Rise part 2
"Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee" (Isaiah 60:1). This is one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible. In a sense, I think it really describes the finished work of the cross and what we are capable BECAUSE of that finished work. Arise, shine; for thy light IS come. The light came first. That's so important. We love because the God who IS love first loved us. We don't rise in order to shine. We don't do in order to be. We rise because HE shines in and through and as us! We do BECAUSE we be. Yesterday I was focusing on the difference between "falling in love"--lowering ourselves, or settling--rather than rising in love and pulling others up with us. Today I want to focus on the truth that we really don't have to "rise" at all. All we have to do is understand that we have already rose when Jesus rose from that dead (both for us and as us)! That's when the great shift took place. That's when we passed from death to life. That's when we were filled with the Holy Spirit and were equipped and empowered to receive the love that God always had for us. A whole new dimension of living was opened up to us. Abundant living. Everlasting living. Eternal living. Resurrection living. A life filled with love as we receive it and release it. See, we think we need to arise and shine so that the glory of the Lord will fall on us. But that's not what our verse in Isaiah says. It says our light HAS come and the glory of the Lord IS risen upon us. Everything that needed to happen... happened at the cross. Now we can begin to enjoy the fruit of Jesus' labor--a labor of love that produced the fruit of the Spirit which IS love. And notice that the glory DIDN'T fall on us. It rose upon us. Our God is a consuming fire, right? Well fire doesn't burn things down. Fire burns things UP! It doesn't condemn, it affirms. It burns things up and it BUILDS us up by consuming everything that doesn't belong and leaving only the purified gold--and again, even though it feels like this is what's happening right now... it feels like God is processing us... this is actually what happened 2,000 years ago. We ARE complete in Him. The journey isn't us being conformed to His image. He already comformed us. The journey is finding out what that image IS as He reveals Himself to us and in us and through us and as us. It's looking in the mirror with an unveiled face and seeing the glory of the Lord... and being changed into that same image from GLORY to GLORY. The glory is already upon us. Already IN us. And as we let the Holy Spirit lead and guide us into all truth--the truth that God is our heavenly Father and we are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased--that's when what is IN us starts to overflow naturally OUT of us! That's when we stop TRYING to rise and realize that we are already seated at the right hand of the Father. We stop TRYING to get love when we understand that we ARE loved. And when we understand that we are LOVED that's when we understand that we are LOVE and that's when we truly begin TO LOVE one another! We don't settle for anything. We lay hold of the gift of God and we share that gift with everybody we come into contact with!