I want to write this Rant series for two reasons: 1. Because I think there's a pretty common misconception that "rest" is the same thing as inactivity, which couldn't be farther from the truth, and 2. Because I think it's vitally important that we understand where our effort should be directed. It's amazing to me how often I see people getting all fired up about things that really don't even matter. Like today, my friend sent me a link to a video about some lady going crazy over the Monster energy drinks. Because the Monster symbol is really 666, and there's a cross in the "o" which means antichrist and all this stuff. And I was like, "It's an energy drink... there are more important things. Like... people. I really truly believe that the two most important things in the universe are God and people. Love God and love people. Love God BY loving people. And I'll tell you right now, in order to truly love someone like Jesus loves us... that takes maximum effort. That's takes laying your life down for someone else. Giving everything you have and everything you are. And not expecting to get anything back. I think expectation is one of the worst "enemies" we have. It's that thing right between our ears. We figure out how we think things should be, or how we want them to be, and then when they inevitably turn out to NOT be that way we're left with disappointment. Self-inflicted disappointment that we nevertheless blame on other people. And then we let that disappointment stop us from trying next time. Because we didn't get what we wanted last time. And we think that's rest. "God will take care of." Well, yeah, He will. But the mysterious way that God works... is through people. Jesus lives IN us, but He also lives THROUGH us, and AS us. We don't try to follow in His foot steps. We simply let Him make His own foot steps with our feet. And THAT'S what rest is. Rest is not inactivity. It's not being a spiritual couch potato and not doing anything because you're "waiting on a move of God." God already moved. 2,000 years ago on an old, rugged cross. We don't need a move of God. We need a revelation of Jesus. Because that will tell us what the move of God was, and what it means for us today. And what it means for us today is, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). See, I was included in the move of God. When Jesus was lifted up from the earth He drew all men into Himself. And He planted Himself in all men. He gave maximum effort on the cross. He did it ALL so we could get it ALL. And the ALL that we got... is Him. His Holy Spirit, leading and guiding us into all truth. The truth of His love for us. The truth that BECAUSE of His love for us... we can love each other. We can give maximum effort TO each other. From a posture of rest. Not trying to get something from each other, but giving something to each other. Sharing what we've got with each other. Rest is not inactivity. It is Holy Spirit directed activity. It is letting God love us. Letting Him fill us up with His love and then letting that love overflow out of us and get all over everybody we come into contact with. Going the extra mile for someone. Because they're worth the effort. They're worth it. Maximum effort!

Faith comes from hearing. And hearing from the Word--which is Jesus, which is love--of God. So trust doesn't come from what we want. Hope is what we want. Faith, or trust, comes from what we know. From what we've experienced. Which can be really tricky if we put our trust soley in people. Because people WILL let you down. People will lie. But God can't. Because He IS the truth. If He says it, it immediately and automatically becomes true. Remember when God said, "Let there be light"? There was light. So when we're talking about trust issues, and we're talking about the hard truth of life, here it is: You were created in His image. As He is, so are you in this world. That's the truth of the matter. That's what you can rely on. That's the Rock you can stand on. And when we get that truth decided, that's when we can build on that foundation. When we know who we REALLY are that's when we can BE who we really are. We can stop trying to be someone we're not and we can embrace ourselves--and each other. We can trust our heavenly Father to take care of us. Not because of anything we've done, but because of who we are. And who He is. The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. That's the ultimate truth of the universe. That's WHAT we can trust, and that's WHY we can trust. I know we've all been burned one way or another, one time or another. And usually in matters of the heart. Because that's where we're most vulnerable. But that's also where we're the strongest. I don't necessarily believe a heart can BREAK. I think it's too strong. I KNOW it can ache. I know it's hard to trust when you've been let down. But I guess we just need something better to trust in. And there's nothing better than love. Love is the more excellent way. Love is what makes life living. Because to live is to love, and to love is to live. It's the same thing. What could make life abundant other than love? A life filled with love IS Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! It's knowing the Father and the One whom He sent. Knowing and believing Daddy loves you. That's where faith comes from. It comes from the Holy Spirit--our love receptor. It comes from Jesus going to the cross and laying His life down for us. Giving His life for us and giving His life TO us. That's something you can trust. And that's the greatest expression of love a man can have. What is love except giving everything you have and everything you are to somebody else? Laying your life down for somebody else. But you can't do that unless you have trust. You can't have a real relationship without trust. And I'm not specifically talking about trusting other people. I'm talking about trusting God. Trusting love. Trusting that if I lay my life down for you... it doesn't matter if you receive it the way I want you to. It doesn't matter if you receive it at all. We're called to love one another, not worry about how our love is received. And guys, I'm telling you, love never fails. If you can trust anything... it's love. God can keep you from falling. Because He IS the truth about you. You can trust Him because He doesn't HAVE a motive, He (LOVE) IS the motive! Trust love. It's worth it.

I really think the hardest thing to do in life is to trust after you've been let down. We spend so much time trying to learn from our mistakes. To NOT get hurt in the same way over and over again. And I think that's why so many "relationships" stay right on the surface. "How you doing?" "I'm fine." And that's it. We never let people in because we're afraid they'll reject what they see. And in the "church world" that's a valid fear. When you preach the Law--or whatever your particular culture defines as the Law--you set up an atmosphere of fear. People hiding who they really are so they can pretend to fit into the box you've outlined. But that's backwards. The world screams at the top of its lungs, trying to tell us who to be. Jesus came to show us the Father--to show us who we really already are! And, as we saw yesterday, Jesus did it with no agenda. No ulterior motive. He loved the hell out of us because that's who He is. The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. That's the ultimate truth of the universe. That's the Rock that we stand on. That's the one thing we can trust even if nothing else holds up. Let God be true and every man a liar. People say what they say and do what they do. But heaven and earth will pass away and God's Word--which is Jesus, which is love--will stand. And if His Word stands, and His Word lives in us, that's how and why WE can stand. Jude 1:24, "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy." Did you catch that? He is able to keep us from falling. The world tries to knock us down. Be of good cheer. He has overcome the world. We're not overcomers because we try really hard to overcome things. We're overcomers because HE already overcame and He lives in us! We aren't called to conquer. We are MORE than conquerors through Him. Because HE conquered. He gave us THE meaure of faith when He gave us His Holy Spirit. When He gave us the love receptor. And since love conquers all what else could we possibly be talking about? Since the Word that we stand on--the thing that we can trust in unconditionally--is love... What I'm trying to say is that we've all been burned. And if you haven't yet, just wait. But that doesn't mean to have to be afraid of the fire. (Or the light.) Because fire can burn you, but it can also keep you warm. It can melt your heart and keep your heart soft. So that you don't reject people completely just because one of them did you wrong. God works in mysterious ways because He works through people. He keeps us from falling by surrounding us with people that will hold us up. If we let them. If we get over our trust issues and let the truth set us free. Because even though they say the truth hurts the worst, even when it does it sets us free. And I think that's where I'm going to end this Rant series tomorrow. The hard truth of the matter.

It's like people are more concerned with your motives than your actions. Even though we shout from the rooftops that actions speak louder than words. And I think this applies to love more than anything else. People don't trust love. Because it seems too good to be true. So they second guess your kindness. They assume you have an alterior motive. When the truth is, love doesn't HAVE a motive... love IS the motive. We do what we do because we are moved with compassion and motived by love. And that's the same reason Jesus did what He did. The same reason God does what He does. Look at Psalm 50:12 in the NLT, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for all the world is mine and everything in it." God created everything. He owns everything. He doesn't need anything. His motive is not to get anything from us. His motive is that He loves us. And since He doesn't need anything from us, we can trust Him. He can trust His love. Because it has nothing to do with "us" in the sense of what we have or what we can do for Him. It has everything to do with "us" in the sense of who we are. And who we are is God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. He loves us because of who we are, and because of who He is. Period. He doesn't love us in order to get something from us. If He was hungry, He wouldn't tell us. Even when Jesus WAS hungry and DID tell the disciples, He ended up taking care of Himself... by taking care of the woman at the well. He didn't depend on anybody for anything. Because He was full of what HE needed, and what everybody else needed. He was full of the one thing in the universe that truly fills us up and sustains us. He was full of love. The word "love" in 1 John 4:8, "He that loveth not knowneth not God; for God is love" means "love feast." It's the fruit of the Spirit that comes from the Tree of Life. It is the one thing we need to eat in order to truly live. Remember Jesus said in another place that unless we eat His body and drink His blood we have no life in us? No part in Him? That's because He literally IS the way, the truth, and the life! And, because of His great love for us, He gave His life for us on the cross. And He gave His life TO us on the cross. So that we could have His life. So that we could experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life that is the unconditional love relationship between Father and Son. He wanted us to experience His love--by receiving it and releasing it. By letting Him love us and loving each other with that same love. He wanted us to be able to trust Him. So He loved the hell out of us when we had nothing to give. People are always like, "Take my heart, Lord." But that's backwards. He gave us HIS heart. He circumcized OUR heart to SHOW us His heart underneath. Beating with love in our chests. He never wanted anything for us... except love. And that's what He gave us when He gave us Himself. When He gave us His Spirit. When He died both for us and as us and then rose again so that we might walk in newness of life!

If you don't have trust you can't have a relationship. And that's what God wants more than anything. He wants us to have a relationship with Him. He wants to be our God and He wants us to be His people. That's why He poured out His Spirit out on all flesh. Why He gave us His Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is our love receptor. It is the Spirit of truth that leads and guides us into all truth. Without letting the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us, we think unconditional love is too good to be true. We think MAYBE, if we try hard enough and behave well enough, we might be able to earn it. But that's like pulling flower petals. It's a crap shoot at best. Especially when you consider all the different interpretations of what we're "supposed to do." Most religious churches seem to preach their culture and call it the Gospel. But that's not life. And it certainly isn't abundant life! We were created to be loved, and to love one another. Period. And the Holy Spirit is what equips and empowers us to know and believe that we are loved. That's step one. We receive it. And then, as we fill ourselves to overflowing with Daddy's love, it comes out of us naturally! And that's step two, releasing it. Giving what we've got. Sharing our experience with God. See, KNOWING God trumps knowing ABOUT God. Heart knowledge beats head knowledge. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. What I'm trying to say is: God gave us THE measure of faith. He gave us (on the cross) and continues to give us (every day in every way if our Spiritual eyes and ears are open to see and hear) reasons to trust Him. Seeing is believing, right? Faith isn't blind. Faith is the EVIDENCE of things not seen. The SUBSTANCE of things hoped for. Faith is the reality of the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Love). Faith is believing the right report. Not what the world is screaming at you, but the still, small voice deep inside. Faith is believing the Word of God. Which is Jesus. Which is love. Remember yesterday I used that snippet of a verse that says, "...let God be true, but every man a liar..." (Romans 3:4)? Think about that for a minute. LET every man be a liar. LET people be who they are. Don't try to make someone fit through a hoop, or into a box. But at the same time, let God be true. If someone lies to you that makes it hard to trust them. But that doesn't have to make it hard to trust God. Because He IS the truth. He CANNOT lie. If God was to say, "The sky is brown," that would be the truth. Because Him saying it would make the sky turn brown. That's the Rock we stand on, and the foundation we build on. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35). And Isaiah 55:11 says, "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." God is the truth. His Word shall not pass, and it shall not return unto Him void. Which means we can trust it. People say "I love you" in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons. Most of them selfish. But when you're heavenly Father says it, you can trust it. Because He doesn't need anything from us. It's a pure, unselfish, trustworthy love. And that's what we're going to look at tomorrow.

There's an old saying that goes like this, "If you attend church on a regular basis, and haven't been offended by somebody... just wait." Because people are people. Even "church folk." Especially church folk. My point is--and the point of this Rant series is--we've all been burned by somebody at some point in our lives. And that hurt can very easily make us gun shy. If you touch the stove, and it's hot, chances are you aren't gonna touch it again. Which seems smart, right? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Right? But here's the thing. If you're afraid of the stove you can't cook anything on it. So you'll miss out on some good meals. By "protecting yourself" what you're really doing is hurting yourself. Instead of avoiding the stove altogether, what you need to do is learn to use it properly. Don't burn yourself on it, but don't give up on cooking on it. And believe me, I get it. That can be just about the hardest thing in the world to do. It's hard to trust when you've been let down. But it's also vitally important. Because we're all in this together. If we cut ourselves off then we miss out on what's available. Relationships. Connection. Love. The best things in life are "free" because they don't cost any money. But they still have a cost attached. They still require us to walk in faith. So let's talk about faith. The most commonly used definition of faith comes from Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And that's an ok defintion. It makes some good points. Like how if it's not now it's not faith. Faith isn't about what might happen. That's hope. Faith is the EVIDENCE of things not seen. Faith is about what what has already happened. Faith is believing that the Word of God is true. Faith is believing that the work is finished. And watch this, "...faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17). Faith doesn't come from what we hope for. It comes from hearing about God's love. Which is what the cross was. The cross was the greatest expression of God's love. The cross was where Jesus put His money where His mouth was. First Jesus told us what love is. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Then He went to the cross and literally laid His life down for us. He gave us something--someONE, Himself, love--to believe in. Romans 12:3 says it like this, "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith." THE measure of faith. Which God has dealt to every man. He gave us ALL something to believe in. And that's why we have faith in God: because He proved Himself faithful. That's why we can trust God: because He has proven Himself trustworthy. One more snippet of one more verse for today. "...let God be true, but every man a liar..." (Romans 3:4). People may burn you, but God never will. And He lives IN people. So instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (to REALLY mix my metaphors) what we need to do is learn to eat the watermelon and spit out the seeds. Be wise about how you interact with people, but don't completely cut yourself off from them. Don't put yourself in a bad situation by blindly trusting people, but don't get to the point where you refuse to believe that you are loved. Loved by God. Who works through people. Loved by PEOPLE... believe it or not!

Love is unlimited in two ways. And they are both vitally important to understand. First of all, love is unlimited because it can't run out. In fact, the more you give it away... the more you have. When Jesus was hungry and He sent His disciples to get something to eat He had an interesting experience with a woman while He was waiting. He ministered to her, gave her exactly what she needed, and then continued to wait for His disciples return. When they got back they found Him refreshed. And He explained it in this way, "But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work" (John 4:32-34). Jesus' food and drink... the things that sustained Him... was giving what He had to others. He didn't become more hungry when He gave what He had. He became satisfied. Refreshed. Guys, we are connected to an unlimited source of love. The God who IS love. We can't run out. And the second way love is unlimited is because it has cast out the thing that limits us! "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18). We don't have to be afraid to love, when we know that we ARE loved. When we know that we are LOVE! It's inside of us. God's heart is beating with love in our chests. The circumcision of the heart cut away the flesh of human effort and revealed what was deep down within us. So rather than being afraid to lose what we've got, rather than trying to get something we think we don't have, we can rest in the truth of the finished work. Jesus said His meat was to finish the work. To reconcile us back to Father God so that we might have eternal life. And eternal life is knowing the Father and the One whom He sent. Knowing God not just as A Father, but as OUR Father. Knowing what it means in 1 John 4:17, "Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." A perfect love is knowing who we are. And knowing who our Daddy is. Knowing that there is no separation between us and God. How could there be? He lives in us, and we live in Him. As He is, so are we in this world. So we can have boldness in the day of judgment (which is everyday, when you stop judging by appearance and start judging righteous judgment) and we can come boldly to the throne of grace to find grace to help in times of trouble. We can find the solution to every problem; which is love. It's all about love. That's what people need. And that's what we know and believe we have. So that's what we can give. You can't give what you don't have and you can only give what you do have. So when you let Daddy love you, the fear is cast out. When you totally and completely identify yourself as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased, then you don't have to worry about losing what you've got, or getting something you don't have. You can rest in the arms of a loving heavenly Father and you can receive and release His love. You can stop putting limits on what this life is "supposed" to be and you experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life you've been given! You can live fearlessly. You can live without limits. You can live a life of love!

Love is limitless. Exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think. Love is on a whole different level. It is one of the few things in the world that doesn't diminish as you give it away, but GROWS as you share it! The limits--the biggest of which is fear--come from the natural brain. The carnal mind. That's why there always seems to be this struggle between the head and the heart. Why we rationalize things and try to figure things out instead of trusting our gut and following our heart. We're afraid that if we can't make things make sense we'll be lost. But the truth is, no matter how the winds blow, no matter how the rain falls, if we're planted on the Rock our house will stand. And you know what I always found interesting in that parable? The wind in the Bible is the Holy Spirit. And the rain makes things grow. So maybe Jesus wasn't talking about "bad" things wiping us out. Maybe He was talking about learning and growing. Maybe He was talking about the world shaking--not in the sense of falling apart, but in the sense of being revealed in Divine Order! Here's what I'm trying to say: We're connected to the unlimited source of love. The God who is love. And as we let Him love us, as we fill ourselves to overflowing with what we've been filled with, that's when we can begin to love one another. Effortlessly. Fearlessly. Limitlessly. (Is that a word? Anyway...) There is no fear in love. And perfect (mature) love casts out all fear. Just as the light makes the darkness flee. Because love IS light. God is love, right? And God is light. It's the same thing. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). All of these different pictures, and terms, are really just different ways of describing the same thing. Life. Love. Light. Spirit. Way. Truth. Life (Did I already say that one? Well, it's abundant). And the thing about this abundant life is that it's everlasting. It's eternal. It has no beginning and no end. It's unlimited. We can hide from the world and try to protect ourselves, but all that really accomplishes is robbing ourselves of the gift we've been given. All that accomplishes is making us miss out on what's available to us. Because we're afraid. Afraid to lose what we've got. Even though we don't even seem to WANT what we've got. If you don't go out on a limb, you'll never get the fruit. And when you realize that He is the vine and you are the branch... you'll be able to look inside and find everything you wanted. It doesn't come from an external source. It comes from the heart. That's where the issues (issue, love) of life flow from. That's where we think, and believe. Not the carnal mind that was taken away, but the mind of Christ. And when we let the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us, when we stop trying so hard and just let go and let God... that's when things get exciting. That's when we start to go above and beyond. Upward and God-ward. Because that's when we stop dragging around the corpse of the dead old man and start soaring on eagle's wings! That's when we start to SEE everything under our feet, because we start to SEE where we really are. Because the light of the world is shining on us, and in us, and through us. That's when we stop being afraid of love--afraid TO love--and start loving one another with the love that we are loved with. That's when we start to receive and release (and in that way experience and enjoy) the gift we've been given. That's when we begin to truly live a life of love!

I think most of us (who believe in God) agree that God is all-powerful. But I think there are two very important parts of that truth that we sometimes miss: 1. If God is all-powerful, and God is love, that means love is all-powerful. And 2. All-powerful doesn't mean most powerful. It means ALL of the power. I debated a little bit before deciding to quote this verse, Acts 4:12, because "salvation" can be a tricky subject. But it gets across what I'm trying to get across regardless. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." For the record, "salvation" here is 4991 in Strong's Greek Concordance and it means, "rescue or safety." Which is my point. We're safe when we love. It's not scary. There is no fear in love because perfect love casts out all fear. We don't have to worry about losing what we've got---because we're SHARING it when we give it away--and we don't have to worry about how other people will respond to our love. God's Word (and, really, He only has one Word. Jesus. Love.) does not fall void. It prospers in what it has set out to do. Which was to prosper us. That's the thought in the mind of Christ. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end" (Jeremiah 29:11). And that expected end was the cross. The end of the old and the beginning of the new. The end of religion and the beginning of relationship. The end of works and labor and the beginning of rest. The end of trying to get, get, get because you're afraid you'll run out... and the beginning of unlimited. Abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life... a life overflowing with love... has not limits. Because love is all-powerful. There is no other name. No other word. No other anything. On the cross, at the Messianic rebirth of the world, Jesus (the consuming fire) burned away everything except Himself. And that's what's left: Jesus. One New Man. And we are all parts of that body of Christ. We have been reconciled to God. He never left us nor forsook us, but He let us try it our way. Then, at the appointed time, Jesus was lifted up from the earth on the cross and He drew us all into Himself. He showed us a more excellent way by spreading His arms wide and wrapping us in a loving embrace. So that we could stop being afraid of an angry, vengeful God--which is how we saw Him but isn't how He ever was--and we could turn to a loving heavenly Father. We could stop running FROM Him and start running TO Him. We could stop trying to earn something that is freely given and we could start to enjoy that gift. Stop trying to take the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of Love) by the violence of human effort and start to see that we've already arrived. We are WHO we need to be, we are WHERE we need to be, and--as we let Daddy love us, and then love others with that same love--we are doing what we were created to do. Remember yesterday we saw that the power that works within us is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think? That's love! Love is what's in us! And it's bigger, and more unlimited, than we could even imagine. It's too big to contain. To powerful to keep to ourselves. It fills us to overflowing and comes out naturally, getting all over everybody we come into contact with. Love is THE power. And there is nothing that compares to it. To Him!

Fear limits us. Fear of change. Fear of failure (or success?). Fear of losing what we've got (even when we don't like what we've got). But the simplde fact is life is always changing. I read somewhere that every seven years you have an entirely net set of skin, tastebuds, pretty much everything. The person you were is no longer the person you are. And that's ok. That's the journey. Learning and growing. Receiving and releasing. Living and loving. I Ranted a while ago about being a true disciple of Jesus. And what that means is being a student of love. Learning to love as we learn how Daddy loves us. But, again, fear holds us back. It keeps us from walking in faith. It keeps us from experiencing all that is available to us. You know, the Kingdom of God (Kingdom of LOVE). We continue to wander around like strangers in the land of promise, trying to earn something that can't be earned. Something that is freely given from Father to Son. There's a passage in the book of Joshua where God is describing the Promised Land. "And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them..." (Joshua 24:13). Land we didn't labor for. Cities we didn't build. Isn't that a slap in the face to the idea of, "Work hard and get what you can earn"? You can't earn a gift. But we always think the goodness of God, the blessings of God, are too good to be true. So we end up robbing ourselves of them. We end up trying to take the Kingdom by the violence of human effort. We end up trying to enter in by any other door than Jesus. Any other door than the heart. It all comes from the heart. The issues of life flow from the inside-out, not the outside-in. And since the issues of life flow from the heart, the issue (singular) of life... is love. Because to live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other because they are the same thing! So what am I saying today? I'm saying we need to stop limiting ourselves. Stop limiting God. We need to believe bigger. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21). More than we could ask OR THINK. According to the power that works IN US. What's that power? Love, of course. And what is it working in us to do? It's working to get OUT of us! To get all over everybody we come into contact with. But we worry. And we get scared. We think, "What if I love him/her but he/she doesn't love me back?" And the short answer is, "It doesn't matter." But the deeper answer is, "What if he or she DOES love you back???" I think a lot of the time we're more afraid of success than failure. Like Jonah, right? He got mad when the people repented. But here's the thing about love: There is no fear in love. None. In the same way that God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all... there is no fear in love at all. We don't have to be afraid to love. Because we can't lose what we've got when we're connected to an unlimited supply. We don't have to let anything hold us back when Jesus is carrying us higher and higher! Upward and God-ward! High above this earthly realm where literally anything is possible. "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth" (Mark 9:23). And that's where we'll pick up tomorrow!