“Then Jesus said to them all, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'” Luke 9:23
In my last blog I talked about how we need to die to become fully alive. I do not consider myself to have made it or died all the way. I am in the process of becoming more like Christ, more like our loving Father. This being said, there is a point at which you can look back and say I am not like that anymore, or I am different now and am becoming more free with every day.
If I were an artist and could paint beautifully, the last blog would be one painted in broad colorful strokes, but we need to find more detail and more practical applications for finding the new life in store for us. How do we get there? I will do my best to paint the picture of how I have gotten here and I will try to paint the picture of Jesus for he is the center of our faith. My goal is not to try to convince you of some fact. My goal is to bring Jesus to you in what I say and write so that he may speak to you personally and you can know him. I am only an artist.
For death to not matter to us, we have to realize that we are truly children of the living God, once we have been enlightened by God himself. For the last several decades the church in America has talked about the fact that we need to be “born again.” This is most often viewed as an emotional epiphany of some sort and once this is obtained, you are basically home free and have a ticket to heaven. The more I grow and learn, the more that I see this is only half true. And a half truth that allows you to just have one experience without a change of heart, attitude, and life direction is no truth at all.
The phrase “born again” is a rather new term in that it originated in the southern USA in the mid 1900s. It seems to be a rather selfish term as WE are the ones who have done something great and are rewarded for it. God is the pursuer and he is yearning for a relationship with us. He is the one who has done all the work. Having one emotional experience with God is not enough, we need to walk with him and learn from him. This is not hard because his yoke is light, but it is so easy to slip back into our materialistic American mind-set. (I am preaching to myself here too.)
A term that is far older and I think better is “I was seized by a great affection.” God is coming after us and it is only our own selfish desires that get in the way. To live an abundant life we need to crucify these material and carnal desires. For me that has meant giving up my laptop, IPod, and a comfortable lifestyle. I am finding my validation not in comfort, but in dependance upon God.
So back to the beginning, to be unaware of who I am will only leave me wandering in the dark with no goals and only temporal impulses. When I found my identity, I found a purpose bigger than me and bigger than what I can accomplish.
I found the Kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not in a building, a synogogue, a mosque, or any other holy place. It is His people that I have learned to live with and love (although that can be hard at times). We are not yet perfect, but we are becoming so.
You see, I am a son of God and he loves me. I am his child. I am God’s heir. I am seated with Christ in heavenly realms. I have an eternal inheritance. Nothing can defeat me because God is on my side.
Being enlightened is just becoming aware of these truths not only in your head but your heart too. This is where we start running into problems. REAL problems. We have all experience pain and loss in our life because life is hard. Without a guide we will become more caloused the older we grow. The only thing that can break through this calousness is a perfect love and that only originates in the heart of our father God.
Sometimes this love can shine through people or events in our life, but it only comes from one place…
