I like to talk about how when we look in the mirror with an open face we are changed into the image we see--which is our true identity, Jesus, God in the flesh, love in a body... God in OUR flesh, love in OUR body--from glory to glory. Not becomeing something we're not, but simply BEING what we already are. Understanding WHO we already are. Embracing our true self instead of trying to be someone we're not. So when we're talking about the trees of righteousness that we are, let's apply a very similar idea, "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17). We are changed from glory to glory. God's righeousness--OUR righteousness--is revealed from faith to faith. Let me say it like this: Jesus is the Alpha and Omega. The first and the last. The beginning and the end. It starts with Jesus and ends with Jesus. Always. In the beginning... God. At the end (supposing there IS an end when you're talking about everlasting life)... God. When Jesus died on the cross and rose again three days later, He changed everything. Got rid of everything that wasn't... Him. I believe it is the Amplified version of the Bible that refers to this as the Messianic rebirth of the world. He took away the sin (unbelief) of the world. Cursed the fig tree (the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of death) so that it would wither and die because it couldn't produce fruit. See, in the garden of Eden there were two trees, but in the Kingdom of God, in the book of Revelation (which I believe is simply an indepth look at the cross) there is only one tree. The Tree of Life. The Tree of Righteousness. And that, friends, is what we are. Because that is what He is. And as He is, so are we in this world. He is the vine. We are the branches. He has cast every tree that didn't bear fruit into the fire. But maybe not to burn it or destroy it. Maybe to purify it. Right? That's what the fire does. It gets rid of all of the imperfections. Jesus washed us with the Word (which is love) so that He could present us to Himself as a bride without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. And all we have to do--ALL we have to do--is believe it. Receive it and release it. Breathe it in and breathe it out. The just will live by faith. From faith to faith. Our faith connects us to Jesus, and His faith makes everything happen. Look at Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." We died, but we live. Because we live in Him. Because He lives in us. And look at what the text says, "I live by the faith OF the Son of God." Not faith IN the Son of God. We live by HIS faith. And His faith is what matters. His faith is what gets things done. When Jesus prayed, His Father listened and answered. When Jesus said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," I believe God did so. He doesn't withhold things from us. Why would He? We are in rightstanding with Him. Not because of anything WE did or didn't do, but because of everything JESUS did. Abram believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness. We live by faith as Jesus reveals His (OUR) righteousness from faith to faith. Faith like a mustard seed growing in strength and power as God proves Himself to us over and over again. Faith is like a muscle: it grows when you use it. When you exercise it. When you walk by faith and not by sight. When you LIVE by faith!

Law of first mention. God is talking to Abram and then this happened. "And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). Our right standng with God comes from our faith in God. Believing Him. Believing IN Him. Jesus said it in Mark 11:22, "...Have faith in God." Which, of course, means have faith in love. Because God is love. When you're in right standing with God, that means you know and believe that you are loved by God. That's what it means to have faith--it means you believe the truth. The ultimate truth of the universe is, "God is love and He loves you." That is the good ground that we are planted on. That is how we grow from the incorruptible seed to the tree of righteousness. And when we receive that truth... we can release that truth. When we know and believe we are loved, we can love. That's when, and how, and why, the tree that we are bears fruit. The fruit of the Spirit. Which is love. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. We are connected to Him because He has planted Himself in us. And we simply bear the fruit that He produces. We simply release what we have received. We release it BY receiving it. We receive it by releasing it. And it's all for God's glory. When you love someone, you are showing them God. Again, because God is love. They may not know it, and they may not understand it the same way you do, but when they receive your love they are receiving God. Some of the best conversations I've ever had about Jesus didn't mention His name one time. Because they were conversations about life and love. Living and loving. That's what we were created to do. And those two things are not just connected, they are the same thing. To live is to love and to love is to live. And all we have to do is believe. Jesus made the Way of Grace. And we respond with the Walk of Faith. Walking by faith and not by sight. The just will live by faith. Righteousness is prosperous and just, right? And when you believe, it is counted to you as righteousness. All you have to do is know and believe. And I put it in that order because I believe that is the Divine Order of things. You can't believe what you don't know. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) of God. Just like you can't give what you don't have. You have to know that God loves you before you can believe it. Faith isn't hoping that something will happen, or hoping that something is true. Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things hoped for. The EVIDENCE of things not seen. God proves His love to us, and then we believe it. He gives us what we need. When people in the Bible asked God for signs, He never had a problem giving them. He's not afraid to show us who He is. He's not afraid to prove Himself. Let God by true and every man a liar. He planted us, and He wants us to grow. That's why He takes care of us. He waters us. Prunes us. And the better we look, the better He looks. As He is, so are we in this world. We are the Son(s) of God, but we don't know what that looks like all the time. But when we appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is. When we are like Him, others will see Him as He is. In us. We are the spout where the glory comes out. When God looks at you He sees Jesus, and when He looks at Jesus He sees you. When people look at you they can (and will, and should) see Jesus too. What you believe is inside will come out. When you believe that you are the righteousness of God in Christ, Christ in you the hope of glory will come out!

I like the image of the tree. I think it's pretty good. Pretty profound. He is the vine, we are the branches. He is the Gardener, we are the garden. So good. But today I really just want to focus on what kind of tree we are. The tree OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. And just so we're clear on what we're talking about, "righteousness" in Isaiah 61:3 is number 6664 in Strong's Hebrew Concordance and it means, "the right (natural, moral, or legal); also equity or prosperity: even that which is altogether just, right." Prosperity. A tree that bear fruit. The Tree of Life that bears the fruit of the Spirit. Which, we know, is love. That is what we are here to do. Not produce fruit, but simply bear it. Jesus does the planting. He does the producing. It's all Him. He simply chooses to do it in us, and through us, and as us. He gives us the ball and we run with it. We are the spout where His glory comes out. People will know we are His disciple when they see the love that we have for each other. Trees are known by the fruit they bear. An apple tree is only an apple tree because of the apples. We are trees of righteousness because of, well, the righteousness of God. Look at Philippians 1:11, "Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God." And I like how every time we talk about what we do, or what we are capable of, it always ends with WHY we do it. What's my motivation? The glory of God. Glorifying my Father. Making Him proud. And, listen, God always loves us. Always has, always will. He IS love. What else could He do? But think about this: I love my son. Always. And yet there are things he does and times in my life when I'm really proud of him. Sometimes he'll do something that will just fire me up. Fill up my pride meter. And when someone compliments my kid... I take that personally. Because I put a lot of time and effort into raising him. Into training him up the way he should go. I'm not trying to pat my own back, but simply illustrate how our heavenly Father feels about us. You can love someone and be disappointed in them. And you can love someone and be proud of them. Those are separate things. When we bring glory to God... I believe He is proud of us. Well done, my good and faithful servant. So this idea of righteousness, right standing with God, prosperity and that which is altogether just, it is what puts a smile on Father God's face. When we receive AND release the gift He has given us. That's who we experience that gift, by the way. Breathing it in and breathing it out. Focusing on love with every breath we take and every move we make. Making the fruit that God has produced in us available to those that we come into contact with. Prospering ourselves by prospering others. Living out of our abundance by giving away what we've got. Gladly spending all that we have and all that we are. Laying our very lives down for our friends. Esteeming others higher than ourselves. Putting others first. All of these things... are love. All of these things... are what Jesus has done for us. He planted us when He planted Himself IN us. That incorruptible seed that bears much fruit. And it's GOD that gets the harvest. We don't have to make anything happen. We simply have to know and believe that something already happened. The cross happened. The Finished Work happened. And it... is... finished. Our tree doesn't NEED fruit. Our tree has fruit. The fruit of mercy. The fruit of grace. The fruit of forgiveness. The fruit of righteousness. The fruit... of love!

I want to pick up on our memory verse from yesterday. "To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified" (Isaiah 61:3). To me this is such good news. The essence of the Gospel (which means good news). What God has done... and what it means for us. HE gave us beauty for our ashes. HE turned our mourning into dancing. HE did all of the heavy lifting. So that WE could enjoy the fruit of HIS labor. The planting of the Lord. When Jesus was lifted up from the earth He drew all men into Himself. And planted Himself in all men. That was the planting. He planted His incorruptible seed in us. And when that seed grows... it grows into the tree of righetousness. The Tree of Life. The tree that bears the fruit of the Spirit (which is love). And, to be clear, Jesus is the vine. We are the branches that the fruit hangs on. We are the vessels that make the fruit (of the Spirit, which is love) availabe to those around us. We are the spout where the glory comes out, if I can say it that way. God has filled us up with Himself... and what's inside is what comes out! And here's the best part--we don't have to force it out. It comes out naturally. Whatever you believe is inside WILL come out. It has to. It's too big not to. So that puts the emphasis on God to give us the best things going. When Jesus gave the New Commandment (for the New Man) He told us to love one another AS HE LOVES US. The emphasis is on HIS love for us. If He wants us to love big big... he must first love us big big. Whatever we receive from Him is what we can relesae into the world. That's how trees work--whatever the farmer (or Gardener) plants is what will grow. Jesus is the Gardener. The sower of the seed. Once again, that incorruptible seed. The seed that remains. The seed that brings forth good fruit. We don't have to produce it, because HE is producing it in us. All we have to do is rest. Receive it and release it. Let God love us, so we know what it means to love Him back by loving each other. All we have to do is understand that He has already filled us with His love. When we understand that, we can fill ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. We can let what's inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. And now, before I run out of room and time, I want to talk about righteousness. Righteousness, in a nutshell, is right standing with God. It is what the Father proclaimed over the Son when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan. Luke 3:21-22, "Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opeend, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." That affirmation from Father to Son is what equips and empowers us to go forth and do all of the things we were created to do. To bear that fruit in the way that only we can bear it. For me, it's mostly in my writing. That's a big part of who I am. For you, it may be singing. Or dancing. Teaching. Whatever it is that when you do it you feel like... you. And I'm telling you, when you find that thing... do it! Do it as hard as you can as much as you can. Because that's your innermost being. That's the true you. That's what you were created to do and that's who you were created to be. You are a tree of righteousness, planted to bring glory to your Father. The trick, the secret of life, is finding out what that means for you!

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and it is), then it's vitally important that we not only behold the right thing... but understand what it is that we are beholding. Look at John 1:14, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." One of the main reasons God poured Himself into sinful flesh was so that we could see Him in a way that we understood. He became like us so that we could see that we are, in fact and in truth, like Him.  "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). We know who we are. We are the Son(s) of God. Right now. Always have been, always will be. That will never change because that can never change. The problem is that we don't always see clearly. In the beginning the world was dark and void and without form. We couldn't see until the light of the world began to shine. We couldn't see until Jesus appeared. He is the light of the world. And when He began to shine--when He entered our world--we began to shine. Because the same light that He is... we are! It's all one light. The light of life. The light of love. So we don't have to stumble around in the dark anymore, looking for love in all the wrong places. We can stand firm on the Rock knowing we are connected to the source of love. Knowing that we live in the very God who IS love, because He lives in us. That's the best place to be. That's beautiful. And, because what you do flows from what you believe, when you believe right... you will do right. When you know that you are beautiful--on the inside, because of the love that God has filled you with--you will BE beautiful, and you will DO beautiful. When He appears (to you, and in you, and through you, and as you), you will see Him as He is. And you will BE Him as He is. By letting Him be Himself. By resting. By submitting your body to Him as a living sacrifice. Jesus died (so that we could die) and now He lives (in us, so that we can live). Isaiah 61:3 tells us that God is, "To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified." I really like that part about being a tree of righteousness and giving glory to the Gardener. Good stuff. But to end this Rant series I want to hit the ashes for beauty trade. We've been through some stuff. All of us have. Nobody hits harder than life. The hardest part of life is just living. And, really, it's impossible to do with God. Without love. Because He's there for us when we stumble. When we fall. When we mourn. And He can redeem all of that time that the locusts steal. He can bring us out stronger on the other side. Scars don't make you ugly. They just prove that you've been through something. That you've lived. So don't worry about all that. Don't mourn for what you've lost, rejoice that you had it at all. And, listen, you CAN mourn. I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying don't get stuck there. Jesus wept when Lazarus died, even though He was fixing to go raise the man from the dead. I'm simply saying we can learn and grow from the things we go through instead of letting those things wreck us permanently. We can still be beautiful no matter what. We can still love no matter what. Because God takes everything that isn't love and trades it for love. That's what He wants us to have, so that's what He has given us!

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Which means... when we look at ourselves (and each other)... we can (and ought to, and need to) see the beauty inside. Look at 1 Peter 3:3-4, "Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." Basically--it's not out beauty that matters, it's inner beauty. Basically, letting the hidden man of the heart be no longer hidden. Letting what's inside come out. When you know and believe that the love of God dwells in you (which, by the way, is how you dwell in God's love for you), that love inside WILL come out. Whatever you believe is inside will come out. That's how faith works. Knowing and believing. Receiving and releasing. Letting God fill us up with His love (He already did that--He always has and always will love us) and then filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. Not worrying about the outside, but focusing on the inside. That which is not corruptible. A meek and quiet spirit. And remember, meekness doesn't mean weakness. Meekness is strength under control. Knowing who you are and what you're about without being loud about it. Not letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing, if I can say it that way. Just quietly going about your business and not worrying about making sure people know. Listen: People are watching. Especially when they know you're a disciple of Jesus. Because--I believe there's one of two reasons. 1. They want to see you slip up so they can say, "Ha! You're not anything special, you're just like me!" Or 2. They want to see if what you have is really anything at all. Which is why it is so important that we let what's inside come out. Jesus said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). That's it. That's where the rubber meets the road. That's how people will know what you're about. Either you love people... or you don't. And, listen, I know you can't give what you don't have. How could you? I know that hurting people hurt people. Because you can only give what you DO have. But here's the thing: Loved people love people. When you know better, you can do better. When you understand how beautiful you are (and how beautiful your neighbor is) because you can see how beautiful JESUS is--when you look in the mirror, and when you look at the people you come into contact with--that's when you can BE who you really are. No matter what. You can let other people be who they believe they are, and you can love them no matter what. Now, that doesn't mean you let people walk all over you. Turn the other cheek. Yes. Don't retalitate. Ok. But you don't have to stand there and get abused either. No father (including our heavenly Father) wants his child to be in a bad situation. Being humble, and meek, and quiet, doesn't mean being a doormat. You don't have to accept abuse. Ever. And you shouldn't. If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. If you're standing on the rock, you will not--cannot--be shaken. When you know how beautiful you are on the inside... that beauty will come out. Naturally. With every breath you take and every move you make. And that is beautiful. Loving people is beautiful. What you do--from the inside--not what you look like--on the outside--is beautiful. The inner man. The hidden man of the heart. The love inside coming out!

Hearing the Word of God (that is Jesus, that is love) and then not doing anything about it means one thing: You don't believe the Word that you've heard. And that's important because what you do matters. What you do flows from what you believe. Doing things from a posture of rest. Knowing that rest is not inactivity, but Holy Spirit directed activity. Knowing that it is what you do that makes you beautiful, not what you look like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You are beautiful because your heavenly Father says you are. You are beautiful to Him, and that is what matters. The key to this abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love is simply receiving and releasing that truth. The ultimate truth of the universe is "God is love and He loves you." So when you heart that Word, "I love you. You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," and then you DO something with that Word you've heard... that's when you truly experience the gift of life that you've been given. That's when you understand what this life is all about and what this life is for. Receiving... and releasing. Sharing what you've got. Giving it away. Hearing the Word and then acting on it. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. So you have to know what you have before you can do anything with it, but then you have to, you know, do something with it. God has made the Way of Grace. We respond with the Walk of Faith. If you don't do anything with what you believe... do you really believe it at all? True faith is an activator. The substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. Putting your money where your mouth is, if I can say it that way. Because it's easy to say you believe something... when it doesn't really matter. When it doesn't really affect you. But when you're really put to the test and have to do something... it's like that old saying, "Christians are like teabags, you don't really know what's inside until you put them in hot water." How we act when the chips are down defines who we really are. Do we continue to stand on the Rock that will not be shaken? Or do we run around like chickens with their heads cut off? Do we look for love in all the wrong places? Or do we simply go to the source. The God who is love. The God who lives in us. Beauty comes from within. Because love comes from within. And there is nothing more beautiful, or holy, or important, that you can do than loving people. God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. That's what this life is. Life is about those connections and relationships that you build in your life. It is about giving what you've got to those that you come into contact with. Which, by the way, is HOW you build those relationships and connections. It's not about what you can get. Love is never about getting, because love IS giving. It's about knowing what you've got so you can experience what you've got by giving it away. By sharing it. By inviting people to partake. By seeing a need and meeting it. At the end of the day, physical looks fade. Father time is undefeated. But you can be beautiful no matter what. Because you can love no matter what. Your heavenly Father loves you. Period. Full stop. He has filled you up with the love that you need. And now you can experience that life of love by giving that love away. By letting Jesus live His own abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life in you, and through you, and as you. You can let the beauty inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. You can BE beautiful instead of just trying to look beautiful.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And when we are beheld by someone who loves us... that's what MAKES us beautiful. I keep coming back to the idea of Jesus washing us with the Word (which is love) and presenting us to Himself as a bride without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. And the thing that I keep thinking about is that He didn't wash us so that HE could see us that way... He washed us so that WE could see us that way. When you look in the mirror with an open face and see Jesus looking back at you, that's when you see things clearly. That's when you start looking INTO the mirror instead of just AT the mirror. Seeing what's inside. Look at James 1:22-25, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." Being a doer of the word (which, again, is love... Jesus) means walking by faith and not by sight. Acting like the beautiful creatures we are even when we don't feel like it. Holding our heads high even when things try to drag us down. Letting JESUS hold us up when things try to drag us down. Standing on the Rock of His love and knowing that we cannot be shaken. I think one of the biggest problems people have is that they simply believe what the world tells them instead of listening to that still, small voice deep inside our hearts that tells us the ultimate truth of the universe. You know, that God is love and He loves you. That you are His favorite (and so am I). That you are the apple of His eye. That He would literally die rather than live without you. That He DID die so that He could live with you. He died so we could die, and rose again back to life so that we could live. So that we could experience His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love as He lives it in us, and through us, and as us. God doesn't want us to forget who we are. He doesn't want us to forget what we've heard from Him. He wants that truth--THE truth--to be the central theme of our life. The guiding light. He wants that truth--one more time, that He is love and He loves you--to inform every aspect of our life. Love is the center, and everything flows from there. Your beauty--let me say it like this: Your beauty is the light inside you shining out through you. Period. It's not what you look like. It's who you are. What you do. Because what you do matters. Being a doer of the work is how we are blessed in this life. And I'm not saying doing the work earns you blessings. I'm saying we are blessed... so that we can do the work. I'm saying the blessing is in doing the work. It's not the destination, it's the journey. Think about it: It's a never-ending life. There IS no destination. Except, I guess, heaven. But we're already there, right? Heaven isn't just where you go when you die, it's where you went when Jesus died. When you died in Him. The days of heaven on earth. Heaven is a mindset. A reality. It's where we are now and where we operate from. The Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom of love! When you are loved, you are beautiful. Because love shines the light on you. So that you (and everybody else) can see you as you truly are. Beauty isn't something you can produce yourself. It is something God has produced in you. By filling you with Himself. His Spirit. His love!

I want to stay in Song of Solomon for a while. "Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!" (Song of Solomon 4:1). This is important to me. Because the way we see ourselves is so often very different than the way other people see us. And certainly different than the way God sees us. Now let's be clear: The one that matters is the way God sees us. Let God be true and every man a liar, right? It doesn't matter how other people see us. Lions are not concerned with the opinions of sheep. When you know the truth you can ignore the lie. If God calls you beautiful... you're beautiful. And, yes, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder. I'm not for everybody. I know that. I've accepted it. So I get in where I fit in. I try to be all things for all people. Love everybody. Go along to get along. All of that good stuff. Good, proper, stuff. At the same time, I really try to maximize my time with MY people. With the people that I share that bond with. Not just the bond of love--that's where it starts--but the bond of friendship. The people who see me for who I am, accept me for who I am, and like me for who I am. That's the real stuff. And it can be rare, but that's ok. Because it's worth it. And that's also why your relationship with God is so important. Let me drop a memory verse for you, "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18). When we look in the mirror we see Jesus. That is our true identity--God in the flesh, love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. Now add this to that, "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). John tells us right there we are. The Son(s) of God! The problem isn't that we aren't who we're supposed to be. The problem is that we don't KNOW who we are. Or we don't know what it MEANS to be who we are. That's why we need to look in the mirror. That's why we need to let the light shine. When the light shines we can see clearly. Because the light is the light of love. When love shines we can see clearly. When someone loves you, you are beautiful to them. There are a lot of pictures of God in the Bible. Two of the biggest ones are "Father and Son" and "Bridegroom." When we see Jesus as our bridegroom we begin to see ourselves as His bride. He cleaned us, washed us with the Word (which is Jesus, which is love) and presented us to Himself without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing. We are perfect to Him. And we are coming into our perfection day by day. Because, Biblically, perfection means maturity. Being who we really are by learning who we really are. And this is the best part: We aren't changed from crap to glory. We don't start at the bottom and work our way down. We don't have to try to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We are changed from glory to glory. We start at glory. We start at perfect. We start at beautiful. And then, as we accept and understand and embrace our true identity we move FROM glory TO glory. We move into who we are. We begin to experience who we are. We manifest who we are. By manifesting who HE is in us. Christ in you the hope of (revealed) glory. And it's not a Hail Mary type of hope. Not a blessed hope. It's a blessed assurance. As we see Him--when He appears to us--we BE Him. We learn about ourselves by learning about Him. We be who we are by letting HIM be who HE is in us, and through us, and as us!

The Gardener tends to the garden. Jesus is the Gardener. We are the garden. He takes care of us. And, yes, sometimes that means pruning. Getting rid of some things that need not be in us. Or around us. Boundaries are a good, healthy thing. Saying no can be a good, healthy thing. Those are ways we dress and keep our own garden. But, again, it all flows from our heavenly Father. He is the pattern son, and we just follow the pattern. He gives us the ball and we take it and run with it. The garden was inclosed. But then the wind (of the Holy Spirit) began to blow. It scattered the seed. The incorruptible seed of love. So that what was shut up in the garden (that we are) could come out. Living from the inside out. Letting what's inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there. Filling ourselves to overflowing with what we've already been filled with. Letting God love us--which, again, includes chastening and correcting us--and loving Him back by loving the people that we come into contact with. We have everything we need. Because all good and perfect gifts come down from the Father of lights. And catch this: If our heavenly Father is the Father of lights... that means WE are the lights that He is the Father of. The light of the world. That's how Jesus described Himself... and that's how Jesus described us. It's the same light that God introduced way back in the beginning when the world was dark and void and without form. The same light of life. The same light of love. That's what shines on us, and in us, and through us. That's not just what we have... that's who we are. Because that's who HE is. And as He is, so are we in this world. In the beginning God created us in His image and likeness. And then on the cross God conformed us to the image of His Son. He shined that light, He sent that wind, so that we might be able to see clearly and go where He wanted us to go. Look at John 3:8, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell where it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The wind blows US where it wants to. Sends us to where we need to be. He that is led of the Spirit shall be called (identified as) the Son(s) of God, right? And where does that wind blow? Where does that Spirit lead? What does it direct us to do? (Because, remember, rest is not inactivity it is Holy Spirit directed activity.) Think about it. What else but love could, or would, the Spirit of love direct us to do? It's all about love. Love is not just what God does, love is who God is. Love is not just what WE do... love is who we are! The inclosed garden has always been filled to the brim with love. And now that it is no longer inclosed... that love that is inside can come out. It can get all over everybody we come into contact with. All of that good stuff inside of us can be shared with the people that need it. And, of course, the people that need the love that we have... are all people. So just be who you are, where you are, and love the people you come into contact with. The wind is blowing. And it blows where it wants to. Don't try to control the wind. Just let it go and let it blow. Let go and let God! Let what's inside come out as HE stirs up that love inside you!