Beloved part 1
I feel like I've Ranted on this subject before, and maybe even called it by the same name. But, if so, here we go again. Because I think its important. I read somewhere that we accept the love we think we deserve. And that's a problem because we are with ourselves 100% of the time. We know all of the bad, awful, rotten things we've done because we were literally right there doing them. So we don't think we deserve good things. And we settle. We get used to things NOT going our way and we trick ourselves into thinking that's actually what we deserve. So we accept it. We learn to live with it. "Its not so bad." Even when it is. But I've also heard it said that, "You've got to stand for something, or you'll fall for anything." And what I choose to stand for... is love. Where I choose to stand... is on the Rock. The solid foundation that everything else is built on. Because if you start with love, everything else is icing on the cake. If you start with love then you have everything you will ever need. That's why Jesus--God in the flesh, love in a body--is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the beginning and the end. It starts with love, and it ends with love. And love is also everything in between. If you're open to it. If you guard your heart--which doesn't mean closing it down, but instead it means keeping it open. You're heart is protected when it is receiving and releasing the love of God. That's its purpose. That's what its there for. So. My point is... God had two sons. The first Adam (Adam) and the last Adam (Jesus). But one of them didn't know who he was. And that got Adam (and all of humanity) into trouble. The Message Bible says it like this, "Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life" (Romans 5:18). Adam ate from the tree of death (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) and got us into trouble with sin and death. Before the cross we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And Adam ate from that tree because he was looking for love in all the wrong places. He thought he had to earn something that can't be earned. He thought he had to DO in order to be. And if he got enough information (knowledge) about good and evil, he thought he could do good, not do evil, and be rewarded. He didn't know he was loved. Jesus, on the other hand, is the BELOVED Son of God. Not because God loved Jesus and didn't love Adam. Of course God loved Adam. Adam just didn't know it. Didn't believe it. Jesus, on the other hand, let Himself BE loved of God. He knew who His heavenly Father was. He knew He was loved. And that love from the Father will always empower His Son. In order TO love we have to first know and believe that we ARE loved. Because you can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. So the trick is to believe that the truth is... true. The trick is to let yourself be loved. To forget all your hangups. To lay aside the sin (unbelief) and the weight that so easily besets us. To know the truth, and let it set us free and make us free. Because where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Freedom. Freedom FROM sin and death, and freedom TO live and love!