The Resurrection part 4
Here's what we're talking about: Resurrection. Number 386 in Strong's Greek Concordance. "A standing up again, that is, (literally) a resurrection from death, or (figuratively) a (moral) recovery (of spiritual truth)." I love that. Because THE Spiritual truth--the ultimate truth of the universe--is that God is love and He loves you. Love is what picks us up when we stumble and fall. It is through love, because of love, by love, that we CAN stand up again. We've probably all heard Proverbs 24:16, "For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief." But the thing I want to say about it is... love is what makes the just man just. We fall down, and love lifts us up. And, I believe, eventually we will understand what Jude 1:24 is talking about, "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy." We will break the cycle of falling and getting up, falling and getting up, falling and getting up... and we will let God--let LOVE--HOLD us up. Because when God--when LOVE--is holding you up, nothing can drag you down. You will truly be able to see all things under your feet, and operate in that truth. You'll be able to get over it, if I can say it another way. Walk in newness of life. Stand firm against whatever comes you way. Because we WILL go through stuff, but we don't have to let stuff go through us. We don't have to let stuff wreck us. We don't have to listen to the lie that the world shouts at the top of its lungs; not when we know the truth. When you know the truth you can ignore the lie. When you know you're alive--because you know and believe that you are loved by God, and you love Him back by loving others with that same love--you can stop acting like you're dead. Stop acting like you're on the "highway to hell." But I think we desperately need this moral recovery of the Spiritual Truth. You can't believe what you don't know. So even though the resurrection IS in your past--it happened 2,000 years ago on the cross, and really it happened before anything else happened because the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world--if you don't know that it happened you'll keep on acting like it hasn't happened. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the word of God. The Word. Which is Jesus. Which is love. That's what we stand up for. Love. That's what we stand up in. Love. Its all about love. Before the cross we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Because of the cross we are alive. Our sins have been forgiven, and forgotten, and washed away. They can't hold us back any more... if we don't let them. If we lay aside the sin and the weight that so easily besets us. It doesn't have to trip us up anymore. That old man is dead. A New Man has come forth. Come forth to live a life of love. To experience Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life as He lives His own life of love--loving others... giving away what He's got--in us, and through us, and as us. Letting the love inside come out by knowing and believing its in there. Standing up and loving people no matter what because we know the truth. Not laying in a grave as if dead, but walking... living... by faith. Faith in God. Faith in love!