Sitting at my computer day after day for a solid year, dependent upon God’s Presence for the writing of these lessons, has been a true joy. Time after time, as need arose, God brought to mind a specific event about which I would next write, and time after time, He talked me through each event’s message, delivering specific Truth.

Faithfully steadfast, God upheld the process, completing more than two dozen lessons, one every other week. The journey, one of both remembrance and enlightenment, has been a spiritual one, punctuated with off-the-chart highs that, at times, have raised me out of my seat and into worship. The opportunity given to me to connect to God through the lessons has been an abundant blessing, pure and simple.

But now the opportunity is about over and a new one begins. Time will reveal how God chooses to continue using the lessons. Only in obedience’s fulfillment is benefit realized. Not until the lessons’ completion could their full benefits become activated to provide more together than they ever could have offered separately.

Similar in manner as to how God places individuals with specific knowledge and abilities within the Body of Christ to increase the Church’s effectiveness, so God has structured the lessons for maximum benefit. Using something as simple as specifying the order of their writing by bringing only one event at a time to my mind, this is what God did apart from my full understanding:

1.   He selected twenty-four mostly unrelated events from my life.
2.   He used the events to reveal Truth about Him.
3.   He never duplicated a message, but compiled Truth upon Truth.
4.   He structured a complete and orderly message from chronological disorder.
5.   He divided the events by their physical and spiritual natures, creating two categories.
6.   He placed the lessons containing physical events first, emphasizing the discernment of Truth through physical reality.
7.   He followed those lessons with others based on spiritual events, emphasizing the discernment of Truth through spiritual reality.
8.   He opened the lessons with a message concerning the confusion that is caused by personal misinterpretation of God’s Word.
9.   He split the two categories at the point of Jesus’ crucifixion, history’s turning point, when the Truth of God’s love was fully revealed in salvation.
10. He opened the second half with a message about our personal relationships with Him, showing Himself to be Father.
11. He concluded the lessons with a message about eternal reconciliation to Him through Christ.
12. Then, after the writing of the lessons was complete, He revealed His finished handiwork for what He had designed it to be all along:  a singular, unified and cohesive body that glorifies God through His Word.

The revelation shocked me, for I had completely missed the big picture. Immersed in the typing of the details of the individual lessons day after day, I had focused so much upon the specific messages that I had remained unaware of the totality of the work that God was accomplishing, even as He was accomplishing it through me.

“Through me” was the shock. Though I was involved the entire time in the lessons’ development, God still had no difficulty surprising me (once again) with His greatness. Stunned, I could only say, “God! How did You do that?”

So orchestrated by God, The Lessons of the Cross retells the story once again of God’s relationship with men in yet another new way. Working with selected events from just one individual life (in this case mine), God took what appeared to be a collection of random occurrences and gave them cohesive purpose within His Kingdom. He revealed His Story that had been hidden in the ordinary day to day events of one person’s history, demonstrating His dominion over any given set of circumstances. God’s fingerprints, invisible to the world in general, proved to be all over every event, no matter what their nature.

The same is true within every individual’s life story. While our histories are different, we all exist as interconnected parts of the one Story that contains every individual one. Our lives are God’s Story in the making. They all have design and purpose beyond our scope of vision. They will outlast this world, as will we, leading us into our selected eternity, whichever way we have chosen to go:  heaven or hell. Our stories, like us, are eternal.

God, ever-Present and ever-loving, is continually working behind the scenes (out of range of our awareness), as well as overtly, in our stories. Weaving every component of Creation into a united whole, God is perfectly reconciling all into a singular finished work. Each person is born with intrinsic value and designed to fill specific purpose within Creation. No life is ever demeaned or devalued by God, despite what the world may have to say about any individual.

No one is born in isolation from God’s plan, and no one lives in isolation from it. Together, with all Creation, we are God’s Kingdom under construction through Christ Jesus. Wherever we go, wherever we are, God is there in advance, anticipating both our next move and our need. His righteousness reigns, as God comes to us, accepting us as we are and loving us perfectly. No matter our circumstances, God is above them all, creating a finished product of perfection from what appears to be the chaos of our seemingly less than perfect lives.

But all chaos is redeemable by our God, who accomplishes perfect redemption. He is with us  and for us all:

•  the alcoholic, passed out in a plush penthouse…
        the bellman, who stocks the liquor cabinet for a fee;

• the orphan, huddled under a cold, dark bridge…
       the aunt, who refused to take her in;

• the evangelist, tortured for sharing his faith…
       the non-Christian, who never heard the Truth;

• the widow, left alone day and night…
       the neighbor, who meant to drop by for a visit;

• the boy, picking through garbage for his daily bread…
       the relief worker, who lacks sufficient resource;

• the girl, held against her will…
       the men, who use her to have their way;

• the woman, overwrought and suicidal…
       the doctor, who sent her home with pills;

• the executive, sacrificing all to his job…
       the employer, who terminated those near retirement;

• the rock star, unfulfilled amid a frenzy of fans…
       the agent, who overbooks him;

• the religious zealot, mocking his neighbor…
       the neighbor, who mocks a life of faith;

• the guerilla combatant, beheading his captive…
       the diplomat, who failed to negotiate;

• the sassy child, raised by hired help…
       the nanny, who wants a child of her own;

• the invalid, needing a helping hand…
       the retired nurse, who doesn’t feel needed;

• the boy, shamed by his father’s guilt…
       the mother, who predicts, “Like father, like son”;

• the prisoner, forever confined to a cell…
       the judge, who can’t see beyond his own closed mind;

• the grandmother, forced to choose between medication and heat…
       the social worker, who again says, “I can’t help”;

• the child, drinking from pools of infested water….
       the mother, who watches with no other option;

• the out-of-work laborer, dropping his last coin in the donation pot…
       the good-will ambassador, who asks for more;

• the politician, personally smeared by the press…
       the reporter, who didn’t realize the cost of his scoop;

• the authority figure, accepting a bribe…
       the collaborator, who looked the other way;

• the baby in utero, not given a chance…
       the mother-to-be, who prays to give life;

• the soldier, who will never see his child…
       the comrade, who will always remember him missing;

• the addict, besieged by the pain of the past…
       the dealer, who helps her stay that way;

• the woman, feeling unworthy of love…
       the man, who is certain that he isn’t worth much;

and the list goes on, encompassing all:
     you, in your circumstances and me, in mine—
     every man, woman and child ever given life.

Equally loved… equally important… equally covered by the blood of Jesus… no soul is overlooked by God. Jesus died for all. (See 1 Peter 3:18)

Bestowing grace upon grace on everyone, God is righting wrongs with divine wisdom in ways that we are not always capable of comprehending. But He is doing so, whether we understand or not. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

We can be certain that in the eternal end, God’s wisdom will be evident to all, no matter what we believe now. Wise and all-knowing (See 1 John 3:20). God alone understands the perfect implementation of His perfect plan (See Job 42:2).

In this world, God is countering our ignorance and misperceptions of Him with Holy Spirit revelation, enlightening us to the Truth through various means. Disclosing a reality superior to the visible one of this world, God leads us into more blessed lives, enabling us through transformed thinking to better realize His active love for us.

Every life is God-given and has God-given purpose in this world and the next, fulfilling God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2c). Every face has a history, and every tongue has a story. Each one is known by God in minute detail (See Psalm 139). Each is an integral part of His exquisite Masterpiece.

From a worldly perspective, however, life’s events can cause us to misconstrue the Truth of God and His relationship with us. From the midst of the production process, we cannot yet see God’s finished work that brings understanding. But God does. He sees perfectly the product of His envisioning.

At times, a tapestry is used to help visualize this point. While the back side of a tapestry is typically a tangled mess of knotted threads that appear to randomly crisscross one another without rhyme or reason, the front side reveals a work of art, every stitch perfectly planned and executed. The apparent waywardness of each and every thread on the backside is used to specifically increase the beauty of the artwork on the front. During the tapestry’s creation, disorder and order simultaneously appear from two differing points of view.

Similarly, but in a far grander way, God is producing beauty from every part of our current lives (See Isaiah 61:3). Even the less than pretty is being woven by God into His magnificence.

To know that God is in control in a world that seems ever-increasingly out of control, changes our perspective, giving us a new outlook of hope and expectation. The excitement of discovering that “God is with us” (actively Present in our lives) is superseded only by the realization that, in Christ, “God is in us.”  Boggling the mind, the revelation is an eternal show-stopper, changing everything through renewed thinking.

God loves expanding our vision with glimpses of Him, for those revelations are an outgrowth of our ever-deepening fellowship with Him that He so desires. Rain or shine, blue skies or grey, God remains Present, blessing us with Himself, meeting needs in countless ways, both seen and unseen.

God’s ceaseless blessings to us in this world are a precursor of the life to come in God’s eternal Kingdom. They are a taste of God’s goodness that whets our appetite for more of God—the precise outcome that God desires. God is the “WOW Factor” of life that we need and of which He wants to make us more aware.

Right now, in this world, the Truth is best seen from our God-provided vantage point of the Cross. Jesus is true perspective, complete revelation, an exact representation of our Father God (See Hebrews 1:3)

But the day is coming when God will reveal Himself from the “other side.” Then and only then will we see the bigger picture:  the finished work of “perfect love, fully applied” (See The Lesson of the Love). Permanently woven into God’s picture through our faith in Jesus Christ, we will be immersed in a beauty that provides understanding and needs no further explanation.

And, when God stuns us all with His finished Masterpiece, we will all undoubtedly respond uniformly:

“God!!! How did you do that???”

Amazing Grace… amazing all… after all and for all.

Once the Truth of God is seen, every other perspective fades from view.

.

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever…”  (Deuteronomy 29:;29)

At the time of the initial writing of this piece, almost one year exactly has passed since a website was set up to house these lessons. Suggested separately by both my husband and a clergy friend more than a year prior, the site finally came into existence in early January 2013, when I suddenly knew that its time had come.

Having received in my spirit a first topic about which to write, I sat at my computer wondering what to title the piece that was about to be written. Within seconds, the word “lessons” popped into my mind, giving me awareness that God’s plan involved, not one, but a series of lessons that would become a book.

Without fail, God has delivered a completed lesson every other Friday since then. Always faithful, God appears to be bringing the lessons to culmination on the Friday before Christmas 2013, a special time of celebration of God and His work through Jesus.

“Through him all things were made, without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:3)

“All things” includes these lessons. As a part of God’s work in and through me, they belong to Him. They are His teachings, both to me and through me to others. Overseeing every detail, God has birthed the lessons, one at a time in a progressive order, tying them together in a neat bundle that only became apparent as such in the finished whole. 

Note the order in which God systematically delivered the lessons that are built upon the foundational Truth of Jesus:

The series began with a lesson on communication problems (The Lesson of the Email), the very issue that Adam and Eve encountered when Satan put a spin on God’s Words, creating confusion in the world. Then came a lesson on man’s entrapment by sin and the Fall that occurred (The Lesson of the Fawn). Following that was a lesson on God’s continual concern and provision for each and every individual, affirming that no one (despite the appearance of any circumstance that may seem contradictory) is ever forgotten by God (The Lesson of the Comforter).

Then came a lesson stressing the paramount importance of our personal relationships with God and with one another (The Lesson of the Cleaners). That lesson was then followed by others that, in order, reminded us that God is ever-present, saving us (The Lesson of the Shattering), delivering us (The Lesson of the Parting) and providing in abundance for our every need (The Lesson of the Thanksgiving).

But since relationships are two-sided, the lessons that came next were reminders that we have a part to play in our relationships with God. We are to stand upon His Word (The Lesson of the Wind), remain in purposeful dialogue with Him (The Lesson of the Transfer) and depend upon Holy Spirit empowerment to guide and direct us (The Lesson of the Assumption). We must put all of our faith in One Man only—Jesus Christ (The Lesson of the Sauce), trusting always in the perfect work of the Cross (The Lesson of the Point).

Then, in awareness of God the Father’s completed work through His Son, came a lesson on the importance of family (The Lesson of the Pain). As perfect Father, God then followed that lesson with a lesson of assurance that He is indeed the Source of all of the understanding and guidance that we will ever need and seek in life (The Lesson of the Illumination). As members of His family, the lessons that followed affirmed our personal witness of the Truth of God that Jesus reveals (The Lesson of the Declaration), as we come to better know God in growing intimacy with Him (The Lesson of the Knowing). Those lessons were then capped off by others about how God’s healing power is at work in the world through His forgiveness that we receive and pass on in compassionate outreach (The Lesson of the Uprooting), witnessing in action as well as words to the Truth of God that we have received (The Lesson of the Touch).

The next lessons assured us that when we call out for God, He not only comes to us (The Lesson of the Radiance), but He remains with us (The Lesson of the Sealing), increasing our faith in Him as He restores us to wholeness in Christ Jesus (The Lesson of the Walk). The final lessons then wrapped up the others, affirming God’s all-encompassing love for each and every person (The Lesson of the Love) and avowing His unbreakable commitment to each individual (The Lesson of the Perspective) who chooses to be permanently reconciled to Him through His Son (The Lesson of the Honor).

Movement through the lessons is transitional. The revelation-based process itself is transformational.

The Story revealed in The Lessons of the Cross is an ongoing story, one that is authored fully by God and penned in part by many. In bringing these particular lessons into being, my “job” was simply to devote specific time to God in reference to the lessons that God wanted to use in this way. In so doing, with each additional lesson that I received, I was also given additional opportunity to share what I had received with others. God, working in me, simultaneously worked through me. Through the words that He provided, God multiplied the benefit of my growing understanding to encompass increasing wellbeing in and through others. God provided both the words and the understanding, connecting thoughts and filling in missing pieces. As I sat purposefully waiting on God before a keyboard, prepared to type, as I was led to do, words came forth to mind and print that God provided, bringing me closer to Him as I listened and typed in a continual refining process that was fueled by one word of Truth at a time.

God’s words are literally that which God says that they are:  Spirit and life (See John 6:63). Imparting Truth, they instill—give—life wherever they are accepted. Once God’s words are in us, they transform us by correcting errant thinking, thereby changing our actions to create positive outcomes in not only our lives, but the lives of others as well. Through our willingness to be identified with the words of God that we accept, God’s words then have opportunity to come forth from us to instill yet more life wherever they are then once again received. Though all of our words, in general, are important in their conveyance of ideas and information one to another, God’s Words are vital. They alone always contain the Truth of God that builds up life in the best way possible, rightly fine tuning understanding in one person after another.

The Bible’s prophecy and testimony, wrapped up together cohesively in Christ Jesus as one, is the all-inclusive story that is the foundation for every other story ever written. The Bible’s words cover the completed past, the occurring present and the coming future, all in relation to God’s eternal “now.” Every other true testimony of God, apart from those in the Bible, bears witness to the Truth of God that the Bible reveals. God-produced, every word of the Bible is related to every other word along various pathways that lead always to the Story’s focal point:  Jesus. Jesus, in alone having the Words of eternal life (See John 6:68), is the sole route to salvation:  everlasting life. (See Ephesians 1:13)

Our personal acceptances or rejections of Jesus as Lord and Savior singularly sentence each one of us to either everlasting life or everlasting death. No one’s words but our own determine our future existence following the judgment that is coming. Having been given an appointed time by God, Judgment Day cannot be avoided. (See Hebrews 9:27) The clock is ticking, and as it was set in motion by God’s words, so time will expire in the same way. The end of time as we know it is yet coming, for both the Bible’s words and the Word of God (Jesus) have declared it so. God is unchangeable (See 1 Samuel 15:29), and His words are self-fulfilling (See Isaiah 55:11). Understanding of a God-ordained finality will be experienced by all.

But our acceptance and rejection of God’s words also affect our here and now. God employs His words, in us and through us, to best prepare everyone for all that rightly lies ahead today as well as in eternity. Countering every individual misunderstanding of Him with Truth, God leaves nothing to “chance,” nor anything incomplete or undone. He even interprets His Holy Word for us in ways that we can best understand through the Holy Spirit, who unravels our confusion one thought at a time. By remaining in God’s Word (See John 14:26), seeking greater Truth, Truth comes to us in the manifestation of more of the abundance of the life of Christ Jesus that is growing within us.

In the light of Truth that Jesus provides, we more clearly “see” the manifested Spiritual Truth of God revealed in Jesus. Each additional revelation better enables greater realization of the unification of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as One accord, existing forever in unparalleled harmonic perfection. As One Living God (See Deuteronomy 6:4), they are One in Truth, One in Word and One in Spirit. As One, They have invited all mankind to join Them in knowing the perfecting in Christ that They have made available to all people for all time everywhere.

When we have moved beyond time’s completion, God will remain as He has always been;  Eternal God. “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1), and in the end God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (See also John 1:1) Being of One Voice, God spoke all Creation into being by the power of His Word, timing perfectly the Story that He unfolded from beginning to end, bringing it to right completion in its eternal conception. Then at the precise moment in time that all-knowing God so designated as perfect timing, God revealed to His Creation, through the giving of the Son, the fruition of the Story that will have no end.

When God the Father delivered His Son into a sin-filled world in a Body of sin-free flesh, God revealed Himself to be the All-in-All of the Story that mankind, for the most part, thought was being written by them. They (we) couldn’t have been any more wrong, and God proved so by giving visibility of the Authorship of God to the people whom He had penned into the Story. God the Son carried God the Father’s Name in His very Being, exactly as God had foretold throughout all of recorded history (His Story):

Immanuel – God with us
Jesus – YAHWEH is salvation
Savior – the One who saves
Christ/Messiah – the Anointed One
King – the Sovereign One having dominion
“I Am” —the Self-proclaimed Name of God Eternal
(See Isaiah 7:12-16, 9:6, 7; Matthew 1:16; Luke 1:31, 2:11; John 18:5, 8, 37).

God the Father has always been both honored by and proud of His Son who bears His Name. But even more so, according to God, He has always been both honored by and proud of His Son who bears His Word, for the Son speaks only as He hears the Father speaking. (See John 12:49) By fully respecting His Father’s words, the Son gives respect to the Name of the One who spoke them.

In verse two of Psalm 138, God specifically says through David’s penning that He has exalted His Word above even His Name:

“I bow myself toward thy holy temple, And I confess Thy name, For Thy kindness, and for Thy truth, For Thou has made great Thy saying above Thy name.” (Young’s Literal Translation)

The abundant (See John 10:10) and eternal life (See John 17:3) that God has given to all men by grace through faith (which comes also by grace—see Ephesians 2:8), is the Gift that God extended to us in the Truth of Jesus, for “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

Denoted in the original Greek by use of the singular tense of the verb “came” is that the grace of God is indistinguishable and inseparable from God’s Truth that reveals it. Likewise, the Truth of God comes to us only by God’s grace. “Grace and Truth” is a singular Entity, a single Being:  Jesus Christ—God. Encapsulating all life, Jesus is the revealed perfection of God, who ”…gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

That is the Truth that Jesus continually delivers.

To a world inclined to judge people by performance, the Truth of God’s grace is a conundrum. Though grace is a breath of fresh air (an unexpected reprieve from “measuring up”), its unselfish “no strings attached” nature can make grace difficult to accept. Carrying no hidden agenda, grace’s extreme generosity is counterintuitive to self-preservation, defying worldly logic.

Yet there it is, “Grace and Truth” laid out in a lowly stable, publicly displayed in the innocent babe, most humbly born to die for the sake of others.

“He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—” (John 1:11, 12)

And how did God say that it would be so?

Through faith in His Word,..
Through acting—speaking, confessing—in belief of His Word…
Through faith in the Name of Jesus:  the Living Word of God Almighty.

To all who humbly turn to Jesus to ask in faith for whatever is needed in accordance with the Father’s will, much is given. (See Mathew 21:22, Mark 11:24, Luke 11:10) Everyone who brings their needs to Jesus discovers that Jesus is already on top of every situation. Whenever Jesus is asked if He is either willing or able to help, His reply is always the same. He answers with His Father’s Self-professed Name:  “I Am” (See Exodus 3:14 & John 8:58).

Like Father, like Son… always One and the same. (See John 5:19)

That is Grace, pure and simple:  the Gift of God, giving His All.

And that is the Truth.

Jesus. His Name says it all.

 .

“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”  (Philippians 2:9-11)

Seven years ago, I attended the conference discussed in The Lesson of the Touch by myself. But I was never alone. In addition to God’s constant companionship, I was surrounded by compassionate people, who ministered to me and to one another in the Name of Jesus.

Two sisters, in particular, showed me numerous considerations. At the conference’s close, they gifted me with a book in which they had written the name of an individual whose prayer ministry, located in my home state, might prove beneficial to me. I thanked them and said that I would check it out.

But I never did visit the ministry, for in my internet search to find its location, I discovered information about another prayer ministry that caught my attention. The ministry, with a local affiliate only an hour from my home, was within reach, and the decision that I made to pay them a visit proved to be life changing. When I walked through the doors that opened into the ministry’s waiting area, I walked into the lives of a group of Christians dedicated to serving others in love through prayer. I was met with open hearts and arms that welcomed me into God’s unconditional love.

One evening each week, the ministry operates in a church that offers its facility for the ministry’s operation. Within that God-provided space, born-again Christians from various local churches pray for the needs of whomever God delivers into their hands. And each week, God leads specific individuals through the church’s doors, uniting need with supply.

During my first visit to the ministry, a two person prayer team listened attentively to my prayer request, before spending considerable time praying for my needs. While they prayed, an intercessor in another room also prayed, asking God for specific Scripture verses for me. Later that evening, as I prepared to leave, I was given a slip of paper, which remains in my Bible. Handwritten by the intercessor on that paper are these verses:

”The LORD has appeared of old to me saying ‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness I have drawn you. Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt.”  (Jeremiah 31:3, 4a—NKJV)

God’s rebuilding process, known as restoration, is always in progress, whether we recognize it or not. The prayer ministry to which I had been led would be one of the instruments that God would use in my personal rebuilding process. Over the next number of years, I learned through firsthand experience the value and power of prayer in rebuilding lives, beginning with my own, which had needs far greater than my understanding was capable of recognizing.

A couple of years later, when God led me to join the ministry’s prayer team in a desire to give back the good that I had been receiving, I was given increased opportunity to discover only more of the good that prayer does. The act of praying is itself a confession of mankind’s true need:  God. It affirms right order between God and men, who are all equal before God. Binding together, prayer strengthens right relationships.

One evening at a ministry session, two members of the prayer team were praying for me when one of the women suddenly became quite excited. With her eyes closed, she exclaimed, “Oh! God is giving you a wonderful gift!”

Growing more excited each moment, she then asked, “Do you see it?”

I didn’t, but I wanted to see it. So I closed my eyes, hoping to see something. But I didn’t see anything. Though the gift that she saw was for me, the vision that God was using to deliver the knowledge of the gift was for her alone. The vision was her gift, connecting us in shared experience in an answer to prayer, delivering much more than I could possibly conceptualize. Years would pass before understanding would even begin to dawn in me, fulfilling even more of the gifts’ intended good.

My friend glowed as she described seeing a glorious array of streamers and colored lights that poured forth from a box that opened to reveal its contents. She then announced, “The gift is honor. God is giving you honor.”

Honor? I was totally baffled. If I hoped for anything from God that evening, it certainly wasn’t honor. After all, honor is reserved for God, isn’t it? People honor God; God doesn’t honor people… or does He?

The extraordinary thought was perplexing. Why would God want to give me something as intangible as honor when I had pronounced physical needs that seemed to me to be of more immediate concern? Though honor sounded nice, and I was appreciative of anything that God wanted to give me, I couldn’t even picture what honor might look like, let alone what it might do for me. It didn’t seem crucial to my wellbeing.

I could not have been any more mistaken.

I repeat, lest anyone (including me) should diminish the significance of that last statement, for its truth stunned me as I typed it.

I could not have been any more mistaken!

The point ringing true is this:  Honor is what God has been rightly restoring in this world since the moment He escorted Adam and Eve from the Garden. (In the bigger picture, God has been restoring honor even longer.) Honor is vital, for it gives and shows proper respect where it is due, maintaining proper order.

When Adam and Eve acted in disobedience, disrespecting God, they burdened themselves with guilt that caused them to hang their heads in shame. They could no longer look God in the eye. Shame stood as a formidablle roadblock in their relationship with their most honorable God—the Father who had given them life. Not only did shame rightfully acknowledge their wrongdoing, it also labeled them as unworthy, leading them into isolation apart from God in a  state of dishonor.

Far too often we incorrectly connect honor to worthiness of our own defining. We reserve respect for people who perform “rightly,” according to a set code of standards of our making. We deem those individuals who measure up as worthy of our attention, giving them awards and rewards for their “good” accomplishments. We define people by their actions.

The problem is that no one does right all of the time. We all fall short of the glory of God, who is the only perfect One among us all. He is the only One who is always right, the only One who is truly honorable.

Yet, God is not due honor only because of what He does, but more so because of who He is. His right actions are a result of His right Being. While God knows this full well, we often get it backwards. While God acts honorably, doing good, because He encompasses all goodness—perfect love, we try to “do good” in order to be honored (given positive attention, commended, loved one way or another). We work (strive) to earn (maintain) our worthiness. We want to be found “acceptable”—labeled as honorably worthy. And, likewise, as we so envision ourselves being labeled, so do we tend to label others. Using our own personal code of worthiness, we assess the words and deeds of others to determine the amount of “honor” that we will willingly bestow upon them.

But people are not their words and deeds. Those are simply a reflection, “good or bad,” of what people think and believe. Indeed, we are all much more than our words and actions. We are spiritual beings, created in God’s image. As such, we carry the honor that is intrinsic to our Creator. Our very existence honors the One who honors us with our creation. We are worthy, simply by connection to God. It was true in the Garden of Eden by God’s design, and it remains so today through Jesus Christ.

Jesus is God’s perfect plan for eternal honor. In both His honoring of God the Father and honored as God, Jesus overcomes the division between God and men that sin created. When we accept Jesus as Savior, we are “hidden in Christ.” His Blood covers us. When God looks at those of us who are in Christ, He sees only His Son’s righteousness, making us worthy in both being and action (confession of faith in Jesus). We are made right forevermore in the eyes of God, who remains perfectly right in seeing us that way. In our acceptance of Jesus, we are perfectly acceptable to God. Our honoring of Jesus instates His honor in us.

God did indeed give me… and He gave you… honor, just as He said. He gave us Jesus—-the ultimate Gift. He couldn’t have bestowed any greater honor upon us. Nor could He have honored Himself any more than He has done in having done so.

During Jesus’ ministry on Earth, Jesus one day purposefully sat alone at a well in Samaria, waiting for a women who was isolated from her fellow townsmen by her shame. Previously she had been married five times, and at this time she was living with a man who was not her husband. Various rejections had left her wounded. Scarred, her imperfection was public knowledge that shrieked in her mind and heart of her unworthiness.

But then came Jesus…

Jesus—The Man of Honor—chose to honor her:  first with His Presence, and then with personal knowledge of Him. Jesus, the Messiah—the Savior of the world, revealed His identity to a woman who needed to be saved from judgement in both this world and the next. In her acceptance of who Jesus is, she realized who was accepting her as worthy of Him. Jesus gave the woman His time, His attention, His words, His love. He presented her with honor that trumped all past shame.

Jesus made her a new woman—one who ran to share her knowledge of Jesus with the people whom she had previously avoided. Her personal relationship with Jesus gave the woman what she needed most:  the respect that accompanied complete acceptance. More important than having given her self-respect, He gave her the respect of God. The gift was one that she could never have earned, which made the gift all the more appreciated. She returned the honor by accepting Jesus for who He said he was. She took Jesus at His Word; she took Him to be her Savior… and He was. He gave her new life.

If we are honest with ourselves and with God, we each have personal Garden of Eden moments in life when our eyes are opened to the degree of sin that we commit against God and others. The Truth puts an end to the lies of self-justification, leaving us with shame-loaded regrets.

But then along comes Jesus…

Full of Truth and grace, Jesus reveals Himself to us in our own “woman at the well” encounters. There He is waiting for each one of us, just as we are:  in need of Him. Only in personal relationship with Jesus can we receive all that we need, for Jesus has given us His all.

The honor of being made forever acceptable/accepted in Christ Jesus may leave us breathless, but it also gives us volumes of Good News to continually share with others. We can’t help but spread the Word.

And every time that we are honored by the opportunity that knowing Jesus affords us to share the Gospel, we can’t help but honor God all the more. That is exactly what Jesus did in His life on Earth:  He honored His Father, not Himself, all of the time. Jesus simply made the decision to live that way, and so can we in Christ by Holy Spirit power. In Christ, life abounds with the honoring of one another, at all times and in all circumstances.

It turns out that mankind’s dishonoring of God is the precise booty that Satan was after when he delivered deceit into the Garden of Eden. It was the path to destruction of the good life on Earth that honored God in reflection of God’s glory. Or, at least, so it appeared. 

But those who don’t look beyond surface appearances to seek greater Truth, miss seeing the bigger picture of opportunity that the Garden sin gave God. Here is what God did with that opportunity:  He paved a road—the Way—of righteousness that intersected with and cut off sin at the center of the Cross.

There hung Jesus—the Centerpiece of God’s Glory, waiting for each person to see Him, just as He is.

And so, now here we are today and forever (if we so choose to be), right where we honor God the most:  in the Centerpiece—the very place that God prepared just for us!

If that doesn’t lift our eyes and bend our knees, nothing will.

To God be the glory! In Christ alone…

.

“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever!'” (Revelation 5:13)

Recently, my husband and I attended a Friday evening worship service at a church that was begun not long ago by several of our friends. Looking forward to worshiping with them, we were additionally pleased to learn upon our arrival that the speaker that evening would be a visiting Apostolic leader, whom we had heard speak once before.

Called by God to equip Christians for greater personal ministry, the Apostolic leader freely shares the work that God is doing in and through him, teaching others through modeling and guidance. By sharing testimonies from his own experiences, he draws others into active participation through his encouragement. Then, in providing opportunities for others to have their own first-hand experiences, a ripple effect of benefits is generated.

On this particular evening, he was demonstrating the specific prayer method that he was then currently using to lead others in acquiring greater awareness of both God’s Presence and God’s personal knowledge of individuals. The method that he was using in his submission to God for the purpose of allowing God’s love to flow through him is simple. While shaking an individual’s hand, he mentally asks God to reveal something to him about that person. Once he hears a response from God, he speaks the response aloud to the person to reveal specific knowledge from God about him or her. Then, while maintaining hand contact, he repeats the prayer and response process three more times to reveal a total of four pieces of information. By the time the fourth word is spoken, God, not the leader, has the individual’s attention.

Though he stipulated that the order of the four revealed words is important, the leader also quickly admitted that he didn’t always understand why. Only God, “the builder of everything” (Hebrews 3:4b), has the complete picture.

After explaining the process, the leader called a few volunteers from the congregation forward to help model the prayer. The first time, he did the praying and asking. But after that, he stepped aside to give others opportunity to pray and speak. Since the responses were all from God, they were all equally accurate, no matter who received and spoke them. The words that were revealed, such as palm tree, nose and white farm house, sounded innocuously generic to most of the people present, while proving to be most meaningful to the specific individuals to whom they were delivered.

After the completion of several prayers, the leader asked if anyone present had been sick for more than five years. Half a dozen arms went up in the air, including my own.

I consider the fact that I raised my hand to be a “minor miracle” (an oxymoron, I admit). For most of my life, I have concertedly tried not to be noticed, especially when it comes to volunteering in group settings. But on this night, instead of scrunching down in my seat, I raised my hand. Apparently God had prepared me to do so, for the leader called me forward.

Taking my right hand in his, the leader smiled before closing his eyes for a few moments. Then, opening them, he said, “I see you in a gymnasium type place with pine floors.”

The memory that the words called to mind was of my first day of teaching. Before the common use of computers, the high school, where I had been hired to teach, assembled all students and faculty in the combined gymnasium-auditorium that had pine floors on the first day of school. One by one, the teachers had to stand at the microphone in the middle of the room and read their homeroom roles. Petrified of public speaking, the event terrified me. But somehow, despite the fear, I did what needed to be done, marveling since then that it went as well as it did.

After I had shared the memory, the leader briefly closed his eyes for a second time. Then he said, “After that, your life was threatened.”

Anything but innocuous, this word from God really surprised me, as well as others. I replied, “Yes, by a student.”

Nodding, the leader confirmed, “He threatened your life.”

The he, who had threatened me, was an angry young man, with a reputation among school officials and local police officers as a regular troublemaker. When other students confided to me that he had threatened to put an explosive device in my car, I became apprehensive about where I parked each day. With the threat replaying each morning in my head, I made a point of arriving at school early enough for the remainder of the school year to park in the tiny lot next to the office, avoiding the more isolated field behind the school.

Following my affirmation, the leader spoke for a third time, saying, “Then you had a broken relationship.”

I did, and it was no small matter. Turmoil, having sprung up unexpectedly, had brought with it an ongoing apprehension of extended duration before resolution was attained.

Astonished, I said, “Yes!” Then the leader spoke the fourth and final word, saying, “Then you were robbed.”

I was, multiple times. My husband would remind me later that evening that we had been robbed physically twice, first of appliances in the new home that we were building and then of our car from the parking lot of a neighborhood grocery store. Despite the appliances being replaced by insurance and the vehicle being found abandoned across town three days later (contrary to police assurance that it was already in pieces in a chop-shop), the robberies left behind a sense of vulnerability.

But when the leader said “robbed,” neither of those two events came to mind. All that I could think about was my regular use of the word to describe what disease does, stealing both God-given time and opportunity.

Jesus once said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Jesus left no room for doubt that God isn’t the one who steals from the life that He gives.

But that evening at the church, God did want me to lose something in order to gain more life. Looking straight at me, the leader said, “Let go of the trauma.”

Trauma is the lasting effect that either a physical or psychological injury can inflict. Unlike the cause of the injury, which becomes history, trauma continues carrying forward to threaten future wellbeing. The residual fear and anxiety that exist in trauma can produce a victim mentality that is forever expecting the other proverbial shoe to drop at any moment.

When the leader said, “Let go…,” nothing appeared to happen. But when he repeated the words, they apparently struck a chord, causing me to gasp. Surprised by my audible response, I was then more surprised to feel myself beginning to fall backwards, only to again be surprised when unexpected hands behind me lowered me gently to the floor. Startled, I laid still for a minute, while the service continued without me.

But my greatest surprise of the evening was yet to come, for when I tried to stand up, I couldn’t. The discovery was bizarre… beyond worldly explanation. Neither paralyzed nor weak, I was just plain “stuck,” as if I had been super-glued to the floor. I could wiggle all parts of my body slightly, but I couldn’t separate myself from the floor in the least. I felt like a chunk of metal being held firmly in place by an overwhelmingly powerful magnet.

For over an hour, I remained where I had been placed, talking with a friend, who remained at my side, until the eventual release arrived. Only after the slow release had worked its way from my toes to my head was I finally able to be helped to my feet.

That night, I returned home clueless as to the meaning of the evening’s events. Later, in giving testimony to another individual about what had happened, I hoped to gain understanding. I was certain that the events, being from God, had purpose that would prove beneficial. But no understanding came, until the time of this writing. Then I received one word:  commitment.

Prior to the leader telling me to let go of the trauma, he had made one other comment. Smiling, He had said, “God was always there with you, through everything, wasn’t He?”

I had nodded, intellectually knowing that it was true. But still, I sensed that I was missing something deeper:  unshakable personal conviction of the statement’s truth.

The four events in my life to which the statement had specifically referred had all occurred in the years between my confession of faith as a teenager and the time when I came to begin having a more personal fellowship with God. Though I believed in God’s existence during that time, my awareness of God’s Presence was negligible. Though God had been with me, I had noticed Him very little. Yet God was always faithful in His care for me.

Even before time began, God anticipated with delight the creation of each and every unique person with whom He would come to share His life. (See Jeremiah 1:4, 5 & Ephesians 1:11, 12) Forming us in His image (See Genesis 1:27), God has birthed us each into specific times and places (See Acts 17:26) to suit His good and perfect purpose. We are designed to share in His eternal love in Christ Jesus (See John 17:23 & 1 John 3:1) through His unmerited grace (See Romans 5:17 & 1 Timothy 1:14) that sustains us (See Matthew 6:31-33).

In His desire for eternal fellowship with us, God has placed a God-sized need within us that only He can fill. Additionally, to assure that we never get our fill of God, He also has provided us with an outlet—one another—into whom we can pour out His loving grace that we receive, producing an ongoing desire to receive and share “more” of God.

God alone is our Saving Grace. Saving us from every lack (which isn’t really lack, but opportunity to ask and receive from God—See Matthew 7:8 & 21:22), God draws us deeper into fellowship with Him—the fellowship that He desires and that we need. Everything—everything—in existence depends upon Saving Grace—Jesus. While infants are born into a life of grace, the more mature must continue relearning so.

When Satan subtly planted the seed of doubt in Adam and Eve’s minds regarding God’s goodness to them, they chose separately to tend the fear that doubt produced. In doing so, they reaped destruction upon themselves and the world. Their lack of commitment to live according to God’s Words enslaved them to lives of toil, pain and shame. Still, God’s commitment to mankind never wavered.

Even in our doubt today, we are blessed by a God who is fully committed to accomplishing the highest good for all, which includes every individual’s singular wellbeing. God’s necessary faithfulness to His own righteousness holds the world together in Christ Jesus, despite every unfaithful act of the world at large. In using  the nails that held Jesus to the Cross, God proved His commitment. He proved Himself the Consummate Provider, meeting every need with His personal Sacrifice. This is the committed care into which God births us.

 “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”  (Romans 8:32)

When I was lying on the church floor, unable to get up, I had a singular viewpoint: my own. I lacked God’s knowledge, understanding and perspective. But later, in His commitment to change that, God expanded my vision to enable me to see the situation from a point of view that is more in line with His. Zooming in initially on me, in order to meet me where I was, God then panned out, as with a camera, to show me the bigger picture of which I am a part.

The floor, to which God had stuck me and from which I could not separate myself, is part of the entire church (the body of Christ in this world and His Bride in the next)… which is connected by its foundation (Jesus) to the entire world… which is connected to the entire natural universe… which is connected to all of Creation, both the natural and supernatural alike… which is of  its Creator:  God.

As bizarre as my experience seems by this world’s accounting, it was right on target, exactly as God had aimed for it to be. God gave me exactly what I needed:  assurance of His firm hold on me, despite any evil suggestion that tries to lead me into doubting otherwise.

Trusting God is not a difficult task. When we awaken in the morning expecting that the Earth has continued to rotate while we slept and that the sun will rise, signaling roosters to crow and bees to buzz, we are employing faith that God is holding the universe—Creation—together. We—part of Creation—are inseparable from the totality of God’s plan. We who are in Christ Jesus are more firmly held in plce than are the stars in their galaxies.

When mankind fell from grace and couldn’t right itself, God maintained a firm grip on all of us via Jesus, who would be lifted up upon the Cross for us all.  In lying at the foot of the Cross, we are positioned by God to gain right perspective in looking up at Him. From that vantage point alone can we see that we are precisely where we need to be:  in the Church Universal… in the Body of Christ… in Provision… in Saving Grace. The inescapable Truth is that, squirm as we may, we can’t stand on our own. We never could, and we never will. Without God raising us to life, we would be down and out by our own lack if ability to raise ourselves.

We need a continual Hand-Up from Jesus, the only One strong enough to maintain our right standing with God. Using His Son’s Blood, God “stuck” Himself to us forever, fulfilling Eternal Promise. His ironclad covenant grip on us in Christ Jesus will never let us go, nor will it ever let us down.

And to those with a limited view who scoff at the power of Jesus’ life-giving Blood, know that its reality is not bizarre in the least, no matter how it may sound to any particular individual..

It is simply plain commitment… pure, eternal commitment—a commodity that is much needed by all the world, no matter what our individual perspectives may be.

 .

“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”  (Lamentations 3:22, 23)

A number of years ago, maybe five or so, I was at home one day, immersed in my morning routine. Playing praise and worship music while sitting in the living room, I had completed my daily Bible reading and devotions, but was not yet ready to move on to household chores. Caught up in the spirit of the music, I turned the volume even higher and remained in the living room for some time, singing and praising God. With a joyful heart, I declared the Truth of the songs’ words with an unaccustomed boldness that arose from my spirit, welcoming God into both my heart and my home, denying God’s enemy access to either.

Then, in the midst of my adamant celebration of faith, God made His Presence known, filling me with what I can best describe as tangible love. The love felt something akin to liquid warmth or glowing embers, only much richer and more pervasive. Far more than just a glorious sensation, the love seemed to be comprised of unseen substance that infiltrated every minute part of my spirit, soul and body, encompassing me completely. Try, though, as I may to describe the experience, I can’t do it justice. Words are insufficient.

Fully enveloped that morning in the love, I was sent into my day to go about doing what normally would have been routine. But on this day, the ho-hum was accomplished from a new perspective that gave increased significance to everything. Harmony reigned in both “doing” and “being.”

Though functioning normally by outward appearances, I was anything but what I had known “normal” to be. My mind performed its duty, getting my work done, but my consciousness was caught up in euphoria. I can only compare the experience to having always lived in a light that had been unknowingly set on dim, only to have someone suddenly switch the light to a much higher setting, greatly increasing its intensity.

That afternoon, as my husband returned home from an outing, he walked into the kitchen where I was working. Instantly, without thought or effort, the love that continued filling me to overflowing ratcheted up another notch, intensifying even more.

I cannot explain how something so complete could become even more so, but it did. The love multiplied not only itself, but also my joy that was a part of it. I am convinced that had anyone else entered the room with my husband that day, both the love and the joy would have compounded even more.

For fourteen hours, I remained in this extraordinary state. Every moment of its continuation felt like a “triumph” of sorts. Knowing that I had done absolutely nothing and could do absolutely nothing to deserve, create or sustain the experience made me nothing but appreciative. The love was a most generous outreach from the Heart of God, handed to me free of charge. With an excitement that was too great either to contain or to share with others, I celebrated in thanksgiving with God alone—the way that I now imagine that He had planned it all along.

Since that day, I have heard two well-known Bible teachers attempt to describe what must have been similar events in their own lives. Even though their personal experiences lasted much longer than mine—one having lasted several weeks and the other one a couple of months, they too had a great deal of difficulty conveying their experiences.

One of the individuals could only describe the event as a time of walking around in “La-La Land,” an apt description for what I consider to have been an out-of-this-world experience. Likewise aptly put was the other individual’s description of an imaginary scenario of the top of one’s head being removed to have warm honey poured in to overflowing capacity.

But my personal experience contained an aspect that I have not heard addressed by anyone. For during the fourteen hours that I was immersed in God’s love, I had not a single symptom of disease in my body, verifying that the experience was not solely an emotional high, but was physical as well. The love was a real and a powerful entity.

At the time that I experienced the love, Parkinson’s disease had been knowingly present in my body for about thirteen years. Having moved in and taken up residence, it took no vacations and offered no reprieves. The absence of symptoms that day cannot be explained as remission, for Parkinson’s disease has no remissions. Rather, the disease was in submission to the overpowering perfection of a love that allowed no room for anything less than itself.

Feeling fulfilled in every sense, I had no concern or needs, including the need for medication. I took not a single pill that day, never even giving the matter consideration. Medication would have been superfluous, meaningless compared to the perfection of the love that had freed me from the plague of infirmity and disease. As love flooded my body, as well as my heart and mind, I was made whole, aware that love was all that mattered.

A story is told regarding the Apostle John, who, in having had recently returned to Ephesus in his later years, was recognized during a worship service one day as the last living Apostle. As such, he was begged to share his personal knowledge of Jesus and, hence, God the Father. Acquiescing, John made his way to the front of the group, causing quite a stir among the people present. As they awaited John’s every word with great anticipation and expectancy, they could hardly believe their good fortune in having access to the wealth of John’s first-hand knowledge.

But when John spoke, he stunned the crowd, condensing the entire Gospel into one simple statement. In essence, John declared love to be the focal point of everything. Then, having said all that needed to be said, he sat back down, leaving the crowd speechless. True or not, the story’s point is both well made and well taken.

Though I say this with admitted conjecture on my part, John perhaps had the greatest personal comprehension of any apostle (while in this world) concerning the love of God. Having had lived with Jesus, experiencing Jesus’ compassion first-hand, witnessing Jesus’ Self-sacrifice, receiving revelatory knowledge of King Jesus and then living longer in Holy Spirit guidance than any other original Apostle, who is to say with certainty that John did not experientially know far better the perfection of God’s love than most, if not all, others?

John has been the brunt of many jokes regarding his references to himself in the latter portion of his Gospel as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (John 13:23, 21:2, 21:20; see also John 20:2) But the statement isn’t a joking matter. Though to the world at large, John’s terminology sounds like bragging, it is anything but. The statement is one of Truth, displaying genuine humility, acknowledging the greatness of God’s love that supersedes by far every lesser form of imitation.

By restructuring John’s description of himself, we more readily see the statement’s message:  “Jesus loved the disciple.” Jesus is the subject; the disciple is merely the direct object of Jesus’ affection. The emphasis is on Jesus and what he did, not on John, the disciple. We may think that saying “I love Jesus” is being humble, but the statement focuses way too much on us, instead of upon Jesus.

Following the Last Supper, when Peter earnestly declared that He would willingly lay down his life for Jesus, Peter effectually proclaimed a “love” for Jesus that would see him through to the end. Many of us valiantly proclaim likewise, declaring complete allegiance to Jesus and/or to one another.

But Peter’s “love” failed before the rooster finished crowing, and our imperfect love doesn’t last much, if any, longer than did Peter’s. (See John 13 & 18) More than anyone else, we let ourselves down, unable to love as we want to love, trying all the harder to be more lovable in a perfection that we can’t attain.

In the end, God’s love laid down Jesus’ life for everyone, including Peter. In the reality of what true and perfect love is and what it is not, the story couldn’t have unfolded any other way. God loves wholly; we love in part.

As Peter experienced, people fail to love perfectly time and again, creating pain and regret. To expect differently is to create even greater havoc in the world, demanding impossible specificity from others and ourselves in a desire to feel good about ourselves always.

But, as seen with Peter, fear and pride sometimes interfere with our ability to love, concealing themselves even from the ones who harbor them… until they do their damage. Daring to hide even in good sounding intentions, fear and pride eventually rebound to show their true colors, betraying both self and others in a breeding ground of guilt, shame, disappointment and sorrow.

Peter, like most of us, envisioned himself to be a “good” man, true to his word. He expected to act honorably, being a source of fulfillment, meeting his own and others’ needs. But in betraying himself, Peter fell short in striving for the self-preservation to which he had yielded:  a love for his own life that exceeded his love for others… even Jesus.

But Jesus, knowing beforehand the restoration that Peter would need following his betrayal of Jesus, made Himself present later to be Peter’s Provision, specifically going out of His way more than once to be so. After first meeting with Peter privately following His resurrection, Jesus then met Peter publicly on a lakeshore, Esteeming Peter during Peter’s time of confrontation with the Truth, Jesus remained steadfastly loyal to Peter, fully loving him in the ways that Peter best needed to be loved. (See John 21)

By the love of God that dwelled in Jesus, Peter was strengthened in his weakness, empowered by forgiveness to face the future with honor and dignity. In personal restoration, so loved by God, Peter was prepared for his life and ministry that were yet to come. Forever changed by God’s merciful forgiveness, Peter was made ready to love others more fully through the love of Jesus that he personally received.

Likewise, each and every Apostle had to face the same truth about his own shortcomings, meeting the Truth of the love of God in Jesus head on. So must we today. To learn what love is, we must first admit what love is not. Only then are we enabled by our acceptance in Christ to pay forward the love that we receive from Him.

Jesus is our One and Only Example when it comes to eternal love. Knowing that He was fully loved by God the Father, He fully loved us, giving us relief in the present and hope for the future. In handing Himself over to death for our sake, Jesus showed the world what love looks like.

This is what Jesus did:  “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

He died—“died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6b)—right in the middle of all of our wrong thinking and hurtful actions. Even knowing that all men would continue sinning after His Sacrifice, Jesus gave Himself, also knowing that we would need all of the love that we could get.

Jesus didn’t require us to be lovable before He loved us. Nor did He expect us to perform acceptably before He accepted us. He just plain loved us as we are.

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:10-12)

Perfect love, fully applied, fully perfects. Nothing else comes close. Only the love of God provides proper perspective, building futures upon hope in Jesus.

Never wavering or diminishing, never extinguishing, the love of God is eternal reality. It is without beginning or end, for “God is love.”  (1 John 4:16b)

Is… right here and right now, in each and every moment, God is loving us perfectly, because “God is love.”

John was right in reminding us, as well as himself, that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Unable to fully comprehend or explain the love of God, John could only accept it, keeping his words to a minimum and letting love speak for itself.

In understanding the limitations of men’s words, God drew a self-explanatory picture that would explain His love. He drew a Self-Portrait, using the Cross.

With that Cross, God “spelled out” His love, using the blood of His Son to give love a whole new dimension.

“Greater love has no one than this:
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
(John 15:13)

When we truly see the picture that God has drawn for us personally, we become “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

The realization leaves us speechless. It always has, and it always will.

.

“Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  (John 13:1b, c) 

Six and a half years after the vision in The Lesson of the Sealing, I was at home one day, walking down the hallway, when God interrupted my thoughts. As I stepped into the living room, my eyes closed and I stepped into another vision. This time, though, I remained fully cognizant of my presence in both my physical surroundings and the vision, walking in two places at once.

In the vision, I was standing on a craggy precipice that appeared sketchy, as in an artist’s quick rendering. With nothing ahead of me but thin air, I was at a literal dead end, unable to take another step forward or upward. I had gone as far and as high as I could go.

Gazing out into the void, I saw another sketchy formation, quite a distance away. The front of the formation was gently sloping, resembling a coastal landing area. Standing back a bit from its front edge was a group of people, who I somehow understood were just a small number of countless others beyond the horizon. Motionless, the people appeared posed and cartoon-like, lacking detail.

Stymied by the open expanse, I was alone and stuck, having no way of getting to where the people were gathered. But when I again looked, I saw that a large cross, lying horizontally, had been positioned across the void to form a bridge.

The imagery of the Cross being a bridge between man and God is often used to portray the Gospel and is not unique to my vision. But I was unprepared for what I saw next.

The Bridge-Cross, contrary to its typical depiction, was not empty. Instead, Jesus was attached to the Cross. To cross the bridge, I would have to walk on Jesus. Horrified, I didn’t move.

Jesus, understanding both my thoughts and my dilemma, looked directly at me. With loving firmness, He said, “You must walk across Me. It’s the Only Way.”

Submitting, I began an obedient walk that was punctuated with emotional sobbing. Painfully aware of the suffering that Jesus was enduring for me, I inched my way forward, doubled over (both physically and in the vision) in grief. Every hesitant step that I took in the physical was duplicated with a similar step in the vision. As I slowly crossed my living room, I also crossed the Bridge that was Jesus, His Holiness alone sustaining me.

Arriving safely at the other side, I stepped onto the landing. Still doubled over, I asked, “Where am I?”

An authoritative Voice from an unseen Being responded, “In the Land of the Living.”

Confused, I questioned, “The Land of the Living?” But no explanation followed.

Straightening up and turning my attention to the people present, I was surprised to see my deceased maternal grandparents at the front of the crowd. Though they appeared stoic in a type of frozen animation, I was ecstatic to see them. Then, thinking of my dad and my stepdad, who are also both deceased, I asked if they too were present. Hearing only silence, I sensed that there were things that I was not yet to know.

Then another thought popped into my mind and out of my mouth. I asked the unseen Voice, “If this is the Land of the Living, why am I still sick?”

The Voice responded in a matter of fact manner, “You aren’t. You’re being restored.”

Now, even more confused by the answer’s apparent contradiction to my ailing body, I could only query, “Restored?”

“Yes,” the Voice replied. “Jesus took your sicknesses.”

More confused than ever, I sought further clarification, asking, “He took them?”

“Yes,” the Voice said, patiently. “Look.”

Looking over my shoulder at Jesus, who was still lying on the horizontal Bridge-Cross, I watched as He raised Himself part way up on His left arm to look at me. Nodding in agreement with the Voice, Jesus affirmed that, unbeknownst to me, He had taken sickness off me, as I had crossed over Him. With His right arm, He lifted a large sack-like satchel up in the air for me to see, offering it as proof that my sicknesses were in His possession, not mine.

With that knowledge, the vision ended. My tear laden, physical eyes opened to reveal that I was now standing on the far side of the living room from where my walk had begun. The walk had also taken me to a new position of faith, leaving me with validations, as well as with questions that only God could answer. Both would be used to draw me into an even deeper relationship of greater Truth with Him.

“The land of the living” is a Biblical phrase, occurring fifteen times in the Old Testament. According to various concordances, the Hebrew word translating as “living” means exactly that, nothing more. However, the Hebrew word translating as “land” has a variety of usages, referring at times to the whole earth, particular land areas, specific nations, the earthly realm and even the earth’s inhabitants.

Though the phrase does not appear in the New Testament, the word “living” does, ninety-four tines. Fourteen times it describes God as the “living God,” a phrase also appearing fifteen times in the Old Testament. The root of the Greek word that often translates as “living,” with variations occurring 141 times, is the origin of the English word “zoology.” The word encompasses all physical and spiritual existence emanating from a Self-Existent God, who is literally life itself.

The “land of the living,” incorporating both physical and spiritual life, is where the people of the living God abide with Him. It is where life flourishes in connection to God.

God’s Presence—life and its sustenance—has always been in and among the people of His Creation in various ways. Initially, after breathing His life into man, God walked the Garden with Adam and Eve, sharing an intimacy with them that He desired. But even after sin came between God and His Creation, God continued developing His relationship with men beyond the Garden’s gate. As men roamed, searching for fulfillment, God kept dropping by, openly engaging Himself with first one man, and then another, as men’s hearts and minds were made conducive by faith.

But God wanted more than a “drop-by” relationship. He wanted permanent togetherness that would allow Him to share the full measure of His Life. So God built a Family of His own, through the descendants of Abraham, a man of faith upon whom God bestowed His blessing. God would remain with Abraham’s descendants through thick and thin, with the Promise of God’s Presence sustaining them. Where they went, God went, selectively meeting with them in a portable Tabernacle of His design.

But God wanted yet more, and so did His people. So God gave them Israel, a land of their own, a land where God could dwell among them in a glorious Temple. He did, but behind a necessary, though unwanted, curtain—a cumbersome hindrance that separated a most Holy God from the unrighteousness of men.

So God sent His Righteous Son to tear the curtain down, once again enabling face-to-face intimacy between God and men. (See Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45) Injecting the world with His Righteousness, Jesus provided the antidote that men lacked to overcome the power of sin (See 1 Corinthians 15:56). In one overwhelming act of grace, Jesus turned the hearts of those who would accept Him into personal Holy Temples of the Lord God Almighty (See 1 Corinthians 6:19), making them “the land of the living.”

We, who are sons of the living God, are “living land.” By His grace alone, our bodies carry the life in Christ that has been given to us though faith, wherever we go. As instruments of God’s revitalization program, we extend His life that is in us to the spiritually dead, wherever they are, through our obedience to go wherever God leads us.

God always has sustained Creation by His grace, timing His Provision to fit every need. But His abundant grace has never been more apparent than in the eternal life of Jesus, freely shared with us. The moment when Jesus walked out of the Tomb, He resurrected a world that had been deadened by sin. Administering spiritual CPR, Jesus began pumping God’s Breath—the Breath of Life—back into the world’s breathlessness, resurrecting one person after another, in reclamation of His Father’s land.

In our rebirth into Christ’s life, God places a new spirit—one in tune with His Righteousness—within us, permanently setting us apart from sin for eternal fellowship with Him. (See 1 Corinthians 1:8, 9) In renewal and healing, God reveals His power that is at work in us (See Ephesians 3:20), as He restores us to the wholeness that is found only in Jesus.

Restoration is a process, sometimes slow and sometimes fast by our accounts, but a process, nonetheless. God’s endless grace—embodied in Jesus, displayed upon the Cross and released through the Tomb—restores righteousness within the confines of our reconciliation to our Righteous God. Initiating and empowering the restoration process, God alone dismantles deception and nullifies lies, rebuilding Creation upon the unshakable foundation of Truth in Jesus.

In Jesus’ willingness to bear the wrath of God due men (See 1 Thessalonians 1:10), Jesus “took” our sin upon Himself, bearing our guilt (See Isaiah 53:10b) and shame (See Hebrews 12:22b) upon His Body. “For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressor” (Isaiah 53:12e), “and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6b). For our sake, “he was cut off from the land of the living” (Isaiah 53:8c).

In bearing our sin, Jesus also “took” our sicknesses that were a part of the curse attached to sin (See Deuteronomy 28:14-68). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” (Galatians 3:13; see also Deuteronomy 21:23b)

“This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.’” (Matthew 8:17; see also Isaiah 53:4) “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds, you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)

The curse was never a part of God’s will for man. God’s will always has been and remains one of blessing, never cursing. (See Deuteronomy 30:19) God is for us, not against us (See Romans 8:31), proving so through His Son.

In the glory of the perfect work of the Cross (See Hebrews 5:9 & 7:28), God’s will has been done. The work is complete… finished… assured… secure in Jesus. Set in place, it is achieving complete unity that becomes clearer to us only through revelation, a supernatural God-given understanding, emanating from our ongoing and deepening relationship with God over both time and eternity. (See 1 Corinthians 13:12)

To walk out the complete life that God has ordained for us, we must first step into the life of Christ, allowing Jesus to strip away our past, freeing us for a future with Him. As we continue walking with Him, taking one obedient step after another, we are propelled forward by God into deeper relationship with Him, by the faith that He develops in us. (See Ephesians 2:8)

Our questions may be many and confusion may linger, but in the knowledge of the Lord, we thrive, flourishing in Christ. Given eternity, we have unlimited opportunity in our quest for understanding. As we continue seeking God, He makes sure that we find Him, delighting both Him and us in the revealing of the glory of His mystery.

“It is to the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” (Proverbs 25:2)

Such is the glory of eternal life:  the honor of living in the land of the living God, knowing Him. (See John 17:3)

In journeying with Jesus via the Cross and the empty Tomb—which isn’t empty after all, but teaming with the overflowing life of God, we transit the span created by sin, crossing from death into eternal life via the Body of Jesus.

During the crossing, Jesus transfuses His life into us, shedding His life-giving blood upon us, “and by his wounds, we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5d). Cleansed of both sin and its residue by the Lamb’s Blood (See Revelation 7:14), we are made well, restored to wholeness, for “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” (Romans 3:25)

Centuries earlier, God had explained the necessity of blood sacrifice, saying, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” (Leviticus 17:11)

“[Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2) No one is an exception. Whoever and whatever we were prior to our crossing, Jesus is Jesus is Jesus, and we are all the same in Him:  sons of the living God, alive in Christ, by faith in His blood.

Receiving life, all vestiges of death fall away, for God is “the God who gives life to the dead” (Romans 4:17b).

In the words of Jesus, recorded three times:

“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32b);
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:27);
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38a)!

The living! As sons of the living God, in this world temporarily, but no longer of it (See John 17:11 & 16), we walk in two places at once:  one world seen by all, the other visible only to those within it.

Yet, only one true walk exists, revealing all others to be nothing more than shams—a variety of death crawls, sucking the breath out of mankind, draining life.

But with the Breath of Life that has been breathed into us, we praise the living Lord:

the One who enables us to walk in His Righteousness;
the One who has laid down His own life to be the Bridge;
the One who is the Only Way onward and upward;
the One who has restored His Creation unto Himself.

We praise the Living God in His “Land of the Living,” now and forever more.

.

“For you, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the LORD in the land of the living.”  (Psalm 116:8, 9)

Between the physical healing and the manifestation of God’s Presence that are both described in The Lesson of the Radiance, another notable event occurred, this time at the home of the friend with whom my husband and I spent the night. The following morning, at the onset of my awakening, while my eyes were still closed, I experienced “a vision plus,” for lack of better terminology. Differing from a dream, the event felt as real as the present moment.

Before the vision began, I knew that I was in the guestroom bed of our friend’s one story home, lying on my back, with my arms at my sides. Then, in an instant, I was in the vision, having no awareness of my actual physical surroundings.

In the vision, I was likewise lying on my back in a bed with my arms beside me, but I was in a second story bedroom. Unlike the actual guestroom, the room in the vision was small, with the bed against the right-hand wall. To the left, across a narrow open floor space, a large picture window provided a view to a driveway below. The only other object in the room was a large television with a blank screen that was sitting at the foot of the bed.

As the vision began, I saw a large black sedan pull into the driveway and come to a stop beneath the window. All four car doors opened as a handful of men got out. Tall and dressed in dark suits, they wore hats and sunglasses, giving them the appearance of stereotypical movie mobsters from days gone by.

Walking toward the house, the men quickly disappeared out of my field of vision. Then, just as quickly, an extensive alarm system was activated. Very loud sirens, bells and whistles sounded, as the television screen came alive with flashing lights and warnings. Instinctively (in the vision) I sat up in bed, realizing that a very real and present danger was trying to enter the house to get to me. But it couldn’t. I was protected, and I was safe. With that knowledge, the vision ended.

In the next moment, my awareness returned to my physical presence in my friends’ guest bed, drawing my attention to an electrical tingling in my toes. Spreading up the outer edges of both of my legs, the tingling sensation outlined my body, as a child traces his or her hand with a pencil. Continuing to flow up my torso and around my arms, the current followed two symmetrical pathways that united at the top of my head, encasing me in an electrical silhouette. Then, and only then, did my eyes open, as the event ended.

Other than the generalized awareness of protection that I had received in the vision, I had no understanding of the event that morning. Bewildered, I mentally filed the experience away with other unanswered questions.

Then, a couple of months later, during one of my regular morning Bible readings, I came to Ephesians 4:30. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Sealed! Instantly, without question, I knew that I had been sealed by the Holy Spirit! Though uncertain about what sealing entails, I was confident that God was protecting me with Himself. Having installed the Holy Spirit in me, God was my “Alarm System,” keeping evil at bay. With the Gift of the Holy Spirit—the third Person of the Trinity, God’s commitment to my welfare was affirmed by God in a way that I couldn’t mistake for anything less. God, living in me, would be my much needed strength and shield. (See Psalm 28:7)

God distinguished Holy Spirit baptism, a vital part of Christian life, from water baptism through the words of John the Baptist and the baptisms of Jesus. Including both John’s words and Jesus’ baptisms in all four Gospels, God left no room for doubt regarding their significance. (See Matthew 3:1-17; Mark 1:2-11; Luke 3:1-22; John 1:8-34)

While John preached repentance, baptizing with water, Jesus—the One upon whom John would see the Spirit both descend and remain—would baptize, not with water (See John 4:2), but with the Holy Spirit (See John 1:33). The Holy Spirit’s remaining upon Jesus would be God’s signature, anointing Jesus and identifying Him as “the Son of God,” simultaneously privileging John the Baptist with the testimony that was his life purpose to proclaim. (See John 1:34)

In the words of John the Baptist, “A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” (John 1:30b, 31)

In the presence of John and others, God the Father propelled Jesus into the earthly portion of His Eternal Kingdom Ministry with public baptism. Glorifying Himself, God honored Jesus with the Person of the Holy Spirit, effectually declaring that God would be with Jesus, wherever Jesus went. Jesus and the Father were One. (See John 17:22) Then, acclaiming Fatherhood of His Son by Word, as well as by Spirit, God left no room for doubt regarding the nature, as well as the permanency, of His relationship with Jesus.

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:16, 17)

From the Day of Pentecost forward, God has similarly revealed His pleasure with all who become His beloved sons in Christ, offering them Holy Spirit baptism by Jesus. (See Galatians 4:6) As affirmation of our acceptance into God’s eternal Family, the Presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit both confirms our future (See 2 Corinthians 1:22) and empowers our present (See Acts 1:8), transforming us through ongoing fellowship with God. (See 2 Corinthians 3:18).

Salvation, a package deal, is an all or none proposition made by God. Either we accept His offer, being reconciled to God in Christ Jesus (See Colossians 1:22), or we reject it, remaining independent agents (See Romans 2:8). But like a birthday present of multiple pieces that are all wrapped in one box, we can open the package of salvation, taking out the primary gift of eternal life, but overlooking the accompanying benefits that pertain to this world.

While, indeed, the combined expectation and reality of eternity with God is arguably salvation’s most outstanding blessing, minimizing the significance of our role in God’s earthly kingdom leaves us short-changing ourselves and the world in general. Jesus specifically said that the Kingdom of God is within us (See Luke 17:21), not without.

Through Paul, God further expounded on the subject, saying, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power” (1 Corinthians 4:20), ”…of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17b). To live Kingdom life as God intends, living the life given to us God’s way, we need unlimited resource. We need the Holy Spirit.

First John 5:7 speaks specifically of three separate baptisms for believers: “the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.” Each testifies to the Truth of God, supporting one another, yet providing different benefits. Together they form the complete package.

When we confess and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit baptizes us into salvation by the blood of Christ. “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body…” (1 Corinthians 12:13a) Our position in Jesus is secure, for “…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:10)

Water baptism then enunciates in a different way the faith that we have declared in the finished work of Jesus, giving physical substance beyond our words of confession to the spiritual renewal that has occurred. Signifying death, burial and resurrection in Christ Jesus, water baptism enacts our spiritual rebirth, displaying obedience to God. As new creations in Christ Jesus, the old has gone, the new has come. (See 2 Corinthians 5:17)

“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:2)

Solidifying in this life the eternal promise given to us in Jesus, Holy Spirit baptism substantiates our new life of personal reconciliation to God as nothing else can. Giving us privileged access to Himself (His Person, knowledge, power, etc.) through the Holy Spirit, God reiterates the promise that He once made to Abraham and has fulfilled to us in Christ:  God Himself is our ”very great reward” (Genesis 15:1), our provision (See 2 Peter 1:3, 4).

In committing our lives into Christ’s Hands, we receive both the honor and the responsibility of ministering the Gospel—the Truth of God in Jesus—to one another through word and deed. (See 2 Corinthians 3:6) Only “God in us” can work this miracle through us, further distributing His life to a hurt and dying world.

We need the continuity of Holy Spirit guidance in every aspect of life, pointing us and others always to the Truth of Jesus. (See John 16:13) Through revelation of the Truth of God, God accomplishes what we cannot, setting our lives apart from the turbulent nature of evil that cohabits this world with us.

But even the indwelling companionship of the Holy Spirit does not eliminate evil’s attempts to sway us. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:34b), and we do. Evil exists, brewing discord in our hearts and minds, disrupting even nature (See Romans 8:21) and employing dark spiritual beings against us (See Ephesians 6:12).

More importantly, though, Jesus had this to say: “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:34c)

In having triumphed in the same battle between good and evil that tempts us, Jesus submitted to no one but God. (See Hebrews 4:15) He arose victorious, and so do we in Him. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we, too, experience the ability to conquer the flesh’s rebellious nature (See Galatians 5:16) that attempts to lead us away from God and into destruction.

God’s Way, the only viable way, is the way of agape love:  dedication to the highest good of others above oneself. Living out God’s love multiplies blessings, giving life—the very essence of God (See John 17:3). In deferring to the Holy Spirit’s leadership, we become part of God’s rebuilding process, being used by Him to construct anew what evil has torn apart:  our relationships with God and with one another. Kingdom living is all about unification:  salvation in Jesus, being made one with God.

Salvation is God—no less than Father, Son and Holy Spirit:  the complete Salvation Package in One Eternal God. (See Deuteronomy 6:4 and Mark 12:29) Without God, there is no life, not in this world or the next, only a mortal facade.

God said, quite clearly, “Now choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19b) … “Choose Me.”

There is only One Way to do that:  Invite Him in… invite All of Him all of the way in.

And there is only one reason why we can:  God made the nonretractable offer possible when Jesus sealed the deal for us… in blood… His Own.

.

“…Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2)

Some months following the event of The Lesson of the Touch, I attended another conference, enticed by both my experiences of the first one and my growing relationship with God. Still uncertain regarding the extent of God’s active participation in people’s lives today, I continued observing, intrigued with faith’s potential.

But, even then, doubt was receding, and my mind was opening. The seed of faith, planted in me decades earlier, was receiving the nurturing that it needed to grow the way God intended. This event would provide yet another supplemental boost.

During a conference session, I was sitting next to my husband in an aisle seat of the midsection of the church’s auditorium-sanctuary. A conference official approached me, accompanied by a woman of about my age. Leaning over, so as not to disturb others, he introduced himself. Then he told me that a few minutes earlier, as the woman with him had walked by me, she had received a word of knowledge regarding an abdominal pain in my midsection.

Surprised and confused by the entire scenario, I stared at him, trying to absorb what he was saying. But feeling no pain, I automatically replied, “I don’t have any abdominal pain.”

My response apparently caught the man by surprise, for he sounded shocked as he asked, “You don’t?” Shaking my head in the negative, I said (almost laughingly), “No.” Looking at one another, the man and the woman shrugged slightly, not knowing what else to say or do. Apologizing for bothering me, the man returned to his duties, and the woman returned to her seat several rows in front of me.

But as I watched the woman sit back down, I was suddenly gripped with the realization that I had, without intention, not spoken the truth. For a couple of months, I had indeed had a reoccurring pain in the area that the man had described. But not experiencing the pain at that moment, I had not made the connection, due to the unexpectedness of the conversation.

Now I was again the one who was confused. How and why would a woman, who I did not know, know about a pain in my body that only God and I knew existed?

Thoroughly perplexed, I remained in my seat until a short time later, when the woman got up and walked past me, exiting through the rear auditorium door. Instantly filled with a sense of “now or never,” I excused myself and followed her. Seeing her step into the ladies’ room, I waited in the empty lobby.

When she came out, I approached her, quickly explaining the situation regarding the pain that had been described. Though I had no expectation of what might transpire from our meeting, I was absolutely convinced that she, knowing more than I, was my opportunity to learn more.

Confounded, I was also awe struck. Radiance from the woman drew me to her even more than my questions had done. Standing face to face, just a few feet apart from one another, I was transfixed by her glowing countenance that permeated the air around us. She, on the other hand, was transfixed by something that I could not see, except upon her.

With partly raised arms and upward facing palms, she stood with her eyes closed and her chin slightly lifted, basking in more than the music that was coming from the auditorium. Though we spoke only briefly, and she offered an even more brief prayer for my healing, we continued standing together in a holy silence that was broken only occasionally by her softly spoken praise to God. In that state, we remained alone in the lobby without interruption for quite some time, before returning to our seats.

Soon afterward, the conference concluded for the evening, and my husband and I headed for the home of a friend with whom we were staying. In the darkness, we rode in silence. Deep in thought regarding the evening’s events, I suddenly became aware that the area of discussion in my abdomen was getting warm… quite warm, almost hot.

The warmth was deep inside my body, not on the surface, and it felt luxurious! I sat motionless, soaking up the warmth, not wanting it to end. But as we neared our destination, the warmth faded, and then it was gone.

I can’t explain all of the intricacies of my experience that evening. I can only testify to its occurrence and to the fact that the abdominal pains never returned. One of my gifts from the event is an unwavering knowledge that God is a healing God, still manifesting His Presence in our lives today through miracles of direct intervention. (See 1 Corinthians 12:8-11) He is Jehovah Rapha, “the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26), just as He has always been.

The Bible, full of miracles in both the Old Testament and the New, reveals both God’s power and His goodness in uncountable ways, many of which we don’t always recognize as such. Men, even God’s “chosen” people, have more often than not misconstrued both God’s nature and His intentions, right from the get-go. (See Isaiah 1:3)

God wants all men to know Him well, to enter into personal, eternal fellowship with Him (See 1 Timothy 2:4). God has never hidden Himself from mankind, but has always been open, revealing Himself in a myriad of ways to provide the understanding that man lacks concerning God. (See Isaiah 45:19)

Right from the beginning of time, God has revealed Himself in His Word. The Spirit-filled Truth of God that is contained in God’s Word was then given a physical component in the life of Jesus—the Living Word—to make a new way for men to see the Truth of God quite clearly. The Truth revealed in Jesus can then lead to further opportunity for increased fellowship with God through the indwelling Presence of the Holy Spirit. But while many people believe in the historical Jesus, fewer believe in the future King Jesus, and fewer still accept the reality of a Present Living Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit.

By not engaging in purposeful fellowship with the Holy Spirit, even born again Christians can unknowingly diminish their interactions with God through a lack of expectation. Inadvertently, neither surprise nor disappointment are generated by the lack of personal experience with God that complacency with the status quo substantiates:  a “that’s all there is” faith.

A faith that is not stretched in accordance with God’s Word is a faith that stagnates within self-imposed boundaries. In squelching new faith experiences before they begin, we can give greater credence to lack of experience than to the Word of God. A mind that is closed to God’s potential in any area of life through unbelief hampers new experiences with God in those particular areas.

On the night I was healed, I had little faith by which I might have received or even contemplated the expectation of such a healing. But in attending the conference, I was open to discovering new dimensions of faith. So I did have exactly what I needed that evening:  willingness to accept the woman’s faith in God, a faith that radiated from her in Word and Spirit. The woman’s intimate relationship with God enabled her to hear, receive and deliver the Word that God had sent to heal me (Psalm 107:20), words for which my spiritual ears were not yet in tune.

My emerging faith was apparently enough to meet God halfway, through this woman, who He had placed between us. That evening, standing before the woman, as she basked in her relationship with God, I believed, without question, two things: God’s Presence and the woman’s intimacy with Him. In her awareness of God, God granted me awareness, also. In effect, God provided opportunity for me to piggyback off the woman’s faith that evening, undoing doubt by establishing in me a greater faith of God.

A faith in God that is more complete in both substance and application is a faith that is more life enhancing. ”We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7) so that greater intimacy with God and increased expectation of Him will develop in us.

Through faith by grace, God has accomplished the greatest miracle of all:  salvation that provides opportunity to commune with God one-on-one, any time and any place. When we are in Christ, God goes with us. Wherever we go, God’s supernatural power fuels our words and actions that are in compliance with the Truth of God, thereby fulfilling the expectations of faith that He develops in us.

While the world likes to say, “Life is what you make of it,” the Truth is that, with God, life becomes much more than that. The abundant life that God offers us in Christ Jesus (See John 10:10) is a supernatural life of transformation (See 2 Corinthians 3:18), one beyond the scope of the world’s vision that depends on our interaction with Him. The greater priority that we give to communing with God, the more personal experiences that we have with Him, breeding even greater intimacy with God in an unending cycle of faith. We, not God, are the ones who can bring the cycle to a screeching halt by applying the brakes of unbelief.

At this particular conference, God had yet another surprise in store for me. As He had revealed to me His Presence in the woman, so He also would reveal to me His Presence in me, letting me know that our relationship depends upon no intermediary other than Jesus Christ  (See 1 Timothy 2:5).

The following evening, at the close of the conference, this is what happened:

Standing alone on a few square feet of floor in a crowded auditorium, I was desperate (no exaggeration). During the final minutes of the conference that my husband and I had attended in South Carolina, I wanted to experience God in some profound way, some way that was previously unknown and unexpected by me. I wanted a taste of what I saw and had seen in other people. I wanted to know God, not just to know about Him.

On that day, when I cried out in silence, imploring God with emotionally charged words in my heart and tears in my eyes, God showed up. He did not show up around me. Nor did He show up above or beside me. God showed up in me.

God was—is—real. I felt Him.

[Excerpt from The Life of the Cross]

God alone can set us aglow, igniting our lives with His potential. He alone is God.

And if we are His, others will know. His Presence will be seen all over us, radiating His Glory through so-called impossibilities that He accomplishes in us and through us, allowing the world to better see Him.

With God, we become the very miracle that we need:  a mind fully open to accepting the full Gospel Truth of God.

.

”Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’”  (Romans 12:2a)

Seven months following the ministry weekend prayer that changed the direction of my life (See The Lesson of the Illumination), I attended a faith conference in my quest to learn more about the Truth of God. While my husband fulfilled a previous commitment elsewhere, I attended the event alone, just as God often arranges for me to be when He wants my full attention.

During a meal break, I was sitting in an aisle seat near the back left corner of a sparsely populated auditorium. Deep in thought, I paid little attention to the woman walking up the side aisle, until she squeezed by me to sit next to me.

The dark skinned woman, about my age, wore a beautiful multicolored floor-length robe and head turban. When she spoke, her words revealed an accent that I did not recognize. Looking into my eyes, she seemed to choose her words carefully, saying, “I believe that God wants me to pray for you.”

Humbled by anyone praying for me, I was overwhelmed to have God send a stranger. As the woman spoke, telling me that God had healed her of AIDS, her voice and mannerisms conveyed a compassion that suggested a personal knowledge of God’s grace that far exceeded my own.

When she finished speaking, she hesitated briefly, and then rose. Squeezing by me again, she began walking back down the aisle. But after taking only a few steps, she hesitated again, turned around and returned to the seat beside me. Laying her hand upon mine, she spoke with soothing compassion. “Don’t be afraid. It’s okay to touch people when you pray for them.” My only response was a flow of tears down my cheeks, for I knew without doubt that this was God, not the woman, speaking to me.

The message that she delivered was one of a loving and compassionate God of merciful grace, who imparts healing and restoration. Even in knowing that I needed both, I remained ignorant of the extent of my need. But God knew. He knows full well my every need, and He would not miss the opportunity to supply what I needed that day, at that time, thanks to a willing messenger.

Understanding the precise nature of our brokenness, God continually draws us, touching us with the compassionate mercy that we need. We are never out of His limitless reach. With ever-open arms, He awaits our willingness to accept His embrace again and again. Each time that we do, we receive more of the wholeness that He has for us in Christ Jesus. Wholeness only comes from God, who alone fulfills us. Without Him, we remain but pieces of our potential.

As exemplified by the commitment of the father of the prodigal son to his son’s welfare (See Luke 15:11-32), God is fully committed to ours. He wants only to bless us, never to curse us, even when we go our own way.

When the prodigal son left home, his father knew that he would eventually be confronted, as we all are, by the consequences of self-proclaimed independence. So, in love, the father fattened a calf, unable to do no less than prepare for a celebration of his son’s homecoming that he could only hope would one day occur.

The celebration, though, could not take place until the son, unable to continue fooling himself, would humbly decide to confess his wrong thinking to his father. By honoring his father, the son would gift himself, enabling his father to honor him with restoration to his family.

When the ever-watchful father first glimpsed his son’s return, he ran unabashedly to meet his son with open arms. Fully embraced, the son received his father’s love—a love revealed in his father’s great relief for his son’s wellbeing. Kissing his son, the father restored his son’s dignity by returning his son’s identity to him. In the receiving of a robe, a ring and sandals from his father, the son received his true inheritance:  his father’s heart—a gift that could never be squandered, but would only grow with time, forever increasing the son’s inheritance.

Not unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the son would learn that everything that he needed had always been his. His search for what he wanted would lead him nowhere but home.

To our shame, we sometimes make poor choices in life, departing from our Heavenly Father’s ways, searching for glitz that is fool’s gold and bankrupting our hearts. But to our Father’s glory, He offers us forgiveness before we ask, bestowing true and lasting treasure upon us in His compassionate, merciful grace. Whether we wander a far distance or near, our Father is always watchful, waiting with outstretched arms for us to turn to His embrace, wanting to delight us in His lavished goodness. His compassion is endless; His mercy without limit; His love unfailing.

Embodying God’s love, Jesus is the Hands of God’s Restoration Ministry that reaches out to restore a needy, hurting world. “The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.” (John 3:35)  Everything and everyone…

And so, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people” (Matthew 4:23), extending God’s love to every man, woman and child who would ever live. No one exceeds His reach.

No one is too defiled:

“A man with leprosy came to [Jesus] and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.” (Mark 1:40-42)

No one is too troublesome:

“…some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything?’…  Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.” (Mark 8:22b-23, 25)

No one is too incapacitated:

“When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sicknesses, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.” (Luke 4:40)

No one is too bound:

“On a Sabbath, Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over, and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’ Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.” (Luke 13:10-13)

No one is too hopeless:

“As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow… When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, ‘Don’t cry.’ Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying him stood still. He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, get up!’ The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.” (Luke 7:12a, 13-15)

No one is too distraught:

“While [Jesus] was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” (Matthew 8:5-8)

No one is too unworthy:

“[Judas] approached Jesus to kiss him… When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, ‘Lord, should we strike with our swords?’ And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, ‘No more of this!’ And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.” (Luke 22:47b, 49-51)

No one is too unimportant:

“Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me….’ When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.” (Matthew 19:13-14a, 15)

With every touch of Jesus, hearts and minds are opened more fully to the Truth of God. Compassion overcomes suffering, and wholeness overcomes brokenness. Faithfully delivering the message entrusted to Him:  “Grace, Peace and Mercy from the Father’s Love” (See 2 John 1:3), Jesus infuses His compassion into our hearts, further healing and transforming them into greater likenesses of their Parent Heart.

On the day when the woman sat down beside me, God increased my awareness that my heart was not all that He had designed it to be. Without the plumb line of the Father’s Heart in Christ Jesus, we can deceive ourselves about our hearts. We aren’t always able to see the fears or pride existing in them. Neither are we always aware of misappropriated feelings of unworthiness, disappointment, despair and other negative emotions. Additionally, illness, infirmity, poverty and other worldly problems may encroach upon what is left of our hearts; for our hearts, as well as our minds, are continually bombarded by the concerns of this world.

As I sat in the auditorium with the woman’s hand on mine, the tears that I shed were from personal shame. In addition to the shaking of Parkinson’s disease that wrongly restrained me, I knew that if our positions were reversed, I would not have placed my hand on hers, thinking that she may have AIDS. Aware that such a decision would have been nothing short of fear-driven selfishness, I could do no less than admit to myself my own self-limited compassion for others. God already had my number; and now that I knew, the jig was up.

By revealing a piece of my heart to me that day, God disarmed the self-deception that had prevailed, returning the freedom that I needed to act in accordance with His will, living His way.

As the Body of Christ on Earth, our hands are Christ’s Hands—hands that are to be used only for good, never for evil, including the evil of failing to do good. Awareness of our enabling to be His Hands comes when our hearts experience His compassion, empowering us to live beyond ourselves.

As Christians, we have the Power of God residing in us and with us, as well as acting for us and through us. We are never helpless. While all prayer is powerfully life transforming, prayer for others that is accompanied by touch through the laying on of hands contains a physical element of acceptance that delivers the spiritual reality of God’s love through an act that tangibly confesses oneness in Christ. Touch draws us into greater recognition of our spiritual unity with one another, further opening our hearts and minds to greater awareness of the Father’s love for all. The result is greater overall restoration, with the love of God flowing more freely in every direction. Touch is a God-designated means of tangibly connecting us one to another in this world as the Body of Christ, delivering Holy Spirit power through our responsive obedience to reach out to share with others the love that God has for all.

Jesus expects us to believe in and appreciate the power of touch, as did both the woman with the issue of blood, who reached out to touch Jesus (Matthew 9:20-22), and Mary, who wiped Jesus’ feet with her hair in worship of Him (John 12:3). Touch forms a two-way connection that enables both giving and receiving. To “successfully” touch others as God intends, we must first be in touch with Jesus ourselves, receiving from Him and returning to Him our worship of Him:  thanksgiving for His outstretched arms that have been extended to a hurting world by the immeasurable love of God for all.

When the woman in the auditorium had finished delivering God’s message to me, she quietly got up and started back down the side aisle. I glanced down only briefly—a few moments, but when I looked back up, I could no longer see her. The exits were behind me, and her brightly colored garb should have been easy to spot. But even though I looked for her the remainder of the evening, I never saw her again.

Who she was and where she came from, I don’t know. But she fulfilled duties of both angels and saints, delivering both God’s message and His compassion to an individual who was in need of receiving both.

May we—the entire Body of Christ—do likewise, touching every body and soul with the compassionate outreach that is ours in Christ Jesus to freely give. (See Matthew 10:8)

And should there be any doubt regarding the power of touch or its necessity, just ask Jesus to provide a tangible touch of proof.

He will, defeating every objection… pierced hands down, every time.

.

“…they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (Mark 16:18c)

Less than two weeks after being led to write and post the event of The Lesson of the Pain, God brought to fruition part of the revelation of the pastor’s prayer for me. Less than two weeks… Yet, more than seven years had passed between the revelation and the posting.

Seven years ago, in the prayer that I had received for healing, God had revealed two things:  one, that I had a problem; and, two, that He is my Solution. (See The Lesson of the Pain and The Lesson of the Illumination.)

But following the prayer, I was certain of only one thing:  I didn’t understand either event that had transpired. Somehow, though, I had the faith to accept what I had heard and seen, despite my lack of understanding. More importantly, I was left with a burning desire to know more about the events, and, in particular, about my God who was behind them. On that day, I began a conscious quest to know the Truth.

Following reliable testimonies, I ventured to places where I hoped to and did witness the Truth of God in ways that were beyond my previous experience. Like the proverbial fly on the wall, I sat in on teachings, prayers and worship, observing all that I could, yet participating little. Still, in the midst of my uncertain apprehension regarding a reality that superseded my senses, God began showing His Presence to me in new ways, giving me new personal experience with Him.

During those years, God changed my thinking, words and actions by the power of the Truth that is in His Word. God made Jesus my very personal Savior, Lord and Friend. This is what changed:  Jesus became the overriding reality of my life.

Carrying me from Truth to Truth and from event to event, God delivered me to the point in time when He had fully prepared me to allow Him to deal with my need that the prayer had revealed. On the day when God deemed me ready, He proved Himself.

On that particular day, my husband and I were standing in the driveway at our son’s house. We had dropped off our grandsons and were about to leave, when I stopped my husband from getting in the car.

For some reason, not understood by me, I had found myself short tempered all evening, practically biting my tongue at times to keep from speaking with words and tones of voice that would not have been commendable. Something nasty was welling up inside me, but I didn’t know what or why.

Then, suddenly, in the driveway, I knew what I was feeling. Standing eye to eye with my husband, I blurted out the realization. “I finally feel something for my father. I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!” The words spewed out of my mouth with venomous conviction.

As great of a shock as the feeling and words were to me, the greater shock was still to come. Without missing a beat, my husband emphatically declared, “Oh, I’ve always known that. I saw it in your eyes the first time that you introduced me to him.”

I could barely believe my ears. For more than forty years, the bitterness that I had hidden from myself had been visible to someone who knew me. The resentment and anger, along with other negative emotions that accompany them, had always been present. Undoubtedly, they had affected my decisions and my life in incalculable ways, just as the pastor’s question regarding my father had suggested. God knew exactly what was in my heart, and He also knew exactly how to resolve the issue.

Getting in our car, my husband and I drove only a short distance before pulling into a gas station. When he got out of the car to pump gas, I was left alone. Sitting quietly, I softly murmured, “God, I’m sorry that hatred has lived in me for so long. I really don’t want it. I rebuke it in the name of Jesus, and I give it to you. Please, get rid of it, Jesus.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when the tangible Presence of God filled me, the car or both. I don’t know which. I only know that He was suddenly there in a way that could not be mistaken. The air was thick with His Presence, and in that moment peace filled me.

The amazement of the experience was compounded by the realization that the hatred that I had felt just moments earlier was completely gone! The realization was so unbelievable that I tested it, actually trying hard to stir up the negative emotions that simply were no longer present.

Feeling a bit like the man born blind, who was unable to explain how Jesus had restored his sight (See John 9:25), I cannot explain how God freed me from the oppression of hatred and its relatives, uprooting them from me. I only know, gratefully, that He did.

Previously, I had spoken words of forgiveness numerous times regarding my father. But apparently more was needed. I had to trust God, recognizing and letting go of my equally wrong reaction to my father’s wrong actions. We had both sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In God’s eyes, sin is sin, and we all need continual forgiveness… not in degrees, but in totality.

Forgiveness is a gift given to ourselves when we release others from the debts that we believe that they owe us. Often, the “unforgiveness” to which we sometimes cling in judgment of others is over debts that are impossible for them to pay. (See Matthew 18:23-35) Unable to go back in time and change the outcome of the events that they caused, we tie ourselves to a desired revenge that, no matter what occurs, never satisfies us. Mentally, we brand our offenders with a scarlet “W” for “wrong,” wanting the world to know what they have done to us. But the “unforgiveness” that we harbor eats away at us, not at the ones for whom we hold self-righteous anger.

True Righteousness of God includes righteous justice:  a justice of mercy and grace, a supernatural forgiveness that is given to all men, covering all sin. God condemns Sin (the wedge separating man from God), not men (the prey of Sin).

Our self-righteousness, set apart from God, is never right. Singling out individuals (ourselves included) in condemnation of particular wrongs, we erect walls that destroy relationships by closing off hearts. Such walls are not of God. Constructed under the guise of self-protection, they do more harm than good. Inadvertently, they wall pain in, giving it a permanent foothold.

Only this morning did I realize that the walls of the fortified cities in the Old Testament, built for self-protection, were actually perfect weapons of death. While a city’s enemy might find it difficult or impossible to conquer a city by going over or through the walls, all that was needed for assured victory were sufficient men to surround the city, laying siege to it. This made it virtually impossible for life-giving supplies to reach the people inside. If a city’s enemy were willing to allot sufficient time to waiting, the city could be theirs with minimal battle engagement.

Entrapped by the very wall that their hands had built, the city’s inhabitants had only two options. One was to sit tight, praying for miraculous deliverance. Even while in prayer, though, awareness of slow but certain death from thirst and starvation led to infighting. Lies, deception, thievery, hoarding and even cannibalism all became acceptable concessions to a hoped for end—all to the glory of self-preservation. (See Deuteronomy 28:49-57)

The other option, outright surrender to the enemy, was equally detrimental. Confronted by an enemy also driven by selfish motives, mercy was in just as short supply outside the city walls as it was within. Typically, surrender meant assured death amid plunder and mutilation. At best, a lifetime of slavery, often in the enemy’s homeland, was to be expected. Without God’s intervention, loss of freedom and life were certain.

Ironically, though, the removal of God’s protection due to the people’s failure to heed His warnings usually stood behind a siege. The people inside the city were their own worst enemy, having created their own death trap. (Deuteronomy 28:45-48)

Similarly, we create heart sieges by refusing to forgive others as God has forgiven us. The walls that we construct between others and ourselves stand as barriers of pride between God and us. They restrict our hearts from the good things of God that are needed to flourish. Consequently, our starving hearts harden even more to God’s ways, further inclining our thoughts and actions toward greater evil.

Only in giving up prideful self-righteousness in agreement with and in obedience to God are we miraculously delivered into freedom from evil, both within and without. (See Psalm 31) God alone is our Provision:  the life for which we pray. Saying that He will be Jerusalem’s “wall of fire around it” and “its glory within” (Zechariah 2:5), God wants to be such for each and every person.

When God arranged for Barabbas to be released from the death for which his acts of murderous insurrection warranted him (Mark 15:7), Barabbas had little, if any, idea of the identity of the One who took his place upon the cross (Mark 15:14). But we do. And, like Barabbas, Jesus has enabled each of us to walk away from our earned punishment and into His freedom, also thereby empowering us to forego crucifying others, as does He.

If Jesus, who is always Right, never laid aside His Rightness, but utilized it for the welfare of others, aren’t we required to follow suit, demonstrating our faith in His Rightness? And shouldn’t we then follow Jesus from the Cross to the Empty Tomb to not only stop crucifying others, but also to be used by God to deliver healing and restoration to everyone, especially to those who have hurt us and are in great need themselves?

Every time that we do so (purely by the grace of God), we walk into greater freedom (also purely by the grace of God). By giving in to God’s ways, we receive more of the life of meaningful and lasting value for which we were made… always by God’s merciful grace.

God, who is Grace, is always for giving, proving so in the giving of His Son for the forgiveness of all. No one is excluded. No one… We each have been given equal opportunity to live forgiven and forgiving.

Consider this:  Of the 129 times that variations of the word “forgive” occur in the NIV Bible, the prefix “un” and the word “not” are used in conjunction with them only one (See 2 Timothy 3:3) and seven times, respectively. God is all for forgiveness.

And here is more good news:  Not only is the word “unforgiveness” not in the Bible, it isn’t even in the dictionary. It doesn’t exist. While to be unforgiving is possible, to “unforgive” someone is not.

When we give up our “unforgiveness” to God, we literally lose nothing but a mass of deception—one rooted in nothing more than a lot of hot air.

.

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31, 32)