This is what I hear, "God loves you just the way you are... BUT He loves you too much to leave you that way." Which, to me, are two mutually exclusive statements. Either He loves you just the way you are... OR He wants to change you. It can't be both. If He loved you just the way you are--ACCEPTED you just the way you are--then there would be no NEED to change you. And, guys, that's the case. We don't need to change. We need to know the change that took place. God absolutely loves you just the way you are. What He wants is for you to KNOW the way you REALLY are. Because that's what God sees. He sees the truth. He sees the inner man. The hidden man of the heart. And that's who you really are. This Rant series is going to look at what acceptance really is, but first I want to make sure we know that everything acceptance is applies to us. Because, "To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved" (Ephesians 1:6). We ARE accepted in the beloved. The beloved is Jesus. He is accepted, and we are in Him so we are accepted. Period. No ifs ands or buts about it. We don't NEED to be accepted. We ARE accepted. God loves us--and He always has and He always will--just the way you are. Acceptance is not about trying to change somebody. If you accept them then you don't need to change them. And this is good news because it's impossible to change somebody else. In fact, it's impossible to change yourself! You can't force change from the outside in. Change has to come from the inside out. And that's what happened on the cross. That's what happened when our hearts were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands. The flesh (of human effort, or TRYING to change) was cut away and what was already--always--there was revealed. That's why Paul said to BE transformed by the renewing of you mind. He didn't say GET transformed. We have already BEEN transformed. Now we simply need to BE what we already ARE. Seeing is believing. When you look into the mirror with an unveiled face--with the veil or the stone of the Law of Moses (religion) taken away--THEN you see the glory of the Lord. And when you see it you are changed into that same image from glory to glory. When you SEE it... you BE it. When you SEE that you ARE accepted... then you will stop TRYING to be accepted. You will stop trying to jump through religious hoops in order to become something you think you're not. You'll accept who you are. Accept who your heavenly Father says you are. Our verse in Ephesians tells us that the glory of His grace is where our acceptance is found. We look at ourselves, and each other, through the eyes of grace. We see what God sees and then we see that the "change" already took place. We see Jesus in ourselves and each other. That's where we're accepted. That's where we connect. Spirit to Spirit. Holy to holy. The Jesus (the love) in me to the Jesus (the love) in you. Because it's only by knowing and believing that we ARE accepted that we will ever be able to accept ourselves. And once we accept ourselves... once we accept that we are loved... then we can accept each other. Then we can LOVE each other. Not try to change each other. Not judge each other. Accept each other. Love each other. Accept as we are accepted. Love as we are loved!

What's the point? What's this life for? Why are we here and what are supposed to do since we are here? Well... it's pretty simple: Be loved and love each other. That's the point. That's why we were created. God IS love. So when God created the universe... love created the universe. And the only reason love does anything is so that it can manifest itself. Because love is an adjective. It's a action-word. Charity is love in action, and that's what Paul spent most of his time writing letters about. Charity. Doing things for others. Esteeming others higher than yourself. Not trying to get something, but realizing you already have it all, and sharing what you've got. I'm telling you... if you "win" the rat race, all that means is that you are the king rat. And that's not really a goal worth pursing. Better to rule and reign on this earth even as the King of kings rules and reigns in and through and as you. Better to experience the Kingdom of God--righteousness, peace, and joy found in the Holy Ghost--that you ARE than to try to get somewhere that you're not. I always go to this passage of Scripture, but its really one of my favorites, and it's really the point of all of this: "That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (Ephesians 3:16-19). This life is not about earning love. It's about exploring the love that was freely given to us. It's know about figuring things out. It's about letting God reveal Himself to us and in us and as us and through us. It's not about getting anything. It's about comprehending what we have. It's a life long journey into the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is the heart. GOD'S heart beating with love in our chests. That's what the Holy Spirit is all about--He leads and guides us into all truth. He strengthens us in the inner man. The true man. The New Man. The hidden man of the heart. See, when you're rooted and grounded in love--when you know what the point is--then you can build and grow from there. Then you can focus on the real... the deep... the height and length and depth and breadth of His love. And the best way to explore that love... is by using it. By loving others. That's HOW we love God. We love one another. That's how we know we've passed from death into life. We love one another. And that's the point. We ARE loved, so we CAN love. We ARE loved... so we are LOVE. Just like love isn't just what God does, it's who He is... in the same manner it's not just what WE do... it's who we ARE. It's our nature. Love is what it means to truly be human. To truly be alive. And that's what it's all about. That's why we were created. To be loved, and to love one another with that same love. Not just in word, but in deed. Not just an idea, but an action. We are God's love letter to the world. We are how God (love) expresses Himself in this dimension! We are loved, and we are love!

God's Word (Jesus, love) is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. In fact, He IS the path (or the Way). But here's where I find a lot of people are at: They want to know SPECIFICALLY what God has for them, or, "What does God want me to do?". And listen, I know that God has a specific purpose for everybody. He made you special. And He made you specially... you. But I can't tell you what your individual, specific purpose is. That's for you to find out. I've heard it said like this, "The two most important days of your life are when you are born... and when you find out why." And I agree. I've spent a lot of time "wandering around in the wilderness," my dad calls it. Trying to figure it all out. And I can tell you from experience that you can bang your head against the wall trying to figure it all out... but all you'll end up with is a headache. See, God doesn't want us to (or expect us to) figure it all out. He reveals Himself to us (and in us and through us and as us) and all He wants us to do is receive it and release it. Now let me hit my verse for today: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21). And let me tell you what the point is: Follow your heart. If love never fails--and believe you me, love never fails!--then following your heart will never lead you wrong. But you have to understand the nature of love (which is why I wrote a Rant series about that very thing a little while ago). Because if you think your treasure is something you don't have that you need to get... and if you think following your heart is the way to get that thing that you don't have... then you've missed the point. Love isn't about getting. It's about giving. It's about sharing what you've got. The greatest treasure in the world is the GIFT of God which is eternal life, which is knowing the Father in the context of your true identity as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. I'm telling you... we are already blessed with all Spiritual blessings and we have already been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. Jesus did it all so we could get it all. And now, on this side of the cross, we have it all because we have HIM! We have His Spirit--our love receptor--and we know and believe the love of Christ. So while I can't tell you your specific purpose, I can tell you all of mankind's purpose: To be loved by the Father and to love Him back by loving each other with that same love. That's why we're here. That's our EPIC (Eternal Purpose In Christ) destiny. That's the point. But specifically... again, follow your heart. Because really it's God's heart beating in your chest. Beating with love. And that thing you do that puts your heart at peace--for me it's writing, for you it might be teaching, or singing, or playing music, or computers, or sports, or whatever--that's your treasure. Your talent IS your treasure. Where your treasure, is where your heart is. That thing that makes you... you. That's the thing you need to be doing. That's the point of YOUR life. And when you do that thing, that's when you're the most alive. That's when you're most glorifying to God. That's when you're the most... you. And that's the point. Don't try to be someone else. Just be yourself!

The point of all of this--of existence--is to be loved and to love one another. It's that simple. And we KNOW that. The deep calls out to the deep and we KNOW that we are loved. But there's a big difference between knowing and understanding. Between knowing and believing. My pastor always says it's not the truth that sets you free... it's the truth you KNOW that sets you free. Now watch this: "The morning sun's a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed, The daybreaking sun an athlete racing to the tape. That's how God's Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset, Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith. The revelation of GOD is whole and pulls our lives together. The signposts of GOD are clear and point out the right road. The life-maps of GOD are right, showing the way to joy. The directions of GOD are plain and easy on the eyes" (Psalm 19:5-8 MSG). It's all about the sun because it's all about the SON. The light of the world is the life of men. God isn't trying to make this hard. He's not the God of confusion. I'm telling you, it's vast... but it's simple. Love. Period. That's the Word of God. That's who Jesus was (and is in us). He's the Word made flesh. God in the flesh. Love in a body. And becuse of that light of revelation--because God has chosen to reveal Himself to us and in us and through us and as us--we can focus on what's really important. We can, as Hebrews 12:1 says, "...lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easly beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us." We can lay aside unbelief, because now we have something (love), someONE (Jesus), to believe in! And we can run the race because the signposts are clear and the right road, or Way--the Highway of Holiness that IS Jesus--has been revealed to us. Now check this out: The best part of this race... we've already in a sense completed it! We're already at the finish line. The work is finished. We don't run in order to get a prize. We run because we HAVE the prize. We ARE the prize! And that's the point. It's not about earning something from an angry taskmaster through our human effort. It's about receiving the gift of a heavenly Father who would rather die than be without us. You can't earn Daddy's love. And you don't have to. He always has and always will love you. And because of that great love He died so you could die and then rose again so you can live! He gave you His Spirit--which leads and guides us into all truth... the truth that we KNOW, but don't yet fully UNDERSTAND--so that we could receive His love. So that by receiving it we could release it. Or by releasing it, truly receive it. So that we could know and believe the love of Christ. So that we could lay aside all this other stuff and get to the point. God loves me and I love Him back by loving you. I love you because I am so full of His love that it just comes out naturally like a river of living water flowing out of my heart! We get stuck on a lot of things, but God (who IS love) is stuck on us!

The point of this life--certainly the point of this abundant life--is to be loved and to love. That's it. That's our EPIC (Eternal Purpose In Christ) destiny. That's why we're here. That's why we were created. And the thing of it is, while it may be simple... it's eternally vast. See, this life isn't about GETTING love. It's about the life-long journey of understanding what it means that we ARE loved. It's not about GETTING to the Kingdom. It's about understanding that we are already IN the Kingdom (we already ARE the Kingdom) and EXPLORING the Kingdom. It's about receiving--because it's one thing to be given a gift but it's something else entirely to receive the gift we've been given--and releasing. And I'm convinced that the best way, the most real way, that we can receive God's love to us is BY releasing it. Because you can't give what you don't have. So if you "step out in faith" and start loving people, that means that on some level (with THE measure of faith) you believe that you are loved. And then it's like the man who needed healing for his son, "The father instandly cried out, "I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!"" (Mark 9:24 NLT). It's not about having it all figured out. That's not the point. It's about believing. And seeing is believing. Jesus showed us the Father so that we might believe in the Father. He showed us the greatest expression of love--giving your life for your friends--so that we might believe in that type of sacrificial love. Faith isn't about believing until something happens. Faith is about believing what already happened 2,000 years ago on the cross! And that's the point; It's not what WE do. It's what HE did. And what HE continues to do in and through and as us. It's not about me figuring it all out. It's about HIM revealing Himself to me and in me and as me and through me. It's all about Him. He is the point. It's all about love. Love is the point. But we make it about anything and everything else. The Apostle Paul put it like this, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:3). There's simplicity in Christ. The Gospel--the Good News--is simple. Daddy loves you. Period. And there's nothing you can do about it. No religious jumping jacks or hoops can make Him love you more. And no missteps or mistakes can make Him love you less. Guys, love isn't just what God does. Love is who God is. Simple. But, again, it's so vast. HE is so vast. We can--and should--spend our entire eternal lives dwelling in His love. Exploring it. Enjoying it. Sharing it. Not using it to put up walls--"I'm right and you're wrong"--but using it to break down walls. To connect with each other on that real level of Spirit to Spirit, holy to holy. Because that's the point. We are loved, and because we are loved we can love each other. Because we are loved... we are LOVE! 

Sometimes I get a little bit dejected when I see what people are talking about. Especially regarding "religion," or God. I don't want to mention any names, or heap any condemnation on anybody, but when I see people who are getting excited by the idea of God, "really sticking it to those who won't confess His name," I have to shake my head. It's bewildering to me that we would actually get pumped up about people being punished. And I'm not saying that God doesn't chasten and correct the Son that He loves. There's absolutely that aspect of Fatherhood. But I don't think God is in the punishment business. I don't think God is mad at us. So, when I read things like that my thought is, "Wow. Talk about missing the point." And then on the other side of the coin I see things about how you need to act. What you need to do in order to "sanctify yourself" and "be holy." And I think, "Wow. Talk about missing the point." Jesus said it like this, "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment--the absolute basics!--you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkepping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?" (Matthew 23:23-24 MSG). We seem to focus on all the wrong things. What people do and not who people are. I'm absolutely convinced that if we stopped telling people what to do, and started telling people who they are, then they would begin to DO the things they do OUT of who they are! You can't fix behavior unless you fix identity. What you do flows from what you believe--from WHO you believe that you are. And that's the point. It's not about religion. It's not about jumping through hoops in order to be accepted. It's about relationship. It's about knowing and believing that you ARE accepted in the beloved. All of these different ideas about God. All of these different gods out there... and yes, I know there are a bunch of them. But there's only one true and living God. And His name is Jesus. His name is love. That's the point. That's what's important. That's our building block. That's where everything else comes from. Is it good to "be holy"? Of course it is. But holiness is not something you DO, it's something you ARE, because of the Holy Spirit that lives in you. As long as we are focued on external things--tithing, behavior, circumstances, what have you--then we are missing the point. It's what's inside that matters. The hidden man of the heart. What's in the heart. As you think in your heart, so are you. And when you understand that it's God's heart beating (with love) in your chest... when the circumcision made without hands gets the flesh of external human effort out of the way... then you can stop focusing on all that other junk and you can get to the point. Guys... It's all about love. That's the point. And everything else is just details. We need to get back to basics, and it doesn't get any more basic than this: God loves you. And because He loves you, you can love Him back by loving other people!

There is no part of an abundant life that would expect you to settle for less than God's best for you. And make no mistake: God wants the best for you. That's why He gave the best TO you in the person--in the name, nature, character, Spirit--of Jesus. It's vitally important to understand that on the cross Jesus didn't just give His life FOR you, He gave His life TO you. The Apostle Paul put it like this, "My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20 NLT). We don't try to live Jesus' life. Nobody can live Jesus' life except Jesus. What we do is we present our bodies as a living sacrifice and let Him live His own life in us. Through us. As us. We don't fall in love. We rise to love. We don't try to arise so that the glory of the Lord might rise upon us. We arise and shine BECAUSE the glory of the Lord HAS risen upon us. We don't love in order to be loved. We love because we ARE loved. And that, friends, is literally the difference between life and death. To live is to love and to love is to live. If you know (and believe) that you are loved... you can partake of the divine nature and experience (and enjoy) the gift of God which is eternal life. You won't rob yourself of what you've been freely given because you won't try to earn it by the sweat of your brow. Instead you'll simply receive it and release it. You'll stop trying and start resting. But true rest is something we learn how to do as we spend time with the One who finished the work. As He shows us how He finished it, and what it means that it is finished. See, it's not even really so much about rising, as it is about realizing that we already rose! We are crucified with Christ. When He died, we died. And in the same manner, when He rose... we rose. It's not something that needs to happen. It's something that already happened. And every time we stumble on this journey, we have the assurance that Jesus is the One who keeps us from falling! It's interesting to me that we use the term, "falling from grace" to describe "doing something bad." When really the Bible tells us that the only way to fall from grace is put ourselves back up under the Law of Moses that Jesus brought us out of! The only way to fall from grace is to forsake the love relationship between our heavenly Father and our true identity as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased... and to embrace the performance based, man-centered, culture conscious religion. We fall when we try. When we try to get love (as if it's something we don't have). When we try to jump through religious hoops. When we try to do in order to be. We rise when we understand that He is risen... in us! When we stop trying to be someone else and just be who we are. When we stop looking for love in all the wrong places, and go straight to the source. Boldly to the throne of grace. Finding love in the God who is love. Finding ourselves in Jesus--God in the flesh, love in a body. We don't have to settle for what the world throws at us. Because we may be in the world, but we are not of the world. We are IN the Kingdom, and we ARE the Kingdom. The King of kings rules and reigns in and through us! And it's His love that has raised us up, and His love that keeps us from falling. It's His love!

We don't have to "fall" in love. Jesus keeps us from falling. We don't have to look for love in all the wrong places. We can go straight to the source. And when we know that we are loved... when we know that the glory of God HAS risen upon us... that's when WE arise and shine! See, it's not about "getting" the light. It's about letting the light that we already have shine! And listen, you don't let the light shine by trying to force it to shine. You LET it shine... by knowing and believing that it is ALREADY shining within you. Because what's in you comes out of you naturally. Or rather, what you believe is in you comes out of you naturally. That's why it's so important to understand your true identity--Jesus, God in the flesh, love in a body... God in YOUR flesh, love in YOUR body. That's who we really are. Not a selfish, soulish, beast nature, but a love nature. And, one more time, the love nature is not about GETTING. It's about GIVING. For God so loved the world He GAVE His only begotten Son. The love nature is about understanding that we already have everything we need--we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings, and we have been given all things that pertain to life and godliness. Jesus did it all so we could get it all. The "all" that He did was the cross. And the "all" that we got was His Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our love receptor. He is what equips and empowers us to love by leading and guiding us into the truth that we ARE loved! And because we ARE loved we don't need to GET love. We don't need to settle for whatever the best is that we think we can get for ourselves. We don't need to "fall" in love. We can rise in love. And when we rise in love we bring those around us up with us. When we shine--by believing that Jesus is shining in us and through us and as us--we don't just light up OUR lives, we light up everything and everybody around us. I preached a message a couple of years ago called, "Contagious." And the point was that we think God is, like, allergic to sin or something. That sin makes Him run and hide. When really the opposite is true. Sin is what brought God down to us. Sin is what Jesus came to save us from. Jesus healed the sick. He touched people. He touched LEPERS. He wasn't afraid of catching what they had. Because He knew the fire in Him--and remember, fire burns UP not down--was hotter than the fire He was in. So what I said in that sermon was, "It's not sin that's contagious. It's love!" It's the deal behind, "Pay it Forward." Or, in a sense, what the Beatles were saying when they said, "The love you take is equal to the love you make." What you believe defines your reality. If you receive love (from the Father) and release it (to those around you), then you have a life that's full of love. And that's what REAL life--abundant, eternal, everlasting, Resurrection Life--is all about. To live is to love and to love is to live. A life without love is no life at all. So don't fall for the lie that you have to do in order to be. That you have to earn what is freely given. Arise, shine, for your light IS come. The glory of the Lord HAS risen upon you. Daddy loves you and because of that you can love Him by loving people!

"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, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen" (Jude 1:24-25). I never hear this concept preached EVER. God can KEEP us from falling? What? All I ever hear about is how we are doomed to fall--because it's our "human nature"--and then grace can sweep our mistakes under the rug and keep an otherwise angry God off our backs. That's not the Gospel (good news) though. That's not the face of the Father that Jesus showed us. Jesus showed us that it is absolutely possible for a "human being" to resist temptation. And then James told us HOW to resist. "Submit yourselves therfore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). We resist by submitting. He keeps us from falling by teaching us how to rise! The biggest struggle you will ever have in your life is trying to be somebody you're not. Because it's impossible. You were made to be who you are. The trick is finding out who you REALLY are. Because there's only one place--one WAY--that you can find out who you really are. You are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. So if you want to find your life you have to find it... in Him. It's that true identity, that inner man, that hidden man of the heart, that is deep down inside you. And you have to get past all of the surface stuff to find it. You have to look in the mirror with an UNVEILED face--with the demands and condemnation and stone of the Law of Moses rolled away--in order to SEE the glory and BE the glory. Remember yesterday we saw that you don't rise to GET the glory. You rise because the glory HAS risen upon you. It's not about changing. It's about seeing the change that took place on the cross. We were MADE in God's image, but it wasn't until Jesus finished the work that we were CONFORMED to His image. It wasn't until He showed us who HE really is--and by implication who WE really are--that we could begin to BE who we really are. It wasn't until Jesus broke the yoke of slavery--sin and death--that we could take HIS yoke upon us. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We couldn't do anything BUT fall. Then the cross happened. And we were brought out of death and into life. The love that God always had for us was suddenly accessible TO us. We didn't have to strive for it anymore--and stumble and fall in the attempt. We could begin to rest in the loving arms of our heavenly Father. We could stop trying to earn a gift--if you have to earn it it's wages, and the wages of sin is death--and could begin to simply receive it and release it. Let me say it like this: Grace means I can do whatever I want... but I no longer want to do all that stuff that I thought I wanted to do when I was looking for love in all the wrong places! Grace doesn't cover sin. Grace annhiliated sin! Grace is what empowers us. It doesn't just fix things when we fall. It keeps us from falling!

"Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee" (Isaiah 60:1). This is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. In a sense, I think it really describes the finished work of the cross and what we are capable BECAUSE of that finished work. Arise, shine; for thy light IS come. The light came first. That's so important. We love because the God who IS love first loved us. We don't rise in order to shine. We don't do in order to be. We rise because HE shines in and through and as us! We do BECAUSE we be. Yesterday I was focusing on the difference between "falling in love"--lowering ourselves, or settling--rather than rising in love and pulling others up with us. Today I want to focus on the truth that we really don't have to "rise" at all. All we have to do is understand that we have already rose when Jesus rose from that dead (both for us and as us)! That's when the great shift took place. That's when we passed from death to life. That's when we were filled with the Holy Spirit and were equipped and empowered to receive the love that God always had for us. A whole new dimension of living was opened up to us. Abundant living. Everlasting living. Eternal living. Resurrection living. A life filled with love as we receive it and release it. See, we think we need to arise and shine so that the glory of the Lord will fall on us. But that's not what our verse in Isaiah says. It says our light HAS come and the glory of the Lord IS risen upon us. Everything that needed to happen... happened at the cross. Now we can begin to enjoy the fruit of Jesus' labor--a labor of love that produced the fruit of the Spirit which IS love. And notice that the glory DIDN'T fall on us. It rose upon us. Our God is a consuming fire, right? Well fire doesn't burn things down. Fire burns things UP! It doesn't condemn, it affirms. It burns things up and it BUILDS us up by consuming everything that doesn't belong and leaving only the purified gold--and again, even though it feels like this is what's happening right now... it feels like God is processing us... this is actually what happened 2,000 years ago. We ARE complete in Him. The journey isn't us being conformed to His image. He already comformed us. The journey is finding out what that image IS as He reveals Himself to us and in us and through us and as us. It's looking in the mirror with an unveiled face and seeing the glory of the Lord... and being changed into that same image from GLORY to GLORY. The glory is already upon us. Already IN us. And as we let the Holy Spirit lead and guide us into all truth--the truth that God is our heavenly Father and we are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased--that's when what is IN us starts to overflow naturally OUT of us! That's when we stop TRYING to rise and realize that we are already seated at the right hand of the Father. We stop TRYING to get love when we understand that we ARE loved. And when we understand that we are LOVED that's when we understand that we are LOVE and that's when we truly begin TO LOVE one another! We don't settle for anything. We lay hold of the gift of God and we share that gift with everybody we come into contact with!