Escape Hatch part 4
I try to quote this memory verse a lot, because I love it. But I think I use it in a rather non-traditional way. Ready? Romans 10:13, "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." The religious folk use that as a ticket to heaven, right? With the alternative being, "If you don't call on the name of the Lord, the cosmic elevator will go down instead of up." I have a more present way of looking at this though. And mine is: When you get into trouble... don't run FROM your heavenly Father. Run TO Him. Call on the name of the Lord--which is Jesus, which is love--in the midst of a situation you need to be saved from. Take a deep breath (drawing His love that is already inside of you in) and speak life. Breathe it in and breathe it out. Fill yourself to overflowing with what you've already been filled with and let it out. Naturally. Breathe love into your situation and you will be saved... from your situation. By being able to endure your situation. Remember now, escaping doesn't mean avoiding. It doesn't mean you never have to deal with anything. God has given us a way of escape SO THAT we can get through what we need to go through. Love is that escape hatch. Love is what carries us through. You've probably heard the poem (or whatever) about the foot prints in the sand. About how sometimes there are only two feet on the ground. Because that's when God carries us. Childlike, right? Trusting in Him. Letting things be what they are, and understanding things for what they are supposed to be. If you're always fighting, you're not letting all things work together for good in your life. What's that other old song? You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have... the facts of life. Life happens. Every day. You can either fight it every step of the way or you can rest, and flow, and enjoy it! Every storm runs out of rain, right? Every cloud has a silver lining. It came to pass, not to stay. Tough times don't last but tough people do. So we need to change our mindset from "I don't like this, I don't want to deal with it," to, "What lesson can I learn from this?" Or, "What love can I bring to this?" We so often see ourselves as the center of, well, everything, that we miss out on the fact that there are other people in "our" situations. And sometimes WE are in that situation soley to help someone ELSE. So if we avoid that situation, we're missing out on an opportunity to improve that situation. You can't learn and grow unless you go through things. You can't learn from your mistakes if you never make any. Escaping from temptations, or from whatever we need to be saved from, is as simple as calling on the name of the Lord. Injecting light into the darkness. Injecting love into everything and everybody. Letting YOUR light shine. Calling on the name of the Lord isn't an external thing. He lives in us. He IS us. Jesus is our true identity. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. And we are saved--I think this is where I'm going tomorrow to end this Rant series--by saving each other. By loving each other. By letting the God in our flesh... out! And we do that, by calling on His name. His nature. His life. His love!