dimly aware of in increasing elements, even during their terrible performance in the midst of that storm on the Lake of Galilee. That’s what I’ve been learning. And I want to share this with you so that you too will know and be able to expect that He will sustain and ‘garden’ you too, in your times of great need… in a variety of tender, gracious, loving ways. He will create miraculous changes that will suddenly but quietly emerge in the midst of all your terrible situations, crises and periods of sadness. And even when you’re convinced that you are hopeless and always failing, other people will be blessed by Him as He works through you. And you won’t have to bother or be obsessing over that. It will just be one of the ‘perks,’ a byproduct of His Greatness working in your personal experience. None of that will exalt or glorify your fallen flesh, but at least it will encourage you and enable you to be aware of what He is doing through you from time to time.
He will make us all aware of His Presence in a variety of subtle, and not so subtle, ways. We’ll see and hear the evidence that will let us know, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that He is with us, in us, all around us, and always for us… in ways that are nevertheless, real and obvious to many others who are all around us even though we’re not aware of it at the time.
I pray that by having me share this with you, you too will receive a timely, encouraging boost that will let you know that this Follow Me ‘stuff’ really is the Truth, and that slowly but surely, we’re ‘getting it’ and learning what He’s been trying to tell us all along and that He has me, and you, and all the others who are still to come alongside of us, on the right track!
I’m confident that if and when we all develop a deep habit of making the right ‘Yeshua in me’ choice again and again… we will become increasingly prepared for what is inevitably about to engulf the world. We’ll be trained and equipped to overcome any and all demonic evils with His Infinite GOOD, as His Presence emanates from our spirits, souls and bodies, and from every imagination, thought, action, reaction and interaction that He will cause to come out of us. His Light will shine in us and it will shine out from us, and that will bless and draw and guide many other people out of their dismal lairs of fear and desperation. They will thus be drawn to Him, like moths being drawn to Fire! Only this Fire won’t destroy… He will save, cleanse, bless and restore them beyond their wildest dreams and imaginations.
So in the midst of all the boot camp flack and tension and challenges and testings that never end… we’re learning to abide with Father… in the eye of the Last Days’ hurricane… enfolded by His Everlasting Shalom. And because He is always with us, you and I can continue to say:
“As long as 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 draw everything I will need in the days ahead from the eternally Faithful Covenant Loyalty and Perfect Lovingkindness of Your Word. I gratefully defer to Your Word so that He can live in me every step of the way… and take me to the very end of this Journey! Thank You for always being here with me. Everything is coming to pass, just the way You said it would! And so, in Yeshua’s precious Name, I will praise and exalt Your Name forever!”
Beloved… this training is hard! But it is well worth the effort to endure and persevere in it. What the Lord intends to reveal to us and instill within us, is not some spiritual ‘bag of gifts.’ It is much more precious and powerful than that. The Lord 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 have… EVERYTHING!
Knowing God as He Really Is
It’s not about how much we know or how many tricks we have up our sleeve. It’s about whether or not we know Him as He really is. We will never pass Judgment by trying to improve and cultivate ourselves. The one Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our only Source- for everything! And we are made to be His reflectors and proclaimers, His image and likeness, that brings and reveals His Presence wherever we go. We will never be His replacements or competitors, but He does want to do everything with us and in us and from us, as He trains us to be His sons, emissaries, and heirs.
“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.” (Philippians 3:7-16 Amplification and emphasis added.)
Beloved friends… it’s absolutely True! Everything our Master said and promised and everything that He claimed to be… is ABSOLUTELY TRUE! So let’s ponder those precious words that our Lord spoke to us once again. We will never plumb the depths of the full meaning that they contain, so let’s repeat and repeat and repeat once again:
“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you REST. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find REST for your souls!” (Matthew 11:27-29 Emphasis added.)