Loved part 2
The love and affirmation of the Father equips and empowers the Son to live. Because to live is to love and to love is to live. Because you can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. In order to love, you have to know and believe that you ARE loved. And that's what the Holy Spirit is all about. He is the Spirit of truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The truth that the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hands. The truth that we ARE that beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. And I can tell you from experience, when your son knows you love him... that's when he ACTS like a son. That's when he's about his father's business. Not in order to earn something, but because he already has something. That's why Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he SHOULD go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." That's why 1 Corinthians 3:11 says, "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Jesus--God in the flesh, love in a body--is our foundation. That's where we start. LOVE is where we start. And when we train up a child in the way he SHOULD go, by laying that foundation of love, that's when we find ourselves on the right track. On the straight and narrow road that leads to life. I've mentioned this before, but I'll spend a little time on it here. The straight and narrow road does NOT lead to heaven. We have already beeen given heaven. The days of heaven on earth. So we don't have to wait until we die to go to heaven. We already went to heaven when Jesus died. When He established the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom of love. And the reason the way to life is narrow is because, again, to live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other because they are the same thing. "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we live the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death" (1 John 3:14). Love is the difference between life and death. Because love IS life. Jesus isn't just our foundation--and He's certainly not our boss--He's our life. Our abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life! And what makes the abundant life abundant... is love. So in order to truly live we must love one another. Otherwise we abide in death. And the only way we CAN truly live--by loving--is knowing that we are loved. Building on that foundation. Training our children (and ourselves) up in the way we should go. Filling our children, and ourselves, and each other, up to overflowing with the love that we have been loved with. Letting what's inside come out by knowing and believing it's in there. Living from the inside-out. Not trying to get anything, or prove anything. Not making ourselves look bigger by making others look smaller. Not trying to control or manipulate... or even earn anything. But simply sharing what we have. Letting the love inside us come out by focusing on that love. By focusing on how loved we are. I know that can kind of sound selfish, or self-centered (and I think I'm going to tackle that aspect of it tomorrow) but it's really not. It's really the only way to live. To look into the mirror with an unveiled face, and see the glory of the Lord, and be changed into that same image from glory to glory. To know what's inside and in that way stop trying to get something (anything!) else. To love... because we know and believe that we ARE loved!