Knowing Christ in Divine Order (Preface)
The following is the preface to my newly released eBook Knowing Christ in Divine Order. If you would like to read the book, you may now access it from this blog. Scroll down and look for the link on the sidebar. You may also want to check out the endorsements listed in my posts.
Preface
This book has been written to expound on a forgotten teaching of Scripture that I believe gives us great insight into knowing Jesus. It is my desire that this small book will provoke its readers to draw near to the Lord in order that they would receive greater revelations of Jesus Christ and know the power of his resurrection life.
There is a terrible trend today that the church has accepted. As an avid reader, I have noticed the plethora of Christian books and other writings that offer a “new” word and promise a way out of spiritual despair for a return to authentic Christianity. Yet, little seems to come of the many attempts to jump start the church individually or corporately. I humbly believe I know why this is happening. If you would do me the honor of continuing to read this book… I believe you will agree with me and the many saints who have left us with the keys to spiritual revolution.
“We have almost forgotten that God is a person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can.” A.W. Tozer
It is not my concern to be trendy or to present something that would look good on a bookstore shelf. I am writing in hopes that Christ may use my words to reveal something about his Person to you. For it is my strong conviction that all our problems and concerns in our lives and the Christian church… are resolved in knowing Christ in spirit and in truth. This is the very reason that we have been placed on this earth… to know Christ and make him known.
“Though most believers are comfortable speaking of a ‘personal relationship with Jesus,’ few concepts are so greatly celebrated and little experienced.” Wayne Jacobson
This book is about us knowing Christ intimately and experiencing him daily. It is about the way Christ has prepared for us to meet with him and walk with him moment-by-moment. You will find nothing in this book that will excite the outward man to respond by his own intellect and emotion. However, you will find spiritual things that beckon the governing of Christ’s Spirit in your inner man.
My intentions are not to rest solely on a lost teaching, but to move on to experience and application. However, it must be known that I myself have only just begun to implement these things into my life. I am still running the race. It is my hope that you would prayerfully consider the content of this little book. It is the Lord that must teach us how to follow the divine order of knowing him.
Therefore, this book should be read as an invitation. Would we be so bold to trust Christ to be our leader and head? Would we trust the Lord Jesus to give us the experience of knowing him in divine order instead of looking to a man to guide our steps? Only those who wish to surrender to Christ as teacher will find satisfaction in what I am passing on to you. May we allow Christ to be central and supreme in our lives. Let us deny the life that has become dependent upon man’s words and the many religious gimmicks that leave us empty time and again. Let us return to our first love.
“We are past the point of revival; we have gone beyond the possibility of repair through reformation. Christianity must experience a vital revolution!” H.J. Stanley
Finally, I have written this book to Christians everywhere who are dissatisfied with their current knowledge of Christ and see the great need in the church for spiritual revolution instead of religious reformation. Is there more to Christian spirituality than you are experiencing? You bet. Are we missing something in the midst of all the ecclesiastical drama today? No doubt. Do I have all the answers? Absolutely not. But I am confident that I am beginning to know the One who does.
I pray that your reading of this book will not be a judgment on my limitations and short-comings as a writer. It is the message that I hope you will hold up to the testimony of Scripture and take to the Lord in prayer. May the Lord speak to you in spite of me.
David,
I’m hooked and looking forward to the rest! Thanks.
Chris
Hi David:
Like Chris, I’m hooked already too. It’s the desire of my heart to “know” Him. I know lots about Him intellectually, but I don’t know Him all that well yet. But I’m on the path now, I hope. Your book sounds like it’ll be a real encouragement to “know Him”. If you haven’t read Manfred Haller’s, The Mystery Of God: Christ All and In All… I think you’d be blessed. He expands on much you discussed above… it’s something the Spirit is calling us to… to be like Jacob: the generation who seeks His face. (Ps.24:6)
I’m there with you, brother.. on this “way” to intimately know our Lord and Christ!
Ron
This is really insightful and hopeful! Can’t wait to read the rest…
It can’t just be about beliefs… there has to be some “experience of the divine” – of Christ in us… like the Catholic mystic saints used to espouse…
David
Interesting. I am interested in what you have to say here. But here is my problem with what you have stated thus far. It would appear your might be headed down a path of nothing more than “emergent mysticism” or Christian existentialism. I have yet to find a biblical text that would suggest we are to know the “otherness of God” as put forth by Calvinist and others – (just how does someone “worship” that which is not known??). God requires relationship, therefore we must know a person and their nature and character in order to maintain that relationship. What I find is a problem with the church today is not a lack of “spiritualism” or mysticism, but a apathy for the word and the knowledge of God. Most are lazy and want to have an experience rather than a genuine intellectual knowledge and understanding of God. For those who are seeking an “experience” are in some sense looking for God to come to them, rather than them coming to God. What I see with this whole concept of mysticism, Contemplative Prayer, etc is nothing more than a dead work of the flesh. I suggest we put our focus on knowing God (Lord knows there is plenty of him to know!) rather than having an experience. “To know me is to know the father” – Jesus Christ.
I am very much looking forward to reading your insights. I feel a kinship with you in these things. I found my self saying, “yes, yes, yes” as I read the preface. My heart longs for the LORD to bring the revolution to his bride and that we would wake up.
Thanks for think of me as one who would join you in this revolution.
Soli Deo Gloria
Preston,
I am in agreement with you, mostly. I am suggesting we experience Jesus in our mind as well as our spirit. The book is sprinkled with Scripture throughout. I do hope you will read my e-book and check out some of my other posts. Please do not push me off into a category you already have etched out and tag me as one of those you have already encountered. Read what I have written before you make your conclusions. Thanks for commenting!
OK… so I want to read this book, now.
If you read my book, you will see that I am emphatically proposing that it is only by the Spirit of Christ that we are able to receive anything from him and about him. You do not take the higher ground to say that people should not read or hear the words of others who speak about Jesus… and insinuate that you should just listen to his Spirit. That would be ridiculous. How would any of us know of Christ had not someone spoke to us in the past? Faith is not born this way. Furthermore, the Preface has been posted to give a person an idea to what the book is about. it does not encompass the entire message. Please read the book before you respond to its content. Thanks.
Hey David,
I finished reading KCIDO yesterday. Although I’ve been on a similar path for some time now, there was much in this that ministered deeply to my inner man. I did much underlining and wrote many comments on the side.
There’s so much here worth mentioning, but I will focus on one thing you said, more than once:
This (following Christ in Divine Order) is only possible if we are willing to surrender our preconceived ideas of Jesus and lay them on the altar of sacrifice. If our views of Christ are correct, he will return them to us richer than before. However, if what we were told and believed about Jesus is incorrect, he will give us new insight into his person and accompany it in his time with experience. We must hold to Christ’s word to us about himself. In time, he will give us the experience we desire. P.38
And:
Deny your self, your own will, your emotions, your thinking and the Lord will lift you up in due time. P.40
And
It is not until we give up all that we think we know about Christ and our work that he is able to whisper his truth into our spirit. Once we are willing to lay our work-centered, religious Christianity on the cross…we will find a sweet release of Christ’ Spirit within our own spirit. We will discover a religionless Christianity that operates off of the natural faith of Christ p.28
David, our Lord has spoken these same words to me, verbatim, about “giving up all that we think we know” about Him. He wants to detox us from so much we have learned. It’s not that some of our ideas about him, be it Pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical, etc. are wrong per se, but so many of these ideas just do not contain his life, if you catch my meaning.
Listen to this passage of scripture in II Timothy (2:20-21):
But in a great house there are not only gold and silver vessels but also wooden and earthen; and some are unto honor, and some unto dishonor.
If therefore anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, useful to the master, prepared unto every good work.”
There is so much in our lives, in our thinking, that is of wood and earth. It is of the natural sphere, albeit, such things may also be of the religion of Christianity, and thus we wrongly attribute silver and gold to what is of wood and earth. As Jesus said, “If the light in you be darkness, how great that darkness is!”
This purging ourselves of the earthly is such a major undertaking isn’t it? Nothing runs deeper than our “religious” ideas of Christ and the things we have grown up with in regard to the traditions of the churches we have belonged to. Only if we “come to Him as living stones” will we rise to be the temple He longs to build for Himself. Instead, we cast our crowns before our ideas of him that have become shiny idols that are encrusted and as hard as nails and have no life or breath.
Thanks again David for this “bouquet of the spirit” you have given to the body of Christ. I’ll be passing it on.
Your brother,
Clark
Great website, Can u contact me via e-mail?
Hey Tony! Shoot me an email at daviddflowers@aol.com