Prisoner part 5
Let's do our memory verse first. Not my favorite thing to do, but I really want to build off of it today. "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles" (Ephesians 3:1). Not a complete sentence, or even really a complete thought, but it has the idea that I want to close this Rant series with. A prisoner of Christ... for you. God fills us up... so that we can empty ourselves out... unto each other. That's the Divine Order. That's the way things are supposed to work. Receiving and releasing. Letting God love you and then loving Him back by loving the people you come into contact with. And that's what it means to be a prisoner of Christ--a prisoner of love. It means letting love control you. Which it does anyway. But instead of fighting it, we just need to lean into it. Understand what it means to be "controlled" by love. And here's what it means: Either you don't know that God loves you, and you do everything you do in order to try to get what you think you haven't got... or you DO know that God loves you and you do everything you do in order to share that love with others. Because love is giving. We don't need to GET anything. We already have what we need. In order to experience and enjoy what we have... we have to give it away. Share it. Let what's inside come out. Receive it and release it. Receive it BY releasing it. Release it BY receiving it. Let God love you and love Him back by loving people. When we focus on what really matters, we are focused on love. Focused on people. God and people. Love God and love people. Love God BY loving people. That's as simple as I can make it. I am a prisoner of Christ... FOR YOU. I don't do what I do for me. And, in reality, it's not about YOU either. Not in the sense of "people getting what they deserve." Because deserve has nothing to do with it. Look at Colossians 3:23, "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men." To me, "heartily" means, "to the best of your ability, because it's in your heart to do it." And if we're treating people the way we think we they should be treated, we're judging people by appearance and not judging righteous judgment. And Jesus said don't do that. He said DON'T judge by appearance. He said judge righteous judgment. The judgment that was handed down from Father to Son on the cross. Well, actually, three days after the cross. Which was not a death sentence, but an abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life sentence! That was God's judgment on His Son... and on the world! For God so loved the WORLD that He gave his only begotten Son. Being a prisoner of Christ--of love--doesn't mean you're trapped. It means you're empowered. It means you are who you're supposed to be, and you have what you need to have, so that you can live the life you were created to live! Being a prisoner isn't about you. And it isn't really about anybody else--except in regards to everybody else being the destination of your love. It's about who you are a prisoner to. It's about Jesus. It's about love. Letting love rule and reign in your life so that you can rule and reign in this earth as a king and a priest. Letting love flow out of your heart so you can experience the life of love that Jesus is living in you, and through you, and as you!