There's a huge difference between "life" and "Resurrection Life." And that difference, in a Word, is love. Before the cross--and, in a very real way before we accept the truth of the cross through the act of water baptism--we were all dead men walking. We just stumbled around in the dark trying to do the best we could with what we have, even though we were convinced we didn't have anything. It was mankind trying to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Killing ourselves to make a living. Like my mom always says, "What do you get when you work your fingers to the bone? Bony fingers." And, listen, I'm not saying you shouldn't work. Paul wrote something to the effect of, "If you don't work, you don't eat." This life--even in it's most abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life form--is still about taking care of business. But here's the thing, whatsoever you do... do it as unto the Lord, and not men. You have to work for a living, but that doesn't mean you have to kill yourself for a living. You can find a balance. And you can do your work, while you're at work, heartily--to the best of your ability, and because it's in your heart to do it. When I'm at work I look at it as a labor of love. Because it's putting a roof over my family's head and food on my family's table. I love my family. I want to take care of them. Working is how I do that. So it's not pointless. It is, in fact, very pointed. Very purposeful. My point is, when we talk about things like "rest" or "being still and knowing that HE is God" we're not talking about inactivity. We're not talking about not doing anything. Rest is no inactivity. It is, in fact and in truth, Holy Spirit directed activity. Letting the Spirit lead us, guide us, direct us, and protect us. And what the Spirit of truth (that leads and guides us into all truth) directs us to do... is love. What else would the God who is love expect from us? We love, because He first loved us. He fills us with His love and then we love Him back by loving each other. We receive and release the gift we've been given. Breathe in God's love, and breathe out God's love. That's what life is really all about. That's what Resurrection Life is. It's living out of our abundance. And, again, what makes the abundant life abundant... is love. Love is what elevates us out of "life" and into Resurrection Life. Think about it like this: No love... no life. KNOW love... KNOW life. To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other and you can't do one without the other. They aren't just connected. They are the same thing. I truly believe that there is more available to us than we even realize. We cut ouraelves off from what God has given us by trying to earn what has been freely given. By trying to be someone we're not in order to try to get something we think we haven't got. We rob ourselves of the gift we've been given. We miss out on what's available to us. And that's a shame. We ought to just be still. To focus on what we have rather than what we think we don't have. Because if you have love... you have it all. If you have love you have what you need. If you have love... you can give love. Because love is giving. And love... is living!

"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection" (Romans 6:4-5). Baptism is where we really kind of make a declaration of acceptance regarding the cross. Because, let's be real, the truth is true whether you know it or not, believe it or not, accept it or not. But even though the truth has set us free and made us free, if we don't know that we're free we're going to act like we're not. Either way Christ's love controls us. Either we don't know that God loves us and we do everything we do to "get" that love that we think we don't have... or we know and believe that He does love us and we do everything we do in order to share (and in that way experience) the love that we have. Either way it's all about love--either trying to get it, or giving it away. Love is the central theme and the central focus of all of our lives. Love is what makes the world go 'round. Love is what we were created for. The God who is love created us in order to express Himself (His love). The key to this whole thing--the resurrection--is understanding that you have to die before you can live. You have to walk before you can crawl. Yesterday we looked at how we were already dead, and we needed a second death (the death OF death) in order to have life... and that more abundantly. Water baptism is us putting away that old man. Killing him (in a sense) in a watery grave. And moving on without him. Leaving the old behind. Embracing who we are on this side of the cross. Not just a sinner saved by grace... but a saint! Because a sinner saved by grace is not a sinner anymore. That part of our life is dead and gone. Sin has no power over a believer because sin is unbelief. A believer, by definition, cannot sin. How could he? That old man has passed away. All the old has passed away. We don't need to drag it around anymore. We can learn from it and move on. We can get to the place where our past doesn't define us... but the will and the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) of God defines us. We can walk in NEWNESS of life. We can experience the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God (life of love) by being still and knowing that HE is God. By letting Jesus live HIS life in us, and through us, and as us. If we have been planted in the likeness of His death, we can also be in the likeness of His resurrection. If we understand what the cross was all about--that His death WAS our death--then we can understand that now, because of the cross, His life IS our life. We can stop trying to be someone we're not when we understand who we really are. Who we are in Christ, which is who Christ is in us. We can be free of sin and death. Think about it--if the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world... we're free from it. It's a non-issue. We don't have to deal with it or struggle with it. If we already died... and rose again... we don't need to deal with death either. Even when this mortal body gives up the ghost, that isn't the end of the story. It's just a transition from one thing to the next. So instead of worrying so much about what happens when (if) we die... we can focus on living while we're alive. We can focus on what we can do right now. The days of heaven on earth in which we are the kings and priests equipped and empowered to rule and reign... on the earth. In the here and now. Resurrection life doesn't start when your body dies. It has no beginning and no end. It simply is. And we can experience that eternity by simply knowing and believing!

Let's really get into this. Our key verse for this series is John 11:25, but before I quote it again I want to back up and get the previous verse too. "Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day" (John 11:24). That's such a religious mindset. We think something great will happen... in the sweet by and by. We're only interested in the afterlife... at the expense of life itself. So Jesus kind of pretty much stopped her right there. "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live" (John 11:25). He brought it to the present tense. He said I AM the resurrction AND the life. And He pointed out that, in a very real sense, He IS the last day. It was happening right then. And I know that Jesus's death on the cross is a big time culmination of, well, everything. The finished work. The end of the old and the beginning of the new. But I want to point this out too: In Revelation 13:8 Jesus is described as, "...the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." So, as I said, the cross was the culmination. The fulfillment. But we have to remember that God is outside of time. He sees the end from the beginning. He doesn't operate within our limited human understanding. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. So, in a very real sense, the Lamb has always been slain. The deal about resurrection is not just what will happen when we die... it is what happened when Jesus died. It is what happened when--on, and through, and because of the cross--the old passed away and the new came forth. Because Resurrection Life is not just pushing reset on life as we know it. It is a totally and completely different kind of life. Think about this. Jesus said, "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." In our understanding of "death," physical death, where does belief come in? Can your corpse believe things from the cold ground? Or if you're cremated can your ashes believe or unbelieve? So maybe there's more to it than just the end of our physical bodies. Maybe before the cross we were dead even as we stumbled around trying to "live." Maybe believing in Jesus--believing in love--is what brings us out of death and into life. Maybe it's not about an afterlife, but an everlasting life! So my point for today is that we need to stop living in the past... or in the future. It's ok to learn from the past. And it's ok to work towards the future... but all we really have is right now. So even as we're working towards the future we need to have a balance. You can't sacrifice your entire present for a future that may or may not ever happen. What we need to do is really start to see, and feel, and experience, and understand what that difference is between "life" and Resurrection Life. Because it IS a big difference. It is the ultimate difference between, honestly, death and life. God told Adam that on the day that he ate of the tree of death he would surely die. And Adam did. Even though he lived another like 900 years or something. So death isn't just physical death. It's more than that. And it's less than that. Because Jesus defeated death. Death could not hold life down. Jesus died... and rose again. And we, in Him, died--we were already dead in Adam, then we had a second death when Jesus died, which was the death of death--and rose again. To walk in newness of life! To experience everything that our heavenly Father has made available to us. To not only live... but live abundantly! To not only "live" but live... by loving! That's what God wants for us, so that's what He gave to us!

I'm stuck on this idea of life. So, as my pastor once taught me, I'm just going to preach it until I'm empty on it. In our last Rant series I spent some time trying to look at the difference between life and death. That difference, of course, being love. No love... no life. Know love... know life! So for the next few days I really want to focus on the difference between "life" as we know it and have accepted it... and resurrection life. To me there's a huge difference between simply living and truly being alive. The difference between struggling through the day as we go through the motions and experiencing the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God. The life (one more time) of love that is the gift of God! Look at John 11:25, "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." This, to me, is a big one. An important one. Notice that Jesus said "I AM the resurrection and the life." That's an "I am" statement, which is incredibly powerful in the Scripture anyway, but it is also in the present tense. He didn't say, "I am going to be the resurrection." He came, in a nutshell, so that we could have life, and have it more abundantly. So that we could experience His life as He lives it in us, and through us, and as us. The life that our heavenly Father always wanted for us... is available to us. Jesus gave it to us. He gave His life for us, yes, and there is a lot that could be said there. But for this Rant series I want to focus on the glorious truth that He gave His life TO us. See, a lot of people say, "Jesus died so that you could live." And that's not exactly true. Jesus died... so you could die. Look at Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified wtih 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." See, when Jesus died... we died. That was the second death. The death OF death. And if we're talking about the difference between "life" and Resurrection Life... that's it. From the time Adam ate of the tree of death (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) we, as a human race, were dead men (and women) walking. We were, like I said, just going through the motions. "Living" but not fully alive. "Life" but not abundant life. And what makes the abundant life abundant? Love, of course. Love is the difference between death and life. Love is not just what Jesus does (and did), love is who Jesus is. When He said He IS the resurrection, He also said He IS the life. If Jesus is love--and He is. God in the flesh, love in a body... God in your flesh, love in your body--and Jesus is life... that means love is life. Life is love. To live is to love and to love is to live. And that's what we have right now, because that's what Jesus gave us. He died so we could die, and He rose from the dead so we could live! So we could experience His life of love right here and right now. The days of heaven on earth. Experiencing everything God has for us. Living life while we're alive. Not wasting our time trying to get to an afterlife, but feeling secure in the truth that absent from the body is present with the Lord. Feeling secure in our heavenly Father's love for us. Let me say this again as clearly as I can: Jesus died so we could die. And then He rose again so we could live. He gave us His life so that we could experience it as He lives His own life (because nobody can live Jesus's life except Jesus) in us, and through us, and as us. We experience His life by being still and knowing that He is God. By letting everything He has and everything He is--that is already inside us--come out of us by knowing and believing that it--He, love--is in there. Filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with!

The secret of life is... living. It's knowing what you've got instead of constantly trying to chase what you think you haven't got. Its doing what Romans 6:11 says. "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto usin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It's that reckoning. That understanding. That acceptance of the ultimate truth of the universe. Dead unto sin. Alive unto God. Alive unto LOVE. Guarding your heart by keeping it open. Not closing it down because you've been hurt and you don't wan to be hurt again. We've all been hurt. But if you shut down you miss out on what's available to you. You miss out on living. And that's what life is for. We were given this life so that we could live it. We were given this gift so what we could share it. Living is loving. Love is giving. Living is giving what we've got instead of running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get what we think we haven't got. Religion is such a trap because it forces you to be someone you're not in order to try to get something you think you haven't got. Something you already have. Something you already ARE. And therein lies the key: You already have what you need. You already are who you need to be. You don't need to--and can't--earn God's love. It is a gift that is freely given. Freely we have been given, freely we can give. By reckoning. By setting our affection. By putting ourselves and our emphasis where it belongs. And where it belongs... is on God. On love. What you magnify in your life is what will manifest in your life. What you feed is what will grow. What you focus on is what you will experience. If you're constantly focused on problems, all you'll have is problems. But if you focus on the solution--again, Jesus... love--you'll be able to get through everything you need to go through. When you're planted on the rock you cannot be shaken. When you're building on the foundation of love you can be sure that the building--or the bridge, if I can say it that way--will last. Jesus came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Love is what makes life abundant. Love is what makes life worth living. And love is what makes life possible to live. To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other and you can't do one without the other. We need to understand the difference between life and death. We need to understand that we have passed from death unto life. We need to let go of all of the old... stuff that has been dragging us and holding us down. And we need to walk in newness of life. Reckon ourselves dead to sin... and alive unto God! Stop trying to "get" life and start to just ENJOY life. Experience and enjoy the gift we've already been given. We already have it. We don't need to "get" it. And we experience and enjoy it by giving it away. By sharing it. By laying our life down for our friends. By giving what we've got. And you can only give what you've got when you know what you've got. What's inside WILL come out--or, more accurately, what you BELIEVE is inside will come out. So make sure you know and believe that what's really in there... is in there. The love of God. The life of God. Fill yourself to overflowing with what you've already been filled with. Receive it and release it. Breathe it in and breathe it out. Love God and love people. Love God BY loving people. Live a life of love with every breath you take and every move you make. This life is worth living. So live it to the fullest. Live it in the way that your heavenly Father always wanted you to. Live it... in love. With love. Through love. Because of love. It's all about love!

No love... no life. Know love... know life! That's about as simple as I can make it. To live is to love and to love is to live. But here's the important part: We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. We have to understand that we were dead. That, in fact, we ARE dead and our life is hid in with Christ in God. Our life is hid in love. We have had two deaths. The first death was when Adam (and all of humanity in him) ate from the tree of death. And that, by the way, was not God punishing anybody. That was the natural consequence of eating from that particular tree. Because you are what you eat. What else could come from the tree of death... but death? Which is why Jesus cursed the fig tree. He knew that it couldn't bear fruit and He didn't want us messing with it. So He got rid of it. That was the second death. The death OF death. The cross. When we were crucified with Him. First we were identified by Adam. Then Jesus was lifted up from the earth and drew all men into Himself. From that point on what happened to Jesus happened to us. When He died, we died. And when He rose again... we rose again. To walk in newness of life. To know and be known. To love and be loved. When the light of the world shined, that was when we could begin to see things clearly. To see things as they truly are. To understand that we ARE the Son(s) of God. To understand that even though we might not always feel like it... we ARE the righteousness of God in Christ. We live in Him because He lives in us. And that, friends, is what it means to be alive. To be in the light as He is in the light. To know that we ARE the light. It shine on us, and in us, and through us... because it IS us. Jesus described both Himself and us as the light of the world. It is the same light. The light of life. The light of love. It is that light shining that reveals things to us. So that we can know who He is, and in that way know who WE are. When we look into the mirror with an open face we are changed into the image we see from glory to glory. We magnify the love--the God--in our lives and it manifests in our lives. We stop focusing on what we DON'T have and we enjoy what we DO have. We live with an attitude of gratitude. Experiencing and enjoying what we have by sharing it. By giving it away. Love is giving. You can give without loving but you can't love without giving. So if you are talking about life... talking about love... you're talking about giving what you've got. Laying your life down for your friends. Gladly spending everything you have and everything you are no matter what. And if someone doesn't pick up what you're laying down... don't sweat it. Just shrug your shoulders and move on. All you can do is all you can do. Don't try to overreach or overextend. Stay in your lane. Love those you can love by being who you are. Do what you do heartily--to the best of your abililty and because it is in your heart to do it. Let love guide your way and you will live a full life. A life of service is a life worth living. Not being selfish, but being selfless. Not being self-centered, but being Christ-centered (which means being people-centered). Focusing on living. What's that old phrase, "Get busy living or get busy dying." We're alive now. We ought to live now. Give what we've got in order to experience what we've got. That's what this life is for--it's for living. It's for giving. It's for loving!

Jesus came that we might have life. He knew the problem wasn't good vs evil. Both of those are on the same tree. The tree that can't bear any fruit. We keep trying to turn over a new leaf, but until we get onto an entirely different tree there can never be real, true, lasting change. That's why Jesus cursed the fig tree. That's why even though in the garden of Eden there were 2 trees, in the true paradise of God in Revelation there is only the Tree of Life. The tree that Jesus is! He is the vine and we are the branches. He produces that fruit--the fruit of the spirit which is love--and then we bear it. He makes it available to us and then we make it available to each other. We experience and enjoy what we've got by giving it away. By sharing it. Because it's all about God, and people, and love. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. Letting what He has put inside us come out, and in that way experiencing the gift we've been given. Listen guys: To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other and you can't do one without the other. I think a big part of why people struggle so much is that they try to fill a God-shaped, love-shaped hole inside themselves with anything other than. We look for love in all the wrong places. Or we give up on love and try to fill ourselves with anything else. Nothing can fill a God-shaped hole except God. Nothing can fill a love-shaped hole except love. My son would tell you that's "Logan logic." Something that just makes sense. So if we want to truly live--and I think we ALL want to truly live--we need to focus on what matters and let go of what doesn't. Colossians 3:1-4 says, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." So much good stuff there. I like, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." If you want to truly live you have to understand that you are dead. That it's not about you. It's about HIM. He is our life. Nobody can live Jesus's life... except Jesus. It is Him living His own abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love in us, and through us, and as us. We don't have to look for love in all the wrong places. We can go straight to the source. We can look inside. Because that's where love is. Because that's where Jesus is. We can rest, and let God do what He's of a mind to do. Which, of course, is love. What else could the God who is love possibly want to do? He wants to love. He wants to take care of His children. That's what God does because that's who God is. That's what WE do because that's who we ARE! The difference between life and death, quite simply, in a word, is love. We know that we have passed from death into life because of the love that we have for one another. It's like this: No love... no life. Know love... know life! One more time: To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't do one without the other because they are the same thing. So stop trying so hard. Stop trying to "figure it out." Or "earn it." Just be still and know that HE is God. Be still and know that you have what you need. We love because He first loved us. We don't need love... we have love. We ARE love. So just live, man. Just give what you've got. Let what's inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. Fill yourself to overflowing with what you've already been filled with and live your best life by giving your best love!

One of my favorite things that Jesus said is, "The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). And I always like to point out that the thief Jesus was talking about in this passage of Scripture is... us. Anybody who tries to enter into the sheepfold any other way but through the door. Which, of course, is Jesus. Point being, anybody who tries to live their life without Jesus--without love--is doomed to perish. That's why God sent His only Son, so that in believing in Him we might NOT perish but have everlasting life. It amazes me that religion has twisted the gospel to the point where the afterlife has seemingly become more important than life itself. Everybody wants to "go" to heaven instead of realizing and understanding that we can experience the days of heaven on earth. We don't have to suffer. We don't have to kill, or steal, or destroy... OURSELVES. Which is what we do (unfortunately) when we go around looking for love in all the wrong places. When we don't include our heavenly Father in our lives. And see, that's the thing: Jesus doesn't just want to be a PART of our lives. He wants to BE our life, because He IS life. To live is to love and to love is to live. They aren't just connected, they are the same thing. You can't have one without the other, and you can't do one without the other. So if we're talking about life--and abundant life at that--we're talking about love. Love is what makes the abundant life abundant. Love is what makes life worth living. Love is what makes life possible to live. Jesus didn't come so that we could have a religion. He didn't come to make "bad" people "good." He came to make dead people alive. He came that we might have life. HIS life. And the way that we have His life... is by letting HIM live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. By being still and knowing that HE is God. By resting. And, as always, that doesn't mean inactivity. Rest is Holy Spirit directed activity. Letting the love that is inside you flow out by knowing and believing that it is in there. Receiving and releasing the love of God. Letting God love you and loving Him back by loving the people that you come into contact with. That's what this life is all about--knowing and being known. Loving and being loved. And it all starts with God. We love because He first loved us. He gave us what we needed so that we could, you know, have it. So that we could use it. So that we could experience it by giving it away. And guys, what we have... is this life. What we have... is today. Remember the old saying, "The past is history, the future is a mystery. All we have is right now and it's a gift. That's why it's called the present." So don't waste what you've got. Give what you've got. Experience what you've got by giving it away. By sharing it. We know that we have passed from death unto life because of the love that we have. Death is the absense of love. Which is why a lot of people, instead of living like they were dying a (as the old song says), live like they're dead. They just go through the motions. Stuck in a rut. They either look for love in all the wrong places, or they give up on looking for it at all. That's where we come in. Us. The believers. The ones who know better. Because when you know better, you can do better. When you know what you've got, you can give what you've got. And in that way you stop robbing yourself and start experiencing and enjoying the gift of life that you've been given!

Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. This, to me, is such an important distinction. If you see yourself (or others) as good or bad, you're eating from the wrong tree. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the tree of death. That is literally what happened when Adam and Eve ate of it--they died. And we, in them, died. That was what Jesus came to correct. Let me say it like this: "Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and gout of out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One mn said no to God and put many peole in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right" (Romans 5:18-19 MSG). The first Adam ate from the wrong tree and died. The last Adam IS the right tree (the Tree of Life) and has given His life both for us and to us. Jesus came that we might have LIFE and that more abundantly. Look at John 22:25, "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Now let's track this. To live is to love and to love is to live. They aren't just connected, they are the same thing. So if Jesus came to make dead people alive, to literally resurrect us, He came to bring us from a place where we thought we were unloved... to a place where we know we are loved. Because the truth of the matter is God loves you. He always has and He always will. We didn't need to change from "unloved" to "loved." There was never a time we were unloved. It may have felt like that, and we may have disqualified ourselves from experiencing that love because of mistakes we've made. But nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. The God who is love lives in us. And we live in Him. The key is knowing and believing that we are loved. LETTING God love us. Look, Adam was God's son. But Jesus is God's beloved Son. Not because God loved one and not the other, but because Jesus allowed Himself to BE LOVED. He accepted His heavenly Father's love instead of trying to earn it. One more memory verse to really set the foundation for this Rant series: "We know that we have passed from death to life, beacuse we love the brethen" (1 John 3:14). In death there is no love. Because, again, love IS life. And love is giving. Living your life by giving it away. By esteeming others higher than yourself. By laying your life down for your friends. A life of service is a life worth living, and a life well lived. If you want to do more than just struggle through each day, stuck in a rut (which we know is just a grave with the ends kicked out) then you must give what you've got. You must let the love that is inside you come out. Receive and release the love of God. With every breath you take and every move you make. Breathe it in and breathe it out. Fill yourself to overflowing with the love--the life--of God!

If you're afraid of God you'll run from Him instead of to Him. That's kind of my point for this Rant series. Look at Genesis 3:8, "And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden." After Adam and Eve ate of the tree of death (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) they thought they were going to get into trouble. They were afraid of the consequences of their actions. So they hid. They ran. They tried to avoid those consequences. And that was, to be blunt, the opposite of wisdom. That was making a bad situation worse. See, we think the way it works is, "I messed up, my Dad's gonna kill me." We think we're dealing with a distant, angry taskmaster of a God who is out to get us. Just waiting for us to mess up so He can really slam us. The truth is, "I messed up, I better call my Dad." People make mistakes. That's part and parcel to life. Nobody does it "right" all of the time. So we can run from our mistakes... or we can learn from them. We can keep digging and make things worse and worse... or we can make a U-turn. We can face up to what happened and try to make it right. And knowing God as He is--being reverent, which is what the word "fear" in Psalm 111:10 means--is what allows us to come boldly to the throne of grace in times of trouble and find the grace that we need. If you're afraid of getting in trouble for messing up... that's double trouble. Trouble on top of trouble. That's not what God wants for you. And if you read that story in Genesis, Adam and Eve had a problem because they were naked AND ASHAMED. God didn't have a problem with their nakedness, but they did. So God went ahead and fixed THEIR problem anyway. They tried to cover themselves with fig leaves, but God covered them with Lamb skin. With Himself. With the only thing that could truly cover them. And that doesn't mean sweeping their sin (unbelief) under the rug and covering it that way so that it's still there but nobody can see it. It means transforming them from sinner to saint. Taking away their sin (unbelief) by giving them something (someONE, Jesus, love) to believe in. A believer cannot sin. By defintion. If you believe, you can't unbelieve. But if you're afraid of God you won't listen to what He has to say, much less believe it. If you're afraid of God you'll do whatever you can do to avoid Him. You'll hide from His presence. And that's not wise. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." Or has said no TO God. That's the opposite of wisdom. That's foolish. Fearing Him--in a reverential way where we be still and know that He is God--is the beginning of wisdom. Coming TO Him instead of running FROM Him. Including God in everything we do--even if it doesn't turn out the way we want it to or the way we think it should. If you include God--love--from jump street, things will work out the way they're supposed to. Because love never fails. Again, it may not look like we think it should all the time, but it will be what it's supposed to be. It will be what GOD wants it to be. And He knows what it should be better than whatever we think it should be. He knows the end from the beginning. So in the beginning we should just put it in His hands and fear not!