Preaching last night got me to thinking about HOW Jesus won the war to end all wars on the cross. And it seems to me that Jesus won... by surrendering. He didn't come with a show of force. He didn't come with an overwhelming army. He didn't even defend Himself. Because He knew what the end result was going to be. Jesus said, "No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded" (John 10:18 NLT). He knew that death wasn't the end. And that only by dying could the corn of wheat bring forth a great harvest. Someone once asked me why Jesus had to die. And there are a LOT of reasons. But the one that I used in that case was that He was taking the world's best shot. Even though there were two examples of men (Enoch and Elijah) who didn't die... it's "common knowledge" that death is the end of the road. The end of the story. And even though we've focused so much of our time, talent, and treasure on AVOIDING death... and even though we've built up this whole idea of the "afterlife" (and look, I'm not saying there's not an "afterlife," I'm just saying that since we have eternal life it's not really "after" at all. Just different.)... we still look at death as the enemy. We even quote a verse like 1 Corinthians 15:26, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." And we look at it like WE have to fight and defeat death... some day. But look at 1 Corinthians 15:26 in the Young's Literal Translation, "the last enemy is done away -- death." Did you catch that? The last enemy IS done away. It is finished. Jesus took the world's best shot and declared it powerless. Jesus laid His life down for the specific purpose of taking it back up. Of showing death to be completely powerless. I've said this before but we need to understand that God being all-powerful doesn't mean He's the most powerful. It means He has ALL the power. LOVE has ALL the power. LIFE has all the power! And, again, He didn't win the war to end all wars by avoiding death. Or by fighting death in the traditional way that we think of fighting. He won the war to end all wars by submitting. By refusing to fight. He showed us a more excellent way. He showed us that it doesn't have to be a struggle. He showed us how much He loved us by laying His life down for us. By doing what we couldn't do. By giving His life for us, and giving His life to us. I once heard it preached that Jesus was in the grave for three days because the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life inside Him wouldn't let Him stay there any longer! And I know He accomplished a lot during those three days. I'm simply stressing the point that the fire in Jesus was hotter than the fire He was in. Not even death could hold Him down. Not because of what He was doing--not because He was fighting--but because of who He was--because He submitted to the will of His Father. I think we miss out on things sometimes because we're not willing to submit. We're not willing to trust that Daddy has it all figured out and He knows what's best for us. We'd rather fight upstream than flow in the river of life. And I think we can use Jesus as an example of just the opposite. Jesus was so in sync with His Father that He didn't do anything unless He saw Daddy do it. He didn't say anything unless He heard Daddy say it. He waved the white flag and won the greatest victory of all!

I really can't stress how important this is: In order to lead a life worthy of your calling, you have to know what your calling is. Which, again, in the broad sense is to love. We were created to be loved by God, and to love one another with that same love. To receive and release the gift of God that we've been given. And in the individual sense, we are called to follow our hearts. To be who we are. To embrace that thing that makes us... us. For me, it's writing. I never feel more at peace than I do when I'm putting words on the page. That's my calling. To love others through my writing. And listen, for a long time I tried to use that gift selfishly. I tried to write for ME. It wasn't until I presented my body as a living sacrifice and put my three T's (time, talent, treasure) to work for God that things started to take off. I never published anything until I started writing Jesus books. Now I've published 8 books. Daddy took the dream that He put in my heart and made it explode. In other words, "...God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him" (Philippians 2:13 NLT). The King James Version says, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." The desire AND the power. To will AND to do. The "want to" comes from God and the "ability" comes from God. That's why we say God is more interested in availability than ability. Seemingly every time God ever called anybody to do anything they thought it was too big of a task. Moses stuttered. Gideon was kind of a coward. David was a lowly shepherd. But they were all willing to obey the voice of the Lord. And in Moses's case--I love this--God didn't make him do something he was uncomfortable doing. He gave Moses a mouthpiece. I think this is important. Because I really don't believe God wants us to struggle. I believe He wants us to flow. To rest. I think there's a difference between stretching ourselves--going on a limb because that's where the fruit is--and trying to do something we weren't meant to do. I think the most frustrating thing in the world is trying to make a round peg fit into a square hole. Banging your head against the wall trying to force something to be what it's not meant to be. Trying to act--or, worse yet, trying to make other people act--like someone you're not. Trying to fit into a religious box of some culture's idea of what "holiness" is. We're not called to be someone we're not. We're called to LIVE. And to live is to love. To love is to live. So what we're called to do... is love. Be loved, and love one another. It's that simple. But WE always make it so hard. WE always make it about any and every thing else. We call people to do this and do that. Guys... ministry isn't about telling people what to do. It's about telling people who they are. By telling them who Jesus is! Christ in you the hope of glory is your true identity. Letting Him live His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life in, and through, and as you IS your calling!

We are all uniquely suited to do some things, and we are all terrible at other things. Nobody is good at everything, or bad at everything. This is why I can our "calling" is to be loved by God and to love each other with that same love, but why I can also say that we each have a very individual way of leading a life worthy of our calling. If I try to do something that I'm not made to do that's when I get super frustrated and give up. And that's what I see when it comes to trying to get people to fit in to religion. When we put people up under the Law of Moses we set them up for failure. That's literally the definition of "falling from grace." Because grace is the divine influence upon the heart, and it's reflection in the life. Grace is living from the inside-out. The outworking of the indwelling Spirit. Grace is God's unmerited favor. Receiving and releasing the gift of God--which is eternal life, which is knowing the Father in the context of being His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. What I'm saying is, your calling is to be YOU. Not somebody else. You were not called to act like anybody. Not even Jesus. Because if you're acting like Jesus that's all it'll ever be: an act. Your calling is to LIVE. And to live is to love. To love is to live. Love is what makes an abunant life... abundant. But we have to use wisdom when it comes to living--when it comes to loving. Again--there are things I can do, and there are things I can't. If I try to love outside of what I'm capable of it's not going to be good for anybody. And listen, I'm not saying we shouldn't stretch ourselves. Love is limitless. You can't love so hard that you run out of it. How else could we test the height, and length, and depth, and breadth of God's love for us without loving as big and as hard as possible? I'm convinced that we experience love by GIVING love. Because love IS giving. Making others happy is the best way to "feel" happy. Why do you think Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive? You have to receive in order to have something to give. But it doesn't stop with receiving. We are blessed... to be a blessing. We are given... so that we can give. Filled to overflowing so that what's inside can get all over everybody else we come into contact with. Not by running around like chickens with our heads cut off... but simply by being who we are. I'm a writer, so I use my words to love people. I don't try to do things that I know I can't do. Everybody loves (and receives love) in different ways. Again, that's where wisdom comes in. Don't love people the way you wish they loved you. Love people the way THEY need to be loved. Do what you can do, and do it in love. Even faith works by love. Works don't work. Love does. Our calling is to be loved by God and to love each other with that same love. But we have to know ourselves (and each other) in order to do that. We have to embrace ourselves, and each other, in order to fulfill our calling. In order to lead a life worthy of our calling. Guys... I say this all the time but it's still as true as could be... it's all about love!

We're not called to fit into a box. We're called to live. And since living and loving are the same thing, we're called to love. But that's where it gets interesting. Because everybody gives and receives love in their own unique way. Things that make me happy might not make you happy. So it's important to love wisely. And it's important to understand that you can't please everybody. Sometimes your best efforts fall on deaf ears. And that's ok. It's not your responsibility to make sure people react the way you want them to. It's your responsibility to love people no matter how they respond. I always hear about this debt that we owed God. And I always wonder about that. Because the only debt I can find is in Romans 13:8, "Owe no man anything, but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law." We don't owe anybody anything except love. Because that's why we're here--to be loved by God and to love one another with that same love. That's the New Commandment. That's the perfect law of liberty. And that's our calling! That's why we were created. We are God's love letter to the world. His expression of love is when WE love one another. That's when the Word (Jesus, love) is made flesh. That's when we are most alive, and that's when we are most ourselves. Our TRUE selves. Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. That's what we are called to do. Not to fit in a box. That's not liberty. Not to try to be someone we're not. But to embrace who we are. To embrace one another. To be loved, and to love. It really is that simple. The simplicity of Christ... is love. When we get rid of everything else--which is what Jesus did on the cross when He remade the world in His image--we are left with what's real. Left with love. So to lead a life worthy of our calling is to lead a life of love. Love IS our calling. And it's not just what we do... it's who we are!

I think the reason we struggle so much (and so often) is because we're trying to be someone we're not. We're trying to "fit in" when we were made to stand out! We let the world dictate to us instead of being led by the Spirit. Those who are led by the Spirit are the Son(s) of God. That's our true identity, and that's how we lead a life worthy of our calling. And here's the best part: The Spirit leads us by leading and guiding us into all truth. By taking our hand and walking WITH us. It's not leader/follower in the sense of someone giving orders and you better obey them or else. It's an eternal life-long journey into the heart of the matter; which is the heart. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, testifies of our true identity by testifying of Jesus. The ultimate truth of the universe is that the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. That's what the Holy Spirit tells us in that still, small voice. He tells us, "You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." He tells us, "Daddy loves you." And when we know that we ARE loved... that's when we CAN love. Because you can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. And that's when this thing gets real. When we embrace our purpose, or our calling. When we let God love us and when we love others with that same love. When we receive and release (share) the gift of God that is eternal life! And that's what makes this thing so exciting. Because in the same way that everyone receives love in a different way, we all love in different ways. Not to sound cheesy or whatever, but we really are all unique snowflakes. We're all the same, because we're all humans. But we're all different because there are things I can do that you can't. Things that you can do that I can't. Things I'm good at. Things I'm bad at. But when we work together, connecting on that Spirit to Spirit, holy to holy level that is true agape love, that's when we're altogether lovely. Lovely altogether. It's not my purpose to do what you've been called to do. And vice versa. If I do what I can do, and you do what you can do, then it'll all get done. If I try to do it all I'll burn out and end up messing things up. Let me say it this way: We all need to stay in our lanes. Do what we can do. I always go back to my default example: I'm a writer. That's the gift that God gave me. That's my talent. And that's the desire that God put in my heart. Now I can run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to do any and every thing else. But if I really want to be productive, if I really want to flow, if I want to lead a life worthy of my calling... I need to sit down and write. That's when I'm the most... me. And life isn't about being someone you're not. It's about embracing who you are and presenting your body as a living sacrifice unto God. Writing... about and for Jesus. Blessing others with what I've been blessed with. That's not always about money. Rarely about money. That's about you being YOU. Doing what only YOU can do. Wherever you are. With whatever you've got. To whoever you come into contact with!

That's an ironic title, because in this Rant series I'm not calling anybody to do anything. I'm simply trying to help us understand what our calling is. In fact, I think we get into trouble when we hear a rallying cry and try to meet a need that isn't natural for us to meet. When we try to be someone we're not. And, listen, I understand stretching yourself. I understand that sometimes you have to go out on a limb--that's where the fruit is. But I also know that if you're trying to be someone you're not, and do something you can't, you'll meet a lot of frustration and heartache. Even with the idea of giving. I've been to some churches where if you don't tithe regularly you're not really a member of the church. My thought on giving is: If you like it, get behind it. Don't feel obligated. Never feel obligated! The only debt we owe each other is love. God loves a CHEERFUL giver. Not a grudging one. Everything we do must flow from the heart. Because that, friends, is who we really are. The inner man. The hidden man of the heart. And when we do what we do because it's in our heart to do it... that's when the hidden man is no longer hidden. That's when the light within us shines OUT of us. And nobody can tell you what's in your heart. Remember when we talked about wisdom? Where the head and the heart meet? Where things line up in Divine Order because we've stopped trying to make them line up in our idea of order? That's rest. That's the flow. And that's our calling. Let me quote Ephesians 4:1 in the NLT. "Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God." Notice the key word there. It's not "calling." It's LIFE. Because, bottom line, we have been called to live. Jesus came to give us life, and that more abundantly. He didn't come so that we could struggle and fight and try as hard as we can to be someone else. That was the Law of Moses--demanding perfection without being able to produce it. Jesus nailed all of that to the cross because it was contrary to us. Against us. Man cannot function inside a rigid set of rules. So Jesus replaced the Law of Moses with the Perfect Law of Liberty. He gave the room and the space to operate. To be ourselves. To create. I Ranted on this idea quite a while ago, but let me put it here in a nutshell: God is the Creator. We were created in His image. We THINK this means, "Creator and creation." But really it means, "Creator and creator." God made everything from Himself. You can't make something out of nothing. God is love. God made everything out of LOVE. And that's our calling; to be loved, and to love one another. Love and loved... Love and love. The flow is God's love flowing into us, and through us, and out of us. That's WHY we were created. To be an expression of His love. To love others as He loves us. That's our true calling. That's why we're here. And for the couple of days that's what we're going to look at: Living our lives as our true selves. Leading lives worthy of our calling. Being who we are and loving how WE can love!

The cross crossed out everything that wasn't Jesus Himself. LOVE Himself. Matthew 19:28 in the Amplified Bible describes it as the Messianic rebirth of the world. The consuming fire that IS God consumed everything EXCEPT God. Leaving only... God. Only love. It's the same picture that we see when in the garden of Eden there were two trees (the tree of knowledge of good and evil AND the Tree of Life) but when we get to New Jerusalem there is ONLY the Tree of Life. The cross crossed out the old in order to bring forth the new. And nothing connected to that old man--sin, death, the curses of the law--remain. It's all good. And not the same "good" that needs "evil" in order to define itself. But the good that is "good, acceptable, and perfect" (Romans 12:2). The WILL of God. That's what's left on this side of the cross. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Love remains. Everything else was burned away. The problem is that we still see things that have passed away. We need to look at things cross-eyed. We KNOW that everything is under our feet. But we don't SEE everything under our feet. BUT we see Jesus. And that's all we need to see. Because, again, that's what remains. That's what's real. Everything else has been crossed out. Passed away. We don't need to struggle with it, or fight against it. We can lay it aside. Because it's not real. If God is all-powerful (and He is) that doesn't mean He's the MOST powerful. It means He has all the power. Nothing else has ANY power. And when we stop magnifying anything else, we stop empowering anything else. When we simply "let go and let God" then we let things reveal themselves to be in Divine Order instead of trying to force things into OUR order. We stop working and start resting. Stop trying to earn and begin to receive (and release). Stop struggling and start LIVING!

Before the cross the people of Israel were under a covenant that dealt with good and evil. "If you do good, you'll be rewarded. If you do evil, you'll be punished." It was an eye for an eye. But that was never what God wanted. That was what man--with his carnal, unregenerated mind--wanted. Because it made sense. We see this mindset all the way back to the garden of Eden. The serpent said, "If you eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then you'll be like God." That's the cosmic lie that man was so eager to swallow. Because we never see ourselves as good enough. But we like the idea that if we try hard enough maybe some day we can become good enough. Man was made in God's image. We didn't have to do anything in order to be like Him. We were already like Him! We just didn't know it. It was dark, and we couldn't see clearly. Couldn't see God clearly, and couldn't see ourselves clearly. So of course we jumped at the chance to "be like Him." Unfortunately, that was a lie. And because man believed the lie, instead of believing God (which is sin, by the way. Sin is unbelief.), God cursed the ground. He gave us the world we wanted. Do good and be rewarded. Do evil and be punished. Work hard and earn everything by the sweat of your brow. Get what you deserve. He gave that to us... until the appointed time. Until the cross. He let us experience what we THOUGHT we wanted so that when He offered a more excellent way (Jesus, love) we would be able to choose correctly. It wouldn't seem like the grass is greener on the other side, because we'd BEEN on the other side and we KNEW it wasn't any fun over there. Psalm 90:3 says it like this, "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men." The choice was never to stay with God or leave Him. God knew we were going to leave. HAD to leave. The choice was the same choice the Prodigal Son had when he "came to himself." When he realized, "It's no fun out here, I'm going back to Daddy's house." And now, on this side of the cross, the tree of knowlege of good and evil has been completely crossed out. Jesus cursed the fig tree because it couldn't produce any fruit. Now, on this side of the cross, we are no longer under performace based, man-centered religion. The curse has been reversed. There is no longer anything to fear. God's not mad at you, He's mad ABOUT you. Madly in love with you! It's not yes or no. It's not pulling flower petals trying to figure out if "He loves me, He loves me not." It doesn't depend on what you DO. It depends on WHO YOU ARE. And who you are is His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased! It's not yes or no anymore. No was crossed out. "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us" (2 Corinthians 1:20). It's not bad and getting worse. It's ALL good. ALL of the promises of God were fulfilled in Jesus. We have all of the promises because we have Jesus! Because He gave His life for us on the cross... and because He gave His life TO us on the cross! The old man died and the New Man came forth. The curses no longer apply. Generational curses have turned into general blessings! Fear not. It's all good. There's no condemnation. No punishment. (There IS correction, but that's another Rant entirely.) Everything that's not God (Jesus, love) was burned away by the consuming fire that IS God (Jesus, love)!

I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Mercy is not getting what you deserve, and grace is getting what you don't deserve." Well... that's because of the cross. The cross crossed out any evil accusation that could be leveled against you. The cross washed you clean as snow. It took any stain, or wrinkle, or spot off of you. In other words, "...Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). There's no condemnation in Christ because there's nothing to condemn. Because we've moved out of the appearance realm--the good vs evil realm--and into the realm of the perfect law of liberty. Letting people be who they are and do what they do. And listen, I'm not saying you need to let people walk all over you. But you don't have to retaliate either. You can turn the other cheek. But if someone keeps slapping you and keeps slapping you... you don't have to slap back, but you don't have to stick around either. You can take yourself out of the situation. And here's my advice on that: If you give something (or someone) everything you've got, it's either enough... or it's not. And if it's not you don't have to stay there and suffer needlessly. So we're not condemning people. We're letting them be who they are. Giving them room to learn and grow. Because condemnation, and punishment, and all of that "wrath of God" Old Testament stuff... is over. Let me say it like this, "You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also" (Matthew 5:38-39 NLT). The Law was contrary to us. It was against us. It demanded perfection without being able to produce perfection. All it could do was point out imperfection. So Jesus nailed it to the cross. He brought us out of the Old and into the New. And on this side of the cross we're a New Creature. A New Man. THE New Man. Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. No longer do we make sure people get what they deserve. No longer do we give back what we get from others. Now we've been given something we DIDN'T deserve. Something we didn't--couldn't--earn. We've been given the Holy Spirit. The love receptor. And now we know what we've got. Now we know that we're loved. And now, instead of giving an eye for an eye... we can give love no matter what. Someone hurts us and instead of hurting them back we understand that they're only giving what THEY'VE got. Hurting people hurt people. But loved people love people. We have what they need. And we have what WE need. So it doesn't matter what THEY give us. It matters what DADDY gave us. We have something to share. Something that is so big it when we fill ourselves with the fulness of it... it overflows out of us. Naturally. Because God is light and there's no darkness in Him at all. WE are that same light, and believe it or not, there's no darkness in us at either!

The cross crossed out the Old Man. That old, obsolete "good vs evil" way of thinking. Why? So that we could walk in NEWNESS of life! Abundant life. A life full of love. That's what happened when Jesus cursed the fig tree--the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It withered and died. And we know that Jesus cursed that tree because it wouldn't--couldn't--bear any fruit. God wanted something better for us than just life as we knew it. He wanted the best for us, so He gave the best to us. He gave us His only begotten Son, so that we could experience Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life as Jesus lives is in, and through, and as us! The cross crossed out all of the old so that the new could come forth. The old man had to die (the second death) so that there could be a new birth. So that we could be born from above. But don't get it twisted--Jesus didn't come to make "evil" poeple "good." He came to make dead people alive. He came to translate us out of the power of darkness and into His Kingdom. And He did that by planting Himself--the King--in us! Because what is the Kingdom but the realm where the King rules and reigns. That's why we don't just live IN the Kingdom... but we ARE the Kingdom. WE are the realm where the King rules and reigns. We are kings and priests and He is the King of kings and the High Priest! I'm telling you, we weren't "bad" before the cross. We just didn't know who we were. Because we didn't know who God was. So Jesus came to show us the Father. To show us what it means to be loved, and to show us what it means to love others with that same love. He came to cross out all of the misconceptions about God. To show us that while we were God's enemies in our minds because of our wicked deeds... when God arises His enemies are scattered! When the day star arises in our hearts that old mindset--that guilty conscience--scatters. When we let the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us... that's when we stop worrying about all of the religious junk we've been taught. That's when we stop worrying about what the world is screaming at us. That's when we hear the still, small voice inside of us that leads and guides us into all truth. That's when we start to understand what--on a deep level--we already know. What we've always known but what we thought was too good to be true. The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. That's the ultimate truth of the universe. Daddy loves you. Always has, always will. He didn't send His Son to die on the cross in order to change you into someone He could love. He already loved you. He sent His Son to die on the cross so that you could change into someone who could know, and believe, and receive, and relese His love. He had to cross out the lie so that you might know the truth. He had to shine the light of the world (which He is, which you are) so that you could see clearly. So that you could stop trying to earn what is freely given and can only be received. Either the cross changed everything, or it didn't change anything. Spoiler alert: It changed everything!