I wrote this first brief Friday around 11 p.m. when I was super tired:

Tonight I’m writing from a Super 8 motel in the little town of Rantoul, Ill. just off Highway 57. I’m only about 120 miles or so now from Chicago. All my possessions are in the parking lot just outside my window, piled up inside a 12 x 6 U-HAUL trailer hooked to my ’97 Isuzu Rodeo (which is, thankfully, holding up real well so far!).

Driving today, I was thinking about dying—not physically, but psychologically—to my past so that I can truly know once and for all what it is to be free.

I desperately want to be free from fear, for example, because it’s been wrecking me emotionally for the past year and a half. I even now know what it is to have what people call a “panic attack.”

Obviously, to live every day as if it were a new beginning means you’ve got to die to everything from yesterday.

Paul advises, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind . . . day by day.”

Because of God’s grace, there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t die each day to all that’s old so there’s room for the new.

It’s only by faith that any of us can ever know this intimate relationship God wants to have with us, and it requires a free mind and heart that can truly look, live and enjoy out of a genuine knowing that God really does loves us just exactly the way He says He does in Paul’s epistles.

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Paul writes, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

The use of the word “substance” is to be understood as the foundation underneath something, much like the foundation for a house.

“Faith provides the firm footing; it’s the proof,” says Jordan. “It’s what furnishes proof and enables you to treat the things God says in the Bible as though you’ve seen them.

“It’s your faith resting in some objective facts that God has stated that give substance to faith. You know, in philosophy and in much of religion, faith is said to be ‘a blind leap into the dark.’ It’s just, ‘Well, we hope it’s true. We’re going to hold our nose and jump off the end of the pier and maybe it’ll be true and maybe it won’t.’

“But that’s not faith in the Bible. In Scripture, God says some things. He says, ‘Here are the facts; here’s the issue. Here are objective facts whether you believe them—whether you think good about them or not—this is the truth.’

“Now your faith is to rest in that. You’re just to depend on what He said. ‘Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’

“What gives substance to the faith is the facts that God has revealed. And once you believe those facts, you add substance to your faith.

“Paul writes in Eph. 3:16, ‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.’ You see, the way it is that Christ is going to dwell, and be active and living in your life, is by faith; by your faith resting in the reality of who God says you are in Christ.

“Paul says, ‘We walk by faith, not by sight.’ It’s our faith that allows us to walk, and in Scripture, when we walk by faith and not by sight, the indication is that walking by faith in what God says is better than walking by sight!”

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In Paul’s writings, he talks repeatedly about a secret or a mystery. People often make this into something complicated but it’s really very easy to define.

“Before the world began, God promised to give eternal life to the Body of Christ,” explains Jordan. “Eternal life is not just living forever. Eternal life is the concept of God saying, ‘I have something for you to do for me forever.’ It’s more than just you existing forever. What Paul does is reveal to us this purpose God had before the foundation of the world for the Body of Christ but He kept it a secret. He kept it hid. That’s why it’s called the mystery.”

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Galatianism is the name for what much of Christendom operates under. It says, “We all know we’re justified before God by faith in Christ but if you want to stay saved and/or be safe in your Christian life, you got to start working.” It’s Israel’s law program added to grace.

“The problem at Galatia was people putting (newly saved Gentiles) back under a program God didn’t have in operation anymore,” says Jordan. “If you’re a bunch of idol-worshipping Gentiles who get saved and then somebody comes along and says, ‘Now you’ve got to get circumcised,’ who are they trying to get you to be like? You already had the spiritual circumcision but they’re trying to get you to get the physical one. Who does that belong to? That physical circumcision is the sign, seal and outward demonstration for that physical covenant God gave to Israel and Abraham about the land.

“But God has equipped us over here (in the grace program defined by Paul) to live as adults. Paul says we’re ‘not under tutors and governors,’ and so going back to Israel’s program is going back to grade school. In fact, it’s going back to kindergarten and pre-school. God has the Grace University for us and we don’t need to go back there.”

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The fundamental foundation acid test of a person’s theology is whether he/she is Pauline, meaning do they follow Paul. Paul says, “If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.”

Jordan explains, “People like to say, ‘Oh, that brother is such a spiritual giant,’ but Paul says, ‘You got somebody you think speaks for God, or is spiritual—well, here’s the test: ‘Let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.’ That’s hard when you don’t do that.”

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For 80 years prior to the 1940s communist takeover in China that led to the deportation of its Christian missionaries, an outfit called the China Inland Mission had been preaching the gospel.

Thanks to the native Chinese converts who remained in the country, though, there’s been a hundred-fold multiplication of Believers in China in the last 50-60 years.

“Probably one of the most difficult things that the Chi-com government has to manage today is the presence of Believers because they don’t know what to do with them,” says Jordan. “What do you do with a Believer? Threaten to kill him? I mean, if you died today where are you going to spend eternity?! Paul says, ‘To depart and be with Christ is far better.’ You put a guy like that in jail and he reasons, ‘Bless god, hallelujah, I now have a jail ministry; I couldn’t preach in jail before!’

“Now, religion is different. You take the religious guy’s stuff away from him and he’s like the man wailing in Judges 18: ‘You took all my gods! That’s all I had!’

“But when you’ve got life in Christ it’s all different. The hunger these (Chinese) people have today . . . they just take to it like a duck takes to water.

“By the way, the internet folks—Google, Microsoft, Yahoo—all sold out to the Chi-coms and they’re very restricted about what they can get on the internet. The Google guys now say, ‘Oh, we made a mistake,’ but you notice they waited ’til they counted their money to acknowledge that.”