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The Kingdom of God has arrived in the Person of God's Son, Jesus the Christ. He rules right here and right now and forevermore.
All the insanity we see in this world is just that, INSANITY. The evil we face is nothing more than hearts holding onto the idea that they have to do something to bring in God's Kingdom. Either into their hearts or the world in general. Of course, there are those who will be honest with God and say, "You can keep your kingdom, God. I'm doing just fine with my own." So then, there is the insanity of humanity defined. Man is out to be his own god even if the effort ends up sending himself to hell. Well, at least, they think they won't have to deal with that other king. "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Psalm 139:8 How have I failed you?
How have I resisted your love? When did I return evil for kindness? Where have you traveled and I have not traveled with you? What have you desired of mine and I have not shared? As the sun rises and you awaken to a new day, I arise with you ready to share your every experience. Because we walk together, I cannot suffer but what you suffer. Blessings cover us all day, like a soft dew dressing the grass at night. We cannot escape our unity, nor destroy our union. Only lies can separate us until we remember they are lies. Come, let us walk hand in hand. Let our feet become one. Seeing the horizon as a shared vision of possibilities. Where you go, I go, and what you do I do. Would it not be better to go where I go, and do what I do? Says the Lord. Is love enough? Can it capture every corner of your life? Will it end the struggle no matter your age, biological makeup, intelligence, race, nationality, or preferences?
Never, if it is birthed out of transient feelings attached to fleeting desires. That sort of love always comes up short. It comes in with a world of promises and exits with the next thought or feeling. Then what is this type of love that settles the soul, declares utility, provides rest? Love cannot be an idea, or salve, or emotional balm, nor even a historical act I trust in. The only answer left is that love is a person who captures our souls and covers all the bases from the inside out. How many liberating loves can there be? One. Yes, we have such a One and that One is a person! That person is Jesus Christ, God's key to opening every heart and transforming the empty into overflowing, the purposeless life into a living monument. Yes, LOVE is a Person doing His thing as you. From Major Ian Thomas's teachings.
God to a man is as unconditionally necessary as oil is to an oil lamp. Without oil in the lamp, we have an oil lamp, but it won’t function as a lamp. Likewise, if you detach a human from God, you will still have a human form, but it won’t function as a human. The only thing needed for an oil lamp to function as an oil lamp is to put oil in it. Then too, the only thing left for a human to act like a human is to put God within it. Oil in the lamp doesn't ask the lamp to try harder. Likewise, God, back in a human, isn’t so that humans might try harder. Oil is only in the lamp so the oil can be oil, functionally. And God put back into a human is so God can be God, functionally. In other words, the spiritual new birth is designed to let God so function through a human that everybody recognizes that God is home. Now God is in business, God Himself in the human, being. I was made aware today of two verses that I've never seen before that add, for me, an additional background to Abraham and the rest of us sojourners. Leviticus 25:23 which has the phrase, "for you are strangers and sojourners with Me." And then David in Psalm 39:12 "Do not be silent at my tears, for I am a stranger with You, a sojourner. . ." I don't know what you hear in these words, but for me, they spoke a new kind of understanding for all the alienation and "not belonging" that I have felt. It is not merely that we walk as strangers in a realm that cannot be our true home, but that He--along with us--is a stranger as well.
These verses seem to say, to me at least, that God is a transient in His own creation as much as we, that we are two of a kind--sojourners on our alone trek. What a new impetus to embrace that foreign soil! I guess if you think of it rightly, then we know that Calvary was not the only experience of forsakenness known to the heart of God, but actually expressed at a certain point in history what God had always been from eternity--self-sacrificial love: "the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world." Perhaps there is always something inherently alienating (as we look forsakenness in the eye) about True Uncreated Love (which is what we carry within us) as it crosses in the night its holy abyss. If that is true, as I'm coming to believe it is, then our "alienation" is a deeper fellowship into the heart of God than any previously known. He, as God, has dared to share even this . . . with us. I really wanted to hug you today. You know, like we used to do every morning, sort of like waking up together in heaven with a new life to share and ever so willing to do so. But, today I was too busy, had things to do. Not important things, but things that filled my life with that cushion called routine. With my routine, I can live anywhere and almost under any circumstance.
My routine can displace not only our time together, but the very reason to be together. That reciprocating flow of safe is so easily replaced with movement, sound, intentions, gathering, and even rest. Then in a moment, I think you are gone and I am faced with the fact that the reason for any one of those things was your hug. Your ability to see me as all you needed and the desire to rest in what we had was the rest that energized every other activity. Jesus, I give you permission to be most insistent and vocal about your desire for a hug. After all, you create them for one purpose. I am that purpose. I'm a kid in school. The cleaver guy on my left asks me for an answer to a question. I don't know the answer and say so. He suggests to look on Sally's paper on my other side. I do, get the answer, and tell him. The next day the guy asks me for my lunch money and, if I refuse, he threatens to tell that I cheated yesterday; so I have impeded my ability to be truthful - will I cave into this little further infraction? What will that breed? The following day I'm asked to help pressure Sally to surrender her lunch money, etc., etc., etc.
The first time I surrendered to cheating I sold my soul, I sinned and I lost my freedom, my freedom to do what is right. That is what Jesus gave back to me when He surrendered to the Cross (my sins of cheating, doing what is not right). When Jesus died and rose again, He gave me back my freedom from that sin (He suffered the consequences of my unrighteousness). Now I am free again, free to choose what is right, what will I choose to with that freedom? That is, in a very childlike way, my view of our fall and redemption. There is no greater encouragement than knowing that Truth. Thanks for sharing. Righteousness is a person, not a condition reached after some esoteric performance. You are a slave to Christ. How? When He died you died. It’s a done deal. There is not threat in dying to sin left for any. But there is a threat of not meeting up to your function in your union with him.
You are His body. Does the hand tell the eye what to do, when, and how? Does the foot tell the brain what to think and why? So then, we as parts of His eternal expression are slaves to His declaration of your purpose in Him. Romans Chapter 1 declares our existence as righteous just after declaring you are a slave to the one you yield your members to. Who owns you? You may have Christ bit does He have you? Are you willing to be all that Jesus in you is willing to be? Now that is the question. Satan wants you to think his thoughts. He wants to capture your mind, ignite your desire, and act from a position of lack or inability. Get, gain, more, and increase are his motivators. First and foremost he wants you to think you depend on no outside person to function and that you have the power, like a Jedi, to use that power for good or bad. Without saying it out loud, he wants and wants and wants right down to his core and shares that core with you, so you will want and want and want. His very self-image of a non-dependent being is so familiar, you think it is your original thought. You, from as early as you can remember, thought it was all up to you. Where did that come from?
If in fact, you are an independent entity with the power to do good or evil, then you are a god. What do you need God for? Maybe He is really, really big and you, though growing, are in comparison, stunted. Like a very smart 8 year old who submits to a violent alcoholic father until she can escape him. On the flip side, you believe the evil you do is totally under your control and you can take it or leave it, right? Just ask the millions of addicts that question and this is what you will hear, "I can stop anytime I want, I just don't want to stop”. Put another way, the illusion of self-control is just that, an illusion. The birthplace of that illusion is our brains hearing Satan's thoughts and thinking they are our thoughts. What am I saying? Well, you were a child of the devil and he 'did you' until you did something very drastic. What was that? Stopped being your own god and humbled yourself to trust God's Son for everything, even your thoughts. You know, like as if living apart from Him you could do NOTHING. In the past, you lived as a container who was housing and expressing, right down to your thoughts about yourself, Mr. Sin. Your being yourself was in fact him being himself through your soul. But once you have obeyed God by trusting His Son, Jesus for life and godliness, you get to continue being yourself, but now with full knowledge, it is He 'doing you'. Now that's encouraging. All of that is of no importance, I now see ITS GOD ONLY, and that’s all that matters, You know, Honey, I see Jesus everywhere, in the so-called good and bad, but you know they are both the same and they look just like when you look with the eyes of Jesus. Things that seemed so big now seem so small. And things that are important just seem to consume me and the only one important thing is Him and how He expresses Himself through me as me. Oh, what a wonderful truth we know; how it lets you know what His mind is and how He wants a thing to be. We don’t need to be bothered with the small things of the flesh anymore., we just look inside and He will give us what we need and He always does it RIGHT. So freeing but yet so involved. When you know who you are in Him, you finally are able to understand why things are and you don’t have to question anymore. Its Him in me and I in Him. That’s all we need to know. What else makes any difference when you know that the God of The universe lives in you as you, ALL is made right.
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