Attitude part 3
One of my favorite Bible verses (and yes, I know I claim just about all of them as my favorite) is in the New Living Translation. 2 Corinthians 5:14, "Either way, Christ's love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life." That phrase, "Christ's love controls us." It's gotten straight into my heart. Either way. Whether we don't know that God loves us... His love controls us because we are trying to get it. Or if we do know that He loves us... His love controls us because we are giving it away. Either way, everything we do stems from God's love for us. Whether we think we have it or not. So, really, it's about knowing and believing that we have it. You can't be thankful for something you don't have, right? In the same way that you can't give something you don't have. That's why we have verses like, "We love him, because he first loved us" (John 4:19). God loves us, and we love Him back by loving each other. That's the Divine Order of things. The NATURAL order of things, if you can hear it. Because love is our nature. It's not something we have to force. It's something that we can let flow. "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38). We know and believe that God loves us. We live with an attitude of gratitude for that love. And that love comes out of us. Naturally. We love Him because He first loved us. We love Him by loving each other. We simply receive and release His love for us. Let what's inside come out. That's the key to this whole abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love that we've been given. The gift of God. That is experienced as it is given away. As it is shared. Our attitude determines our altitude. That's kind of the thrust of this Rant series. What you believe--be it either the Word of God (which is Jesus, which is love) or the report of the world--is what defines your reality. And that's something you get to choose, to a degree. In a manner of speaking. You get to choose what you put your faith in. Deuteronomy 30:19 says it like this, "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live." The question... and the answer. Because, to me, if Christ's love is going to control us either way, we might as well be on the side of it where we're not chasing it, but instead experiencing it. We might as well be on the side where we're giving what we (know and believe) we've got instead of trying to get what we (think we) haven't got. It's better to be on the side of life and love. It's a more excellent way, if I can say it that way. Letting what's inside come out because we know and believe it's in there. Because we're thankful and grateful that it's in there. Not trying to be someone we're not in order to get something we think we haven't got, but instead experiencing what we have got by giving it away. By sharing it. By laying our lives down for our friends. Giving everything we have and everything we are without worrying about how it is received. Giving it because we have it. And because it's worth sharing!