The Real part 5
I'm in it for the real thing. And the real thing... is love. How do we keep our affections on things above, and not things on the earth? By keeping our affections on love. I'm telling you, if Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega (and He is)... if He is the beginning and the end... then that means we ought to start with love and end with love. And we oughta let love be everything in between. This life that we've been given... this eternal, everlasting, abundant Resurrection Life that IS the gift of God... it's for living. And to live is to love. To love is to live. I really think that's why our lives might feel empty sometimes. Because we stop focusing on love. We get caught up in all the surface stuff, all the fake stuff, that is screaming for our attention and we stop listening to the still small voice that's deep inside. The still small voice of the Holy Spirit. The Comforter. The Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit that leads and guides us into all truth by testifying about Jesus. Testifying about our true identity which IS Jesus. Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in OUR flesh. Love in OUR body. And when we know (and believe) who we really are then we are comforted by the ultimate truth of the universe--The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hands. He has given all things into OUR hands. All things that pertain to life and godliness. All Spiritual blessings. Everything we ever could or ever would need. Love. Because if living is loving... but you can't give what you don't have... then without God loving us we couldn't live. We couldn't REALLY live. We could do what most people seem to do, which is spend our "lives" looking for love in all the wrong places. Trying to GET something instead of receiving (and releasing) that which we've already been given. The entire book of Ecclesiastes is about this search... trying to fill the God-shaped void inside of us. And nothing works. Because nothing can fill a God shaped void... except God. Nothing can fill a LOVE shaped void except love. And the tragedy about looking for it in all the wrong places is that God literally died so that we could go straight to the source. So, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). Where do we go to find grace? The throne of grace! Where else would it be? Noah found it in the EYES of the Lord! Jesus IS our throne, even as He is the King of kings who sits on the throne at the right hand of the Father. So where do we find love? In the God who IS love! And where does God live? IN US! So where do we find love? In our hearts! In God's heart, which beats with love in our chests. And since it's in us it can come out of us. It can come out THROUGH us. We can live Jesus' (real) abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life by resting in Him and letting Him live His own life (of love) in and through and as us! In my circle, when it's time to hug it out, we say, "Bring it in for the real thing." Because it's that loving embrace. The same loving embrace that Jesus gave us when His arms were open wide on the cross. That's not fake. That's as real as it gets. LOVE is as real as it gets!