Dear Mr. Grubb,
A few months ago I reached a point in my Christian life where I was ready to commit suicide, even though I was a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian! For me Christianity was not working, and I knew I couldn’t go back into the world; so suicide seemed to be the only way. I had been to seek help from different pastors but that seemed to make it worse instead of better. I came away from one pastor totally discouraged, with the feeling that if anything was going to be changed or improved, I had to do it.
So I came home, stood in by bedroom, looked up at the ceiling and said to the Lord, “I’m going to do it myself. I don’t know how you fit in, but you’ll have to show me!”
Boy did he show me!!! But first I want to say that during this low period, I was getting prayers answered like never before. I couldn’t understand this, but somehow I really expected God to answer that prayer. And He did – through you, Mr. Grubb! I’ll never forget that day. I had turned on the T.V. to the 700 Club and you had just come on. I was listening while I was working in the house. All of a sudden when you started to talk I stopped cold – here was Jesus Christ answering my question!! I glued myself to the T.V. and couldn’t believe my ears. You were telling me that I wasn’t I anymore – was Christ in me!!!! Glory to God! Now I understood how I could use my mind, use all my abilities, and make decisions – because I wasn’t I any longer. After the program was over, I wanted to run outside and tell the whole world what Jesus’ had told me! Well, the Lord was determined that I really get that message – I saw the program 5 more times that week, and I took notes each time. I just couldn’t believe the fantastic secret I had found out through you. It blew my mind!
Then, I started telling all my Christian friends that it was Christ in me all the time – not just when it looks good but even when I’m yelling at the kids. Yes, even then! I told them I’m just an old pot, and my yelling is a scratch on the pot; but doesn’t change the fact that it’s Christ in me – all the time – every minute. I got an immediate negative reaction from almost all my friends – they said I was wrong. I had nothing to back up what I believed – I wasn’t even sure why or how I could believe it, but somehow I knew what I was saying was true!!
I was standing in my front room when all of a sudden I saw (in my spirit I guess – it wasn’t a visual thing) myself gone – I mean totally gone – forever and only Christ inside me. It was like my body was a tube filled with only Christ – there was no trace of me – none!!! Well, it was so real I began to cry because I thought, Ann is gone. I had her for 33 years, and without so much as a funeral, she’s gone!! I know that’s crazy but that is how real it was to me. It was really a shock to me, and in the next moment I started to laugh with joy when I realized who had taken my place – Christ Jesus Himself!
And another thing I knew – even though I had just had this revealed to me – I knew it had happened at the cross at the time I accepted Jesus. I had died three years ago and didn’t know it. All of a sudden the cross meant something new to me. I started exclaiming, “What a plan, what a plan!!” God not only saved us, but He went one better and did away with us and only resurrected Jesus. Now we could really live the Christian life because we weren’t living it – He was!!
The Lord showed me I was gone and it was only Jesus. I went out and told everybody – Sunday School Class, pastors, fellow Christians – it seems like the whole world – that there was no self, only Christ. That is what I had seen – me totally gone and only Christ. So that’s what I told everyone. The reaction to that sent shock waves up and down the state. Everyone was preaching the opposite – that self and the Spirit were in conflict. I was saying that there is no self – only Christ.
I began to wonder if I was crazy for believing this, but yet I knew what God had showed me. Then I read your book “The Spontaneous You” and there was the answer. God and I had become a unity – so much so that I couldn’t see God and me – but only God – we couldn’t be separated. That’s why I was so convinced there was no self, and why I only saw God.
But Mr. Grubb, I don’t understand about this self. I felt I had made a mistake going around saying there’s no self, but how could / not have done it because of the way the Lord showed me? I said it because I really believed it. I’m still not sure it was a mistake. In your books you talk about self, so I’m not clear on this subject at all and am in need of light on it from the Lord. I feel my thoughts and desires are all from the Lord because I have the mind of Christ. I can’t see how some of the thoughts can be of the flesh and others of the Lord and that we are left to best figure which is which. Why would Christ die to loose us from the hold of Satan and then leave us to struggle with the flesh the rest of our Christian life? Didn’t He die to loose us from flesh – especially if we’re dead? I really don’t understand this self thing.
I also don’t understand being an intercessor. I had heard of your book, Rees Howells Intercessor, and decided to get it. For some reason I wasn’t to read it then, but now that I have read it, I kinds wish I hadn’t. At first I felt it was real light on different thoughts I had had in the past. But then a depression came over me which I’ve had for the past two days while I have been reading the book. I don’t understand that. It seems the Lord is trying to show me something about being an intercessor; but instead of this book helping me to understand it, like some of your other books did with other subjects, this intercessor book is putting a burden on me.
Love in Christ, Ann
(Huntington Beach, CA)
Ann, my dear,
What a letter! The Holy Spirit really makes us one, doesn’t He, for here we are writing to each other like old friends!!
It was thrilling to hear how the Lord brought you right in, like in one great leap, to the point of finding who you really are – Christ in your Ann form. It came to you like a blinding flash, so you could not keep it to yourself, though your enthusiasm got into plenty of contrary winds!! And I loved when you said, “But somehow I knew what I was saying was true,” and you repeat it later, “Yet I knew what God had showed me.”
But there is a touch of balance needed, dear. You obviously recognize this when you say, “I don’t understand about this self” and “But a depression came over me which I’ve had for the past two days” (after reading about my precious Rees Howells!!).
So you see, love, there is a human you besides the fact that your real you is HE!! The reason is that within this wonderful unity there still is a conscious duality, at least while we are privileged to remain on this divided world as a light in it. You see. Jesus Himself knew that, for He said, “I and my Father are one” and “if you see Me, you see the Father;” yet He also said, “not my will, but thine be done!”
No, we can never lose ourselves totally. In one sense He is eternally He (the Creator) and we are we (the created). It would be Buddhism, not the truth in Christ, if we were to kind of dissolve into one being. That is why Paul in his great Galatians 2:20 says, “1, yet not I but Christ,” and then goes on to say, “the life I now live in the flesh.”
But those who told you life must always be a conflict between flesh and spirit are wrong. We ARE one. Christ IS the one living our lives. That is the glorious revelation which the Spirit has confirmed to you in your inner self.
But HE lives IN and BY our human selves. Once you know the unity, as you now do, you just live freely as being HE – just as you say. But we continue to live in a world which has pulled out self from God thru the Fall (ALTHOUGH WE WERE ALWAYS IN His being and didn’t know it – Acts 17:28), and our outer self (soul and body – often called “flesh”) became captive to all self-lusts. It is true that we have died in Christ, so that we cannot be captive to sin anymore. You have that clear when you talk about’ the cross; therefore, we are totally cut off from any claim of sin or the devil over us.
But we still are in the “flesh” (in soul and body). But these are now our ASSETS, for it is by our outer humanity that Christ manifests Himself by us. But we are equally still open to all the solicitations which this world is full of and which our flesh easily responds to – all those things we call temptations of the body or mind. They can pull at us (Jesus was tempted in all points!), and our outer flesh very quickly responds – pride, sex, greed, hate, fear, etc. The pulls are not wrong, they are normal, and we should take no condemnation for them. Sometimes we are quick enough to replace the temptation by the recognition of who we are – Christ in us; sometimes we get caught. But if so, don’t stew in guilt or condemnation. The moment we inwardly recognize we have been caught out (that’s what confession means – agreeing with God), then the thing isn’t there. God never saw it. He sees only The Blood. So we do the same. Up and praise! No struggle, no guilt!
As for the life of that wonderful man, Rees Howells, dear, that’s the next stage which is probably not for you now. In this stage, we – God in us – take other people’s burdens on us. That mighty Paul’s 2nd Corinthian letter was full of that. Suffering – for others – glory! But leave that alone till you see it. It is God in His highest form, operating by His human Rees Howell form – or His Ann form.
Now where this isn’t clear, write again, write again, dear; but DON’T GIVE UP OR GO BACK on what God revealed to you as fact – HE, the Real You. Just learn where and why the human self is still a self as His means of manifestation.
Love you,
Norman Grubb