The BIG Picture

from Doug Perry - www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com - November, 2007

Chapter Seven - TREES

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

(Transcript from the Audio)

The first thing you need to understand for this chapter is that there is NOT a battle between good and evil. 

This was quite a revelation for me one day when the Lord dropped it on me through a sister who really prayed and sought the Lord on this and the Lord has really confirmed it to me and helped me to understand that there is not a battle between good and evil.

In the Garden of Eden, things were perfect and God was fully in charge.  So long as they didn't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, everything was going to remain perfect.  Satan, of course, wanted Adam and Eve to eat from that tree.  He told them, "Eat of the tree and you will be like God." - Part of Genesis 3:5.

One thing he meant by this is that Adam and Eve would be able to access the natural (physical, fleshly) realms, whereas in the beginning, they were totally in the Spirit.  Adam and Eve were so focused on the spiritual realms and their spiritual relationship with God that they were totally unaware that they were naked physically.  What the snake did by getting them to focus on good and evil, and to get them to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is this;

It didn't make them aware of good, it restricted them down to evil and good only. That little range between good and evil was all they could see after eating from the forbidden fruit. Prior to that, Adam and Eve were separated from the spiritual realms where there was so much more available, and their focus was reduced to that comparatively small range between good and evil.  They were stuck focusing on the range between really, really bad, and not quite so bad.

All of a sudden, they were disconnected from the spiritual and aware of the natural.  They realized they were naked and they were stuck in this planet earth, a mud ball, and they were severed from that spiritual relationship with God.

Now, you say, "But Doug! God is good!  Satan is evil!  There absolutely IS a battle between good and evil!"  But that brings to me to my point, "There is NOT a battle between good and evil; however, there ARE two trees,  the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life.

There IS "good and evil" and there is "LIFE".  There is NOT a war between good and evil, there IS a war between "good and evil" and PERFECT.  Here in the natural we are always arguing about how we are good and another group is evil.  (Americans are the good guys, Nazis and Al Qaeda are bad guys)  One group is more evil than another group, and we are better than those people and so on.

These are of the things of mud, flesh, law, and knowledge, but not of the perfect.  Contrasting the things of the fleshly realm of "good and evil" and the perfect realm you would see that those who are in the perfect spiritual realm of God are more likely beckoning us to leave the debate of relative morality or "good and evil" and come to the perfect.

It doesn't matter if you are 0.1% better than another group of people when you are not perfect when you are held to a perfect standard, only when you look through the standard of the "good and evil" flesh standard.

The difference is night and day, the difference is light years (light eons or greater units may apply) between good and perfect. 
God wants His children to manifest their son-ship and manifest their inheritance.  What is our inheritance?

Our inheritance is the Tree of Life!  PERFECT! SINLESS! PURE! WHOLE! CHRIST IN US!  US CRUCIFIED!  That is our inheritance!  Is it possible to get there?  Yes, otherwise Christ would not tell us to be perfect in Matthew 5:48

"You, therefore, must be perfect [growing into complete maturity of godliness in mind and character, having reached the proper height of virtue and integrity], as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Amplified)

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (King James)

Peter reiterates this in his writings 1 Peter 1:15-16

15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. (King James)

Many professing Christian people maintain, despite scriptures like this that is not possible to stop sinning while we are in this fleshly realm of the earth.

Is it possible to stop sinning?  If you don't think so, then you're in big trouble biblically, I think.  It's clear from Romans 7 that we are a new creation and we are to be DEAD to sin.  That means that it has no grip on us anymore. That we are over comers in every sense and that we have beaten what used to come against us and what WILL in the future come against us.

There are repeated commands to go and sin no more, to be perfect as He is perfect and to live a sinless life.  I John 3:9 says that the man that is one of God's no longer sins.

Are we seeing anything like that on any kind of decent scale?  In fact, aren't we preaching that those are lies and exaggerations and don't mean what they say?  That can't be good.

It IS possible to stop sinning. There, I've said it.  And I'll prove it. Get your watch out. Now look at the second hand. For thirty seconds, I'm going to ask you to pray without ceasing and just focus on Jesus and the Father and His holiness and your gratitude and praise for Him being so merciful to you.  Maybe repent for something - that'd be nice. Just for thirty seconds, let's just try that together, OK?

Did you do it?  Aw, c'mon!  I'm serious now. It's not too much to ask, is it?!  Be a sport. Thirty, little, seconds.  Please?  Don't just read this - participate with me here.  This is interactive.  Please?  Could you just give Dad your full attention for 30 seconds?  I'll wait for you to catch up.
--------
OK, during that time you were praying, did you sin?  I didn't.  No lusts, no anger, no evil schemes - I just kept my eyes on Him and worshiped (and I prayed for you, hope you don't mind).  How about you?  So maybe it IS possible to stop sinning sometimes, right? I mean you aren't sinning EVERY single second, are you?  (That would be bad.)  If you can do it for thirty seconds, maybe you could practice and by keeping your focus entirely on Him, you could do it for a minute or two. Maybe if you beat your flesh into submission, and you take captive every thought and bring it into obedience with Christ, and you resist the enemy and He flees, and you keep your cup all the way full of Jesus, and you let Him be your defender - maybe you could go for a couple of hours at a time after awhile.  Maybe someday you could get to the end of ONE twenty-four hour day and you could hear God say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." That would sure be something. I've heard Him say it.  And it's worth all the effort!  Maybe you could, too. We're not supposed to worry about tomorrow, just take care of today and see what you can do with it.
Maybe you could string a couple of those days in a row.  Maybe you could learn to live there. That would be COOL, wouldn't it?!  But maybe you're just not believing you can, so you're not trying. Maybe you've settled for some sin and by doing so, haven't needed to strive for holiness and righteousness.  (More here: http://www.fellowshipofthemartyrs.com/manifest_sons_of.htm) So, If I can stop sinning for 10 seconds, and string that into another 10 seconds and so on, practicing this really hard, focusing on God, holding his hand, getting my cup so full of Jesus nothing else can fit even up to an hour, and then up to a day.  And at the end of the day (remember Jesus says not to worry about tomorrow) I want to hear, "Well done good and faithful servant."

I don't want to wait until the end of my life to hear that, I want to hear it every day, perhaps around midnight.  I've seen it happen before, I've felt him say it before and it is SO AMAZING!  IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL!  And if you try really hard, and if you let Him run your day and you let Him and stay out of His way and you obey, maybe you can string a couple of days in a row like that.  And if you fast and pray and you give everything up, you know, yea, some day, one of these days maybe something will go wrong and you will have to repent, you may fall, but, tomorrow, it is washed clean and you START OVER.

All you have to worry about is TODAY.  So, am I ever going to sin again, well, I probably am.  Am I going to sin today?  I'm trying really hard not to sin today; tomorrow will take care of itself.

TODAY, I believe that I can go without sinning.  Why?  Because I believe that I am not trapped in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  I have access to Perfect. I have access to the Tree of Life.

Now, if that is true (it is) and I have His nature in me, and it is Christ in me that lives and He lives in the Perfect, and He doesn't have to sin and He doesn't sin, and He isn't addicted to anything.  If I can reach that point where my nature is changed and I am transformed by the renewing of my mind and I am no longer magnetically attracted to good and evil, then I now run to the Tree of Life and I live at the base of the Tree of Life, and I settle and nap in the Perfect then I can probably get through my day and hear Him say, "Well done my good and faithful servant" at the end of it.

THAT is what we need.  This is simplified a lot, but I want you to understand that the systems and structures of this world, Satan and all his demons will try to get you to run after the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Some of these systems of man will even tell you to do something good like, "go feed the homeless, go be a missionary, etc." (Remember the picture of Matthew 7 and 25, works alone do not save you, only Christ saves you)  It will look good, it will sound good, it will make sense, it might even have some scriptures to back it up, but if it is not what God wanted you to do, then it is not PERFECT, it is not going to be a blessing and you are not really going to be free.  You are going to be doing good works, which is commendable and nice, but it is still the wrong tree until you come from relative goodness to Perfect.

Take it to the Lord; ask Him what you are going to have to do to be perfectly and magnetically attracted to the Tree of Life so that all connections are severed to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the systems of man and the structures of this world.  Ask Him what you are going to do to break the curses of Adam and Eve in your life and they won't apply to you anymore.
We want you free.  We want you hanging out at the bottom of the Tree of Life instead of standing under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil with everyone else arguing about how good you are relative to how evil they are.  We want you to come home to Perfect.  That is where Christ is.  And understand, it is not me that is perfect; it is Christ in me that is Perfect.  And if I crucify enough of the me, and He sits on the me like an elephant on a flea, and if my cup is so full of Him that I have become like a fleck somewhere down at the bottom of the cup that can't even get in His way.  So if you can do that and walk that way, and like Paul you can honestly say, "Be like me, because I was like Christ."  Why, because it was Christ that lived in Paul instead of Saul getting in Christ's way, and because Paul ran to the Tree of Life instead of relying on law, knowledge and "good and evil" all the time and settling for the mud of this world instead of the glory of God on the Tree of Life.

| More...