COUNTING THE COST

 

COUNTING THE COST

As always, I like to start with the hope and prayer that you will hear clearly the message that Father is delivering in this devotional teaching and that you will take it to heart and prayer and ask Him to make it real within you.  Everything that I share with you here or in any devotional teaching I must go through myself.  This is so that I will always speak from a place of authenticity.

 

During this last week, I watched some videos that showed some very old buildings and castles that were built in prior civilizations.  I was amazed at the quality of how these buildings and castles were built, along with the detail and stability, as well as the durability having gone through wars even thousands of years ago.  I was astounded by the overall quality and beauty.  Then in stark contrast we see today’s buildings which may amaze us with their height and technology, but they stand in such a shadow of that which was before.  Any building built today that goes through tremendous earthquakes will fall, but it’s amazing how these castles built so long ago still stand.  I share this, because in previous devotional teachings I have been speaking of us being pillars, or fortresses, even as Ezekiel was told that the Lord was making him into an iron pillar.  He talked about those who would come against Ezekiel but that they would not be able to because He made him an iron pillar.  In the devotional teaching called, “Fortified”, I spoke of a fast that I went through along with the testimony.  The whole purpose of it was to show that through suffering and persecution He strengthens us and makes us into a fortress in the various ways He chooses to do this in us.

 

In this current teaching, we are going to talk about counting the cost.  It was very interesting to me that in this last week, there were three people who spoke to me about buildings.  The first was someone who spoke to me about how they were renovating their house and they were overwhelmed by the extent of the time and resources it would take to finish it.  Then another person shared about their son and daughter-in-law and how they bought a place and were renovating, and it would cost more to renovate it than it cost to initially purchase it.  The last one was another friend who had a dream about buying a new house, but the house was much bigger than what they needed and there was much chaos and disarray in the house.  This dream was actually a personal message for my friend, but it is also applicable in the context of what Father is speaking to us about now.  There is a part of her dream I would like to share and focus upon, and that is about the foundation that was laid in the house. 

 

FRIEND’S DREAM - FOUNDATION

As she was trying to sort things out in the midst of the chaos and disarray in the new house, she noticed that in one particular room she went into, the foundation was not finished.  There were two building inspectors in the room, and wires and other things were exposed.  She was worried about her children going into this room and falling through the unfinished foundation and being hurt. 

Interpretation

In parts of the house, the foundation was not finished. If the foundation isn’t right, whatever is built upon it will be chaos.

 

This dream is a good representation of the church, because if the foundation is not built on truth and the ways of the Father, it will result in chaos within the Body.  Regardless of what you build, every builder will tell you that the most critical part is the foundation.  In the last devotional teaching, “My Disciples”, we spoke about how the foundation was laid with blood by the elders who have gone before us.  Also Ephesians 1 tells us that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.  I then spoke about how Hebrews 11 tells us who these were and that they built the foundation for us and that we further take the torch from them.  Even further, as Hebrews 12 says, we are now finishing that foundation for the church.  We’re still focused on the foundation, but in this teaching we are going to talk about what it costs to build that foundation and to build the kingdom of God.  We are actually building the kingdom of God.  It has come into us, but we need to understand that this is not just terminology. It has to play out in reality.  What does it take for the kingdom of God to be built in each of us?  What does He need to do in each of our lives so that this foundation is sure?  What does it cost us to have the reality of the words, “the kingdom of God in me” and for the kingdom to be built in us?  Psalm 11 specifically tells us about this foundation.

 

PSALM 11

³ If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

 

It is the responsibility of the righteous to build upon the foundation that has already been built and also to finish that foundation in our own lives.

 

I think that this teaching actually started when Father began to build that foundation in me, which was about 14 years ago.  There was a cry that came from my heart, and that cry was one for authenticity.  I wanted to be the real thing.  I didn’t want to be a Christian mother who went from work to home, to look after my child, to go to church on Sunday, and then start the whole process over again.  The cry from my heart was that there must be more.  As I read the Word of God, I thought that there must be more than just this life where I live from home to work to church and just continue that process over and over.  I thought surely the God that I serve had more in store for me.  I believe that my desire for authenticity came directly from Him.  There is no good in us, so even desires like this and to want to seek after Him are birthed directly from the Spirit.  When I cried out to Him, I told Him that I didn’t care what it took to come into that reality of the kingdom of the gospel within me.  On my blog, I have an introductory page where I speak about this cry, and I share that from the day I made that cry everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong.  I share that it went “gloriously wrong”, because that is when He started to break down the foundation that was already there.  He had to break down the foundation that had been built in my life to that point in order to build a new one… one that would be able to stand and one that would become a pillar in Christ.  There was a cost involved with this.  When I speak about this now, I am speaking from a place of authenticity.

 

The first thing I would like to share that Father brought to my attention in this process of working His kingdom in me, specifically authenticity, was that He wanted me to value His words.  He wanted me to understand that when I read scripture, it has to be in such a way that I don’t just gloss over words and that I stop.  He wanted me to allow the Spirit of God to open a word up to me.  I said to someone this morning that Yeshua said that man will not live from bread alone, which is the natural or the written Word, but shall live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Even with the word “live”, if I had just glossed over it, I would not have seen that it has multiple layers and depth to it.  When Yeshua says that we will live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, it’s not just being able to go on with our normal day.  It speaks of that which is eternal life.  What is eternal life?  Is it just longevity that it will be forever and ever, or does it speak of a quality of life?  When He says we will live from every word He speaks, it is not just eternal; He is saying that it is a quality of life which He is… that “zoe” life.  The words that He speaks to us produces that life in us.  What happens when we read His Word and allow the Spirit, who is the author of His words, to come and break open the words to us?  It produces in us eternal life, when we allow the Spirit of God to come and minister to us about His Word.  We cannot gloss over the Word of God and just read it in a way that constitutes our meeting an obligation for the day or in a way that we have done our part.  It cannot be done in such a way that we have checked off our spiritual duty for the day and are then free to get on with our day.  That Word has to become your life!  That Word is the life in you!  In order to bring that life in you, there is always a cost.  Ask yourself, do I have eternal life?  I am not asking if you are saved; I am asking if you have that quality of life in you that comes from the place where you have sat with the Word of God and asked the question, “Is this true in me?”.  Has God truly worked the life that is in the Word in you, so that you live by it?  I am talking from an understanding that He has called us to live by the Spirit.  In order to live by the Spirit, the natural has to die; the flesh has to die.  There cannot be these two opposing forces.  When you come to that place that you cry out for authenticity to be the real thing, you will then have to taste death in order to live.  You will then have to come and count the cost of what it means to follow Him and what it means to truly be a disciple.  You must allow Him to do a complete work in you, being willing to be brought to nothing and follow Him into the grave.  Resurrection didn’t take place on the cross; resurrection took place in the grave. 

 

We have the example of Lazarus. In John 11, we read about Yeshua being told that His very close friend was dying.  All His disciples surely thought that He would immediately leave and rush over to His friend.  Mary and Martha both thought the same and said that Lazarus would have lived if Yeshua would have come.  They all knew He was the resurrection and the life.  They all wondered why He didn’t go to Lazarus when He was first told about his condition.  When it came to the point that Lazarus was actually dead, they were all disappointed.  Did He stop being the resurrection and the life at the point of death?  Or was He by the Spirit waiting for that point of death before the resurrection could take place?  The Jews in that time believed that up until the third day, the soul could actually return to the body.  However, when it reached the fourth day, there was no more hope.  The Lord God knows that He has to bring us to that fourth day, and there are many of us who have only gone to the third day where there is still a residue of the soul life that still enters into the body.  He requires us to go and lay on our “deathbed” in the grave and wait in that place where we feel there is no hope.  Many times what people constitute as the enemy attacking them is God’s hand upon them.  In Psalm 139, David speaks of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Who of us have not read that in the context of being formed in our mother’s womb?  But what if we read it in the context of the Spirit as the Mother, and we are being formed and birthed by the Spirit?  David says that there is no place he could go where the Spirit was not with him.  If he goes up in the morning, the Spirit is with him; and if he makes his bed in hell, the Spirit is with him.  He says that all his members were before God when he was formed in the depths of the earth, which  means in the dust, because we are made of dust.  There is nowhere the Spirit will not go with us or to no degree He will not go in order to form Christ in us.  We must be willing to be brought to dust.

 

In Acts 19, we have the account of two men who were wanting to drive out a demon using Yeshua’s name.  This demon spoke through the man to the two men and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?”. (Acts 19:5)   Then the demon proceeded to attack these men, tearing their clothes off, causing them to run off in absolute fear.  We have to ask this question, why was Paul and Yeshua mentioned in the same sentence?  Why was Paul used in the same response as Him who is the resurrection and the life?  The only answer to this is as he said in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”.  Paul himself is in complete identification with Christ having gone through death. 

 

The enemy knows that which is real, authentic, and true, and that which is not.  What we find is that in Christendom, we ascribe to words but have not yet entered into the reality of it yet.  We talk about the words moral, virtue, truth, and authenticity, and we talk about the word resurrection; but yet we fail to actually exert the very essence and spirit of it in our lives.  The only reason for that is because we have not yet entered into the death that requires the spirit of those words to be a truth in us – to be that very thing, just as we are supposed to be the message.  It’s not just the words that we speak but actually being the message in authenticity.  In this life where we have AI and all that is fake attempting to constitute as truth, this world is hungry and thirsty for real truth.  How truth will manifest itself amongst everyone else is that we will see the fruit of it even in our children. This generation Z is inundated with that which is false and that which is a lie, and they are hungry and thirsty for the truth.  The pure truth will have to come through His disciples – those who have gone from death into life and from the lie into authenticity. 

 

My daughter has been one of the prime tools that Father used to mold me into authenticity.  She has five different disorders, and I have had to learn how to trust Him inexplicitly in everything I do.  There came a time when she told me that I was not allowed to tell her anything about the Lord, because she didn’t want to hear it.  She didn’t want me to play worship music where she could hear it, and I couldn’t speak about the Lord or read anything about Him to her.  As a mother who loves her daughter and wanted to help her as I saw her suffering immensely, one can only imagine the place that I was in at that time.  I had to trust the Lord that He loves her more than I ever could, and I had to trust that He would work in her and bring her to that place without me saying one word.  I’ll never forget the day when I was outside hanging the washed laundry out on the line.  She called me, and as I walked into the kitchen, I could see that her eyes were different.  I could see light in her eyes, because before, there was only death.  She then told me that she had given her heart to the Lord, and what a day that was!  The most important lesson for me was that He didn’t need me to speak, and she didn’t need me to speak; she needed me to be the real thing.  She needed me to be mercy when she didn’t deserve it.  She needed me to love her when she pushed me away.  She needed me not just to speak the truth but to be it.  As parents, we say many things to our children, but they are watching us to see whether we are what we say.  I spoke in the previous devotionals that we as apostles,  prophets, and elders, are foster mothers and parents sent out to the children.  They will not be so much interested in what we say, although we must speak, but they will watch to see if we are that which we speak. 

 

The issue is resurrection life.  Now we will go to Acts 22 where Paul, previously Saul, had an experience on the road to Damascus.  The Word says, “as he was travelling…”, and this is just as you and I are travelling through these experiences with God as we are dying to self and carrying our cross to become conformed to the image of Christ, He will come and reveal Himself to us.  Paul has a moment where he can speak for himself with an audience of Pharisees and Sadducees.  They were divided at this time, because the Pharisees believed in the resurrection and angels and things of this nature, and the Sadducees didn’t believe these things.  They were at odds with each other, and Paul previously being a Pharisee, was given an opportunity to speak and gave them his testimony. 

 

ACTS 22

¹ Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.

² (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)

³ I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day.

⁴ And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.

⁵ As also the high priest doth bear me witness, and all the estate of the elders: from whom also I received letters unto the brethren, and went to Damascus, to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem, for to be punished.

⁶ And it came to pass, that, as I made my journey, and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me.

⁷ And I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

⁸ And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest.

⁹ And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.

¹⁰ And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.

¹¹ And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus.

¹² And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there,

¹³ Came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him.

¹⁴ And he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that Just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth.

¹⁵ For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.

¹⁶ And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.

²¹ And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.

²² And they gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live.

²³ And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air,

 

Let’s consider ourselves as being there with these Pharisees and Sadducees sitting amongst them, and we are now listening to Paul.  Imagine yourself looking at everyone who loves the law and is zealous for God, somewhat in the same context of the church, and Paul is giving us his testimony.  He is saying that he is just a man like us, and he is zealous for God just as we are.  In verse 4 when he mentions being “persecuted in this way”, the way he is speaking of is a term that was used for the Christians at that time, and it was “the way of the cross”.  He goes on to tell them that he himself persecuted the people, men and women, and he bound them and brought them to Jerusalem. 

 

As Ananias speaks to Paul to receive his sight in verse 13, we see there was a seeing before the event and there was a seeing after the event.  There is a seeing before resurrection, and then there is an actual “resurrection seeing”.  We need to read the Word prophetically and by the Spirit to see these things.  Paul receiving his sight is not just being able to see things again in the natural but to see things in the Spirit as well.  God is intending for us to live by the Spirit, so we must receive our sight.  Paul’s call is then revealed in verse 14 to know His will and see that “Just One”.  This “Just One” is the “Justified One”.  It is also saying that Paul will see only one and will live by the words of His mouth.  When I read verse 16 it stopped me in my tracks.  It meant so much to me when I read it, because Ananias was telling him to arise and be baptized.  We know Yeshua was baptized in the Jordan, and the “Jordan” means to “go down, to enter into death”.  Paul was being instructed to go and be baptized into death and have his sins washed away, and this is our calling as well.  The verses go on where Paul begins to talk about what he had done, even specifically to Stephen, consenting to his death and his clothes being placed at his feet.  This makes me think of Elijah whose mantle fell on Elisha, so the same with the clothes of martyrdom falling from Stephen being placed at the feet of Paul. In fact, the word states that Saul kept the raiment of Stephen.

 

In verse 23, the audience listening to Paul is against him and saying that it is not fit for him to live, and they cried out casting dust into the air.  This is the same reaction the High Priest would display when he would tear his garment in a type of agony, like a tearing of the heart and throwing dust over the head.  These Pharisees and Sadducees were in complete rejection of Paul.  Going further, Paul is threatened to be scourged by a Roman centurion, at which time he tells him he is a Roman citizen and deserves a trial.  They became fearful of this, but he was then brought before the council again. This is where Paul begins to say that he too is a Pharisee and believes in the resurrection life.  Now we will go to Acts 23 and read what was spoken over him afterwards.

 

ACTS 23

¹¹ And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.

¹² And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

¹³ And they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy.

¹⁴ And they came to the chief priests and elders, and said, We have bound ourselves under a great curse, that we will eat nothing until we have slain Paul.

 

What we find here is that when it comes to this truth, being that resurrection life, that there is an animosity coming against Paul that speaks of the animosity in the church of those who subscribe to resurrection life but aren’t operating in it.  If the Pharisees who ascribed to resurrection life were the real thing in itself, they would never have said that Paul was not fit to live.  We find within the church today those who subscribe to words, doctrine, and truth but are not of the thing itself.  Just as it was then with Paul, it will be again that those in the church who subscribe to the truth will come against those who are that truth in reality.  Paul was told that he was to suffer this by going to proclaim the gospel to the Gentiles but knowing that he would suffer persecution.  The Word says that all those who are godly will suffer persecution – those who are the real thing will suffer persecution.  Not only does this persecution produce in us the ability to become an iron pillar, but it is the very testimony of the cross.  Our suffering and being subject to this persecution is the testimony of Christ on the cross, willing to die and suffer and willing to be the real thing amongst those who are not.  This is why the demons could cry out that they knew Yeshua and they knew Paul, but they did not know those other men – they did not see the authenticity in them.  Even though they used His name, the demons were calling them out and calling their bluff. 

 

What we find with Lazarus is that he went from the tomb to the table.  In John 11, he rose from the dead, and in John 12, he is sitting at the table with his Friend.  Lazarus sitting at the table speaks of that resurrection life and of dominion.  It speaks of rest and coming into the rest of God, which is to live by faith and have died to self.  We no longer live, but the life we live now, we live by the Son of God.  This is the resurrection life He wants to bring us into.  In order to bring us into that place, we who are sent and will go out into the churches and speak the words of resurrection life, must be brought to that place of death and have risen from the dead even now.  This is not just about what will happen in the end of the age, but we ourselves have to be the resurrection and the life now.  People will turn to us and say, “If only you had been here, he wouldn’t have died”, just as they did with Peter and Paul.  They will come to us because they see the real thing in us.  We have to count the cost of becoming this.

 

Let’s go to Isaiah 6, where we will compare this with Acts 9.  Isaiah 6 was Isaiah’s sending, and Acts 9 was Paul’s sending.  To be sent is the Greek word “apostello”, which means "to be apostolic”.  He is working that in us.

 

ISAIAH 6

¹ In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

² Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

³ And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

⁴ And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

⁵ Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

⁶ Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

⁷ And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

⁸ Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

⁹ And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

¹⁰ Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

¹¹ Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

¹² And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

¹³ But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

 

Isaiah has a vision of the throne room, and he sees the glory of God.  As Isaiah sees this, he uses the word “undone” to describe himself, and this word means to be “brought to silence”.  He cannot speak.  When you are dead, you are silent; it means to die.  In the same way we find John in the book of Revelation where Yeshua appears before him, and he fell down as a dead man.  Isaiah further says, “because I am a man…”, just as Paul said to the Pharisees that he was a man, a Jew.  He could have just said that he was a Jew, but he said he was a man, which is to say, “I am dust”.  The unclean lips refers to fact that  we speak from the abundance of our hearts, and so he was saying that he knew there was no good in him.  Isaiah said that in seeing the revelation of who He is, he saw who he himself really was; as if to say, “I am a man, and you are God”.  Then in verse   8 when the Lord says, “Who will go for us?”, this part got to me.  It was if He was saying, “Who is worthy to go for us?” or “Who can We send that will represent us?”.  Obviously, it is no one.  Who can possibly represent God?  And yet, He looked at Isaiah, and Isaiah  says he will go. Would he be able to say this before he saw the Lord high and lifted up or before he was undone and brought to silence and dust?  No.  He first had to see this and be undone before he could be sent.  The people to which Isaiah would be sent are people who cannot see or hear or perceive the truth, just like the Pharisees and Sadducees who were blind and deaf and could not see the One who is the Truth standing in front of them.  These people are not converted.  Once they can see, then they will be converted.  Just as in the church today, there are many saved but few converted. 

 

Father is so faithful in these words He gives me to speak; He confirms them right through.  Earlier I had seen that I had 390 subscribers to my YouTube channel.  On the same morning I was going to do the video for this teaching, I was praying and speaking to the Father about these things.  The Spirit then said to me to look up the number 390 in the Strong’s.  I looked, and it is a Greek word that means “to overturn, turn back, to convert”.  The Father wants His people to convert.  There are many who are saved, hold on to truth, and who understand the Word, but they do not walk in the Spirit of it.  They are not the real thing at home, at work, or when the heat is on, so to speak.  They ascribe to these things, they give lip service, but their hearts are far from Him.  They are not actively pursuing authenticity in their lives; they are just going through the motions. 

 

Going further, in verse 12 in Isaiah 6, he is speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem.  At the same time, we must apply this to ourselves.  He says that we will also be deaf and blind, until He has brought such devastation to us that we will be utterly desolate.  Isn’t this the very thing that Christ was brought to as an example to us – to a place of complete desolation, destruction, and hopelessness?  This is just as Lazarus, lying in the tomb after four days, with no hope of the soul coming in again.  Until we are brought to that utter place of death, we will still be blind, deaf, and not converted.  We will still ascribe to truths but not be this in reality.  We must desire that authenticity with our whole being, so that He can bring this about in us. 

 

In verse 13 I looked up the description of both the teil tree and the oak tree, and they are both the same.  In my previous devotionals, I explained that the oak tree, or terebinth, is a pillar.  He is saying that a tenth will return, and this tenth is the Bride, or worker Bride, who will be sown into this land of desolation, in Jerusalem and in this earth that will experience desolation and destruction during the tribulation.  This word “substance” means their “seed or member”, and they themselves will be sown into the field.  In John 12, Yeshua speaks of the seed that dies in the ground and brings forth much fruit.  This is a reference to that tenth, those seeds, those pillars who will suffer and be sown into the earth.  The holy seed that will be the substance will be the life sown in the ground.

 

Now we will go to Acts 9 and read about Paul’s conversion. 

 

ACTS 9

³ And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

⁴ And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

⁵ And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

⁶ And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

⁷ And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

⁸ And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus.

 

The first thing is that Paul fell to the earth after the Light from heaven appeared around him.  He fell to that place from where he originally came… the dust.  He fell in the sight of God.  Then he heard a voice.  Now he could hear.  Previously he couldn’t hear, although he ascribed to truth and was zealous for God, followed the law, and did everything for God; but yet he was deaf.  Now he hears the voice when he was brought to the dust.  Then he asks, “Who are thou, Lord?”.  Have you ever asked God this question… “Who are you Lord?”  We hear Him through the hearing of our ears as in we have heard about Him and read about Him, but we must ask Him, “Who are you, Lord?”.  We need to ask him to show us who He is and the reality of who He is; that we don’t just want to read about Him, but we want to know Him.  Yeshua said in John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent.”  Remember that eternal life is not just longevity, but it is quality of life.  To know Him, the Father, and the Son, is eternal life.  Paul is asking this very important question, “Who are thou, Lord?”.  Have you asked that question?  We must see Him in order to see ourselves as we really are, as dust.  Yeshua answers Paul and says, “I AM…”, thus Paul says to the Pharisees that he is only a man, because he met the I AM, Him whom he had persecuted.  Paul didn’t initially understand that he was persecuting Yeshua, and in the same way, we have not fully understood how we have done the same.  We have an idea, but we have not yet entered into the reality of this. 

 

Romans 8 tells us that the flesh is in enmity with God.  Everything about the flesh hates God.  If I were asked the definition of sin, my answer would be that it is to hate God.  When we sin, we hate God, because it is our flesh that is in enmity with God, a rival against the Spirit of God.  That flesh, that religious enmity, lies in the religious garb that we carry within ourselves.  It’s that “robe of zealousy” that we wear when we persecute our brethren and come against those whom we should love.  The enmity lies within a religious spirit that comes against that which is the resurrection life.  We must understand that He wants to show us that when we sin, we persecute Him.  We still persecute Him even now.  When we are not willing to come to that place of complete death, we are still holding on to something in this world, and therefore we are still persecuting Him.  When we don’t pursue Him with everything, we are still persecuting Him, and we still harm the Body, His Body.  The reality is that we do not truly see ourselves as enemies of God, and unless we do, we will not be fully converted.  We will be saved, but not changed.  We will be ascribed to the right things, but we won’t BE those things.  We will not have that resurrection life in us now.

 

When Saul was in that Light, he saw no man (verse 7).  Paul was told by Ananias that he would see the “Just One” and stand before Him alone.  Paul no longer saw man.  It was no longer about what man said or about man’s significance, or even man’s encouragement or approval.  It was only about Christ.  He saw no man.  We still live our lives seeing man, and we still look at what man does to us.  We still crave what man can give.  Paul was brought to a place where there was no man.  Can you say that where you are now, when people persecute you, that you see no man and do not have need to defend yourself?  Are you willing to lay your life down, because you no longer have that life?  In Luke 14:26 Yeshua told His disciples, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  Many have come to the point where they “hate” family members but have yet to hate their own life.  What life it that?  It is the life within us that is in enmity with Christ. 

 

A while back Father dropped something in my spirit, and I wrote it down.  It said, “How will I hate my life if I do not fully grasp that the life in me, that seed that has to die, is the principle of evil, the very enemy of God?”.  How will we ever hate our lives unless we see the life in us as He sees it, as an enemy of God?  There is no grey area here; there is no option to sin and still love God.  Many people may feel I am taking this too far, because no one is perfect.  This is about a disposition… how much you hate sin and how much you really want to be like Christ.  It’s about whether you are willing to pay the price and do whatever He tells you to do.  Are you willing to be like Mary who told the disciples to do whatever Yeshua said to do and how she told the angel who spoke with her to let it be according to what he had said to her?  Can you be like Yeshua who said in the garden, “… nevertheless not my will, but thine be done.”?  (Luke 22:42)

 

In Revelation 16, we read about Jezebel who is riding the beast and represents the false prophet who will come against the true prophets of God.  This has been discussed in a previous devotional, as well as how she is the personification of the enmity against God and how many saints will die at her hand.  She represents the flesh that lusts, because she is a whore, and she rides the beast, who is us.  We are the beast.  David said in Psalm 73:22, “… I was like a beast before you”.  “Beast” means “dumb cattle”.  Then in Ecclesiastes 3 we see more.

 

ECCLESIASTES 3

¹⁸ I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

¹⁹ For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

²⁰ All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

²¹ Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

 

Here he is saying that the Lord must reveal to us that we are beasts.  We are that flesh that sins and desires to compromise and fornicate with this world.  Our lusts is the at Jezebel that rides the beast who is in enmity with Christ and desires to kill the Christ in us.  She desires to kill that resurrection life in us and will do anything to silence it.  When this world sees Christ in us, that resurrection life, it will come against us and will persecute us.  If we are not in the true reality and are in a place where we still compromise, how can we then stand and be sent out by Him?  As the Lord God said, “Who will go for us?”.  He can only send us if we are the resurrection life in reality. 

 

I would like to now read a word that Father gave me a while back in 2021.  It wasn’t an easy word to receive, but He worked it in me.  I pray that you will hear it.  It is not going to make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it is an invitation, and it is a question that He is asking of us – a question He is asking of you.  Will you hear what He wants to say?   Will you be willing to allow Him to show you that you are dust and just how much your flesh is in enmity with Him?  Will you allow Him to show you that you are the enemy of God?

 

ARE YOU WILLING – 22/2/21

Put on your sackcloth and sit in the ashes of humility.  For unless you yourself not only wear sackcloth, but it is engraved in your fibre, how can you who have not allowed My holy judgment to have come over you, speak the same judgment over another?

Are you wearing the sackcloth of repentance?  Are you sitting in the ashes of humility?  Have you made this your disposition?  Are you recognizing the hour of your humiliation?  For how can there be any glory without humility?  Yet My people have ceased to seek Me in true repentance.  They are no longer the Elijahs who by their lives wear sackcloth.  They point the finger and judge.

I alone am He who judges and judges righteously.  But you have taken it upon you to claim My glory without true humility.  Now is the time to seek Me in sackcloth and ashes.  Now is the time to humble yourself before Me.

If you have no identification with destruction, how can you idly speak it?  Look and you will see that unless you allow your sackcloth to be in identification with My cross, My suffering, you cannot share in My glory.  Death unto Life!  Whilst you are still living life from out of your own ability, you have yet to enter into My death.  Therefore, repent in earnestness.  Put on the sackcloth of repentance and sit in the ashes of humility.

Are you willing for Me to devastate you, even as I did with Job?  In righteousness you now stand, but are you willing to fall down to the ground?  Down in ashes?  Are you willing for Me to strip you bare of all things and consume you with fire?  For any self-preservation will cause you to cry out for help, but I will be silent.  I will speak no more.  For you have to become silent yourself.  You have to be still and know that I am God.  And as God I choose how I will form My vessels of glory.  If I beat you to dust, it is my will.  If I burn you to ashes, it is My will.  For unless you are willing for My will whatever it may be, without any limitations, how are you choosing My will above yours?

Look at My Son.  At the ultimate extremity to the point of shedding blood, His cry was, “Not My will, but Your will be done.”  There can be no limitations.  There can be no degrees.  All is Mine, even your very life.  And if you hold onto that life, you will surely loose it.  But if you willingly lay it down, I will not only give you life eternal, but resurrection life now.

From out of you I will be your life.  No longer you living, but I.

Count the cost.  Sit down and count it.  Be still and think of what I am asking.  For I will not take your life, even if I can, I will not take it.  You are My friend and I am yours.  Will you lay it down?  Whose will do you choose?  Mine or yours?

Are you willing to lay it down?

 

Are you willing to be obedient unto death?  In Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, they all “died in faith”.  Are you willing to die in your faith and accept whatever He brings?  Are you willing to seek His face?  Are you counting the cost to become an apostle, a prophet, or evangelist?  Even if you’re not called to all these things but are to be sent out, are you willing to pay the price of a sent one?  Are you willing to be not just ascribed to being a sent one but to actually be it? 

 

Job is an example of utter destruction unto death.  In Job 42:5 Job says, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.”  He repented in dust and ashes.  After he was brought to complete destruction, then he was able to see.  He knew that it took God bringing him to dust and ashes to finally be able to see.  He was willing to repent in dust and ashes and acknowledge he was only a man and that He was the Living God, the great I AM.  In Psalm 51, David acknowledges that it was against God only that he had sinned.  He said further, “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part though shalt make me to know wisdom.”  (Psalm 51:6)   Then he asked the Lord to wash him and cleanse him from blood-guiltiness.  What blood is this?  The blood on our hands where we are all as Cain who killed Abel who brought the sacrifice of blood and where we are all as murderers at heart who killed the Son of God.  In order for the true conversion to take place, the Cain in us has to die, and the Saul in us has to die.  When Adam and Eve conceived again, they conceived a man called Seth.  Seth means “in place of” – a new thing, a conversion. Many are saved, but He wants to convert us, and He wants to bring about a new thing.  Jacob said he was a worm, and Yeshua also said He was a worm in Psalm 22.  But when resurrection came, that worm became a butterfly.  A new creation was born and the old was passed away.  This cannot just be because one day you said a prayer and thought you might better do this God thing or that it might be the right thing to do.  Conversion takes place when there has been death, and we must be willing to be brought into this in order to be sent.  Paul was sent when he tasted death, Isaiah was sent when he tasted death, and King Uzziah first had to die.  What is the King Uzziah in your life?  What is that thing to which you must die continually?  It is in humility, in bringing us down to the dust in complete utter death like Lazarus that He will raise us up to be seated next to Him in heavenly places, even now. In John 3 Yeshua tells Nicodemus the following.

JOHN 3

¹³ And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which IS in heaven.

 

Even whilst standing right in front of Nicodemus, He was also IN heaven at the same time.  So we are.

 

I would like to end this teaching with a prayer.

 

Father, I thank you for this word.  I pray that everyone who reads and listens will count the cost and be willing for you to do whatever it takes to bring them to that place of authenticity that when they read your Word, they will ask, “Is this true of me?”.  And if it’s not, I pray they will earnestly seek this reality and allow you to bring them into death so that the life of the Spirit of the Word will be a reality in them.  I pray it is so much in them that they will not even have to say a word and others will come to them and say, “What must I do to be saved?”.  I pray that conviction will come, merely by their presence and that the anointing and Spirit of God will rest upon those vessels who have become as dust and are merely the holders of that eternal resurrection life to be poured forth to the thirsty, to this world that hungers and thirsts for truth.  Thank you Father.  Please seal this word in the hearts of your children.  I pray this in the name of Yeshua.  Amen.