Purified part 3
The fire burned away the bonds of the three Hebrew boys. Think about that for a minute. Nothing even got singed except for the thing that was holding them back. In other words, "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17). Where the consuming fire that is God is... there is purification. Everything else is burned away, and only love remains. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." And light drives out darkness simply by shining. Not by attacking. The fire purifies us simply by consuming. Not by burning. Nothing God has ever done or will ever do was meant to harm us. What kind of Father wants to harm His beloved Son? And, of course, I'm not saying God never makes us uncomfortable. Growth doesn't come from our comfort level. It doesn't come from settling on where we're at. And life is all about learning and growing. Learning to love as we learn how we are loved. Growing in love as the love in us grows. And seeds grow when you water them. Plants grow when they have sunlight (Sonlight). Love feeds on love. Remember Moses and the burning bush? The thing that was significant about that bush was that it burned but wasn't consumed. Because the fire burns... and it grows. It doesn't consume itself (Himself), it consumes everything else. That's how loved drives out hate: Not by an eye for eye, but by turning the other cheek. And that's when love is purified in us--when we can let people be who they are and love them anyway. When we don't expect anything from them. When we don't need them to act (or react) in a certain way. When we can just embrace them, and love the hell out of them. That's what it means to destroy our enemies by making them our friends. Laying our lives down for our friends. Pure love. Fervent love. From a pure heart. A heart that is open to love. Not a heart that is closed down in order to "protect itself." If you are protecting yourself FROM love... well, you've missed the whole point of the whole thing. Love is life. Life is love. To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other. And I get it, sometimes love hurts. But what really hurts is the expectation we put on love. "I love you, why don't you love me back?" And really we mean, "I love you, why don't you do what I want you to do?" But that's not love at all. Love doesn't demand its (HIS) own way. Love doesn't try to get. Because love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. Love is giving everything you have and everything you are and not worrying about how it will be received. Just do what you can do. Just be who you are. Your bonds have been burned away. There's nothing holding you back from being who you are. Who you REALLY are. Who you are in Christ. Which is who Christ is in you. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in YOUR flesh. Love in YOUR body. You HAVE been purified. That's a done deal. That doesn't need to happen. That already happened. And because of that--because you've been through the fire--you can light others on fire. Again, not trying to harm them, or burn them, but lighting them up with love. Filling them up with what you've been filled with. Giving them what you've got. Loving them with the love that you've been loved with!