Little and Little part 2
The way you walk by faith... is one step at a time. By little and little. That's how you POSESS the land that you've been given. Let me say it another way, "For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little" (Isaiah 28:10). That's how you build anything, right? Well... anything that you want to last. You lay a foundation, and you build on it. Line upon line, line upon line. I like the way it repeats itself there too. Because when we're talking about an eternal, everlasting, abundant, Resurrection Life... that's a lot of building. And that's ok. That's the point. We "get" it all right from the beginning. But we only begin to experience everything we've got a little bit at a time. Take 2 Peter 1:5-7 for example, "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity." We're not adding things we DON'T have. We're adding things we DO have. And notice that it "ends" with charity--or love in action. Guess what: It also BEGINS with love. Jesus, God in the flesh, love in a body, is both beginning and end. That's the foundation, and that's the manifestation. That's where we start--remember, when we look into the mirror with an unveiled face we see the glory of the Lord and we are changed into that image from glory to glory. We start at glory--and that's where we end. It's perfection, which means maturity. It's knowing who we are in order to BE who we are. To BE transformed into what we've already BEEN transformed into. And sometimes it seems like a big change. Sometimes when you have an experience with the love of God you immediately lose your appetite for some of the things you thought you wanted (when you were looking for love in all the wrong places). Sometimes it's like a switch gets flipped, or a lightbulb turns on. But most of the time it happens a lot less dramatically. Most of the time you don't even notice the change taking place, until something happens and you respond to it in a totally different way than you once would have. The cookie story, in my case. At one of my previous jobs I had a cookie on my desk. And I was more or less staring at it all morning because I couldn't wait to eat it at lunch. But then one of my cowokers mentioned she was hungry and didn't HAVE a lunch. And before I knew what was happening... I gave her my cookie. At THAT point I was able to kind of stop and think to myself, "Well. That's not something I thought would ever happen." Because the change came by little and little. It was gradual. And, look, I know giving your cookie away isn't necessarily a HUGE deal. But in my case it kind of was. It was a baby step, sure. But it felt like a big step forward. And the best part was... it was natural. I wasn't TRYING to do anything or be anyone. I was just filled to overflowing with something and that made it easy, effortless, to give it away!