Practice part 5
When you practice what you preach you let what's inside come out. Naturally. Because while practice DOES make perfect (we've kind of looked at that), love is our new (true) nature. Love isn't just what we do... it's who we are. Because God is love. And He lives in us. Loves in us. Loves THROUGH us. So while I can see how it SEEMS like a shift (the transition we looked at in the last Rant series) what is really happening is that we are BEING who we really are as we LEARN who we really are. Let me say it like this, "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen" (2 Peter 3:18). Grow in grace. And grow in the knowledge of Jesus. Jesus is our true identity--God in the flesh, love in a body... God in OUR flesh, love in OUR body--so growing in the knowledge of who He really is is growing in the knowledge of who WE really are. And maturity IS a process. You don't start something "new" and immediately know exactly how to do it. There's a learning curve. There's room to make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes. The key is to let what's inside come out, instead of trying to force things that are without... in. That's why the Law of Moses was doomed to fail; it demanded perfection without being able to produce it. All the Law could do was point out what was wrong with us, without being able to help us with it. So then Jesus came and fulfilled the Law. He basically said, "There's nothing wrong with you. You just don't know it because you don't know who you are. Because you don't know who I am." See, Jesus did not come to save us from an angry God. God is not mad at you. He's mad ABOUT you. Head over heels in love with you. Jesus came to show us that love. The love from a Father to a Son. The love that gives everything it (He) has and everything it (He) is. That's love. Giving. And you can't give what you don't have. You can only give what you do have. So you need to KNOW what you have. You need to grow in the knowledge of who you are. And when you know who you are, you can BE who you are. Instead of, "God give me patience," we can say, "Thank you for being patient with me. I know I can receive and release that patience." If you know you have it, you can use it. You can share it. You can give it away. And when you give it away... that's how you experience it. Receive it and release it. Receive it BY releasing it. Release it by receiving it. Just let God love the hell out of you and you WILL love the hell out of people. You'll be so full of it that you can't keep it in if you tried. If you wanted to. Which you won't want to. Because that love is so good that when you know you've got it, all you want to do is make sure other people know THEY'VE got it. Because that love is what we all need. More than anything else, we all just need to be loved. And notice, I don't say "want" to be loved. We straight up and down NEED to be loved. Living is loving. Loving is living. You can't have one without the other because they are the same thing. So all these things we've learned--head knowledge--need to start being put into practice--heart knowledge. Where the rubber meets the road... that's where things are real. That's where we can truly live. Because we can practice what we preach. And the more we practice loving, the better we'll get at it. And that's the whole point of the whole thing!