The Risen Lord part 4
If we died with Jesus--if His death was our death--then we also rose with Jesus. His life is now our life. It's not something we try to do. I think that's where we get lost so easily. Life isn't about trying to change, or trying to be someone you're not. Life is about living. And we know that to live is to love. To love is to live. So what it means to let God LIVE in us is to let LOVE live in us. To let love fill us to overflowing--through the Holy Spirit, our love receptor--so that it flows out of us like a river of living water. And that's why Jesus came, right? "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). Abundant life. And what makes life abundant? Love! Look at John 10:10 in the NLT, "The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life." A rich and satisfying life. I believe so many people are so unsatisfied because they spent their three T's (Time, Talent, Treasure) trying to "fit in." Trying to do what society told them they were "supposed to do." That doesn't leave us rich or satisfied. It's leaves us poor and unsatisfied. Poor, because we gave it all we got but we found that there was always "one thing we lacked." And unsatisfied because no matter how hard we tried to grab that carrot, the stick kept moving it just out of reach. Guys... that's death. That's the spiritual death that Adam experienced on the day that he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Always trying. Always working. Trying to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. Working and laboring to earn something that can't be earned. Trying to get enough knowledge about good and evil to stop doing evil and do good. But Jesus didn't come to deal between good and evil. He came to curse the fig tree--because it couldn't produce any fruit--and bring us to the true paradise of God, New Jerusalem, where there are not two trees, but only one: The Tree of Life. He didn't come to make "evil" people "good." He came to make dead people alive. By dying, both for us and as us, and rising again, both for us and as us. By feeding us from the Tree of Life that HE is. And you know what the fruit of the Tree of Life is, right? It's the fruit of the Spirit. It's love. Love is what brought us out of death and into life. Love is literally the difference between life and death. If you don't love your brother, you abide in death. But if you know and believe the love of God--know and believe that you ARE loved--then you know that you have been raised from the dead. You know that you ARE loved, and that means you CAN love. You can obey the New Commandment, which is to love one another as Jesus loves you. You can receive it and release it. You can experience--and enjoy--the abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of Jesus (which is the gift of God) by letting Jesus live it in you, and through you, and as you!