Consciousness part 5
Abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life is the conscious awareness of God--of LOVE--in your life. Love is what makes it abundant, and eternal, and everlasting. Love is what we are conscious of--or aware of--because of Jesus' resurrection. He gave His life FOR us and He gave His life TO us. He gave us His Holy Spirit, the love receptor, so that we could KNOW and BELIEVE the love that God has always had for us. He came, not to make "evil" people "good," but to make dead people alive. He came to wake us from sleep. In the garden God put Adam to sleep, and humanity has been asleep at the wheel ever since, stumbling around in the darkness of sin (or unbelief). And it wasn't until the light of the world began to shine that a New Day could dawn and we would awake to righteousness and sin not! It wasn't until Jesus gave us something (someONE, Himself, love) to believe in that He could take away the sin of the world and destroy the works of the devil. And now we have the ability to follow Paul's instructions in Romans 6:11, "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Now we can SEE the finished work... and what we see is what we be. WE are the finished work. When God made all things new, He made US new. He transformed us (from an Old Man to a New Man) and conformed us (into His image). He made us aware of how things really are. He shined the light so that we could see clearly. See God clearly--as our heavenly Father who loves us--and see ourselves clearly--as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. Jesus became sin and died. And He had drawn us into Himself when He did it. So when He died, we died. That's why (and how) we can reckon ourselves dead unto sin. Not because we try really hard to stop sinning (the harder you try, the more you end up failing, because with man it is impossible), but because HE took away our sin! Now we can stop trying and start resting. Now we can ENJOY the gift of eternal life that we've been given. The gift of eternal life that is knowing the Father, and the One who the Father sent. Knowing God in the context of that Father/Son relationship. Knowing God's love... and sharing that love with others. Knowing God's love BY sharing it with others! Guys, THAT'S how we love God; by loving each other. That's how we live His life; by letting Him live it in us and through us and as us! And that's what it means to be alive unto God. It means that we are alive to love. We're not searching for it anymore--looking for love in all the wrong places--we've found it at the source. We know that we are loved. We are awake to it. Aware of it. Conscious of it. It fills us to overflowing and touches everything and everyone around us. It's the difference between life and death. The difference between the Kingdom and the world. The difference between "living" and truly being alive. Adam was a living soul, but he was also the walking dead. Jesus IS our life, and in Him we live and move and have our being. In us HE lives and moves and has HIS being!