Apples and Trees part 1
This Rant series is NOT about the trees in the garden of Eden. This Rant series is about Fathers and Sons. I love that expression, "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," because it's so often appropriate. Especially in the case of my son, Logan, who is more or less hanging onto the tree for dear life. Mini-me says it perfectly. Or we could read it in John 10:30, where Jesus said, "I and my Father are one." We are, in large part, defined by our parents. I'm not getting into the "nature vs nurture" debate--I'm sure both are super important--I'm simply saying that your DNA makes you who you are. I always tell people, when they spend any amount of time with my dad and see all of the striking similarities between us, "I am who I am for a reason." So I guess the question is, why is any of this important, Spiritually speaking? And the answer is: Unless you know who you are (and WHY you are who you are) you'll always try to be someone else. Let me say it like this: "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). If your life is hid with Christ in God, then there's only one place you can find it. This life-long journey of self discovery that we're on HAS TO start and end with Jesus. He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning and the end. And He is everything in between. I wrote three "Jesus books," Identity Crisis, Six Steps to the Throne, and EPIC in order to answer the three most important questions you will ever ask; Who am I? Where am I? And why am I here? And the answer to all three questions... is Jesus. We are Jesus, not Adam. We are in the Promised Land of Rest that is the Kingdom of God... that is Jesus. And we are here to love one another as Jesus loves us. Jesus defined this never ending journey in John 17:3, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." The point of, well, everything really, is the unconditionally loving relationship of the Father and the Son. God's love for us--and not only the love that He has for us, but the love that He IS in us and through us and as us--is what defines us. That's what the Divine Nature of the New Man is. Not a beast nature, but a love nature. Not trying to get something, or trying to do in order to be, but living out of the abundance of what we have. Sharing what we have because it's too good to keep to ourselves. We spend so much time trying to figure out who we are. Trying to figure out where we are--and if where we are is where we're supposed to be--and trying to figure out why we're here. But really there's only one way to "figure it all out." And that one Way (and Truth, and Life) is Jesus revealing Himself to us and in us and through us. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says it like this, "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." We look in the mirror and we see Jesus in the mirror. We see our Father in the mirror. In US. And, since what we behold is what we become, we are changed into that same image of glory FROM glory TO glory. We understand that we are our Father's Son. His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. We understand that the apple did not fall far from the tree!