Turn aside from all else.
This is the secret of encountering Jesus. He is already fully with us. He could not be more with us. But this turning aside is our intentional, intense, singular gaze at Christ within.
When precious Holy Spirit breathes on our weak hearts He carries us into the chamber awareness of God’s presence, and helps us recognize Christ in us. This is why He is called The Helper. We cannot do this without His great and loving help. Even if we are not hungry for Him, even if we are not filled with longing, even if our hearts feel cold, if we will simply ask, He will provide the fire from heaven. He always says yes to the feeblest cry for more.
Like Moses in the desert, we turn aside to behold the mystery of the One who burns with fiery love. It was when Moses made this choice to turn aside, that God called out to him. This is our greatest experience, to hear His voice, to enjoy sweet communion with Him, to be completely preoccupied with His beauty. As we slip away from all other distractions and demands, He becomes our life’s magnificent obsession. When we say, “Come Lord,” it is not because He is not here. It is just a realization that He is here. And saying, ‘Come,” is giving a voice to our innermost longing and utmost welcome of His beautiful Person.
“For we come to God in faith knowing that he is real and that he rewards the faith of those who give all their passion and strength into seeking him.” Hebrews 11: 6
Choose Humility
I can think of no greater reason to choose humility above all virtues than this:
To be His resting place, His home away from home, where He feels loved and understood.
This is my greatest desire.
Didn’t St. Francis say, “that I may seek to understand rather than be understood, to console rather than to be consoled, to love with all my heart rather than to be loved.”
Imagine Jesus feeling understood, consoled and loved with His dearest companions that He could lay down and rest here? Oh to be such a garden, such a peaceful sanctuary.
This is my desire, and the goal for the rest of my life.
How many teeth does an alligator have?
God invented smiling. He invented the whole universe. He is the smartest person there is. He knows everything and everyone inside out. He knows how many feathers are on each peacock and how many teeth every alligator has. He knows how to make lightning, bumble bees and planets. There is nothing that is too hard for Him to figure out.
From “How to Enjoy God All the Time”
Struggling to Love
If you struggle to love someone who you know is living in sin…
If you are afraid that if you really love them, they’ll think you agree with their choices…
If you hesitate to show them kindness and mercy because that could send the wrong message…
Then ask yourself, does God struggle to love me when I sin?
Does God withhold love from me because He doesn’t agree with my choices?
Does God hesitate to show me kindness and mercy because that could send me the wrong message?
Jesus gave us one commandment: love one another as He loves us. I’m not sure I’m very good at this yet. But I want to love like He loves.
I want to be Father’s arms to the prodigals, and Jesus’ hands to the lepers. I want to have a heart like an open door that Holy Spirit can just flow out of me.
I don’t have to identify people by their sins. (Jesus doesn’t)
I don’t have to abandon my beliefs in order to love. (Jesus doesn’t)
I just have to love.
The new commandment Jesus gave us to love one another doesn’t have an asterisk next to it that reads, *except people who…..
And it wasn’t a suggestion. It’s not an option.
If you read all this and you honestly want to love like Jesus loves, then ask God to go to work on your heart first. Ask Him to change your heart, before you ask Him to change others.
I wonder what would happen if there was a love movement? If those who follow Jesus would be known as the greatest lovers of all time? What if we loved as He loves us?
A vision of heavenly joy
I see Jesus gazing with such devotion at the face of Father. He smiles and shares such eternal intimacy, honour and light. They absolutely know each other – in a depth that is (humanly speaking) inconceivable. And yet…He asks Father to let us come into this glorious union they share, this incomprehensible oneness.
Human beings have been made welcome into this perichorisis – the divine dance. We could not be more entwined without violating the Trinity. And Holy Spirit is not an “add on”. Rather He is the loving, sacred breath the Father and the Son share. Holy Spirit infuses and saturates us with Himself into the glory of the Threeness.
This is not a glory train that takes us from earth realm into the heavenly. This is new creation life and transfiguration; this is a partaking and an entwining into the beautiful divine nature. We shine in them and with them and through them. Our presence brings them such delight there is laughter and swirling and gorgeous light. And this is our home.
I see many happy, squealing children sliding down enormous ribbons of light, like luminescent waves. This is the experience of entering into Jesus’ joyous delight in Father, being fulfilled in them and overflowing. There is a depth of shared ecstasy that is astounding. Each child’s laughter splashes onto the other children until they are all soaked in joy. And the laughter is the pulsing, exquisite love between the Father and the Son. This is life. This is glory. This is home.
This vision settles me. Steadies me. This reality wraps around me and warms me with “All is well, and all we be well.” I feel my muscles relax and my heartbeat slow. I breathe in this glory and my being engages with heaven.
A Message to Humanity from Jesus
I didn’t make a mistake when I made you. I wasn’t taken by surprise when you came into your mother’s womb. I looked forward to that moment from timeless eternity. I danced when you took your first breath of earth’s atmosphere. And when your little eyes opened on earth’s landscape, you saw Me smiling as I bent over your warm little body with loving attention.
Soon your vision focused on the physical realm, but you could still see the heavenly. Your infant eyes viewed faces and sounds with delight, just as you had experienced in heaven with Me before you arrived on earth.
But then you came to experience hunger, pain, fear, loneliness, and shame as you grew in your humanness. I knew all these too, because I had come into your humanity and made it my own. Every tear, every sickness, every terror in the night was Mine too because I had joined you in My incarnation. I did not separate Myself from anything that you experienced. I was tempted in every way you were. I suffered as you and with you.
And when I was tortured and killed, I could not have had you more with Me than with My own soul. You were in the bleeding of My heart, and together we breathed our last breath.
But, Beloved, when the tomb’s door opened, you and I both came out together as one. We walked as one in that first new creation morning.
And we can walk together this way, always. Just say yes. And leave the transformation to Me.
Jesus did not come back to life
Ok, I admit that was a clickbait title. But stay with me here and you’ll see what I mean.
We are spirit beings, God breathed living creatures made in His image and likeness. But we are even more than that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are now part of the new creation.
Humanity needed the cross. But it did not end there. He is risen. (Hallelujah!). But His resurrection was not a return to the physical life he had lived for thirty four earth years. It was a genesis of a new creation. He is the firstborn from the dead! Lazarus, the widow’s son, and others, were returned to physical, earth life.
Jesus, however, entered into a newness of life that not only is imperishable. But it is the same life in which we participate.“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4
Staggering, right? He didn’t “come back to life”. He inaugurated a whole new life! And He brought us with Him.
The Awakened Spirit
As spirit beings, we exist in the eternal realm. We are housed inside a body on earth. This is the physical realm. We also have invisible human parts, such as our mind, our emotions, and our will. This is sometimes called “the soul”.
But who we truly are is made from love, and for love. We were breathed into existence by Yahweh, God who is love. And from our innermost being rivers of living water flow. (John 4:14)
But some spirit beings are asleep, unaware of eternal life. The body, the mind and emotions dominate their being. And spirit is inactive, or sometimes worse, interacting with the realm of darkness. The awakening of spirit comes through believing into Jesus, by the power of Holy Spirit. The human spirit being then becomes joined to Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17) This is what it means to be alive! To truly live, and never die. Spirit beings are eternal entities. And although physical death may come, spirit does not die.
Spirit beings, who have been made alive by faith in Jesus, have capacities to open and to release, to see and to hear, to receive and to rest. These are basic spiritual functions. There is always a sense of purpose and freedom in spirit activities. We exist in the heavenly, eternal realm while also experiencing the physical, natural realm on earth.
But how do we function, how do we move in spirit capacities? Much of what believers are taught today is designed to improve or strengthen the human soul. This is not unholy. But it is my belief that as we strengthen and mature in spirit, soul is healed and made whole. Our beings come into proper order and alignment: awakened spirit beings, with thriving souls, housed in a physical body. When we are awakened spirit beings, rivers of living water flow from our innermost being. We hear the voice of Yahweh, and deepen in our perceptions of His beauty. We are filled with the glory of the Lord.
Some ancient rabbis taught that before the fall, spirit was external and visible, housing body and soul within. Since spirit is made in the image and likeness of Yahweh, this is a beautiful idea. Can you just see Adam, Eve and their loving Creator enjoying one another in spiritual joy and play?
This interpretation of life in the garden would explain why Adam and Eve experienced nakedness when they sinned. As spirit beings, they had only known life clothed in glory. But when spirit death came, physical dominance began.
Rest a Little
Let yourself be off duty for a few minutes. Most of what we expect of ourselves is tragically false responsibility anyway.
I had some surgery recently. Wouldn’t it have been ridiculous of me to make suggestions to the surgeon as he worked? Or worse, try to operate on myself? (Although I did see that in a movie once, where a doctor operated on himself to remove a bullet. It was truly gruesome!)
No. All I did was fall asleep in the operating room. The capable physician did all the rest. My part was consent and surrender. In other words, “Yes, and Amen.”
So, if you can, take a little break today. Sit quietly, and offer the Great Physician your “yes and amen.” Rest, my dear. Let go of your terribly busy life for a few moments and just be His.