Category: throne room thoughts

What Grace Communicates…

My 21-year-old daughter had to write an essay for one of her classes.  It is so beautifully written (and no that isn’t mom bias!!) that I thought I would share it with all of you.  Enjoy!

THE RADICAL LOVE OF JESUS – WHAT GRACE COMMUNICATES

The most significant transforming truth I’ve come to understand this past year and a half has been the radical love of God. It’s a simple reality that I’ve claimed to know and encounter and yet something I’ve realized is that I knew absolutely nothing about the radical love of our Jesus. We often take the spotlight off of how radical it is and make it about ourselves. We make it about our sin, and our separation, and our need for a bridge back to God. But the crushing reality the Holy Spirit brought me to is that the cross was never about my lack or separation. It was always about a bold display of love. A love that cries out “YES!” to His people, “THIS IS WHO YOU ARE TO ME. THIS IS WHO YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.” Never once was it about a wrath with which I have been taught that my God was bubbling. 

As long as I can remember, I saw the cross as a place where God poured out His judgment, His anger. But how can my God be both consumed by love and also wrath? The two oppose entirely one another! I have been taught that sin was so offensive to this holy, all-powerful God that He could not enter or be near it. How ridiculous is that? How can an all-powerful, strong God not be near something as little as my sin- when Romans describes sin as just ‘missing the mark’! How can such a loving God be offended by my merely missing the mark? That sounds like a sensitive man, a man who isn’t strong at all. I’ve come to learn that isn’t God whatsoever. My earthly father is never offended when I miss it! He embraces me even more, pouring the truth of who I actually am into me. I can’t imagine how much more my heavenly Father does that to me! Not only is He not offended by sin, but I also go as far as to say that He doesn’t even care about it. And I say that because the truth is: He cares about our hearts. The law, the cross- it was all to point out that our hearts were far from Him after the garden, but His was never far from us.

The garden has become one of my favorite stories. Holy Spirit has completely shifted my view of it! I had been so used to hearing an angry God call out to Adam after he had ‘sinned,’ “WHERE ARE YOU?!” When what happened was Adam hid, and a loving, tender Father cried out, “My son? Where have you gone? You are far from me!” All Adam did was miss the mark of his original design! In my relearning of this story, I found the word ‘sin’ isn’t even in it. The word used in the garden story is ‘disobeyed’ which is the word shemah in Hebrew. It’s ‘to listen.’ Nowhere in this story is God angry towards any ‘sin.’ In fact, He is overwhelmed by a passionate, zealous love that says, “I WILL NOT LOSE YOU TO YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU FAILED TO LISTEN.” The Father never separated Himself from humanity out of anger or disgust toward his son’s now presumed ‘unholiness.’ God sought humanity out! God went looking for Adam because the view of the son had not changed. What changed was our view of the Father. Here is where we see a passionate love story unfold.

When I came to these conclusions, my theology as a whole was on tilt. How then did the law, the wild stories from the Old Testament fit in with all this??? For if my God is the ‘same yesterday, today and forever,’ how could He be angry in the beginning stories of the Bible and pure love after a day of judgment toward His son? He couldn’t. So I had to go searching out what wrath and anger meant because those are words used in scripture! Here began my journey of grace- my journey of actually understanding the radical love of Jesus.

As I was reading up on this, seeking out, essentially, who God is- I discovered the meaning behind the word ‘wrath.’ I found the word used most often in the New Testament is the word orge, which means, ‘any strong passion.’ It’s the origin of the English words, ‘orgy’ and ‘orgasm.’ I would say those are definitely not words having to do with anger! I would even say the latter has to do with a response of overflowing love towards another person! I read a book by a man named Steve McVey called Beyond an Angry God. In his book, he describes ‘wrath’ like this: 

‘If a small child picked up a snake and his dad ran toward him screaming, grabbed him up and was slapping his hand, the child would perceive it as anger but in actuality, what he would be experiencing would be “fierce love.”‘

I discovered that the word wrath or orge is a violent love towards anything that harms us- such as sin and death. I called my mom, absolutely undone by everything I was learning. I felt as though I had no idea what the actual purpose of the life of Christ was until this very moment. She shared with me that the root word of orge is orego. It means ‘to stretch oneself out to touch or grasp something.’ This is what Jesus did toward us! The radical love of Jesus stretched Himself out (on the cross) to grasp us! Another meaning of orego is, “to yearn after, to desire, to stretch toward (to pull towards). “The Father in His love for us, desired us and stretched toward us (through Jesus), pulling us to Himself.”

Writing all of this has me wholly undone yet again. I find myself in tears as the reality of the garden married to the reality of the cross comes to settle within my heart. I have come to know the heart of the radical love of Jesus. It’s Hebrews 12:9, “His jealousy over us burns like fire.” It’s Hebrews 2:6, “Somewhere in the scriptures it is written, “What is it about the human species that God cannot get them out of his mind? What does he see in the son of man, that so captivates his gaze?” It’s God leaving the garden with Adam. It’s the radical, “YES! YOU ARE MINE!” of the cross! It’s the law fulfilling the emptiness within itself- crying out for an example of how to actually reach God and thus leading us to the realization we never lost the relationship with Him! 

This long journey has offended my mind and my theology. This truth has unraveled me completely! I feel like Paul, “Overwhelmed by what grace communicates, I bow my knees in awe before the Father.” (Eph. 3:14 Mirror Bible) My heart cry is now, “The secret is out! His cherished love dream now unfolds in front of our very eyes.” (Eph. 1:9 Mirror Bible) Grace communicates my origin. Grace communicates that I am the very dream of the Creator. Grace communicates I never lost right standing with God. Grace is not an excuse for me to do as I please but causes my heart to shemah- to listen and respond to all He is and says. This is grace. This is the radical love of Jesus.

Mankind never had a sin nature

Mankind has only ever had ONE nature… the nature of God (Elohim – Father, Son, and Spirit). We weren’t born with a “sin nature” and then miraculously when we believed in Jesus, He took that nature out and gave us His nature! Although for years, that is what I believed and taught!!

Genesis 1:27: So God (Elohim – Father, Son & Holy Spirit) created man in His own image, in the image of God (Elohim – Father, Son, & Spirit) created He him; male and female He created them.

ALL mankind, male and female, were created in the image and likeness of God — in the NATURE of Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

Genesis 2:7: Then the LORD God (Yahweh Elohim) formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the Breath of Lives (plural indicating Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the man became a living being.

He (or really THEY – the Godhead, Elohim) breathed Their divine breath, breathed ALL that they are, Their very nature INTO man. One nature – God’s nature IN man!

Yes, man sinned… and still sins. But not because of a “sin nature!” We have only ever had the nature of the Father, Son, & Spirit. From the garden until today the problem hasn’t been a “sin nature” but rather man believing that he is something other than image and likeness, or the nature of God. And then his behavior flows out of who he believes himself to be. Just like God’s actions flow out of who He is… for example, He is love therefore He loves. David said it like this in 119:68: You are good and do good. 

Proverbs 23:7 says that as a man thinks in his heart so is he! The word thinks is the word sha’ar in Hebrew meaning to reason, to calculate, to estimate. It also means gatekeeper!

Adam didn’t pass on a sin nature to mankind. If that were true then Cain wouldn’t have had the choice to use his authority over sin. He would’ve simply been yielding to an inherent nature of sin But God said to Cain in Genesis 4:7 “…. sin lies at the door. And it’s desire is for you AND YOU SHOULD RULE (HAVE DOMINION) OVER IT!”

He did NOT say to Cain, “I wish you could rule over it Cain.” Or “I wish you had dominion like Adam once had, but unfortunately, now all you have is the sin nature that your father passed onto you.” NO! He reminded Cain that he indeed had authority over sin. In other words sin was not inherent in him! He reminded him of his true nature… likeness and image of God, with dominion and authority over sin.

Cain was the GATEKEEPER of his heart, of his entire being… He had the power to choose to walk in the nature of God or yield to a distorted image of himself (sin).

Wake up to who you’ve ALWAYS been — nature of Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, Their likeness and image, with dominion over ALL the works of Their hands and ALL things under your feet!! You don’t have nor have you ever had a sin nature! You are crowned with glory and honor!

No Penal Substitution

There is no coming judgment!  What a beautiful truth!  The entire world lives in fear of judgment from God. Feeling like they can never measure up or do enough to please God. And looking at us Christians only reinforces that belief.  Most of the church world feels like they need to please God because we really have no understanding of His grace.  We have presented Him to the world as a harsh, punitive judge requiring and demanding complete obedience, total service, 10% of our income, and 100% perfection when it comes to sin.  And when we don’t meet those demands we believe that He withholds from us His blessings, favor, righteousness, relationship and if we’re really “bad” He sends judgment upon us.. like sickness, disease, trouble, etc….so that we will turn to Him.  And if that doesn’t work and we never turn to Him then He sends us to a fiery place called Hell to be tormented and separated from Him FOREVER!

I can see why my friend Matt professes to be an atheist…. Not wanting anything to do with a god like that.  There is no love or kindness in that kind of god. But thankfully that is not our God!!  Our God is a good Father who has ALWAYS loved us. And I am on a mission to present Him to others as He truly is…. Kind, generous, forgiving, merciful, good and above all He is Love.

We’ve misunderstood Jesus as our Mediator and we’ve presented Him as one who goes between us and God trying to smooth things over when we mess up. But mediator is mesites in Greek and means an agent of something good!  I love that! Jesus came and revealed to us what a Good Father we have.  He came to show us what His goodness looked like… that He desired us and was so passionate about us that He sent Jesus to reveal who He is and then was personally present in Christ on the cross reconciling ALL of us back to Him.  Jesus was the FULL expression of God’s goodness.

We also are the FULL expression of His goodness…. We are agents of goodness just like Jesus. This message on No Penal Substitution helps me to be an even better, more effective agent of His goodness.  Taking the truth to people like my friend Matt. Telling them that God never required the death of His Son for us.  And He never required sacrifices from us nor does He today. His love is unconditional and always has been!

But how can you give that grace, be that agent of goodness, without an understanding of what His grace and goodness looks like? And how can you be an agent of goodness if you think of Mediator in legal terms. In addition to being an Agent of goodness, 1 John 2:1 tells us He is also our Advocate that we have with (pros) the Father. Pros is face to face. We have an Advocate who has placed us face to face with the Father. I like the way the Mirror Bible translates that verse. _We have Jesus Christ who defines our likeness face to face with the Father! He is our parakletos (Advocate) the One who endorses our true identity, being both the Source and the reflection of the Father’s image in us! _

But we’ve taken that term and made it another legal term. I used to see it as Jesus having to remind the Father that I am righteous because He shed His blood for me.  Having to remind the Father to accept me!!  When all along He was endorsing my true identity and defining my likeness face to face with the Father. The penal atonement teaching has caused us to miss out on the truth in Scripture. Causing us to spend years trying to please a God who we thought was a Judge but who as it turns out was ALWAYS pleased with us.

We were taught that God was a demanding God requiring a sacrifice to appease Him. That He required sacrifices in the Old Testament to show them that the ultimate sacrifice would be His Son.  And then we read Scriptures like, Jesus was the propitiation for our sins (1 John 2:2 and 1 Jn 4:10).  And when you look up the word propitiation in those verses it is hilasmos in Greek and Strongs defines it as an offering to appease or satisfy an angry or offended party; an atoning sacrifice to an angry god.  What a terrible definition! All that does is reinforce your belief that He needed appeasement.

Yet in 1 John 4 it is used in connection with the Father’s love for us…. _Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  _That doesn’t sound like an angry God who needed appeasement. It sounds like a Father who runs passionately after His children, like the father we see in the parable of the prodigal son. And the root of the word propitiation, is “hilaskomai” meaning to have mercy on, to show favor to, to forgive.  That doesn’t sound anything like the first meaning! His Son was the expression of His mercy, His favor and His forgiveness.  Then you realize Jesus wan’t appeasing God…. He was appeasing us! We thought we needed a sacrifice. The cross was for our benefit!

God was not angry with man and therefore sent Jesus as a sacrifice to appease His anger. He didn’t change His mind about humanity after Jesus went to the cross. We had forgotten our true identity.  We had forgotten that we were made in the image and according to the likeness of God and given dominion over all things. Jesus came to reveal to us the love and union we have always had with the Father.  He didn’t give His life for God but rather gave His life to us, as us. He came as a sacrifice because we needed one, not because God did.  He came to put an end to the sacrificial system by being the once and for all sacrifice.

God’s heart has never desired sacrifices.  Man absorbed that teaching from the pagan nations that surrounded them. God didn’t need the cross, we did. The cross simply revealed the truth of what has always been true.  We have always been forgiven, always been righteous, always been holy, and always been saved according to 2 Timothy 1:9-10: who hath saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ before the world began (10) but is now made manifest (revealed) by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus was not God’s plan B for us.  He was not God’s reaction to the fall. Our redemption was the eternal plan and purpose of God. Jesus came in grace and truth, revealing the truth of who the Father is and who we are. And the law was given through Moses. It doesn’t say it was given BY God through Moses… just completely, successfully through Moses. The contrast in this verse in John is wonderful. The law was given, it was put into place through Moses. Through is dia which means completely, successfully through. Then it says THE grace and THE truth came dia… completely, successfully through Jesus.

The word came is the same word used in John 1:14 the Word BECAME flesh. The Word always was from eternity past and now REVEALED in the boundaries of time…revealed for us to behold. The same with grace and truth. Grace and truth didn’t just show up as an afterthought to the law that Moses gave. Grace and truth ALWAYS were from eternity past and NOW revealed completely, successfully for us to behold through the One who is FULL of grace and truth. Full, pleres in Greek….. full, abounding, complete, completely occupied with. Jesus is Grace. Jesus is Truth. And now the Word becoming flesh made grace and truth something they could see with their physical eyes.

David saw a glimpse of the grace and truth of the Father when he realized that sacrifices and burnt offerings were not what the Father required. He said in Psalm 40:6 Sacrifice and offerings You did not desire, my ears You have opened to burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require. David tells us that God opened his ears to the truth that He did not desire, didn’t delight or take pleasure in sacrifice and offerings. He said You weren’t pleased with them. He said, “You didn’t require them.”  In other words, He didn’t ask for them, inquire of them, demand or seek them.  How did we miss that?

He said God opened his ears. Opened means to dig, to bore or open. And to lay a banquet. God literally ripped open the hard ground in David’s ears and laid a banquet of His grace and truth!  David’s ears were full of Moses’ law… full of guilt, condemnation and shame. David constantly messed up!  And when he got this revelation, he had just messed up with Bathsheba… committing murder, adultery, covetousness, etc. The law condemned him. And YET he saw the truth of God’s desire regarding sacrifices and burnt offerings.

Another definition of desire is moved or bend down. God was not moved by sacrifices nor did He bend down toward them as they offered them. In Hebrew grace (chanan) means to bend or stoop in kindness. We have been taught and believe that the sacrifice of His Son was His grace in action…. His bending down toward us in favor and acceptance. Because His wrath had been appeased and now grace was offered to us.  We had no understanding of the word wrath or an understanding that because He is Love… pure Love, and because He is the Spirit of Grace… pure Grace, EVERYTHING He does flows out of that.

Wrath is orgeo in Greek meaning passion. But it’s the root of this word that I really like… it is “orego” which means stretching oneself out in order to touch or grasp something. It is a beautiful picture of Jesus stretching Himself out (on the Cross) in order to grasp us. It also means to yearn after, to desire, to stretch toward (to pull towards). The Father in His love for us, desired us and stretched toward us (through Jesus), pulling us to Himself. (1 Cor 5:19 -reconciling us to Himself).  God’s judgments were all satisfied in the passion….in the “wrath” of Jesus Christ….as He stretched Himself out on the Cross drawing ALL men to Himself and as the Father was personally present in Christ on the cross reconciling the world to Himself. There is nothing punitive in the word.

Our ears today have the hard ground of penal substitution. But God is doing with us like He did with David. He is ripping the hard ground of our ears with His love so that we can hear His grace and truth. So that we can hear what Jesus came to reveal… our Father’s nature and that we have always had that same nature. So, we can perceive and understand the consuming love God has for us. His unwillingness to let go of us.  His passion for us. As Baxter Kruger explains it is His eternal yes to us, a yes to life and fullness of joy for us that translates into an intolerable NO to the destruction of the fall. Wrath is not the opposite of love. Wrath is the love of God in action, in opposing action.

God was not an angry diety demanding blood! He did not need the blood of Jesus to enable Him to forgive. God endured the cross because that is what was needed to wake us up to the reality of who He is and who we are. He met us where we were at. Speaking a language that we understood… law and sacrifice. Our idea of sacrifice was that it was necessary to appease an angry God to change His mind and that blood was required in order to extend forgiveness. But God’s mind was not the problem. We were enemies and hostile to God in our minds… but in our distorted thinking it was God who saw us as enemies and was hostile towards us UNTIL Jesus went to the cross. It wasn’t God who required blood… it was the law. Hebrews 9:22 says that almost all things are purified in blood according to the law, and apart from blood shedding there is no forgiveness. The law required that blood be shed in order for there to be forgiveness NOT God!

There are three words for forgive in Hebrew… salach (pardon, forgive), kipper (atonement), and nasa (to bear, carry, forgive). All three aren’t even used until after the law was given.  Romans 5:13 says that sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged to anyone’s account where there is no law.You would definitely think Adam, Eve, Cain, Jacob, and others who made HUGE mistakes would’ve asked God to forgive them. Makes me think that forgiveness was not necessary, no matter how big the mistakes.  From Adam to Moses was about 2500 years. It’s amazing that something that wasn’t even mentioned for the first 2500 years of history has been a major focus in the church today!

So, in the Old Testament they continued to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings for the atonement of sins, for God’s forgiveness. And God continued to speak through His prophets that He didn’t want them and had never wanted them. He was meeting them where they were at. Allowing them to continue to offer these sacrifices because that’s all they knew. He was trying to bring them up higher and higher, but they rejected the prophets words and kept offering the sacrifices like the pagan nations around them.

Moses had come out of Egypt where they worshipped and sacrificed to all kinds of gods. Abraham came out of Ur where they did the same thing. They carried those things over. So Moses set up a sacrificial system of atonement. Even though Jeremiah tells us that when God brought them out of Egypt, He never commanded them concerning sacrifice and offerings. God allowed these sacrifices until the time that Jesus would come and be the final once for all sacrifice, doing away forever with the sacrificial system of the law.

Jesus came and offered the final sacrifice and then SAT DOWN. The writer of Hebrews says this is the MAIN THING! The priests of the Old Covenant, of the sacrificial system, never sat down. They stood continually, day after day, offering again and again the same sacrifices which could never take away sins. Nor could it perfect anyone or cleanse their consciences the writer of Hebrews tells us. In fact, all those sacrifices did was to continually remind them of their sins.

In ascribing to a penal substitution theory, we have made God into someone He is not. And we have ended up worshipping a god of our own making. A god of wrath and judgment. Instead of God who is our good Father whose image and likeness we bear. A God who refused to remain in Heaven without us. A Father who sent His Son to cancel the handwritten code that was against us. To do away with the sacrificial system of the law that said that life was in the blood. Grace and truth revealed that life was IN Him and reminded us that He had breathed that life into us when He created us. Reminding us that we were never outside of His love or His life, we simply forgot who we were.

Deuteronomy says they were not mindful of the Rock who begat them and they forgot the Father who fathered them. 1 Peter 1:18 says that they followed the aimless conduct received by tradition from their fathers.The traditional way of doing things was passed on to them.  The traditional way of living by their five senses of living from a mistaken identity. They followed after their ancestors not being mindful of and forgetting Whose image and likeness they bore… who they had always been the Father’s sons – from before the foundation. But Ephesians 1:5 says that we were predestined as sons… sons before creation. According to HIS good pleasure.

2 Timothy 1:9-10 says that He has saved us and called us (past tense) with a holy calling not according to our works but according to His purpose in grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus BEFORE TIME ETERNAL. (10) but is now made manifest (revealed) by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ.  It had nothing to do with man’s failure or the fall. He saved us and called us holy not as a result of responding to man’s fall but according to His own purpose and grace. He had this plan for man’s salvation before the foundation of the world.

What was that plan? Jesus coming to reveal the love of our Father and the Father’s plan and purpose BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD. We were whole (sozo) IN Christ before time eternal. Jesus’ appearing didn’t make us was not to save us or make us holy but to REVEAL (to make manifest, or to make clear and plain) the Father’s love and purpose before the foundation of the world. Jesus’ appearing was not to save us or make us holy but to REVEAL (to make manifest, or to make clear and plain) the Father’s love and purpose before the foundation of the world.

We thought the gospel was subject to the appearing — in other words when Jesus appeared then the gospel was brought to earth. But NO, the gospel was what the appearing confirmed. The Gospel was before the foundation of the world! The Gospel always was — it wasn’t a response to the fall. The fall didn’t change God’s mind about us!  We were still who He said we were!

Jesus in the historical event of His incarnation… from His virgin birth to His resurrection and seated-ness did not bring the benefits of the Father to us BUT revealed them to us and showed us that we had them before the foundation of the world. IN HIM we have redemption of sins not based upon a historical event that took place but based upon having been chosen before the foundation of the world

We have to learn to interpret Scripture correctly. We cannot interpret it right without a correct understanding of the nature of God. He is love! He is nothing but love and can do nothing apart from love. And He does not change. And it is out of who He is, LOVE, that His motives, intentions and dealings with mankind flow. Too often we hear that He is responsible for earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, etc.

So many people speaking FOR God who don’t have a revelation of His love! So many “prophets” today speaking FOR God into people’s lives not what has ALWAYS been true but speaking conditional promises into them… IF you do this THEN God will do this. Telling them God would like to do this for you or God will do this for you…. instead of God HAS DONE ALL of this for you from before time began…. WALK IN IT!  JUST BE!

But God is revealing Himself as Love and Grace in a body of believers who are willing to disregard the wrong teaching they’ve accumulated over the years and to say, “Dad show me who YOU are. Because when You show me who You are I will be able to see myself in that reflection. And then as I see ME as who I’ve ALWAYS BEEN and I see what I have ALWAYS HAD, it will flow through me affecting my life and those around me!!

This was a hard course. It stretched my understanding in a good way. There were a couple of days where honestly, I felt like I don’t know anything… not even sure how to write this essay.  Feeling like this was a new level of deep. A depth that is brand new! Everything we thought we knew about our redemption was based on a lie. It was based on a complete misunderstanding of what took place BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.  I am so looking forward to going deeper in these classes and increasing my understanding of what Jesus came to reveal! Of what was ALWAYS true from before time began!

What an amazing Father we have! A good Daddy who covered everything from start to finish… who provided nothing but rest for us. And all we have to do is be aware of it. And that awareness will cause us to walk in who we truly are… sons and daughters who have never been anything but WHOLE AND COMPLETE IN HIM!!

God dances over us

Zephaniah 3:17: The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

The word midst is qereb and means inner thought, inward feelings.

He is a mighty Warrior, strong and brave, in us.

He is glad, delighting and expressing joy over you

He takes pleasure in you

His love gives you rest and peace

The last part that says He will joy over thee with singing doesn’t quite capture the meaning….. it would read better as — He passionately spins and dances, shouting and singing over you with joy because He is overcome with you!

This is God! Overcome with joy and love for us because we are His! Not because we’re believers or Christians or we go to church…. God has no “us” and “them” mentality. This is who the Father is to ALL because ALL are HIs. (Eph 3:15)

When we think of God this is what He should look like. He is LOVE!

Choosing What God Chooses

And the LORD said unto her, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”~ Genesis 25:23

I have to confess Rebekah wasn’t always my favorite woman in Scripture. I thought she was a bit manipulative “deceiving” Isaac. And for favoring one child over the other. But a few years ago, as I was working on my Proverbs 31 Bible study and looking at all of these different women, I began to see her differently. Abba introduced me to this woman named Rebekah, a woman He knew intimately. He let me see her through His knowledge of her…. as a beautiful grace-filled woman… a daughter of Grace.

Rebecca had been barren for 20 years. And after conceiving, her pregnancy was not an easy one. The Bible says the babies struggled within her. The Hebrew word for struggled means to crush or oppress. It’s a violent word. I’ve had 4 babies and they all moved around a lot while I was pregnant and occasionally kicked really hard, but it wasn’t violent. I can’t even imagine what that must’ve felt like.

So, Rebekah inquired of Yahweh (Jesus). There is an aleph tav between inquire and Yahweh. Inquire is darash, it is to seek carefully. It comes from a root meaning to walk or tread. Rebekah wasn’t just asking God why her pregnancy was so hard and violent. She was inquiring of Jesus regarding the destiny of these two sons. How they fit in His covenant plan. And the root of the word shows her determination to walk in His plans for them. She was not just seeking an answer to a question in prayer…. she was a Covenant seeker, a seeker of Divine destiny.

This is the first time that a woman is mentioned as “inquiring of the Lord.” That tells us a lot about Rebecca’s relationship with God.She obviously had an intimate relationship with God and wanted to hear what He had to say on the matter. She KNEW Jesus. She trusted what He had to say. He told her that she had 2 nations at war in her womb. He said they would be divided from birth….two nations, two kingdoms. The Hebrew word for nations is goyim, which means both Jewish and Gentile nations.  The Jewish nation of Israel will be from Jacob, and the Gentile nation will be from Esau (later the nation of Edom).

Romans 9:10-13 emphasizes the importance of God’s word to Rebekah. Before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, “in order that God’s purpose in election might stand, not by works but by him who calls she was told, The older will serve the younger. Just as it is written: I loved but Esau I hated.” The LORD’s choice of Jacob, the younger, to inherit His covenant promise was made before the boys were even born. This showed that the choice did not depend on what either did. This was not about birth order but rather Divine election.  Jacob’s destiny was to produce the lineage that the Deliverer would come….to be an heir of the Promise (Hebrews 11:9).  

Rebecca understood the importance of God’s word to her.  She chose what God had already chosen.  But His choosing wasn’t one of blessing and cursing, loving and hating. His choosing was a pre-election of Divine Grace for one to be the lineage for the Seed. He loved and chose both Esau and Jacob… and had a plan for each man (Ephesians 1:4).

~ Robin

God’s Ideal Woman

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. ~ Proverbs 31:10

Abba wrote an entire Proverb just about us women. His ideal woman! Truth be told the woman in this Proverb seemed a bit overwhelming to me. A Martha Stewart on steroids! She seemed so unattainable to me as a young wife and mother. How could I possibly be all those things that this woman was?

But Abba didn’t give us a picture of a woman that we couldn’t be. He wasn’t dangling a carrot in front of us… teasing us with an image that was impossible to walk in. Nor did He give us a picture of a woman that we should strive to become! What He did give us in this picture of His ideal woman is a picture of us. A snapshot of who we already are. Of what we actually look like through His eyes.

The word virtuous used to describe the Proverbs 31 woman is chayil. This word includes the possession of whatever attributes are needed to carry out the task at hand. All of the attributes of what is needed for you to be the woman He designed you to be are already inside you.

There are 150 words in Hebrew in this poem.  Female in Hebrew is nekeiva (nun-kuf-beit-hei) Nun kuf is 150 and beit hei is a spelling for bah which means “in her.” Together that literally says “150 in her.”  All the words, all the meaning, all the potential and all the beauty of the 150 words is within us as females.  I love that!

The pressure is off! We don’t have to strive to become this woman. She is not an ideal that we are trying to achieve. All of her qualities are already in us waiting for us to wake up to and walk in.  We are fully equipped to be what our husbands and families need to excel and to prosper in their destinies.

The Proverbs 31 woman is more true to the Hebrew text when it uses words like this… “who can find a powerful, mighty, valiant woman?” Synonyms for these three words include wielding power, superhuman, influential, strong, unafraid and brave. WOW! This woman in the simplest translation is a warrior.

Abba is saying with this Proverb, “This is a picture of you My daughter of Grace!”

Rest in this!

Stop trying to become…. and just BE who you have always been, God’s ideal woman… perfect and complete in Him!

~ Robin

Speaking Spirit

Be imitators of God, therefore, as beloved children….. Ephesians 5:1

We are to be imitators of God.  Mimic Him.  Imitate the pattern He has set.  The amplified version says to imitate Him as well-beloved children imitate their fathers.  The Message Bible says watch what God does, and then you do it. Like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.  

I love that this verse starts with BE… just BE an imitator.  You don’t have to work at it.  You don’t have to practice it.  You just have to BE.  BE who you are IN CHRIST.  You were made in the image and likeness of God.  Genesis 2:7 says that He breathed life into man and he became a living being.  In the Targum (the Aramaic translation of the Old Testament), the Jewish sages have translated “living being” as “speaking spirit.”  He made us a speaking spirit….. made in His image….. to create our world through our words, just like Him.

Romans 4:17 says God calls those things that are not into existence…. He calls them – He calls aloud, utters in a loud voice, He calls them by name.  Mark 11:22-23 shows us that God’s faith “speaks.”  Job 22:28 says “you shall decree a thing and it shall be established.”  And of course, one of my favorites is 2 Cor 4:13 But having the same spirit of faith according to that having been written: “I believed, therefore I have spoken,” we also believe and therefore speak.  

God is a speaker!  He spoke everything we see around us into existence.   Hebrews 11:3: Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.  This is the faith chapter!  It says faith understands…. it understands that the worlds were framed by the word of God.  The word of God is the rhema word.  The spoken word.  Faith understands that the spoken word contains power to frame the worlds…. to accomplish or bring to pass what is spoken.

The word in Hebrew is dabar and is more than just the spoken word, it’s an act… something carried out or completed.  Dabar is not just sounds… it’s words that have within them the energy or power to accomplish what is said.  God said “Let there be light. And there was light” “We lay hands on the sick and say be healed.  And they are healed.”  We are speaking spirits just like our Daddy!  The words we speak carry within them the power to accomplish what was spoken.

Isaiah 38:7b says “…… that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken;”  In Hebrew it says Yahweh will do this.  Yahweh is the Covenant Name.  It is the unspoken name in Hebrew.  Instead of Yahweh, ancient Jews and conservative modern ones say Ha’Shem… The Name!  This Name was so sacred that they would not speak it nor would they write it in full (they left out the vowels: YHWH).  YAHWEH was the Holy One of Israel. In Hebrew it is spelled Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey, which means Behold (Hey) the Nails (Vav), Behold (Hey) the Hands (Yod).  Yahweh is Yeshua…. He is Jesus!

Then it says in Isaiah 38:7b, Yahweh (Jesus) will do that. What will Yahweh do?  The rest of the verse tells us, this thing that is spoken (dabar).  But right between “Yahweh will do” and “this thing that is spoken” is the untranslatable Hebrew word “et.” In modern Hebrew grammar it is a direct object marker, pointing out the subject of the sentence.  But I believe that it is actually direct object marker pointing to Jesus.  Alef tav in Hebrew is alef – the beginning letter of the alphabet and tav – the last letter of the alphabet.  Jesus said He is the Alpha Omega… the beginning and the end in Greek.  In Hebrew He would be the Alef Tav.  It also means power of the Cross or power of the covenant.  This little word “et” is scattered all throughout the Old Testament in various places. It’s an identity marker. A road sign if you will, alerting you to a New Covenant truth in the verse…. alerting you to God’s heartbeat.  It is an object marker, so to speak, directing you to the Object – Jesus!

John 14:13a says And whatever you might ask in My name, this I will do.  Whatever you ask… whatever you call for.  It also means whatever you understand.  Remember Hebrews 11:3 says “faith understands that the worlds were framed by God’s spoken word.”  Faith in us (His faith) understands that we are made in His image and likeness, and in Christ our worlds are framed by our spoken words. They have the power to accomplish what we say!

Let’s read Isaiah 38:7b in light of John 14:13 and include the alef tav marking.  Yahweh will do this thing that is spoken (by us)  IN CHRIST.  We are in Christ and what we speak has power!  We are speaking spirits just like our Daddy.

Prov 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of our tongue.  One meaning of power is border.  I like that… it’s within the “borders” of our tongue.. our words, what we say! One of the synonyms of border is hem.  Hem yourself in with the IT IS FINISHED!!

A border is an edge or boundary of something. So begin speaking and framing your world with this as your border…… IT IS FINISHED!

I am healed!

I am righteous!

I am holy!

I am loved!

I am complete!

I am as He is in this world!

I am prosperous!

I am delivered!

I am FREE!

I am whole in every area of life – spiritual, physical, mental, social and financial!

There is nothing missing and nothing broken in my life!

I am favored, I have favor and I continually walk in favor!

I have ALL things that pertain to life and godliness!

I am more than a conqueror!

I have the FULLNESS of the Godhead in me!

I am anointed and know all things!

I am love!

I am good!

I am IN CHRIST!

I am co-crucified, co-buried, co-resurrected and co-ascended with Christ!

I am co-seated with Christ in heavenly places!

I reign in this life through the gift of righteousness and the abundance of grace!

I am dead to sin and alive to God in Christ!

~  Robin

Nature of God

I’m taking theology classes to get my Bachelors and I have to submit essays after each course.  I thought I’d post…..

NATURE OF GOD

I loved this course Nature of God.  At the conclusion of this second course, I feel like my Gospel language has improved as well as my ability to express myself with all that I’m learning about grace and the oneness of us and the Father IN CHRIST.

This course topic coincided perfectly with my life right now.  Specifically, with people, I keep bumping up against who are weighed down heavily in religious mindsets regarding the nature of God.  It seems like everywhere I go I run into Believers who are begging God for healing, deliverance, freedom, etc.  Not realizing that He’s already given us everything we will ever need for life and godliness.  These same people will sit in Bible studies that teach an erroneous nature of God and that we are still bound to the law today because it is our standard of holiness.  I was surprised and saddened that many people receive such a misrepresentation of God willingly, naively believing that a teacher must be an authority on what they’re teaching.  And therefore, everything taught must be truth.

Such a wrong belief regarding God’s nature has been an eye-opener for me because I wasn’t raised spiritually believing those things about God.  I was taught from day one about the Christ life on the inside of me and that God is good and the devil is bad, period.  This course rooted those early teachings stronger in me and unfolded revelation of the oneness I have, not just with Jesus and Holy Spirit, but with my Father.

Getting the revelation that I was in His thoughts before the beginning of the ages was life-changing.  It is a revelation that will forever mark who I am.  Changing how I see myself and how I see others.  It also transforms how I perceive or understand my Father.  I always knew He was a good God.  But as for the fatherhood aspect, I only thought He became my Father after I accepted Jesus.

I thought that He was merely gracious enough to adopt me into His family because I now believed in Jesus. That before that He regarded me as an enemy because I was a sinner.  And that His love and kindness, His goodness and grace towards me, could only begin after I accepted Christ.  The truth is that He makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, on the good and the evil. His grace and mercy have always abounded to ALL men at all times.

Now I realize that He not only always loved me but had a dream for me before time began.  I was never an enemy in His eyes.  He has always been my Father from before the foundations of the world.  My adoption is not adoption the way we here in the West see it but rather it is a position of sonship that He had prepared for me to walk in from before the beginning.  He has always had good, kind, beautiful thoughts about me and towards me.  There has never been a moment in time or before time began that I was not His.

He doesn’t love me more now that I have been reconciled to Him.  His love for me has always been there.  Believing in what Jesus did merely awakens me to the realization of His love. To be free to realize how much He loved me all along.  To begin experiencing the depths of that covenant love.  He is my eternal Father.  He wrote my DNA in my mother’s womb.  And my DNA is His very DNA.  He was always fully persuaded about me.

His faith saw me IN CHRIST before I even knew anything about Christ.  He was so confident in my ability to remember where I began! Then He irresistibly drew me to Himself, waking me up from my slumber to a life of union in Him.

Also through this course, I learned that Jesus’ death was not a penal substitution.  Realizing that His death was not to satisfy God’s anger with humanity.  Nor was it to appease God so that He would finally be willing to consider me or even glance in my direction.  No, Jesus was my Father’s passionate pursuit of me! He came to reveal the Father and show us what we look like redeemed and walking in fellowship, in oneness, with Him.

Jesus didn’t go to the Cross alone. The Father was in Him on the Cross reconciling the WHOLE world to Himself.  Restoring the relationship that He had designed for all men to have with Him.  Jesus was the last Adam.

Adam’s single transgression resulted in the condemnation of all men.  Jesus’ obedience equaled righteousness upon ALL men.  His death redeemed humanity and forever removed any distance with the Father.  What God has always known to be true about us carries more authority than any evidence that could condemn us.   ALL judgment was taken away through that ONE sacrifice, ONCE AND FOR ALL.

The secret of the power of the Gospel is that He succeeded in redeeming all of mankind.  It was a perfect redemption, not when we believed it, but from the finished work of the cross. We are now once again free to be His sons. We may have lost our way for a while, but we always belonged to Him.

Like the lost coin, we never lost our value and ownership.  In Christ God came to celebrate our original value.  We were made in the image and likeness of our Daddy.  He is the blueprint of our design.  To see Jesus is to see the Father.  Likewise, to see me is to see the Father.  The days of distance are over.  We are now free to live as He designed us.  No longer distanced from the Father, but alive in Him.

Jesus showed us the Father’s heartbeat in the parable of the Prodigal son.  His father was not disapproving and saying “how dare you come back after you wasted the family name.” No, the father was dancing and rejoicing.  He was celebrating the son with no hint of shame, rebuke, remorse, regret, or inferiority.  So it is with our Father.

He joyfully celebrates over us with praise.  Zephaniah 3:17:  The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love, he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”  Celebration of us and over us is our Father’s heart.  He rejoices over us with uncontainable joy, singing, dancing, leaping and spinning around with great delight!  Can you see it?  Can you hear it?  Why is He so joyful?  He is celebrating His oneness with us.

We cannot be any closer to God than we already are.  There is no pressing in on our part.  Honestly, I would’ve been grateful just to be accepted by Him and given a place in heaven someday.  It would’ve been more than enough for me just to know that level of security.  But that wasn’t enough for my Daddy.  His dream for us was BIG.   It was much bigger than I would have ever dared dream.  He desired that I would be filled up with ALL the fullness of Him (Ephesians 3:19).  And then He made that a reality for me IN CHRIST.

His fullness, His completeness is tailor-made for our human design.  He is 100% at home in us.  He likes who we are, who He designed us to be.  He made us in His image and likeness. He finds such beautiful expression through us.  Colossians 2:9 says that God finds an accurate and complete expression of Himself, in a human body (Mirror Translation).  And verse 10 tells us that Jesus mirrors our completeness and endorses our true identity.  He is “I am” in us.

Colossians 1:19 says The full measure of everything God has in mind for mankind indwells him.  What a joy to live this life filled with the fullness of the Spirit without measure.  What delight to have all the fullness of God in our human body.  To live our lives in oneness, in intimate fellowship, in Him.  For that fullness, that Living Water to overflow out of us to this world around us.

The more I know Him, the more I begin to know myself.  I can’t know myself apart from knowing Him. He defines me, and my nature is rooted in His nature.  2 Peter 1:4 says that we have been given great and precious promises that through these we may be partakers of His divine nature.  We were created as a partaker of His divine nature.  These great and precious promises were given to us reveal His image, His likeness and His dominion so that in that understanding we could discover our image, our likeness and our dominion.  That is what Jesus came to reveal.  And Jesus is the revelation of the Father.

A true revelation of the Father enables me to understand Scripture correctly as well as accurately understand the communication of Holy Spirit.  My victory in life is proportionate to an accurate image of God.

The only way I can accurately understand God’s nature is to look at Jesus.  He revealed the Father to us.  He said if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father, We are one.  We won’t understand the Old Testament Scriptures if we don’t understand their oneness.  John 1:17-18 says For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.

No one rightly understood God or perceived Him correctly until Jesus came and unfolded Him to us.  The ministry of Jesus was a rehearsal of the goodness of God.  He rehearsed it over and over in everything He did and said so we would get it right.  He came so that we would know what the Father looked like and what we looked like walking in oneness with Him.  He told Phillip if you’ve been watching everything I’ve done you’ve seen the nature of the Father. In everything He did He was always revealing the goodness, kindness, and love of God.  God was not a hard man. That was a disabling perception that was erased by Jesus.

In the Old Covenant they were living in a fallen world, and so they were continually ascribing characteristics and qualities to God that were based on their observations and experiences in a fallen world.  They presented Him as hard, angry, distant, disinterested, and wrathful.  Although we no longer live in a fallen world,  we can still walk in a distorted “fallen” mindset.  A way of thinking that defines God based on our experiences and disappointments in life.  Seeing Him vastly different then we see Jesus.    Seeing Him as disappointed, judgmental, condemning, and punishing.

But Jesus showed us the heartbeat of Abba.  He revealed to us that He is not at all hard to please.  He is not against us.  Rather that He is passionately for us and with us and in us.  Everything about Jesus is the expression of the true nature and character of God.  To know the Father we need only to observe the life and ministry of Jesus.  We aren’t to interpret God by looking backward to the law or through the prophets, the Fall, sin, etc.  Instead, Scripture calls upon us to understand the Father ONE WAY ONLY — according to the Biblical revelation of Jesus.  He’s given testimony of Himself through Jesus.  He’s spoken to us in these last days by His Son.

The Father and the Son are one.  There is no division.  John 1:18 tells us that Jesus was in the bosom of the Father.  The Jerusalem Bible translates it as nearest to the Father’s heart.   It is “kolpos” in Greek and is an intimate expression of co-union.  The prophets and Moses in the Old Covenant didn’t accurately perceive God at any time.  But Jesus was in the bosom of Abba.  He was one with the Father, sharing a single heartbeat.  This co-union was a picture of our co-union.  We have an intimate union with the Father as Jesus did.  He was an example of us.

We have the mind of Christ.  We have the thoughts, feelings, and purposes of His heart which is also the Father’s heart.  Their heart is the same.  To see what that single united heart looks like, we need to become intimate with Jesus of the Gospels.  We are to observe how He dealt with sinners, the sick, and the oppressed.  Regarding how He felt about the hopeless and the shepherd-less masses we get to know not only His heart, but the Father’s.  We are to take notice of His thoughts on pharisaical religion, with its legalism, it’s self-pity, and it’s burden of works but all along KNOWING that He loved every Pharisee.

We are to hear His words to the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the supernatural and understand that again He loved every Sadducee.  He spoke to them with all the love and compassion He speaks to you and me.  His voice of love and compassion is exactly the Father’s voice towards humanity.

Then after we’ve considered ALL His words, His deeds, and His works, we realize that He was expressing the exact nature of the Father.  Seeing Him so clearly through the life of Jesus, we will recognize the Father isn’t at all what religion has taught us.  In Matthew 11:28-30,  Jesus is addressing those who are burned out and worn out on religion.  I like the Message translation of these verses.  He implores them to come to Him and get away with Him to recover our lives.  He says “walk with Me and work with Me — watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

The Father doesn’t lay heavy burdens on us.  He’s a good Daddy.  And in Him, there are rhythms of grace.  Jesus had an unforced relationship with the Father.  An unforced union with Him.  Jesus simply walked from this place of union and life.  And the life He shared in the Father, naturally flowed out of that.  Miracles, signs, wonders, relationships, love, all unforced rhythms of His Father’s grace toward us.  It’s really that simple.

James told us be “doers” of the Word.  Religion has used that Scripture to keep us bound in our outward performance.  Telling us that if we “do” what the Word says we will not be self-deceived.  And yet living a life bound to managing my behavior is in itself deceiving.  If we read on in verse 23, James tells us that a doer is one who looks in the mirror and sees his true self.  Doer is poiétés in Greek.  It’s where we get our word poem.

The Father is the Poet. He has a poem that He has written for each of His children.  He wants you to look into the face of Christ until you see yourself so clearly that what you see inspires spontaneous expression.  As that happens, my life becomes a living expression of the poem that He wrote before time began.  The poetry of His unforced rhythms of grace revealed in me.  My life becoming a living expression of The Poet.

From an Old Covenant to a New Covenant mindset

For years I never gave the Old Covenant Mosaic Law much thought.  In my thinking, it was an old, outdated Judaic system of 613 laws that no one follows anymore.  After all, no one could follow 613 rules and regulations daily and some of these laws were just impossible to do, like animal sacrifices.  Of course, as believers, we still had the 10 commandments and some of the Old Covenant laws that were “do-able”.  Still, I didn’t think I (or anyone I knew was extremely “legalistic” in regards to the Law.

Then I heard a teaching on Old Covenant (law) and New Covenant (grace) thinking.  Old Covenant thinking was “do in order to be blessed” and New Covenant thinking was “we are blessed because it was already done.”  While I definitely believed that we were already blessed because of what Jesus had done, I had to admit that a lot of my thinking was also “do in order to be blessed.”  I believed the blessing was ours through Jesus but in order for those blessings to be mine,  I had to “do” something.  And if I did things “wrong” it would interfere with my blessing or take me out from under His protective covering…….leaving me open to demonic attacks (like Job).  When things would go wrong, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out where I had missed it or which “door” I had left open through something I did or didn’t do.  If things were going well, I must be living an obedient life — doing ALL God has said to do and pleasing Him.

I was definitely living a life of mixed grace and law.

So it wasn’t that I had an actual checklist of do’s and don’ts to follow, but rather my thinking was still rooted in an Old Covenant based mindset of reward and punishment instead of a New Covenant mindset of being only grace based on the finished work of the Cross.  So I started seeing differently and looking at Old Covenant (including the Gospels – since the law continued to be in effect until the Cross) through the lens of the finished work of Christ.  And as I read Scriptures asking Holy Spirit “did the Cross change this particular verse?”

For instance… one of the first Scriptures I got revelation on was Psalm 51:9-11: “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities (10) Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me, (11) Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”  While David was perfectly fine praying this prayer under the Old Covenant before Christ came, for me to pray it was an absence of faith….rooted in ignorance of the finished work of the Cross  While it sounds beautiful and appears “humble,” it’s full of doubt and unbelief.

  1.  God doesn’t hide His face from my sins — Jesus totally removed them and the Father doesn’t remember them or hold them against me any longer.
  2. I don’t have to ask Him to blot out (or wipe away; abolish) my sins — He’s already done that.
  3. He has ALREADY given me a clean and pure heart and He most definitely has ALREADY renewed a right spirit within me!
  4. He would NEVER cast me away from His presence because He has promised to never leave me nor forsake me
  5. And ABSOLUTELY He wouldn’t take Holy Spirit from me because we are ONE now.

The next Scripture I got revelation on was Matthew 6:14-15: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. (15) But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.”  Jesus was talking to people STILL UNDER the Old Covenant Law.  So, how did the Cross change that?  Ephesians 4:32: And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, as also in Christ God forgave you. And Colossians 3:13:  Bear with each other and forgive any complaint you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  We forgive BECAUSE He first forgave us.  Old Covenant was “forgive SO THAT God can forgive you.”  New Covenant is “His forgiveness is your empowerment to forgive.”  Big difference.  Those 2 Scriptures began a  new way of thinking and a beautiful journey of freedom for me.  

And the next Scripture the Holy Spirit began to change my thinking on was Matthew 22:37-40: Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This is the first and great commandment. (39) And the second is like, unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  (40) On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Verse 36 says that one of the Pharisees had asked Jesus what the greatest commandment IN THE LAW!  This commandment was an Old Covenant Law commandment.  We don’t love God with all of our strength nor do we love our neighbor like we love ourselves.  Rather, 1 John 4:19 says We love because He first loved us and John 15:12 says This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you.  We don’t have to rely on our strength or self-efforts to love God or others.  He poured His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit…. we are able to love God and others because He loved us and that same agape love is in us to release.  

Over the last couple of years, I realized that people struggle with this area of their Christian walk.  They really love God and desire to “serve” Him better.  The way they think they can do that is by making the Old Covenant law their standard for living.  They live in a mindset of reward and punishment based on their behavior.  Thinking that if they can just line up their behavior with what they believe God wants, that He will be happy and they will be accepted and “good” sons.  The thing is, our Father already sees us as “good” sons.  We can make Him any happier than He already is with us.

Jesus set us free from an Old Covenant mindset of blessing and cursing… reward and punishment.  He never intended it to be our standard of holiness… He made us holy by giving us His holiness.  He took our sin and gave us His righteousness, His holiness…. His very own nature became our new nature.  We are now IN CHRIST and wholly, completely, wonderfully accepted in the Beloved…. not someday, but now…. just as we are!  We are full of His glory, we have His mind, and we are one in union with Him.  We have the FULLNESS of the Spirit WITHOUT MEASURE!

Today as you read the Word and you come across Old Covenant or Gospel Scriptures, ask Holy Spirit to show you Jesus in them…. ask Him to show you the finished work of the Cross in Scriptures.  He will and your mindset will change causing you to walk in a greater freedom than you have ever known.  It will change how you see God, yourself and others….. you will suddenly be free to walk in a love you have never known.  

We don’t receive a blessing from God because of what we do…. John 1:16 says For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  The amplified version says For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [all had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift [heaped] upon gift.  We receive from His fullness…. out of His abundance, grace, spiritual blessings, favor and gifts in ABUNDANCE.  

~ Robin