Prisoner part 3
Life is all about the choices you make. God put life and death, blessings and cursings before us. And let us choose. But first He told us WHAT to choose. He said, "Choose life." Which seems like a no-brainer to me. But if you don't understand what life IS--to live is to love and to love is to live--then you can't really choose it. You'll keep looking for love in all the wrong places until you understand that you can only get it from the source. Then you will run TO God instead of running FROM Him. Knowing the ultimate truth of the universe--that God is love and He loves you--is what allows us to receive and release that love. Because, here's the deal: either way Christ's love controls us. Either we're a prisoner to trying to get it because we think (erronously) that we don't have it... or we're a prisoner in the sense that love leads and guides all of our actions. You do whatever you do because of love. You either think you don't have it and do whatever you do in order to try to get it... or you know (and believe) that you have it, and you do everything you do in order to give it away. Because that's what love is: Love is giving. You experience it by sharing it. Being a prisoner of Christ means being--in a very real sense--controlled by love. Look at Psalm 119:105, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Love lights the way. Love shows us where to go, and how to get there. It's the Way of Grace. And we respond to the Way (and the Truth, and the Life) that is Jesus... that is love... with the Walk of Faith. Love lights up the path, but we have to choose to walk that straight and narrow way that leads to life. So being a prisoner of Christ doesn't mean we're slaves--except in the sense of the love slave who loves his master and doesn't want to leave. It doesn't mean that we don't have any choice in the matter. I believe God created me with the ability to write. To put my thoughts down as words on a page. What I choose to do is USE that gift I've been given. Letting the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us. That's the key to the Kingdom. That's what makes our lives as prisoners of Christ... well... amazing, quite frankly. A life of love, a life of service, of giving everything you have and everything you are, is a life worth living. Being a prisoner of Christ is not the same thing as being a prisoner of anything or anybody else. Let's liken it to addiction, for example. If you're addicted to something, you're a prisoner of that thing. You're compelled to do it. You don't have a choice. In a lot of cases that can be a negative. That can be something hurtful or harmful. But when you're addicted to love... when you're compelled to love... that makes everything better. In other peoples' lives... and in your own. Giving what you've got is how you experience what you've got. They say that forgiveness is like unlocking the jail cell and then realizing YOU were the one behind bars. Well, being a prisoner of Christ is like having the best thing in the world... and then realizing that it is your mission to share what you've got with everybody you come into contact with. And that (I think) is where I want to pick up tomorrow. The idea that the love we have is for EVERYBODY.