Its all about the heart. Because its all about love. And God's heart in our chests beats with love. That's why, and how, He purified us. He gave us one new heart. His heart. We went through the fire and our bonds were burned away. The flesh was cut away. The circumcision made without hands. So that what was hidden deep down inside could be revealed. So that the love of God that's inside could come out. Naturally. See, being purified isn't about going from "bad" to "good." Good and evil were on the same tree of death. There's something better than swinging from branch to branch. There's something better than trying to earn God's love through our behavior. There's a more excellent way. And His name is Jesus. Jesus IS the Way, the Truth, and the Life, right? Its not us trying (and failing) to live His life. Nobody can live Jesus' life except Jesus. Its about Him living His own abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life in us, and through us, and as us. Its about that pure, incorruptible seed of love growing in us until it gets to be too big to keep inside. Its about us loving each other because God loves us. That's what it means to be purified--knowing and believing that God loves us, and loving each other with that same love. That's the gospel: God is love and He loves you. God is love and He loves THROUGH you. That's the New Commandment: Loving each other as Jesus loves us. Receiving and releasing the love of God. Receiving it (Him) BY releasing it. Experiencing it by sharing it. Giving it away. Giving OURSELVES away. Laying our lives down for our friends, and understanding that we only have friends, and people who don't know they are our friends yet. Giving everything we are and everything we have without expecting anything. And its that lack of expectation that makes it pure. Because you can't control what other people do. You can only control what you do. Like when God told Ezekiel, "Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They're hardened rebels" (Ezekiel 2:7 MSG). Its your job to love people. What they do with it is not your concern. If you only love because you're expecting to get something out of it, or see some certain result, then what you're doing is not really love at all. Because love is never about getting. Because love is giving. Let me quote our main verse for this Rant series again: 1 Peter 1:22, "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." The proof of the pudding is in the eating. You, in a sense, purify your own soul when you know and believe and obey the truth. That truth that you HAVE been purified. The truth that you ARE loved. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give what you do have. So you have to understand that you ARE loved before you CAN love. You have to BE purified before you can purify yourself. You BE transformed into what you've already BEEN transformed into by the renewing of your mind. By using the gift you've been given. Sharing it. Giving it away. Loving people no matter what. Fearlessly. Without any thought, or concern, about what other people think or do. It doesn't matter what they do. It matters what YOU do. And what you CAN do is love people out of a pure heart!

Three Hebrews boys went into the fire. And only their bonds were burned off. Because there was a fourth man in the fire. And He looked like the Son of God. Because He WAS the Son of God. Because God IS the purifying, consuming fire. Nebuchadnezzar thought the fire would destroy Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But, like Joseph before them... "But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (Genesis 50:20). And, really, that's where you get to when you've been purified. You get to that place of maturity. Where it doesn't matter what someone else does, or what they mean to do. You stop taking things personally, even if they are personal. You rise above all the noise and you begin to hear the still, small voice of God saying (with every beat of His heart in your chest), "I love you, I love you, I love you." You stop fighting against things and you start turning the other cheek. You stop letting things get into you, and you start letting what's REALLY in you come out. You begin to love one another fervently out of a pure heart. When you understand how big, and how good, and how all-powerful love is, you see that there's not room for anything else. The consuming fire consumes everything BUT itself (Himself). God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all, right? And as He is, so are we in this world, right? So WE are light and there is no darkness in US at all. We have been washed with the Word (which is Jesus, which is love). We have been purified. Transformed. Conformed into the image of God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. That's our true identity. That's the inner man. The hidden man of the heart. And when we know and believe the love of God... when we receive it and release it... when we receive it BY releasing it... that's when the hidden man of the heart is no longer hidden. That's when we come out of that fire smelling like a rose. The process may have been a bit uncomfortable, but we know it was for our good. ALL things work together for our good. Even (especially?) the things that seem the worst. Being sold into slavery by your brothers, for example. But a setback is really just a setup for a comeback. And who doesn't love a good comeback story? So I think what I'm trying to say is: Don't get discouraged. Don't get down on yourself. You ARE who you're supposed to be. And while it might not seem like you're exactly where you're supposed to be all the time... its a never-ending life-long journey into the heart of the matter. Which is the heart. Like I said before, God's heart beating in your chest. Beating with love. Love is the incorruptible seed that Jesus planted in us with His death on the cross. And that seed has (and is, and will continue to) bear fruit. The fruit of the Spirit. Which is love. He showed us what love really is by laying His life down for us. Giving us everything He had and everything He is. So that we can have it. So that we can, in turn, give it away. That's what pure love looks like--giving everything you are and everything you have. And not worrying about getting anything back. I think that's where I'm going to be tomorrow: Loving people no matter what. Loving people anyway. Because that's how God loved us. He didn't put any demands on us. He just loved the hell out of us. And by doing so... He purified us!

The fire burned away the bonds of the three Hebrew boys. Think about that for a minute. Nothing even got singed except for the thing that was holding them back. In other words, "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Corinthians 3:17). Where the consuming fire that is God is... there is purification. Everything else is burned away, and only love remains. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." And light drives out darkness simply by shining. Not by attacking. The fire purifies us simply by consuming. Not by burning. Nothing God has ever done or will ever do was meant to harm us. What kind of Father wants to harm His beloved Son? And, of course, I'm not saying God never makes us uncomfortable. Growth doesn't come from our comfort level. It doesn't come from settling on where we're at. And life is all about learning and growing. Learning to love as we learn how we are loved. Growing in love as the love in us grows. And seeds grow when you water them. Plants grow when they have sunlight (Sonlight). Love feeds on love. Remember Moses and the burning bush? The thing that was significant about that bush was that it burned but wasn't consumed. Because the fire burns... and it grows. It doesn't consume itself (Himself), it consumes everything else. That's how loved drives out hate: Not by an eye for eye, but by turning the other cheek. And that's when love is purified in us--when we can let people be who they are and love them anyway. When we don't expect anything from them. When we don't need them to act (or react) in a certain way. When we can just embrace them, and love the hell out of them. That's what it means to destroy our enemies by making them our friends. Laying our lives down for our friends. Pure love. Fervent love. From a pure heart. A heart that is open to love. Not a heart that is closed down in order to "protect itself." If you are protecting yourself FROM love... well, you've missed the whole point of the whole thing. Love is life. Life is love. To live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other. And I get it, sometimes love hurts. But what really hurts is the expectation we put on love. "I love you, why don't you love me back?" And really we mean, "I love you, why don't you do what I want you to do?" But that's not love at all. Love doesn't demand its (HIS) own way. Love doesn't try to get. Because love IS giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. Love is giving everything you have and everything you are and not worrying about how it will be received. Just do what you can do. Just be who you are. Your bonds have been burned away. There's nothing holding you back from being who you are. Who you REALLY are. Who you are in Christ. Which is who Christ is in you. God in the flesh. Love in a body. God in YOUR flesh. Love in YOUR body. You HAVE been purified. That's a done deal. That doesn't need to happen. That already happened. And because of that--because you've been through the fire--you can light others on fire. Again, not trying to harm them, or burn them, but lighting them up with love. Filling them up with what you've been filled with. Giving them what you've got. Loving them with the love that you've been loved with!

When I think of something being purified, I immediately go to the picture of gold. Of all the imperfections being burned out of it until it is, well, pure. But notice that we started with something precious. Being purified does not mean going from something less than to something more than. Being purified means letting what's real shine forth because everything else is burned away. Let's look at that familiar story in the book of Daniel to draw this picture even a little bit more clearly. I'm going to quote quite a little bit of it, but I want to use this for the main idea of this Rant series the next couple of days, so it should be ok. "And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God. Then Nebuchadnezzar came new to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them" (Daniel 3:23-27). One of my favorite stories as a kid. Because it had some action in it that even a kid could understand. Thrown into the fire, but not burned up. Pretty cool stuff. And then, as I got older it got even better. The Son of God right there in the midst with them. The only thing the fire touched were their bonds. They were in bondage until the fire burned it away. And they came out smelling like roses. Because the purification process--while sometimes it can feel uncomfortable, or even painful... especially when we are unwilling to let go of some of that stuff that we don't need--is just God redecorating His house. Getting rid of the junk. The stuff that doesn't fit anymore. Stuff we thought we needed, or stuff we thought we wanted, that was doing more harm than good. And then what is left is what needed to be there--what WAS there, underneath it all--in the first place. See, I always say the problem is not us having stuff. The problem is stuff having us. Like that rich young ruler who was unwilling to sell what he had in order to give to the poor. When your stuff is more important than people... that's a problem. That's the kind of attitude that needs to be purified. That's when we need to be transformed (into what we've already been transformed into) by the renewing of our mind. By spending some time in the fire, if I can say it that way. And just so we're completely 100% clear, "...our God is a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29). Of course Jesus was in the fire. He IS the fire. LOVE is the fire that purifies us. Love is how God got rid of all those imperfections. He filled us up with Himself, with His love, until there wasn't room for anything else. He gave us HIS heart. The pure heart that beats with love!

I think this one might take a few days. Which, by the way, is why I started doing these daily Rants in five part series; sometimes you just need to stay in one place and focus on one thing for a little while. Be still and know that He is God, right? Be still and know that God is love. And that's where we're going to start when we're talking about being purified. That's probably where we'll end too, with Jesus (love) being the Alpha and Omega. But anyways, let's get started. 1 Peter 1:22, "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." Did you catch that? The thing that needed to be purified--the thing that HAS BEEN purified--was the heart. David knew this. He wrote, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit in me" (Psalm 51:10). And that was the man after God's own heart. Literally. He was AFTER it. He wanted it. And then in Ezekiel we see it a few times. I'll pick one: "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). And I want to point out that God promised THEM (us) ONE new heart. HIS heart. The heart that beats with love. The pure heart. Not just God with us, but God WITHIN us. That's what happened on the cross when Jesus was lifted up from the earth and drew all men unto (into) Himself. He planted Himself in us. Planted the incorruptible seed of love. The seed that grows and grows and grows until it is too big to keep inside. Too good to keep to ourselves. And watch this: Love feeds on love. That's how it (HE) grows. That's how it (HE) appears to us, and in us, and through us. When people love each other. That's the Word (Jesus, love) made flesh. That's charity--love in action. And that's how we obey the truth. Because the truth is... God is love, and He loves you. God is love, and He loves THROUGH you. So obeying the truth is about being religious. Its not about trying (and failing) to jump through the hoops of the Law. Its not about trying to be someone you're not in order to get something you think you haven't got. Its about knowing the truth, and letting the truth you know set you free and make you free by believing it. By walking by faith. Acting in love. Unfeigned love. And that word, "unfeigned," is number 505 in Strong's Greek Concordance and it means, "sincere: - without dissimulation (hypocrisy)." Which, to me, is important. Because I guess there might be something to say for "faking it til you make it." Like Thumper said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." But there's a more excellent way. A way in which we truly care for one another. Sacrifical, agape, laying your life down for your friends, giving everything you have and everything you are, LOVE. The love of God, in other words. The love that frees people from bondage (which is where I think I'm going to be tomorrow). The love that frees YOU from YOUR bondage when you give it away. Because it makes what is true... true for you. You HAVE been purified. Walk in love in order to experience that pure abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life... of love!

Truth is higher than fact. That's where I want to end this Rant series. Because the facts of the matter are what things look like. But we walk by faith, not by sight. And the truth of the matter is... God is love, and He loves you. God is love, and He loves THROUGH you. So no matter how bad it looks, that is the Rock that we stand on. God's love. The selfless, sacrifical love that IS God. God gave us everything He had and everything He is on the cross. Jesus didn't just give His life FOR us, He gave His life TO us. He literally laid His life down for us. That's the truth of the matter. The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. Our heavenly Father wanted the best for us, so He gave the best TO us. He gave HIMSELF to us. His name. His nature. His Spirit. His life. The abundant, everlating, eternal, Resurrection Life of love. A life of being loved, and loving others with that same love. That's what the Holy Spirit is all about--He is the Spirit of Truth that leads and guides us into all truth. The truth of who we really are; God's beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. The truth of who God really is; a loving heavenly Father that would literally rather die than be without us. So no matter how bleak things look... there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. The light of the world. The light that Jesus is. The light that WE are. On the cross the light shined ON us, so that we could see clearly. See God clearly. See ourselves clearly. See LOVE clearly. Because that's the truth... that's who God is. That's who we are. He is love. And as He is, so are we in this world. WE are love. The living embodiment of love. The Word made flesh. Jesus lives in us--God in the flesh, love in a body... God in OUR flesh, love in OUR body--and He lives THROUGH us. The light shined ON us, and now it shines OUT of us! It shines THROUGH us. LOVE shines through us. Because loves lives within us. A love that is too big, and too good, to keep to ourselves. A love that is life changing. Both for us, as we let God love us (usually through other people), and for those we come into contact with as we love them. I see it all day every day, man. People are DESPERATE for love. But we don't think we can have it. We look at the "facts" and we think we don't deserve it. Like the carrot and the stick, its always just out of reach. Like the man under the Law there's always one thing we lack. And as long as we believe that, we'll always be chasing out. Looking for an outside source of love when it comes from within. And I know I just said God usually loves us through other people. But that's the deep calling out to the deep. That's the light in me recognizing the light in you. That's love feeding on love and growing and growing into an out of control Holy Ghost wildfire. An unstoppable fire that consumes everything in its (HIS) path except itself (Himself). A love that, as Logan and I always say, "Can't stop won't stop." So even when--especially when--the facts look bleak... when it looks dark... that's when the light can shine the brightest. That's when the truth about God's love steps in and reveals everything to be in Divine Order. The truth that we don't need love. We have love. We ARE love. Because we are loved!

God is love and He loves you. That's the truth of the matter. That's as simple as I can make it. And simplicity is important. Because any time we make things too complicated, the truth gets lost. Look at 2 Corinthians 11:3, "But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." Its so easy to get things twisted. To focus on things that really aren't important. To give power to things that really have no power at all. Its so easy to believe the lie, especially when you hear it over and over and over again. And that's what the world does: It screams the lie at the top of its lungs. Just like when the serpent hissed in Eve's ear. "You're not good enough. But if you do this, this, and this... someday you might just become what you want to be." And here's the most tragic part: the church world, in large part, has adopted this lie as its own personal truth. Man-centered, performance-based religion that tries to get you to do in order to be. Guys. We don't do in order to be. We do BECAUSE we be. What's inside is what comes out. Always. Or, I should say, what you BELIEVE is inside always comes out. Hurting people hurt people. But loved people love people. Knowing and believing the truth is the only way to truly live. Because to live is to love and to love is to live. You can't have one without the other. You can't do one without the other. They are the same thing. So when I said "God is love and He loves you" I could have just as easily said, "God is life and He lives in you." And when you know He is living IN you, that's when you can live IN Him! Dwelling in love is how we dwell in God, right? Not dwelling ON it, as if its something we don't have but wish we did, but dwelling IN it. Because it (HE) is what we DO have. It (HE) is who we are! That's the truth. We don't need to do anything in order to be like God. We were created in His image. And then on the cross we were conformed to the image of His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased. So that we might know who we are. And in knowing, believe it. And in believing it... BE IT. You can't believe what you don't know. But WHEN you know... that's when the rubber meets the road. Let me say it like this, simply, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:1-2). And this appearing... I believe that's God appearing to us, and in us, and through us. I believe that happens when the Word is made flesh. When love as an idea becomes charity--love in action. When someone loves us, and when we love each other. That's the truth. That's how simple it is. That's when we know who we really are. Because that IS who we really are. That's why we were created. To be loved, and to love each other. God is love and He loves you. God is love... and He loves THROUGH you!

The truth is the truth whether you know it or not. But if you don't know it... it doesn't really do much for you. So when we see Jesus' words in John 8:32, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," the first part is every bit as important as the second part. Ye shall KNOW the truth. Now let me link that up with one of my favorite verses (and, yes, I do realize that they are ALL my favorite verses), "And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16). I love this verse because it is past tense. John wasn't saying we NEED TO know and believe the love of God. He was reminding us that we HAVE known it and believed it. You can't believe something you don't know. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word (Jesus, love) of God. So first God--the truth about love--had to tell us, or show us, that truth. He did this on the cross. "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). When we didn't know who we were or who God was... when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, looking for love in all the wrong places... Jesus shined the light of the world. So we could see clearly. So we could KNOW the truth, and in knowing... be made free. On the cross God conformed us to the image of His Son. Jesus. God in the flesh. Love in a body. We always had God's love. The ultimate truth of the universe that God is love and He loves you has always and will always be true. Nothing can change that. Nothing you do, or don't do. Because its not about what you do. Its about who you are. And who God is. God IS love. There is nothing else He COULD do, even if He wanted to. Which He doesn't. He wanted to love you so bad that He created you. He loved you so much that He would literally rather die than be without you. He wanted you to know the truth. So He said it--Jesus said there is no greater love that a man can have than to lay his life down for his friends--and then He went to the cross and did it. He put His money where His mouth was, so to speak. He made absolute sure we understood what love was--again, laying your life down... giving everything you have and everything you are--by loving us. By shining that light of love so that we could see clearly. See HIM clearly. See LOVE clearly. We love because He first loved us. We love Him by loving each other. We dwell in love by dwelling in Him, because He dwells in us. We CAN fill ourselves to overflowing with His love because He first filled us with it. With Himself. See, Jesus didn't just give His life FOR us, He gave His life TO us. So that we could have it. So that we could experience it by letting Him live it in us, and through us, and as us. That's how the truth that we know makes us free. We've already been freed. Jesus unlocked the door to the prison, if I can say it that way. But as long as you think the door is still locked, you'll either keep trying to devise ways to escape, or you'll just give up and stay in bodage. But if you know the door is unlocked, that's when you can walk through the door. A free man with a clean conscious. Free to live. Free to love. To let God love you, and to love others with that same love. That's what life is. That's what the truth is!

Here's the truth, as simple as I can put it: God is love and He loves you. Anything that disagrees is a lie. And anything you believe that disagrees is sin. That's why 1 John 3:9 is true, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Get it? Sin is unbelief. So by definition a believer cannot sin. How could you? And, listen, I'm not talking about questions. I'm not talking about needing God to prove Himself. God has never been afraid to prove Himself. Remember when Gideon needed a sign (or two) in Judges chapter 6? That didn't scare God. He was happy to give His servant what he needed. That's what strength is: doing what is necessary. Like I always say, "Gotta do what you gotta do." And if faith comes by hearing--and it does--and if the Word (singular) of God is Jesus... love... then I don't think God has ANY problem repeating Himself. He'll say "Let there be light" all night long. He'll say, "I love you" with every beat of His heart in your chest. Let me say it another way: "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). And its my personal opinion that this verse says a lot about the so-called "doctrine of eternal torment otherwise known as hell" but I'm going to leave that alone for right now. For now I just want to say... God is in no hurry. In fact, He got what He wanted on the cross. All throughout the Old Testament He kept saying, "I want to be your God and I want you to be my people." Practically begging the people of Israel to let Him love them. Then, as He was lifted up on the cross Jesus drew ALL MEN unto Himself. INTO Himself. And He planted Himself into all men. God was in Christ on the cross reconciling us to Himself, right? That's the truth; we HAVE been reconciled. What needed to happen... happened. God proved Himself. Proved His love for us by giving His life to us. Dying for us when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We believed the lie--that says we have to do in order to be--and killed ourselves trying to be someone we're not. But God would rather die than be without us. We were hiding from Him, afraid of getting in trouble. Afraid that God was going to "get us." Guys... on the cross God got us! But not in a negative way. In the best way. He got us in Him. He got Himself in us. He bridged the gap that WE had created by running FROM Him instead of TO Him. He drew us back to Himself by telling us the truth. By giving us something--someONE, Himself, LOVE--to believe in. By GIVING us what we were trying to earn. Because you can't earn it. Love is a gift. It is freely given. It must be received. Recieved and released. Because love is giving. You "get" it by giving it. You experience it when you share it. And since God wants us to love each other, but you can't give what you don't have, He had to first love us. He gave us what we needed. The ultimate truth of the universe: The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. God loves you. He gave you everything you need. He gave you Himself. His love. His Spirit. His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life. He gave us everything He had and everyhing He is. Because He wanted us to have it. Because He wanted us to share it!

I accidentally went a little ways down this rabbit hole in the last Rant series, and I figure I should probably go ahead and take a few days to really dig into it. Like my pastor always says, "Preach it until your heart is empty on it." And you guys know that I think the ultimate truth of the universe is found in John 3:35, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." In other words, "God is love and He loves you." To me, that's it. That's the Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the ending. That's the bottom line, and the top line. Most important, and final Word. God is love... and He loves you. That's the ultimate truth of the universe. And when we know (and believe) that truth... it changes everything. Because when we know that God the Father has given all things into our hand... that's when we can stop running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get something. That's when we can stop looking for love in all the wrong places. We can stop trying to earn something that can't be earned. We can begin to receive and release what we've been given. We can, well, let me quote Ephesians 4:24-25 again: "And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another." Did you catch that? When you know the truth it sets you free and makes you free. When you know the truth you can ignore the lie. And when you know the truth... you can speak the truth! You receive it and release it. You receive it BY releasing it. Let me say it another way: "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). We were (all) reconciled. When Jesus was lifted up on the cross He drew all men unto Himself... and now we can let everybody know that. We can share that wonderful truth that we know. Because the ministry of reconciliation is NOT us trying to reconcile people to God. We just read that HE already did that for us. HE reconciled us to HIMSELF. All we need to do is let people know what happened 2,000 years ago on an old rugged cross. This idea that we need to do something in order to be saved... guys! Jesus is our Savior. He did all of the heavy lifting. Its not by our works, but by our faith in HIS works. The finished work of the cross. That's the truth of the matter. God took care of everything that needed taking care of. He gave us the ability to "put on" the new man. And I love that phrase "that ye put on" in Ephesians because it is number 1746 in Strong's Greek Concordance and it means, "in the sense of sinking into a garment." We have already been clothed with the righteous and holy garment. We simply need to sink into it. Get comfortable wearing it. BE who we are. BE transformed by the renewing of our minds. By letting the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us. Because the truth of the matter is: God is love and He loves you. Always has and always will. And that truth, that love, has equipped and empowered us to be who we are. To tell the truth, and to BE the truth! We are loved... and we are love!