Butterfly part 5
We were created in the image and likeness of God. It says so right in the Bible. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:26-27). More or less that's all I want to say today. And I want to let that breathe. We were made just like our Daddy. And, really, what else could have happened? You can't make something from nothing. A seed can only produce after it's own kind. See, we have this idea that God is WAY up there somewhere. Good, and pure, and perfect, and holy. And we have this idea that we're WAY down here. Dirty, and ugly, and doomed, and damned. But the truth of the matter is, we're just like Him and we always have been. He made us LIKE Himself, and He made us FROM Himself. Everything that exists is simply an extension and an expression of God. Of LOVE. And, listen, I'm not saying things don't get twisted. Obviously people don't always act like they are loved. Because people don't always know and believe that they are loved. That's why the Holy Spirit--our love receptor--is so vitally important. That's why the first thing God is ever recorded as saying is so important. "Let there be light." Not so that we could change into something we weren't, but so that we could SEE what we really are. A butterfly starts out as a caterpillar, and has to go through a transformation, but a butterfly is a butterfly. We start out as babies, and have to go through a maturation process--not BECOMING complete, because we are already complete in Him, but learning what it means to BE complete--but a Son of God is a Son of God. Whether he knows it or not. Whether he acts like it or not. And here's the key: Can a caterpillar flap its wings and fly? Nosir. Can we love before we are baptized (immersed) in the name (love nature) of Jesus? Nosir. You can't BE who you are until you KNOW who you are. So in the beginning, when it was dark (and we couldn't see), and we were void and without form, the Spirit brooded over us. Fluttered over us. Like that butterfly flapping its wings. Starting the effect that would culminate on an old rugged cross. That would culminate with a great rushing wind as God poured out His Spirit on all flesh. Not changing us in the sense that we were "bad" and needed to become "good." Jesus didn't come to give us better morals. He came to give us LIFE and that more abundantly. He didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. He came to give us life. HIS life. Not the crawling life of a caterpillar that we had accepted--even as we tried to change through our own power and effort--but the ascended life. Where we fly because HE flies. And because He lives in us and we live in Him. 1 John 4:17 says it better than I can, "...because as he is, so are we in this world." We were created in His image. That's why Jesus is the truth. The truth about God, and the truth about us. I think what I'm trying to say is: Stop crawling around in the dust like a caterpillar. Stop believing that you're a dirty sinner who needs to run from an angry God. He's not mad AT you, He's mad ABOUT you. He fluttered His wings to show us how to fly. And now we don't have to let anything hold us back, or hold us down!