2-12-17 Audio on Soundcloud
For the last year, being acutely aware of the Lord’s intercession washing through and over my soul like a river. I’ve been listening in faith for His voice, for the sound of the many waters and taking solace in knowing there is only need of a response to the flow of these words. The fruits of this season have been abundant. The washing of these words over my soul have nurtured beautiful revelations and these understandings have poured into and cleansed my heart.
Under His mantle of immeasurable enthusiasm for unity, the voice of Truth has been wooing me, seeking to cultivate and imbue me with a deeper perception of His bond, upheld by His word. He has shown me moving pictures of the pure wellspring of God that satiates thirst in following the word of Christ.
His joy has been revealed in the reciprocal nature of my repentance meeting His intercession and His yearning to elevate this virtue in the hearts of His bride, to that of a treasure. I’ve been made aware of these living waters and they continue to flow with the revelation of His desire for us to meet in unity, His treasure. Towards this joy, He has been continually stirring my heart.
These pictures have been brought to my understanding to illustrate the living water of His intercession and how it flows from Him into the storehouse of the heart. This all ties back into, “What Am I Doing Right Now” & “II” as the theme of His intercession, our repentance and the unity of God have been rendered in these moving pictures. He has shown me His intercession, His voice is the living water, the freshness and beauty of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
On the other side of this beauty is a tale of two cities; one of consideration and heeding in anticipatory childlike expectation and total immersion and another of devastatingly dry myopic resistance in the wilderness of self-righteousness.
The area of ingress to the heart is His, it belongs to Him and from it flow the empowerment to unity and love in the surge of these waters. He is like a door that opens into us whereby one must step away to allow access. Like an aquifer that rises and falls with the water table His flow of living water responds to our willingness to hear in repentance. He has given me a name to designate His entrance, a truly mysterious primal portal, formed in His image from the dust of the ground and breathed into the heart of humanity, it is called God’s Gap.
In watching, one still frame in particular in the flow of these images gave Him pause as He was revealing it all. In that lull, He disclosed the danger of what I saw. The living waters were being obstructed and His life was being choked out! I became aware of a substance that was filling in God’s Gap, barring His door with a hindering force that restricts and seals off His Life from the heart. Sin? Well yeah,.. but what is it? The longer I inquired about this substance and its fruit, the more detail He supplied to me about the spirits and heart attitudes that create, shape and mold it into place. He called it “CUJ” (k-oŏ-əj) born of iniquity,
“The inhibitor and obstruction to the living waters of My intercession”.
There is much more detail to follow to help elucidate and provide a clearer mental picture for you, but amidst all the magnificence that He has shown me about His supplied life in the waters that flow, this most concerning picture that gave Him pause was given as a warning and a sign of danger to those that claim to believe and have faith.
The flow of purity and beauty of these living waters of God have an eternal enemy in a heart of clay, a stealthy sludge of self-righteousness, a man centered mortar of misconception. It is His hope for this picture to be fully revealed and understood so we will not suffer in the wilderness, the stagnant and barren isolation of “CUJ in God’s Gap”.
Using His physical analogy as a mirror to the spiritual reality, we proceed.
Deep in the recesses of the heart, resides a tract of unknown size. It is best described as permeable rock through which this living water of God can flow and hopefully inundate, thereby be known and bring healing to the soul. Through this gap all revelation of God is born, it arrives in this way, unsolicited as a gift, bearing witness to all Truth.
This aperture, these perforations are both the separation and connection to the Kingdom of God that is within us. Luke 17:21 A porous passage formed by and belonging to God working in a similar fashion to the parable of the seed, it is a mystery. But, similar to a computer programer, who is maybe not so mysterious, who designs back doors into operating systems or applications, the Lord formed these cracks and crevasses in innocent harmless oblivion of the receiver. It is at least, your very breath.
It is how He enters into and initiates fellowship with us and explains why Jesus said, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you to the Pharisees whom we all assume were not “saved”. God said “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” The likeness is in God’s Gap, rippling with anticipation for unity. It is a built in connection point He desires to pour through with the living waters of His word, His intercession. The Kingdom of Heaven within you where the word is sown as seed and the living water of His intercession brings forth good fruit.
For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.
Deut. 30:11-14
He is the owner and faithful pervader of this gap, for He knows that on the other side there resides an object of His affection, a scorched and barren wilderness to be conformed to His image and bear good fruit through the flow of this word, His living water. Like Isaiah 35.
This is part of the mystery of Christ upholding all things by the power of His Word, though if only silently trickling into the deep and secret places of any one individual just to maintain their breath as they reject the flush of His love, in the living waters. Herein lies the door for His intercession the stirring of the waters with the aim to cause repentance, a heart to follow. The freshness of the Kingdom of God that brings healing wonder, amazement and satisfaction to the thirst of the dry clay.
From creation, His desire has been for the heart of man, His treasure; and the living waters of God have resided in continual static pressure at the door to the heart, waiting.
“Will you hear My voice, let me in and follow?
That question has never and will never change on this side of eternity. The door is the shoreline of His mercy and grace extended to all who have breath. The living water of the creator, the word that sustains all things dwells at this convergence zone, never desiccated, desiring in perpetuity to flood us with His life juxtaposed the anti-humble dry baked clay of humanity.
Formed from the dust, the heart of man is a potentially menacing silty loam of a substance prone to a wasteland of lifeless illusion and deception without this living water, the voice of His intercession washing and flooding the heart. The living water is the difference between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh, the hope of an undivided heart Ezk 11:19. God’s Gap can and has been subjected to this miry clay, this self replicating carnal paste that clogs the cracks and crevices of His admission, since the garden. In the parched landscape that is formed, a haunt for demons, the living waters and the good seed are stolen, withered or chocked out and the leading culprits in this arid travesty are Condemnation, Unforgivingness, and Judgement. They are CUJ in God’s Gap.
The first letters of each word form a very suitable sound for the overall effect they play in the heart. Awful sounding as a word, but aptly descriptive of the byproduct of those who don’t live in repentance, with, after and behind the One speaking as living water. Sounding more like a substance fit for a Haz-Mat unit,”C.U.J.” (k-oŏ-jəj) as I heard it in my spirit, has all the descriptive phonetics illuminating the carnal mash their definitions hold. This acronym with all the horrific visuals and olfactory spasms it conjures carries a far more dreadful outcome than any toxin known to science. The spiritual ramifications for the materialization and fostered existence of CUJ is at best a rancid pool of self-righteous evil and at worst an arid wasteland, the baked clay of hopelessness.
Beyond the stench, this ooze carries with it an asphyxiating appetite for muddying the water of life and we become subject to the sediment of these words that congest and clog God’s Gap, it is in our fallen nature. If we lived off of His intercession in repentance, the living waters would flourish, flush and heal, transforming the treasure of our hearts.
In this private place of percolation, this flow, this gush of living water was experienced first hand by Peter as described in Matthew 16:13-16 and Luke 9:18-20. After Jesus had asked all the disciples, “Who do people say I am?” and a flurry of well thought out responses. He then posed it directly to them, “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” To be honest, I don’t believe Peter thought this through. He did not “know” this in his mind or he would have said so in the first place. That would have been more fitting of his personality. He would have said something like, I don’t know what these other guys think, but “I know” you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. But that isn’t what he said; No, he didn’t say that because he only understood it as God rushed on him suddenly like a flood when directly asked, then the inspired truth came blasting out of him in an eruption germane to how he was formed and how the living waters of God desire to flow. Jesus confirms to us all it wasn’t study or another’s opinion that brought this understanding to Peter but “revelation” from The Father, the “rock” He will build His Church on that the gates of hell will not prevail against.
The other side of this equation, if we could call it that, is a short time later Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked Him for saying He was going to suffer many things from the elders, the chief priests and scribes, be killed and raised up on the third day. At which point Jesus said to Peter, “get behind me Satan, you are a stumbling block to me because you are not setting your mind on God’s interests but mans.” Surely, Peter had lost his mind to rebuke the Son of the living God, the Messiah whom he had just identified or maybe as Jesus alluded, the understanding never really entered in Peter’s mind at all, but had filled his heart in the moment without a ponder from him and later in his own judgement, he condemned the will of God?
Stepping back for perspective. Is it not very odd that these two diametrically opposed “points of view” emanating from the same soul would be set back to back in the narrative of scripture? This vessel thought so and began asking for the understanding.
Now there is no direct accounting for how Peter knew Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God other than to say it was revealed to Him by the Father. But Peter’s instance of understanding is no different than every other aspect of God’s connection to us, His word, His will, His nature,… it is all revelation from Him that flows through God’s Gap into our hearts by His Spirit as a witness confirming truth. But right behind that revelation, that gush of the living waters of true understanding we are shown the fruit of CUJ in God’s Gap. Man’s reasoning and sentiment, condemnation and judgment with a verdict apart from the living waters is placed right into Satan’s camp, on the other side of the gates of hell. No irony exists there, I’m sure.
In its insidious accrual, CUJ in God’s Gap is a stealthy deposit of noxious toxins that directly oppose the will of God. In covert or overt fashion, our condemnation, unforgivingness and judgement is directly opposed to the will of God. Neither is it born of Him nor can it be reconciled back to Him, it is anathema. The CUJ in God’s Gap will come back upon our own heads unless we allow Him to wash us out. This is why the Lord gave pause to the representation of its effect in the pictures I have been shown. There is no life of God in these manifested heart conditions they are as whitewashed tombs. If Obadiah 15 is true, then in the end CUJ in God’s Gap will keep us condemned, not forgiven, and judged regardless of what we say we believe today. As I heard Him say in my spirit, CUJ is,
“The inhibitor and obstruction to the living waters of My intercession”
Throughout this season, one of the most compelling and reoccurring leadings of the voice of Truth has been to 2 Cor 5:19. It deals with an eternal understanding that the Father was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s sins against them. As I have been listening and pondering that, He has reminded me nothing has changed. “I am the same yesterday, today and forever. Heb 13:8 Know and embrace that the Holy Spirit is saying what I have always been saying.” To hold or carry condemnation, unforgivingness or judgement in the heart towards or about anyone is to be against Him and what He is doing right now. CUJ is in direct opposition to Christ because it demands people pay you for their sins. In light of what repentance really means, this has become a big ponder stop for me.
The heart is prone to CUJ, it is the corrupt fruit of the serpent inspired self-righteous nature that was imbibed at the first break from God’s unity in the garden. I think it came out something like, it is that woman you gave me, she gave to me from the tree. And there you have it, Adam judged and condemned the women for giving him the fruit and God for giving him the woman, when in fact, it all comes back to Adam’s refusal to follow God’s request, from the heart. Adam did not live off of the intercession of God in repentance and was condemned to death.
CUJ entered in from the beginning. It is the most rancid fruit of our unwillingness to follow His intercession, His living word calling us to lay down our lives as we lean upon our own understanding, justifying ourselves for our resentful supercilious hearts. The whole of salvation rests on the unmerited forgiveness of Christ, not judging or condemning us but based on what I’ve seen, my heart aches to see how much CUJ still operates in our hearts.
It is pretty obvious if gluttony is at hand, jealousy, discord or selfish ambition are fairly evident, it is as a red boil upon the nose where rage and anger clench the fist. But condemnation, unforgivingness and judgement can hide in the silence of the heart if only to make cameo appearances merely agreeing with someone else that, yes, she sure is a…? or taking offense, subtly desiring someone suffer and pay you for their perceived failure, or the grand daddy of them all, the self-righteous justification that places us above others because they don’t seem to have the same commitment, understanding or knowledge about something that we do.
Though the former are a manifestation of a dangerous clog of the heart as well, the surreptitious potential of CUJ in God’s Gap will keep us from the very promises Christ paid for with His life and blood and extended to us freely. Therefore, there is a requirement of us in laying down our lives to invite His patient and thorough scrutiny to expose and wash our hearts in the living waters of His intercession. He says if we do not forgive from our hearts we will not be forgiven by the Father suffering the same outcome of the unmerciful servant.
Now before anyone gets off thinking that this isn’t personal, sharing this comes in the continual flow of His intercession driving a persistent survey of my own heart; a recurrent washing of the Spirit of truth exposing the CUJ in God’s Gap. That’s how we got here. He said to me in view of my own condemnation, unforgivingness and judgement, “Why won’t you agree with me for their deliverance, be in unity with me for their healing, hope and believe for their freedom with me? Why won’t you stand in the gap and plead for their thirst to be quenched in the living water of my intercession? Why must you persist in self-righteousness and restrict My power for their lives?” He showed me my own heart as he asked me to follow him not counting sins against anyone saying, “If you do not gather with me you scatter”. Matt 12:30
Going on He said, “Of course the fruit of their behavior, their attitude, their lives is corrupt, it is the sick I have come for”. “It is the nature of humanity to wallow in the stale shallow pools of their own piety and forsake the river of fresh, dependent, revelation.” “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Christ has invited us into the unity of His intercession, His drawing, calling the names of every individual in the world through the Holy Spirit to repentance, a willingness to follow. He is looking for a partner, a helpmate who will lay down their lives and proclaim His liberty, agree with Him that healing come, that freedom be tasted and embraced. It is CUJ in God’s Gap that hinders and restricts His work through us and we will reap what we sow.
We do not change our actions and attain the treasure.
Our treasure changes and this changes our actions.
This visual representation has been given as an aide to understanding. Picture God’s Gap in your own heart where His voice can be heard in the many waters, where the words of His intercession flow and cleanse, seeking to empower us by His Spirit for His will to be done. This is life! This is flourishing in the midst of any circumstance. It is here, through God’s Gap that He desires to flood us with Godliness that conforms us to the image of Christ! It is the unity He has asked for in His intercession since creation.
Until we come to the understanding that it is His joy for us to be in unity with Him, and that He is resident, knocking at the door to the Kingdom within to empower us towards that end we will never be able to stand against the menacing onslaught of any sin or the build up of CUJ in God’s Gap.
It is not for us to just not do sinful things, it is for us to follow the satiating living water, the intercession of God that cleanses and transforms the treasure of our heart into good fruit.
In repentance, His treasure in us, the radiant adornment and fragrant aroma of the bride He seeks, unity with Him becomes our treasure. Then it is no longer a matter of not doing bad, but following with, after and behind He who is doing good and loving all the world, not counting their sins against them.
Through this long season of His intercession washing over my soul with mercy, purity, holiness and so much more, He has developed a sense in me for it’s sweet smell and clean feeling. The word of His intercession has exposed the CUJ that seeks to creep into God’s Gap, the essence of it’s rancid composition and acrid aroma that sour Him and His sweetness, the dichotomy has become palpable. I now have a sense of smell of the two in my spirit.
The Spirit of truth is desiring to meet us in unity. To birth and nurture a perpetual state of repentance that hungers and thirsts for His righteousness to enter into our hearts in the flow of His intercession. He desires this exchange to become our treasure and if this becomes the treasure of our hearts, then the living waters will continue to soften, wash and cleanse our hearts and conform us to the image of Christ.
I bless the Lord for taking me on this multi-season expedition asking, “What am I doing right now?”, slashing through the jungle of nomenclature and religious misconception, exposing me to the beauty of His life giving intercession and what it looks like to answer in repentance. The images He has shown me in my spirit, the entrance into the heart at God’s Gap, the living waters and the resultant cleansing that flow there. Where the unity of the triune God can be enjoined in repentance. Such beauty and bouquet to the spirit.
And what a travesty it would be for the Lord not to warn of the dangers to His work in contrasting pictures? What great grace and mercy for Him to show the terminal results of the assimilation and concentration of CUJ in God’s Gap. The asphyxiating effects to His life as condemnation, unforgivingness and judgement are exercised toward others putting them in their place or wanting them to pay for their own sins.
CUJ is certainly the anti-humble, anti-loving formulation to a barren wilderness and a divided heart. I’ve seen it there, tasted and smelled it’s caustic devises. It cares not what we say we believe, or if stagnant pools of His living water and prior revelation remain behind, for it is the cunning tool of the enemy of Christ to cause us to not live off the freshness of His intercession, every word that proceeds from the mouth of God in repentance.
Our God is faithful! But He has convinced me that unless we choose to listen for and live off of His intercession in repentance we can not be open to Him revealing the subtle condemnation, unforgivingness and judgement we entertain and massage in our hearts. And we will reap what we sow.
It gave Him pause as He showed me this because it saddens Him to see us say we love Him, but not do as He says and is doing right now. No sin is being counted against anyone at this point in time except the ones we carry in the subtle wickedness of the CUJ in God’s Gap. CUJ is an instantaneously lifeless illusion, a dissociated deception of justification. It clouds our conscious recognition of our constant need to follow with, after and behind the leading of His Spirit and abandons us in the corrosive and inhospitable badlands of arrogant self-righteousness when it has solidified.
He has made this a deep ponder stop for me on the road of repentance. If in a moment of honesty before a Holy God speaking truth, we lay down our lives and allow Him to search us with His living water, He will find and replace the heart of dry crusty stone with a heart of flesh. There is immense hydrostatic pressure waiting in God’s Gap for the cry of the repentant childlike heart. He is longing to transform us into the image of Christ by unleashing His cleansing torrent from within to blow out and decimate the CUJ in God’s Gap.
Wow! David! What a great description! We are so in synch! Give my love to S, and a hug too.
His technicolor picture! Just writing the review. 🙂 We must be swimming in the same river of living water? I have thoroughly enjoyed being fully immursed, it is so clean!
David, a confirmation to Peter speaking that revelatory word which Yahuwshua commended him for.
At least twice in my walk with Him, I ‘heard’ words come out of my mouth I had not intended to say. The first such instance happened forty years ago when He lead me to ‘go sit on a mountain to find God’, and I find myself, in following Him, in the valley of texas with no place to live and sleeping in my van, being eaten by mosquitoes and out of frustration I had blurted out, ‘God, if You want me to stay here, then You find me a place to live.’ A few days later I am getting ready to leave to continue on my journey to sit on that mountaintop to find God and the pastor of the church had allowed me to sleep the last few nights in the ‘men’s dormitory'(His converted attic) till the bed I was using to sleep in would be occupied by the man it had been reserved for arrived that night so, not wanting to be ungracious I had planned after the service that night to go and thank Him for letting me stay those last few nights and I was heading north to those mountains and as I had this speech planned and rehearsing it in my head as I wait for him to finish praying and talking to those in front of me and when I get to speak, out of my mouth comes not what I planned but, ‘john*, where am I going to sleep tonight?’ [ in my head I am saying, ‘That’s not what I was going to say’ and I hear a voice say,’That’s okay, He will say, ‘I don’t know and then you can tell him your speech.’… to my surprise his eyes lit up and he said, ‘Didn’t you know, James* works at night so you can sleep in his bed while he’s at work?’
*not their real names
Another instance happened when I first saw my wife-to-be, and I’m waiting in a parking lot to meet this blind date and after recognizing our mutual friend who is going to introduce us and realizing that the woman next to her was she, I heard come out of my mouth, ‘No way, no (blank) way!’ I had never seen a more beautiful woman in my life. Then, my logical brain engaged and I thought to myself, probably a stuck on herself beauty.
David, there are times that I act like Peter, jump out of the boat and before I realize it, I’m walking on water and then, my ‘programmed, logical, dumbed-down, common-sense, fearful, doubtful and unbelieving mind’ kicks in and I ‘realize’ what I’m doing and as I begin to sink, I cry out to Him and He reaches His hand down and instantly, the peace returns and He asks me, ‘Why did you doubt?’
I love the journey you take us on in your words.
Shalom
Glad you like the journey. He is longing to transform us into the image of Christ by unleashing His cleansing torrent from within. May your treasure be the voice of His intercession met in repentance!