Can Do part 2
We can do all things through Christ. He is our strength. The joy of the Lord is our strength. The joy of the Lord is love. Love is our strength. Love is the "all things" that we can do. And since living and loving are the same thing--to live is to love and to love is to live--living is what we have been equipped and empowered to do. I've said for a long time that the hardest thing about life is actually living. Getting up every day and doing what you've gotta do to get to the end of the day. Its hard. Its exhausting. Physically and emotionally draining. Remember when I Ranted about how the least you can do is sometimes the most you can do? We put these unrealistic expectations on ourselves (and each other) and then we get frustrated, and disappointed, when those expectations aren't met. My point for tonight is, you don't have to do everything all of the time. The idea of "no days off" is a bit much for me. We need those times to rest and relax and recharge. Think about it, God specifically made a day of rest--the Sabbath--so that we the people wouldn't get burned out. And, of course, in fullness JESUS is the Sabbath rest of God. He finished the work on the cross so that we could rest. So that we could OPERATE from a place of rest. Because, remember now, rest is NOT inactivity. Rest is Holy Spirit directed activity. And since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and God is love, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love. (It always comes back to love.) The number one thing we can do through the Lord... is love. I know I already said that, but I think we learn best through repitition. At least, I do. So when we think about doing things... one of my favorite Bible verses is 2 Samuel 22:30, "For by thee I have run through a troop: by my God have I leaped over a wall." I like it because its, well, powerful. Its short and sweet, but it has awesome imagery. This is the kind of stuff we think we oughta be doing. Onward Christian soldier, right? I don't think I've ever met people more ready, willing, and able to fight than religious folk. "We gotta root the sin out of the camp! We gotta give the devil a black eye." And so on and so forth. The problem is that we get so caught up in fighting AGAINST stuff that we forget that the only fight left is fighting FOR something. "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses" (1 Timothy 6:12). We don't need to jump over a wall--or a fence, in my case--we don't need to run though a troop. All we need to do is lay hold on eternal life. And eternal life is the gift of God. We aren't fighting in order to GET something. We already HAVE something. We are fighting to believe it. Fighting to keep our mind and our heart open. To let what's inside come out by knowing and believing that its inside. Receiving and releasing the gift we've been given. Letting God love us and loving Him back by loving each other. That's what it means to truly live the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of God by letting Him live His own life of love in us, and through us, and as us. And that, by our faith (which works by love), is what we are capable of. We don't need to run through a troop or jump over a wall. We CAN love the people we come into contact with!