What Else? part 3
Its all about love. Because what else could it be about? What else matters? What else is life for? Life is for living. God matters, and people matter. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. Loving God by letting Him first love us. When we were yet sinners--DEAD in our trespasses and sins--God showed His love for us by giving His life for us. By giving His life TO us. So that we could have it. So that we could experience Jesus' abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life as HE lives it in us, and through us, and as us. That's what mattered to God on the cross. (And really, since the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, that's ALL that has EVER mattered to God.) In the garden of Eden Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God because they ate from the wrong tree and moved out of the innocence that was the finished work of the garden and into the judgment of good and evil. They ate from the tree of death and on the day that they did so they surely died. They lost sight of what was important. Their natural eyes were opened, and they began to see all of the surface stuff. All of the outward actions. They believed the lie that says you have to do in order to be. You don't do in order to be. You do BECAUSE you be. You don't love in order to GET love. You love because you ARE loved. Because you are LOVE. Jesus said what I'm trying to say a lot better than I can: "Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment" (John 7:24). And, by the way, JUDGING righteous judgment doesn't mean getting up on your high horse and trying to prove that you are more righteous than someone else. That's not strength. Judging righteous judgment means, "To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD" (Psalm 149:9). And that judgment that we judge--or execute--is the judgment that the Father proclaimed upon the Son what God raised Jesus from the dead. The judgment is not death to sinners. Sinners were already dead before the cross. The judgment was life, and that more abundantly. A life sentence. And what is life but love? A life sentence is a LOVE sentence. So when we execute the righteous judgment of life... we do so by loving people! We show people God without even having to say His name (just by saying His WORD, which is Jesus, which is love). We make the important things important by focusing on them. By setting our affection on things above (or WITHIN, the heart) and not on things on the earth. Not judging by appearance. I've found that most of the time--almost ALL of the time--when people talk... they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know the whole story. So I don't let what people say bother me. Its like water off a duck's back. When you know the truth--that you are unconditionally loved by the God who IS love--its easy to ignore the lie. Again, you don't have to do in order to be. You already be. And when you know what you be, you do BECAUSE you be. What you know is what you throw. You can't give what you don't have. And you can't be someone you're not. God showed us who we are by showing us who HE is. Jesus, God in the flesh, love in a body. He gave us everything we needed by giving us Himself. His Spirit. His love. What else?