To Seek part 1
The more I think about things in the upside-down view of the Kingdom--you know, lose your life to save it, first will be last and last first, and all that--the more I realize how backwards we have it. Like, we think WE need to do stuff. When, in truth, Jesus did it all. ALL. He finished the work. He drew us into Himself, and planted Himself in us. He got rid of the (sense of) separation that man had put in place when Adam hid from the presence of God. The presence was still there, of course, because God had promised to never leave us nor forsake us. But OUR eyes (the natural eyes) were opened when Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the tree of death. God was still there. Nothing had changed on His end. But we were hiding from Him because we THOUGHT He was mad. Colossians 1:21 says it like this, "And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled." We THOUGHT we were His enemy. And even then HE reconciled US. Because He was never mad AT us. Because He has always been mad ABOUT us. Head over heels crazy in love with us. Willing to die rather than be without us. But we still have this idea that God is distant and WE have to do something to close that gap. It's that man-centered, performance based religion. "If I do good I'll be rewarded. If I get enough knowledge about good and evil I can do good, stop doing evil, and be like God." That's the LIE that the serpent hissed into Eve's ear though. It's not about what you do. It's about who you are. Because what you do flows from who you are. Behavior modification cannot produce a real, lasting change. Because at the end of the day you are who you believe you are. And if you believe you're a sinner... no matter how hard you try to be a saint... a sinner's gonna sin. A smoker's gonna smoke. A drinker's gonna drink. It's not until you stop trying to be someone you're not and find out who you REALLY are that all of those old (false) things fall away. A believer CANNOT sin. So once you get saved by grace (and by the way, THAT happened 2,000 years ago) you aren't a sinner anymore. You're a new creation. Let me use my key verse to try to hit home what I'm trying to say in this Rant series: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). Did you catch that? Jesus came seeking us! But we always think we need to seek Him. As if He's hiding. Or somewhere far away. As if, "Getting closer to God" is a noble quest that we undertake. Guys... He lives in us. There is no separation between us and God. As He is, so are we in this world. There's no "getting" closer to Him. What there is, is revelation knowledge of what it MEANS to be in Him and Him in us. What there is, is UNDERSTANDING of the things that we know deep down in our hearts. We know God loves us. "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." But we don't yet understand truly and fully what the love means. I can say, "God loving us means we can love each other." And to me it's that simple. But it's also incredibly vast. So big that getting to the heart of the matter IS a life-long journey. A never-ending, eternal, everlasting, abundant, Resurrection Life-long journey. But, again, it's not us seeking Him. It's Him revealing Himself to us. HE came to seek AND to save. And He found us, right where we were at. Found us, and filled us up with Himself. Opened our SPIRITUAL eyes so that we could see clearly. Not see what we're missing, but see what we've got!