Remain part 3
The Kingdom of God (the Kingdom of LOVE) is upside down and backwards to the natural mind. Things that seem too good to be true... are actually so good that they MUST be true. But a lot of the time it seems like we refuse to believe our eyes. We lose the simplicity that is the Gospel; God is love, and He loves you. We make things too hard on ourselves, and we end up robbing ourselves of the gift we've been given. Look at this story in 2 Kings chapter 5, because I think it makes my point better than I can. Ok, so there's this fellow named Naaman. And he has leprosy. He goes to Elisha, the man of God, to be healed. "ANd Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the LORD his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have not it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?" (2 Kings 5:10-13). Wash and be clean. Pretty simple. Love in order to remain in God's love. But we think there's gotta be something more to it than that. We think we need to earn the gift of God. But you can't earn a gift. No matter how hard you try. That's the lie that the serpent hissed into Eve's ear--you have to do in order to be. You have to work and earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. Jesus came and sweated great drops of blood to show is that its not about what you do. Its about who you are. Its in the blood. In the genes. The DNA (Divine Nature of the Almighty). So when Jesus says things like, "Have faith in God," or, "Love one another as I have loved you," He's not only telling us what to do... He's telling us HOW to do it. He's making it really simple. Even though it seems upside down and backwards. The natural mind says: I'm going to do what I do and that's going to determine what I get. The mind of Christ says, "I am God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. I'm going to do what I do because of who I am." We don't do in order to be. We do BECAUSE we be. We don't love in order to GET love. We love because we HAVE love. Because we ARE loved. Because we are LOVE. Love is our nature. And we experience it by giving it away. Because love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. So in order to remain we need to understand two things: 1. We are already in God's love. Because His love is already in us. Its not something to get. Its something we've already got. And 2. In order to experience the gift we've been given, we need to give it away. We need to share it. We need to receive it and release it. Receive it BY releasing it. That's where we are, and that's how we REMAIN where we are. We live in God because He lives in us. We LOVE because His love remains in us even when we give it away. ESPECIALLY when we give it away!