Life part 5
I've said this many times before: God doesn't want to be a PART of your life. He wants to BE your life. Because He IS life. Look at 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 in the Message Bible, "Christ's love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do. Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own." I think that's the secret of life. Working--LIVING--from that focused center. Letting Christ's love control us, as it says in the NLT. To live is to love and to love is to live, right? Life means breath. So we ought to love God (by loving one another) with every breath we take and every move we make. He put us all in the same boat. Drew us all into Himself when He was lifted up from the earth on the cross. Showed us that we are all different parts of the same body. Different branches of the same tree. The Tree of Life. And the fruit of that tree--the fruit of the Spirit--is love. Thats not what we produce--HE is the vine and we are the branches--but it is what we bear. What we carry to those who need it. And by the way, those who need love... is everybody. So it doesn't matter who you are, or where you are, or what's going on around you. Live where you're at. How YOU can do it. Because we're all in the same boat. We all died when He died... so that we could all live. So that we could all LOVE. And we are equipped and empowered to love because He FIRST loved us. Because He gave His life for us, and to us. You can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. You don't try to "get" Jesus' life by "living the right way." You CAN live the right way--a life of being loved and loving others--because He GAVE you His life. Because He IS your life. His life is the light of men. In order to see clearly--which is vitally important because what you see is what you be--we needed the light to shine. God said, "Let there be light." Jesus said HE is the light of the world, and He said YE are the light of the world. It's the same light. The same life. HIS abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life. And it's not us trying to live it. Nobody can live Jesus' life except Jesus. It's us letting HIM live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. It's us letting Him love us so much that we are filled to overflowing with that love. So that it comes out naturally. And I think that's where I want to go with my next Rant series--putting our focus in the right place--but I don't want to get ahead of myself. I want to finish this Rant series with the way 2 Corinthians 2:15 finished. "...a far better life than people ever lived on their own." One of the first sermons I preached after I started WWW (Word Without Walls) was called, "Life on Another Level." Because I don't think we really understand, or realize, what's available to us. We haven't completely received the gift we've been given. We still run around like chickens with our heads cut off looking for love in all the wrong places. When all we have to do is go to the source. Or rather, realize that we are CONNECTED to the source. God--LOVE--is not just a part of our life. God--LOVE--IS our life. To live is to love, and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other. And because of the cross, we know that we have both!