"Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart" (Psalm 37:4). Seems pretty straightforward, right? If I delight myself in the Lord then He will give me what I want. Come on guys. That's the Old Covenant in a nutshell. "Do good and be rewarded." On this side of the cross we've moved out of good and evil (the tree of death) and into life (the Tree of Life). Also... it doesn't say IF or THEN. It says AND. That's key. Because delighting yourself in the Lord IS the desire of your heart! So when you do one you're actually doing both. You're not delighting yourself in Him in order to get anything. You're delighting yourself in Him because He has already given you the desire of you heart. And He did that when He gave you... Himself. We seem to have such a twisted view of things when it comes to "blessings." Generally speaking, we seem to think of blessings as stuff. And I'm not saying it can't involve stuff. But I once heard a preacher say, "YOU are the stuff that everybody wants." And the reason for that is... the "stuff" that everybody wants... the desire of the HEART... is love. That's what we all want. That's what our heart desires. And that's what God gave us. That's who God is. So, really, delighting in Him is not getting anything. Delighting in Him is experiencing and enjoying what we already have. Because make no mistake: God loves you. He always has and He always will. And because of the finished work of the cross--because He has given us His Holy Spirit--we are now equipped and empowered to receive and release His love. He's always loved us, we just didn't know it or believe it. And now that we DO know and believe the love of Christ... now we CAN delight ourselves in Him. Check it out: If you thought God didn't love you... would you really be able to delight yourself in Him? Even if you hoped that someday, if you delighted yourself enough, He would love you? I don't think so. Fake it 'til you make it does not work. In order to delight ourselves in Him we have to have something to be delighted about. That's my problem with the way a lot of the "church world" prays. It's like they're going to Daddy begging for a handout. As if it's not His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom. As if He hasn't already given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. As if He hasn't already blessed us with all spiritual blessings. He gave His life for us, and He gave His life to us. What else could we possibly need or want? Stuff? Well, He's got that covered too. In Matthew chapter 6 Jesus addresed our need for "stuff." And the conclusion He came to was, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). But again, not seeking in order to find something you do have. But seeking to explore and experience what you DO have. And besides, "stuff" isn't the desire of your heart. Love is. And when we delight in Him we experience and explore, receive and release, enjoy and share, the love of God. The love that IS God!

Going wth the flow is all about rest instead of works and labor. It is all about letting what's inside of you (the love of God... the love that IS God) flow out of you simply by believing that it's in there. Because here's a very important truth: What's in you comes out of you. What you believe is what you do. And that's important because if, for example, you believe that you're a sinner (even a sinner saved by grace)... then at the end of the day you're going to sin. Because that's who you believe you are. And no matter how hard you try to be someone else, at the end of the day you are who you are. Here's the good news: the cross took a sinner (all of mankind) and transformed him into a saint! You no longer have a sin nature, so at the end of the day that's NOT who you are. You have a new nature, because you're a new creation. And that new nature is the love nature. Your default setting is not to sin. Your default nature is to love. Because you ARE loved... and because you are LOVE. I said all that to say this: Love isn't about trying to be nice to someone. That's works and labor. And love--on this side of the cross--is NOT about the so-called "golden rule." Love is not, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Because that's actually a selfish mindset. "I want you to be nice to me, so I guess I'll force myself to be nice to you." Love is, "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). And we love Him BY loving each other. So our love for one another doesn't come from a hope that we will be loved back. We don't love in order to BE loved. We love because we ARE loved. We don't, "fake it until we make it." We, "go with the flow." There's a river of life that flows out of the throne. Out of the judgment seat that--through the cross--became a mercy seat. And that same river of life feeds the Tree of Life. We are branches of the Tree of Life and we bear (or carry) the fruit of the Spirit (which is love) to those that need it. And just for the record, "those that need it" is EVERYBODY. We are equipped and empowered to love EVERYBODY because we aren't doing it in order to get something from anybody. We are doing it because we are filled to overflowing with love. And when we believe on Jesus--when we believe that the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hands, and when we believe that we are that same beloved Son in whom He is well pleased--then the river that's flowing INTO us flows OUT of us. We don't have to do anything to produce this fruit, or earn this love and acceptance. All we have to do is jump in the river and let it carry us where it wants to go. Let the wind of the Holy Spirit blow us wherever He wants us to go. Stop trying to follow in Jesus' foot steps (which is impossible) and just let Him make His own foot steps with our feet. Stop trying to be somebody we're not and just begin to let Jesus be Himself in and through and as us. That's what rest is all about. It's not inactivity, it's Holy Spirit directed activity. It's love nature directed activity. And if your love nature is directing you... then you're going to love. If you KNOW and BELIEVE that you're loved... then that's not just what you do, but that's who you are!

I know I use this example all the time but I absolutely love it. Here's the picture: We are a garden inclosed. Everything we need is already inside of us. But, in a sense, it's trapped inside. Because we don't know what's in there. We don't know who we are so we constantly struggle to be somebody else. But then something miraculous happens. Look at Song of Solomon 4:16, "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices therof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits." It's not until the wind of the Holy Spirit blows that we begin to understand all the truth that we know. The Holy Spirit leads and guides us into all truth. He is the river of life that is flowing. And remember, the river is flowing no matter what. But when we jump in the river--with that proverbial leap of faith--then WE begin to flow. Then everything that's inside of us--the love of God... the love that IS God--flows out of us. Jesus said when we BELIEVE the river of life flows out of our belly. And how do we believe? Because the Holy Spirit testifies of Jesus! Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God! We BE transformed (into what we have already been transformed in) by the renewing of our mind. By hearing the truth and the truth setting (and making) us free! Here's the important part with all of it too: We don't make the wind blow. Jesus said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). We don't make the wind blow, we are blown by the wind. We are led by the Spirit. And, again, not in the sense that the Spirit tells us to do something and we have to do it or else. Being led by the Spirit means hearing and believing the Word. Those who are led of the Spirit are the sons (Son) of God. The Spirit doesn't lead us into behavior. It leads us into identity. And then our behavior FLOWS from our identity. What we do is directly linked to what we believe. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And I like that our verse in Song of Solomon ends with, "Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits." Because in the same way that we don't make the wind blow, we don't plant the fruit either. I preached a message years ago called, "Be the ground, not the farmer." And the point is this: Jesus did the work. We simply enjoy the fruit of His labor. Jesus planted the garden, the Holy Spirit blows in order to get the spices flowing. AND Jesus eats the fruit. Remember the Kingdom economy: God doesn't require anything that He doesn't provide. Jesus plants the fruit (love) and eats the fruit (love) even as we eat the fruit (love) and share the fruit (love). It's Him in us and us in Him and Him in the Father. It's a relationship. It's a love connection. It's a river that flows into us and out of us!

It's the economy of the Kingdom: The river of living water flows out of us, even as we flow in the river of life. We live Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life by letting Him live it in and through and as us. Look at Revelation 22:1-2, "And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves were for the healing of the nations." I love this passage because it speaks of the true paradise of God. Not the garden of Eden that had two trees--the Tree of Life AND the tree of death (the tree of knowledge of good and evil)--but only the tree of life. And the tree of life is fed by the river of life, in order to produce the fruit of the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is love. And there are twelve manner of fruit--twelve variations of love, if I can say it that way. Because love is the solution to every problem, but love can come in many forms. Love can be a hug. Or a shoulder to cry on. An ear to listen. A helping hand. Or, if I can quote Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no low." Here's what I'm saying though: joy is a type of love. Peace is a type of love. A tree can only produce one fruit, right? An apple tree can only produce apples. But there are lots of KINDS of apples. And then we look at the leaves of the tree. The leaves are for the healing of the nations. Leaves... which are connected to the branches. WE are the branches! We are the ones who can reach out with God's love--the love we have received though the Holy Spirit--and share what we have with those who are desperate for it. We partake of the fruit, and we share the fruit. We receive it and we release it. As it proceeds (or flows) out of the throne. Now the throne is interesting. I wrote a whole book about it (Six Steps to the Throne), but for our purposes today I want us to see that in the Old Covenant it was a judgment seat and now, because judgment was rendered at the cross, it is a mercy seat! LIFE flows from the throne. Because the life of God IS the judgment of God! Hebrews 9:27-28 tells us, "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation." See, death isn't the judgment of God. Death came first. It was appointed unto men ONCE to die, and Jesus kept that appointment. THEN came the judgment, which was God the Father raising Jesus the Son back to life. That's where OUR life comes from. His life in us. ANd that's why it's not a struggle, but a flow. Everything comes from the finished work. Loving one another comes from being loved by God. The river flows out of the throne. And it heals the nations as we reach out to each other!