Walking with Christ from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 28 - Discover Great Treasure!

Through this course, my thinking, my perceptions, my attitudes and my whole life experience has changed! I’ve found out my origin, that I came from God and existed in His heart pure and innocent before time began. I’ve found out the truth of union, that I’ve been made of God and we’ve always been connected (not separated). I’ve learned the truth of my true nature, that made in His image I’ve always had His good nature (not inferior). I’ve heard the gospel that God has saved me from all the lies of separation and inferiority I’d believed. I’ve discovered the finished work, that God found me in Christ before I was lost, fixed up the problem the lies caused in my life before I even drew a breath. I’ve discovered that Jesus joined Himself to me in my darkness and pain and brought me up into His life and light. I’ve discovered that God loves me unconditionally, even in my messes, and I can be honest and genuine and naked before Him without any shame, so great is His love and acceptance of me. I’ve discovered that God already put me at rest through Christ’s perfect work, and that Christ will manifest through me without my help. I’ve discovered that it’s okay to be me, that God is fine with me as I am, that who I am is beautiful and a gift to this world. I’ve discovered Christ inside me, and it’s changed my life, healed my soul, uplifted my heart and brought me to really start experiencing real, genuine, intimate relationship with Him! He truly has been in me all along, loving me, holding me, helping me, accepting me, understanding me, delighting in me, being the deepest part of me and the truest thing about me! The love I’ve always longed for has been here inside me all along! It is all I ever wanted in life – to know HE loved me, to just be SAFE in His arms, to have that deep relationship with Him and know He is fine with me, smiling on me, holding onto me, never to leave or let go. To be loved unconditionally, freely, limitlessly, and to just enjoy real fellowship with Him, to walk through life with Him, to be happy and love life because He is in it with me, to love others and even myself through His love flowing naturally out! The truest happiness is just to know one is loved, accepted, appreciated as you truly are, and that is what this course has brought me to see and know and begin to experience – the treasure of knowing myself loved by God deep within me!! What a great treasure I’ve discovered, Christ in me!

If I had a message I wanted to share with anyone else in this world right now, this is what is on my heart to share:

Did you know you’re a treasure to God?
He thinks you are so wonderful, priceless really!
You see your faults and problems and ways you ‘don’t measure up,’ but God performs no such judgment of you!
God accepts every part of you, loves every part of you, embraces the whole of you, without reserve, without question, without stipulation, without hesitation!
God sees the real you underneath all the junk and woundedness..He understands why you lash out or struggle as you do, He knows the lies you’ve been told, the hurts you’ve suffered. He understands you!
And He sees and knows the real you deep down – the little child, pure and innocent and sweet, looking out with wonder on this world, just needing to be loved.
He has scooped you up into His arms and will never let you go!
You are such a treasure to Him, just as you are, right now, without needing to change, get better, know more, or become more.
You are perfect to Him right now!

His eyes look on you with perfect love! With adoration! With the delight of a proud Papa looking at His child, for that is what you are, God’s child, made in His image!
God is love and you’re in His image, so you are a love being too!
That’s your true nature, to love!
You are good with God’s very goodness, being made of His good substance and in His likeness of pure goodness. You have His characteristics, you bear the family resemblance, you are just like your older brother Jesus, full of grace and truth!
And full of God – made of God and having God as the very fabric of yourself!

Yes, not only are you a treasure to God, but there’s also a treasure in you – God Himself is in you!
Yes, you were made of divine DNA, there’s a part of you that’s eternal!
This spirit part of you is connected with God, so really, through all your life journey, you’ve never been apart from Him and He’s never been apart from you!
He’s always been there with you, going through everything with you.
He’ll never leave you stranded in life.
He walks through every experience with you.
He’s your most faithful friend and constant companion.
You are truly joined to Him, and He to you, in the depths of your being.
You and He are one deep down!

Jesus has removed every lie that would keep you from experiencing your love nature and unity with your Papa.
He has brought you with Him through death to all those lies that bound you in a lesser experience, a lesser existence.
He has taken care of the fallout from those lies, all the messes you might have made believing in lies, taken them all out of the way and removed them from you, killed them off at the cross and put them in the grave, never to rise up!
He has brought you up with Him into His very life, life without end, life that can’t be bound or trapped by lies, life that can’t ever be ended or killed – so you are safe in Him from any lie or bondage or even staying dead – death can’t hold you down, just as it couldn’t hold Jesus down!
Jesus has brought you up with Him to heavenly places and seated you with Him at Papa’s side, reigning with Him from the place of union and life!

You are safe with Him!
You are found in Him!
You are free in Him!
You are fine in Him!



He accepts you..
He adores you..
He delights in you..
He loves you..
He is proud of you..
He is one with you..
He is holding you..
He is living in you..


He is going to take care of everything for you..
He is going to manifest Himself through you..
He is going to carry you through it all…
He is going to love on you for all eternity!

You are such a great treasure to God, His very own dear child!
And there is such a great treasure in you – God Himself, Christ in you!
Christ is in you, and you’re going to get to enjoy His friendship forever and ever, to experience His glorious presence loving on you and flowing in and through you forever and ever!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 27 - Incarnation Continues!

Christ never reveals Himself apart from or separate from us – this truth is overwhelming me! He isn’t ‘out there somewhere,’ He has always been IN! He always and ever and only reveals Himself WITHIN us, as part of us, as the deepest part of who we are, the source and life and fabric of our very being!! God with us, God in us, God as us! I don’t have to get close to Him, find Him, look for Him, or move toward Him – He’s in me and in all people already.

God put a thought in my heart that Jesus is inside each and every person, just waiting to be discovered by them! It is like discovering the life-long friend and soul-mate you’ve always wanted lives right in your own home already, right in your own body-tent! It is like discovering that all you’ve ever wanted to be you already are – as He is, so are we – filled with God’s presence, overflowing with the Spirit without measure, honored, loved and adored by God, a pleasure and delight to God, a light to others, a lover, AT REST, fully qualified and prepared for anything in life! Wow!

We are divine ones in a way I can’t grasp, Jesus-inside people! In the words of a favorite author of mine, Dan Stone, ‘you are already all you were meant to be: one with the One who is Life.’ One with God, that describes a human being, doesn’t it? A meshing of God and a person, a tangible being who is the expression of God’s thought, God’s logos, Christ Himself. In some amazing way I can’t quite grasp I am a ‘little Christ!’ The incarnation continues – just as HE was with Christ, so HE is with me!

I am not lacking, don’t need to try to be more spiritual or more committed or more yielded, don’t need to ask for more wattage or dosage of the Holy Spirit, don’t need to surrender more or struggle to focus on Him, don’t need to get to another level or beg for a bigger blessing or anointing. I already AM rich, full, complete, adequate and prepared for every good work, for everything!

I love way the Mirror has 1 Cor. 1:7: “You don’t lack anything – you are fully qualified. You have every reason to expect the Lord Jesus Christ to be made visible through you.” Wow! God naturally acts like Himself, God naturally lives, manifests His true nature, loves others, overflows with kindness and goodness, flows with divine vibrancy, uplifts others – and that is Who is flowing through me! God doesn’t need my help to be Himself! Haha!

I keep thinking of a quote I read on facebook somewhere: “God will manifest your new creation life in you without your help.” Without my help! To me, that describes God’s way in me, that is ALL GRACE – it’s without my help, not needing my input or initiation to make it ‘go,’ totally spontaneously flowing from God, natural and EASY! We truly can sit back and enjoy the ride, just watching God flow! I can fully expect Him to manifest in me without my help, without my doing anything! It is as natural as breathing, as easy as pie! I love this new way of looking at the Christian life – it makes everything so natural and real and truly EASY!

The incarnation is me, is you, is everyone – we all discover that Christ is in us, God with us, IN US, and He’s been there all along! We discover that simply who we are as humans, not something unnatural that’s been added at some point but is foreign to us – no, this is who we are, we are God-men, we are divinity in earthsuits, we are heaven on earth, we are a union relationship between God and flesh people, we are the expressions of God in this space and time realm, little gods, in His image and likeness, each of us unique and individually beautiful personal expressions of Papa Himself, like a beautiful kaleidoscope, like a wonderful work of art, or as Andre says, His poem!

I am a love poem God writes to the world and I have something very meaningful and valuable to share with this world just by being me! How hard is it to be myself? It’s so easy! I always thought the Christian life was denying my own dreams and desires and thoughts and even my own personality (which is really very introverted and quiet, more disposed to long solitary walks in the woods than being in a crowd)…yet the Christ life that is in me, as me, is all about me being ME! God wouldn’t have it any other way, He’s made me perfectly, just the way I am, with all my personality quirks, as a PERFECT expression of Him in “His Susannah form” – yes! I glorify God by being myself. He naturally shines through without my having to do a thing.

All of life becomes a spiritual experience! All of life becomes saturated with God and with grace! All of life becomes His expression of LOVE to the world! When people see me they really do see Him! When I touch them, He really touches them! He is living through me, as me, without my help, simply by me being ME! Wow! The incarnation continues!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 26 - Introducting a Person to Christ

I feel in this class I have been introduced to Christ all over as if for the first time! And it has truly been a Spirit encounter, encountering God as Unconditional Love right in the midst of my confusion and messiness and failure, which has shown me that this Love of God, this relationship with Him, has never been based on me to set it up or keep it going – it has always been about Him! I’ve seen with great relief that it has always been about God’s initiative, not mine. For HE has come and brought me to see that truth, it hasn’t been my work at all. All I did was get myself into a dark hole full of lies and confusion and failure. He revealed Himself to me in that hole and pulled me out by simply showing me the truth, by simply loving me back to sanity. And the biggest lesson I learned was that if He could love me THEN in that dark place, He really DOES love me no matter what, unconditionally, I really am completely accepted! If He really stick with me and be with me THEN in that confusion of believing lies about myself and Him, He really WILL be with me and stick with me forever, I really am safe and secure!   He has awakened me to the truth, the reality that always was and always will be, that I am His beloved child, held constantly in His tender care, and all the dumb things I did were never from the real me at all, they were a product of lies I’d believed and all along I’ve been His, I’ve been loved, I’ve been one with Him, I’ve been home!


For me it’s been so amazing over the course of the last few months to watch Him bring me:

- from thinking “what do I have to do” to realizing I don’t need to ‘do’ a thing…
- from thinking I am so wretched and shameful to seeing that I’m an innocent child, His ‘very good’ girl…
- from feeling I had a sin nature to seeing I have a good nature, His own DNA being my true core essence…
- from feeling alone and unloved to knowing that He loves me, no matter what…
- from trying to hide my sins and ‘look’ okay to being able to admit that I’ve failed in some big ways and am sometimes a mess (being able to do that because I found out He loves me WITH those problems and sins – WOW – that has blown me away!)….
- from being argumentative over doctrinal issues to just realizing the rest that comes from knowing Him loving me….
- from seeing others as ‘the other’ or ‘the enemy’ to seeing us all as one big family of good little children, some of whom have forgotten whose they are, all of us just needing to know we’re loved, needing to experience that love, but really wanting to love deep down…
- from being absorbed in my own problems and troubles to actually being at peace and full and suddenly able to see others and their needs and finding joy in blessing and helping other people…
- from being so hesitant to pray, withdrawing from God, to being able to talk to Him more freely…
- from having self-loathing to having self-acceptance..
- from seeing God as so separate from me and so harsh, demanding, and disappointed in me to seeing Him as Pure Love, always love, always open and friendly and happy with me…
- from seeing Jesus as someone who satisfied God’s violent retributive urges so I could barely be tolerated by Him, to seeing Jesus as my older brother that God sent to show me how much He loves me, to free me from false ideas about Him…
- from condemning and judging myself (thinking everything is the ‘law’ way) to seeing myself as never judged, never condemned, only totally accepted and loved and embraced (seeing things in the ‘grace’ way, which is the real way it is!)
- from thinking in a dualistic way to thinking in a oneness way…
- from thinking God is all about ‘needing a payment’ for wrong in a police or law type justice, to seeing God is all about forgiving and restoring, as a much better and healing definition of justice….
- from thinking we must get all our ducks in a row or we’ll be rejected eternally to daring to hope that God is so big and so loving and so smart that He has found a way to bring everyone home and heal all hearts with His love, without violating anyone’s free will at all…
- from seeing God as waiting on us to move to seeing that God has moved in an eternal way for us all and that Jesus has put us right on His lap in glory…
- from thinking we must do our part to realizing that Christ has taken care of all the ‘parts’ and we are home free already, we’re just waking up to it…
- from seeing faith as a work to seeing faith as a natural and automatic response to the good news He tells us…
- from trying to get home to realizing I already am home
- from feeling so out of the circle of love, of the Trinity, to seeing I’m within the circle!

Those are the exact things I want to share with other people! The things that already ARE true about them and God and their relationship with Him! It is so exciting to think of us all experiencing God and just knowing His love for us and seeing ourselves as He sees us, realizing we are ALL the beloved ones of God!
So if I think of introducing someone to Christ, I would want to have it happen just as naturally as it did for me, just watching God awaken another person to reality, just sharing with them the good news of what’s already true for them. Evangelism is so different now, it’s more like sharing some wonderful news with a friend, rather than trying to ‘change’ anybody…we don’t need to ‘be changed’ but to hear the good news of what is already true, who we already are, and how close and loving and favorable He already is! Introducing someone to Christ really is helping them relocate themselves mentally and see that they’re in the throne room with God, as one of my friends, Susan, says so beautifully! It’s also introducing them to themselves – I love how Andre Rabe puts that, how Christ always is revealed as in a mirror, someone you find within you, and in whom you find your own likeness – in whom you find yourself. When I looked into His eyes I found myself, I found out I’m the one Jesus loves. So to me, sharing about how loving and good He is with someone else (not ‘doing evangelism’ on someone, but just talking about Him as it comes up naturally in conversation, or just loving on people because I want to, not because I have to or because they are some ‘project’ for me to ‘minister to’), well when that happens, they get to look into His eyes and discover the same thing, that He is the Lover and they are Beloved! And they hear that ‘echo’ from within them, have that inner knowing that this is true! He touches people through us and also rises up within each person, revealing Himself both TO them and IN them!

My friend Kristian Holmes describes living and sharing this good news in this way:   "You are a witness of a firsthand encounter you have had with your Father. This encounter affects the way you live your life and causes you to touch people with your true DNA. Every person has the same DNA and as we live in harmony with our true selves other people awaken to who they really are."  Amen!

Nowadays I don’t want to ‘do evangelism’ at all, it is not about ‘doing’ anymore. I just feel that life is all about being loved, and thus naturally overflowing with love, and that from that overflow people encounter Him and feel His love for them…It’s like we’re standing under the waterfall of His love and grace, and the spray naturally bounces off of us onto others around us, and they get a love-soak too! It’s like having an infection (in a good way!) called Jesus and infecting others with His love without even being aware you’re doing it!! It’s like we’re just dancing around with Jesus, locked in His loving gaze, and one by one, more and more get caught up in the dance of love, the dance of the Trinity! It’s like a well of living water gurgling up and spilling forth from us all, spreading to flood everyone everywhere with the experience of His invigorating Spirit of love! “And the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea!” Wow!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 25 - What is Faith?

I have always struggled with the idea of faith…I have thought in times past that faith was a commodity that I had to have ‘enough’ of in order to make something happen (like new birth) or in order to ‘get’ something from God (like healing) or in order to hold onto and not lose something (like salvation). I Faith was something I had to somehow ‘muster up’ and then, if I ever had any, something I had to keep at constant high levels for fear of losing anything I had somehow gained ‘though faith.’ I was always examining myself to see if I had enough of this ‘thing’ called faith, and of course I always felt I never had enough! This made me feel weak, made me sometimes doubt, made me feel like a sorry Christian, caused me to expect nothing at all from God, made me feel insecure about my salvation, even.

I am so happy that all I believed about faith turned out to be false! Really, the way I saw faith, I made it into a work! And we know that salvation is all God’s work and none of ours, and not only that, His work is finished, finished from the foundation of the world! God already did a complete work for us from the start of the whole creation…and Jesus broke forth into our tangible existence and revealed it here on earth 2000 years ago…now we are simply waking up to what is already real and true! Hey, that is wonderful!

Faith turns out to be simply seeing what is already true, seeing reality! It is like the confidence and trust that comes from seeing what Christ has already done for us. We don’t work up faith within ourselves, it’s already there! It’s God’s gift to us and is really HIS faith in us, bouncing off the walls of our heart and reverberating out when we hear the good news of our salvation, of what Christ has already done and completed in and for us!

So faith doesn’t make something happen, it all already happened; faith doesn’t get God to give us something, for He already gave us everything; faith doesn’t even have to desperately hold onto what is given, for it’s ours permanently as a permanent reality!

What is it that Christ has already done, that we already are and have, that is true permanently for us? What can we say is true for the whole of us, the entire human family, the whole world, through His perfect original creation of us and His perfect finished work for us, as us? All people are already loved and accepted, already made righteous, already forgiven, already clean, already dead and alive again, already in heaven reigning, already healed and whole, already overcomers, already perfect, already innocent, already home, already taken in and included, already reconciled, already sanctified and set apart/made holy, already pure and blameless, already good, already having a good nature, already having Christ in them, already having the Spirit in them, already having God with them, already taken care of, already safe and saved, already an heir of eternal life, already in the circle of the Trinity, already in union with God, already permanently one with God, already secure, already found, already in the fellowship of the Son with the Father, already enjoyed and delighted in, already beautiful, already wonderful, already precious, already redeemed, already strong, already free from law, sin, condemnation, guilt, shame, punishment and death, already in grace, already loaded with blessings, already in resurrection life, already having HIS life, already in peace and harmony with God, already in right relationship with God, already right with God!

There is nothing left to do, gain, attain, hold onto, or become! He did it ALL, He finished His work and we are all home free! I remember when I was first being introduced to these ideas, first reading a couple of Andre’s writings, and it was as if God kept whispering to my heart, “I did it all…I took you ALL THE WAY THERE..into the throne room!” He did it all, took us all the way home to heaven and plopped us down on Papa’s lap, and that is where we all are today, whether we know it or not! He shares the good news with us of what He’s already done, and of His opinion about us (HIS faith in us!), and that faith of God echoes within us and rises as our faith in Him! When you see how much someone has done in love for you, to help and rescue you in the midst of your trouble and mess, you naturally trust that person, because they have proved their love for you. God proved His love for us through Jesus, for while we were yet sinners, in a royal mess, He died for us, He rescued us, He lifted us out of the mire and put our feet on a solid rock! When we were trapped in our sins and confusion, He saved us! When we were dead in our sinful mindset, He raised us up with Christ into resurrection life, never-can-be-killed life, always-and-forever life, eternal life, HIS very life!!! Wow! Faith is simply waking up to that fact, seeing it, relaxing and having new confidence because of it. Faith doesn’t make it happen – how can dead people have faith or make things happen?? We were dead, HE made us alive, and it was obviously without our ‘help’ or ‘our faith’ doing it or making something happen, wasn’t it? Wow! It really IS all HIS work and it really IS finished! Faith is just when we see what already happened, see reality. Faith is like Dorothy waking up in her own bed in Kansas, realizing what she’d been ‘going through’ in her nightmare was just that, a bad dream and not the real reality at all. We wake up to God’s reality that has been true for us since the foundation of the world! We wake up to the dream He has had of us since before time began, a dream of living in union with God in perfect intimacy and true innocence, of loving fellowship and a forever dance with Him, two hearts intertwined forever in complete oneness! While our dreams are fake nightmare illusions, God’s dreams come to pass and are the really real, the only true reality! We are in God’s reality and always have been, and He’s waking up the world to see it!

So what use is faith? Faith simply lets us enjoy the union we’re in, for we can look into His eyes without fear or shame, can be naked in His presence, can feel strong in His stable love, can share our dreams and feelings with Him without hesitation. Faith is like seeing where you are for the first time, not vulnerable and alone but safe in a strong fortress (His presence and love), so you don’t have to be afraid of any enemy/danger outside anymore! Once we see we are safe in this shelter of His loving arms, we don’t have to fear, don’t have to worry. And we don’t have to make any striving or effort to get to that place (His presence, union with Him), since we’re already there – so faith brings an end to strivings and strainings, brings rest. Faith – seeing reality – means we start enjoying reality, enjoying the relationship with God inside us that has always been and always will be, the deep intimacy with Him, the transparent sharing and oneness fellowship that we were made for all along and has been there all along! Faith – seeing reality – lets us stop straining to ‘become’ and instead finally relax about ourselves and our status with God, for we already ARE all we were meant to be, we are truly loved and accepted unconditionally, no matter what, thus we can more easily accept ourselves and even like ourselves. Faith lets us rest from our efforts to attain something and enjoy the party that we are already at! Faith allows us to experience this wonderful forever life with Him, the life of God flowing through our lives in wonderful tangible manifestation and experience starting right now on planet earth! 

The life of the ages that was always in us, Christ Himself, resurrection life, eternal life, wells up in us like a living fountain of fresh water and pours through us like a waterfall of love and grace and life, making the desert places green and thriving, refreshing both us and those around us! We get to enjoy life, enjoy HIM, right here and now, spirit to Spirit, perfect fellowship and communion, right here inside our skin and amongst us all, the Spirit flowing amongst us all, the river of life spreading till it fills the earth and the whole earth is filled with the knowledge (intimate knowing, communion of hearts!) of the Lord, like the waters covering the sea! Flow river, flow, fill this land with the Father’s glory!

Eternity is NOW, is HERE, is upon ALL, is manifesting EVERYWHERE! This reality is breaking forth and being seen by more and more people, oh how wonderful…this good news can’t stay secret…it’s bursting at the seams, popping out all over, exploding out from within us!! He is like a fountain that can’t be plugged up or held back by any barrier or lies, confusion, fear, or misunderstanding! He has won over all that, and HIS victory, HIS reality will be known and enjoyed. For Love wins, Life wins, Reality wins, the Finished Work wins, the Spirit wins, Jesus wins, Papa wins, humanity wins!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 24 - New Creation Reality

This morning I have been pondering some great truths..
All were in disobedience, all were recipients of God’s mercy.
All have sinned, all were justified.
All were condemned through one man’s sin, all were made righteous through one Man’s righteous act.
All died in Adam, all were made alive in Christ.
All fell short of God’s glory, all are revealed with Christ in glory!

I love thinking about all humanity already being raised with Christ and even ascended and seated with Christ in heaven..wow, it is mind-boggling! The only difference between a believer in this good news and an unbeliever in it, is that one is seeing reality and the other is not yet seeing it – yet for both, it IS real!
It is a certainty that I am raised and seated with Christ, yet many times I don’t feel like it, talk like it or act like it. And this can bother me, can make me feel I need to ‘do’ or ‘understand’ or ‘believe’ something better to get this new reality to manifest. Yet I keep coming back to a quote I read on facebook recently: “God will manifest your new creation identity without your help.” Wow, that’s grace! He saves us single-handed, as Robert Capon says, and also He manifests it single-handedly! A dead person could not contribute anything, even faith, in order to bring about resurrection..dead people can’t ‘do’ or ‘believe’ anything! God had to do it all for us, and He did, through the Son. He carried us with Him through death and up into life, carried us all the way to the throne room of heaven and plopped us down on Papa’s lap! All of us, all humanity, wow!  Our wonderful position in heavenly places in Christ is a product of God's initiative, of Christ's work and faith, not our own..that way it can never be lost or altered!

So not only am I already there without doing one thing of my own initiative to make it happen (He brought it all about without my help!), but also this reality will manifest in my life without my help! God brought to mind the picture of a tree planted by the water, and I thought of how it naturally grows and thrives and bears fruit…the tree doesn’t have to stress and strain and keep doing ‘fruit checks’ – it just sits there! The sunshine and water from the river just go into the tree and life happens! It happens now, and now, and now, always and forever – life is happening right now for all of us, the oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord! HE planted us by the river of life up in heaven (we didn’t even have to ‘plant ourselves’), He planted us there within Jesus Christ, the Tree of Life, Himself. We are not separate from that tree but part of it, branches of the Vine Himself! In fact, we were never separated from Him at all but were always connected!

I love the revelation of union…when I read what Andre Rabe wrote in his book Word Made Flesh about Christ never revealing Himself as a separate entity from us but always ‘as in a mirror,’ I feel it made more sense to me than ever before – Christ only reveals Himself as one with me and in connection with me. He never presents Himself as apart from me but always and ever as a union with me. He shows me that He is in me, not as a separate entity, but as the ‘secret center’ of my life, as the deepest part of me, as ‘the most real fact about me,’ as Brennan Manning used to say! He reveals Himself as me in some crazy way! The definition of me as a human being is actually a union of God and man! I am a relationship, a union relationship of me and God Himself, in this flesh body. I look at Him, look into those eyes of love and find myself – I am the one Jesus loves, that is who I am! (And I am loved, His beloved, without any reference to right or wrong, good or bad – just accepted, embraced, loved, without any condition or stipulation!) I am a love relationship between God and man! I am a union love relationship in a body! I am not and have never been alone because the whole definition of a human is flesh matter and God’s Spirit substance together meshed together to form a human being! I never am alone. I never look out at this world alone. I never live alone! We are together here inside me. The real me, the inner child, is one with Jesus, always walking in the garden with Him, planted by the rivers of heaven with Him, sitting on Papa’s lap with Him. My constant companion, my best friend, the One who carries me through life and thinks my thoughts and feels my feelings, who understands me at the deepest level because He’s right there at the deepest level, one with me always, the One who loves me like noone else – that wonderful Person is the most real fact about me!

My friend Kristian Holmes made a wonderful statement about the new creation reality that we now enjoy, and I wanted to share that thought:  "What a joy to now actively participate in reality. All of life takes on a new meaning when we see what He sees. We continue to recognize that old mindsets and ways of seeing ourself have died in His death and everything Jesus experiences is what we are forever alive to."  Another friend, Andrea Joss, adds this:  "Words cannot tell how wonderful this good good news really is! And what it does to our souls… they are finally allowed to lean back and relax! Oooohhh! Baxter Kruger says that the Christian life consists of nothing else but discovering the reality. Just discovering what there IS already. Discovering what has been DONE. Discovering the truth."  What a wonderful journey of discovery this new creation life is, just discovering and enjoying the union life with God that already IS!

New creation reality is that I am one with Christ, seated in heaven on Papa’s lap with Him, IN love and IN life forever! I may not see or feel it completely here on earth, but no matter – He brought it all to be, and He will manifest it for all to see! I need do nothing. I can rest on Daddy’s lap, or run free in the fields of grace with my Older Brother, or dance with the Holy Spirit..or do nothing at all…I can cry, I can share my feelings, I can be vulnerable, I can even doubt, rant, throw tantrums and lash out in anger and confusion..and it won’t change a thing, I am safe in His arms of love and I cannot offend Him or drive Him to reject me, ever! We are so intimately connected that nothing can tear us apart, not even any dumb thing I do or believe. To tear us apart would be like tearing apart not only my own being, but also HIS! We are one, that’s who we are, HE and I. I can’t be defined without Him, and He has chosen never to be defined without me! WHENEVER He is revealed, I am revealed right there with Him in glory – that is new creation reality, and God brought it about and will fully manifest it without my help! Relief! Joy and peace! Total grace! For us all!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 23 - Resurrection Life Now!

"We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."                       2 Corin. 4:18

I love thinking about eternal reality, what is true in the eternal realm!  In the eternal scope of things, we all died and rose with Christ and are in resurrection life right now, even while on this visible earth:

In Adam, all died, because all sinned. Sin entered the world..I think about that – sin entered this realm of matter – I love how it DOESN’T say sin entered humans but that it entered the world! We are born innocent and pure and good, because we are in God’s image, yet we are born into a poisoned environment, and the sin in this world affects us..we hear and succumb to lies about ourselves, lies that we hear through the world, other people, the enemy and the traditions passed down to us from our elders at church and other institutions that run on performance and legalism and conditional acceptance…and we eventually choose sin, we live as so much less than we are, we do very real wrong acts that hurt ourselves and others, we struggle with feelings of unworth and alienation from God, we succumb to self-judgment, feel the need to punish ourselves, can’t handle the shame and pain of who we think we are and all that we’ve done, open ourselves up to evil’s reign, to death. Yet Jesus comes and absorbs all the judgment, shame, pain and guilt we feel; He absorbs it all into Himself, and though He doesn’t need to punish us in order to feel okay with us, He understands that our performance way of thinking makes us feel someone needs to pay for our sins, and so He absorbs those sins and becomes that for us so that we can feel okay with ourselves and feel at ease about approaching God. He takes down sin and guilt and judgment with Him into the grave, and since we are included and connected with Him in all He does, that is also our death to sin and guilt and judgment. They are once and forever separated from us and us from them! Thus He takes away our sin and judgment! We are free!

Yet He does something even more wonderful in the resurrection: In Christ, all are made alive! Christ was raised because of our justification – our righteousness! He vindicates our righteousness through His resurrection! When the sin and lying identity, the fake man that never was the real us, is put down through His death, the innocent original self that we really are is revealed, righteous and pure and good! And since you can’t keep a good man down, Jesus cannot be kept down in the grave, and neither can we! Death has no hold on Him, there is no sin on Him that would lead to death, and no law or performance way of thinking there to demand death anyway, for that whole system has also been set aside and separated from Him and us at His death. So there is nothing to keep Christ – or us – in the grave! So His resurrection is proof of my innocence, proof that my original self God created is and was always good, pure and right in His eyes, fit for relationship with Him, compatible with Him, in His image of love and thus a love being just like Himself! Wow!

How can we be sure that all that He went through includes us, that we also went through all that – how can we be sure that just as He died to sin, so did we, and just as He was raised and now lives to God, is alive to God, so are we? I love how Andre Rabe talks about electron entanglement, how since everything has a common origin or source, everything is still connected and touching! We are all entangled with Him, because He is our source, creator and origin! We flow out from Him like little electrons, always bearing His charge, always attracted back to Him, always oriented toward and with Him, forever intertwined with Him, our destinies connected with His, so whatever He does and whatever happens to Him has an effect on us in an ultimate way! This helps me so much in understanding how what Jesus went through is also what we went through. I love how my connection with Jesus is prior to and thus stronger than my connection with Adam, for Jesus made me and thus for my life, all that He does trumps all the effects of what Adam did! I love being tied like this to Jesus! I love that my connection with Him is waaay stronger than any connection with Adam or with sin/lies! I love how He has carried me everywhere that He Himself has gone – through death and into the grave, and then up from the grave and into resurrection life!

I love what my friend Andrea says, that 'resurrection life now' means just “being the ones we truly are!” Resurrection life isn’t something to try to attain to, something that is so super-spiritual that it feels unreachable except for the ‘really committed’ – it’s what we all are in already, all gathered up in Him!! Wow, it’s not something to reach for (as if there is distance and delay involved) but something to sink into and enjoy, as in enjoying the soft chair you have already been put in or enjoying the party you are already at! I have spent my whole life feeling I need to do or be ‘more’, feeling like I was always ‘not there yet,’ but what a joy to find I am already there, already fine! It reminds me of a quote by Dan Stone in his book, The Rest of the Gospel: “You are all you were ever meant to be: one with the One who is Life!”

What a wonderful life we already have with Him, what wonderful relief and rest to already be in LIFE! We’re in Life and we’re never going out! He takes off every bit of strain, stress and pressure to ‘do’ or ‘attain’ anything..There is not even one thing left to do, even believing doesn’t make anything happen, for it ALL already happened, didn’t it! He has done it ALL, all is safe and all is well, all are home, all are alive in Him! Faith must be simply spiritual sight, then, not making something happen but seeing what’s already happened, seeing this eternal and really real reality that may still be partly invisible yet is truly real!

So what do we see with the eyes of our spirit?  What is in this really real yet partly invisible reality?  Well, it’s such a wonderful fresh world over here in this eternal realm! Instead of spiraling ever downward into decay from sin and its effects , I am spiraling ever upward into real abundant flourishing from His life and its effects! His life has the final word in my life, not any sin or lies! The fake identity is shown to be nothing and the true identity is free to flourish! I am not judged on performance but instead freely accepted by grace, for law is not holding sway here, grace is! I can fail and still be just as loved, accepted, included, and right with God as ever, for this is a place of secure love given from a Father to His children, not a place of a servant working for a Boss, with his position in jeopardy at any time. This is a place of oneness, not duality or separation. This is a place where we don’t have to think of sin or good and evil but where there is simply the enjoyment of union relationship with Him! This is a place of Love, not Fear. A place of truth, not lies. A place where God has already conquered death and the grave, lies and the curse, so what is there to worry about, for all will come out well! This is the place of freedom, not restriction. This is the place of BEING, not trying to become good or trying to stop becoming bad. This is the place of fullness, not longing. This is the place of rest, not struggle. This is the place of completion, not feelings of inferiority. This is the place of union, not separation. This is the place where Jesus IS, and I AM in Him, tucked forever with Him into the Father’s bosom, saturated with the Holy Spirit, caught up in the fellowship dance of the Trinity! This is the place of Resurrection Life NOW!

Forgiveness is Release!

• I love the idea of being released and freed! I read somewhere that when Paul talks about forgiveness he is talking about release from something, deliverance from something that is binding the person who has sinned..so it wasn’t that God was offended and had to somehow calm Himself down and say ‘ok, I forgive you,’ but that He is our good Daddy who steps into the mess we’ve made and says, “Don’t worry, I can fix everything good as new, I still love you, I’m right here,” He is so understanding and doesn’t just fix up whatever mess came from our wrong acts, but He understands why we acted that way in the first place, and He heals that wounded spot in us, shows us the truth of His unconditional love which dispels the lies that have entangled us and made us act crazily….and that frees us from our guilt and shame, frees us to relax in His presence, frees us to live not by law (trying to do right and then feeling self-righteous, or trying and failing and trying to hide behind masks and feeling ashamed) but to live by grace, just being ourselves and enjoying life in the light of His acceptance and unconditional love!
  
  I love that definition of forgiveness as release, (so similar to the idea of redemption as claiming and freeing what is one’s own, and the idea of salvation as deliverance, wow!) and I think that with that release from all the lies and sin that was holding our true self down, we are now freed to be that real self, the real self emerges at resurrection and live free and happy and secure! And it isn’t just the real self but the real self is actually me in union with Christ, right! He has tied me to Him and takes me with Him wherever He goes, down into the grave to release me from the sin that was attached to me, and also up into new life to finally get to be my true self, the inner child being lifted up into real life with Him! And tied thus to Him, we can never again be fatally wounded by sin, bound by death, or fatally held captive by lies! Sure we may sin or get confused, but the lie doesn’t have a death grip on us anymore, death is conquered by the power of an indestructible life!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 22 - Resurrection!

• Behold, I make all things new!   Revelation 21:5
   
   
  This is the picture I am seeing in my mind of the experience of resurrection: It is like I am wandering lost in a dark wood. There is no sound and no light to guide me. It is frightening and lonely. It is cold and damp and the close air heavily presses down, the scrubby branches claw and scratch. You feel trapped, as if in a prison. The place seems endless, it seems there’s no way out of such a place.
  
  Yet suddenly there are shafts of light! And suddenly you find yourself walking in those rays of pearly light, suddenly you hear birds singing, their clear notes ringing out like bells! Suddenly fresh air brushes your face, spring flowers caress you bare feet, branches filled with alpine fragrance bend their arms around you like an embrace. The smell of dew and wet earth and new leaves fills the air. And you feel alive again, happy again, light and carefree again! You feel hope rise within you again! You find yourself walking in sunshine, on an easy and beautiful path, under the sheltering trees – you find yourself not in a prison but a sanctuary! And you know not how it happened, but it did!
  
  That is what I feel has been happening to me throughout these posts! I feel God has been healing so many wounded places and getting rid of so many lies that I’ve believed…and it hasn’t been so much that I’ve been ‘working’ on my issues or on these areas, it is more that just hearing Him whisper those words of grace and love, and seeing who Jesus us and who I am, just HEARING THE GOSPEL in all its true glory, well it has just been healing me up without my even knowing how!
  
  I came into this course with lots of confusion, struggle, depression, fear, etc. I was coming from a low place and wanting to recover. I had heard of grace years before but had been so beaten down by life I had forgotten it and really didn’t understand truth anymore, my eyes had gotten so dim and my heart so weighed down! And there was so much false teaching in me from years of religion. And yet, through this course, it was like windows started opening in my mind and light flooded in again. Little by little, truths were remembered and new truths embraced! He has been pouring His love and grace all over and healing me up…and just a few days ago, I realized I was happy! I realized I was so much more at peace, that I felt hopeful that things would get better, that I felt good about life again! And even good about myself a little bit! And that I was seeing God as so much nicer and kinder than before – when I thought of Him, I didn’t seem to picture a dark shroud over His face anymore but instead He seemed always smiling, open and friendly! Approachable! Not a scary judge anymore but a doting Father and a loyal Friend! I don’t even know how it happened, but I feel I am experiencing resurrection, the manifestation of what was ALREADY true for me but that I wasn’t really enjoying fully!
  
  Jesus raised me up with Him..He made death work backward into life, His own divine and eternal Life..instead of everything spiraling downward, now, in connection with Him as we all are (since He is our creator and origin), we are spiraling ever upward in Him! Not only are we restored to life but we are in HIS life, where we can never be ‘lost’ or ‘fall’ again! All things are working back toward Him from whom they came! It’s already true in the eternal and it WILL manifest completely in the visible and tangible! And God will be all in all! In the meantime, I can wake up every morning in newness of life, I can be happy again, I can know that things are getting better, I can know that eternity is HERE and NOW for me, and that it is already true what Jesus said, “I make ALL THINGS NEW!”
  
  As I was writing this post, I was sitting in my living room on this bleak and rainy morning here in the southern USA, where we are getting gray skies and sheets of rain ..and suddenly I heard a bird sing! The song was so loud and clear, just like the little guy was sitting right beside me there in my living room! He sang out a couple of times, and it was so beautiful! What a reminder of the springtime of resurrection, in the midst of the damp and gray! When life seems to be ending and hopeless, He is still saying, “I make all things new!” It is already true, already real, and it is certain and guaranteed to manifest in the natural, tied as we are to the One who has already taken us through into resurrection life with Him, indestructible life, eternal life, abundant life, forevermore! We really do live in the already of His life, don’t we? His life was always inside us, in our spirit, and now it breaks forth into our soul and body! The Spirit has been there all along, and now we are waking up to His presence! We are IN LIFE, and we are never going out!
  
   
• As I ponder resurrection more, and I am thinking about how it is really the birth and flowering forth of the true, original, conceived/created by God self that always was, that was always tucked away in God’s heart and mind, kept safe in Christ from before the world began, always deep inside me in my spirit, my true spirit identity that was always one with Him, never separated, never confused or believing lies, always pure and innocent, the ‘inner child’ now coming forth! Freed and liberated from the flesh veil (lie of the false identity) that was keeping that little one held down and hidden behind a swirl of confusion and lies (the bondage of the foreign tyrant sin, belief in separation and inferiority)… 
• 
  It is just so exciting to think of His life in us! I don’t understand it fully. There is much to learn and explore. Vast regions of grace and love and life are within Him, just waiting to be enjoyed, yay! Thank You Jesus! I come alive again in You, and this time it’s for keeps, isn’t it – thanks to Your indestructible, eternal life coursing through every part of me!
  

On the Shores

 

 

 

On the Shores

Jonathan and Melissa Helser

 

On the shores of my soul I give you permission

To wash my tears away

And take all my disappointment

And fill me with joy once again

I’m gonna sing out loud

And let my voice be heard

It’s a song of victory

And it’s ringing in the earth

 

On the top of my cage I am sitting

Above the shame so lonely

Your kindness it has lifted me

To see the way that you see

 

I'm gonna sing out loud

And let my voice be heard

It's a song of victory

And it's ringing in the earth!

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 21 - God Loves Happy Endings!

All the ends of the world
Shall remember and turn to the Lord,
And all the families of the nations
Shall worship before You.
Ps. 22:27

O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. 
Ps. 65:2 

[This post includes thoughts that came to me on the implications of Christ's work to wipe out sin and judgment, and how perhaps it includes all to such a degree that all will be restored to Him..I hope that nothing I have written is offensive. I just wanted to write out my thoughts, I hope noone is offended, I would never want to offend and am still trying to formulate my own beliefs about the scope of His work..I am just honestly sharing what I believe He has led me to see!]

Thinking of the good news about death and judgment led me to another wonderful thought about the future for us all. I love how Andre Rabe points out the verse that ‘it is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment’ and how Jesus did that for us. I had never seen it that way, had always had a fear of judgment after death, even as a Christian. But since Jesus really went through that for me, as me, as the head of the human race, then He died (so all died) and after that He was judged innocent, proved by the fact that He rose from the dead (so all are judged innocent, and all rose with Him)! Hey, I’m getting excited! I don’t want to be off-topic, but does this mean there really is NO judgment after death for anyone at all? I mean, if Christ really already stood there for us, as us, in the after death judgment, then just like there is no sin left on us, no law left to judge us, then it makes sense there would be no judgment at all for us…right?

I am imagining what that would be like, to just know that everyone will go straight to the arms of God when they pass away! No ‘eternal conscious torment’ or ‘punishment/destruction from the presence of the Lord’ – just embrace, total acceptance, all tears wiped away, all flesh patterns and lies stripped away at the moment of death (for how could they carry over anyway, clinging as they do to the body and brain systems, and when we die it is spirit that goes to God, and later the body is resurrected incorruptible, glorified, and pure, right!!)..For it truly states that where there is forgiveness (and we know He forgave the whole world, reconciled the world to Himself, not counting their sins against them), there is no more offering/payment/debt/punishment for sin! He promised He will remember our sins no more, they don’t exist in His mind, so how could we be judged or held liable for them, how could we be rebuked, chastised or punished or have to pay for them in any way? The chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we all have been healed of the wounds of sin! Maybe we won’t all understand that here on earth, but maybe at death it all automatically ‘comes online’ as the last of the lies holding onto our flesh drop away! I know God desires a personal response from us, but I am now believing that at death we go from any lingering darkness straight into the light of His presence, and we know that lies can’t dwell in that light, fear is driven away by His presence of love, and with fear goes torment/fear of punishment! I think of the verse in Psalms that says all the families of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and that “unto You all flesh will come.” It makes sense that if not here on earth, at death all will see clearly and know as we are known, and thus all come straight into His arms! Its almost like I can barely hope it’s true, it just seems so beautiful and too good to be true, yet it truly honors Christ’s death as effective for all, truly lifts up His work as completely victorious over the mistake of Adam or the ruinous works of the enemy!

Jesus turned around and reversed death and judgment for us! And He brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, bringing to manifestation the grace He’d given to us before the world even began!    It really seems to me now that there is no judgment, punishment, etc. after death for all humanity – wow! That there is only life and light and love to come!  That sin and death have truly lost and love and life have truly won!  That is such a beautiful thought and a blessed hope and expectation in my mind. I hope I haven’t said anything offensive to anyone, but could His love really be that big and that wide?  Wow, since it is truly Infinite love, how could it NOT be!

I believe God will accomplish this restoration of all hearts to Him without violating anyone's free will.  I truly believe all will gladly choose to enjoy the party that we’ve been brought into!  With all the lies stripped away, with everything about God revealed in all His loving and attractive glory as the One who truly satisfies our deepest desire (to be loved unconditionally), with all hindrances and barriers in our thinking removed, seeing Him face to face in PURE LOVE, everyone being the little children of God made in His image and thus naturally trusting God, looking toward God, and longing to be loved by Him, be in love relationship with Him, to just with our Papa, I believe we will all gladly choose Him..His love melting the hardest heart and revealing the desire we’ve had all along to just be with Him, embraced by Him and safe in His arms, and we’ll gladly sink into those arms that are holding us and just rest! (I think of how a hurting child will look for his mother or father and how the little one's face will light up when he sees him/her, how he runs to the parent and naturally reaches for his mother/father to hold him, naturally wants to be in that loving embrace, wants that love and special attention!  How much moreso with us and our heavenly Papa!) That is my hope! I wonder who could resist such love, and also that if we truly are in His image and thus with a good nature deep down at the core, that once all flesh is removed, and that good little inner child is able to do as he/she pleases without restraint, that that little one will naturally choose to nestle with bliss into Papa’s arms! In an even deeper way, I don't believe there will even be any thought to 'choosing' to enjoy Him or not - I believe our spirits will be so caught up in the enjoyment that there will be no thought of any other course!  This is my humble thought and what I feel God has brought me to see, and oh what peace it brings to my heart to know that He will have all safely home with Him, enjoying His love forever! 

He is pure love, He is a good Daddy, and He wouldn't have it any other way.  He wouldn't be satisfied or happy with any one of His children not enjoying His embrace..He wouldn't be satisfied or happy till every last one was accounted for and guaranteed to enjoy His lap forever with joy and happiness, enjoying that union relationship that Papa envisioned for each of us from before the foundation of the world!  His dream will come true!  He couldn't be happy any other way!  The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, and He did it, He saved us all - it is finished!  Hallelujah!  My Papa loves happy endings, and through Jesus He has ensured a happy ending for all, hasn't He!

What Were We Created For?

What were we made for?
To be a servant or employee in God's business?
To further God's vast purpose of world domination?
To be a pawn on the chessboard in a cosmic match between God and Satan?
To give God a good return for His money, or else be discarded as useless?
NO!

We were made to be loved!
We were made to be the cherished children in Papa's family!
We were made for hugs and kisses!
We were made for long walks in the garden with God!
We were made for love songs, smiles and laughter!
We were made for friendship, companionship, and mutual sharing!
We were made for intimacy with our God!

Intimacy
Jonathan David Helser

These hands you made to hold yours, my love

These feet you shaped to walk with you in our garden

These eyes you placed to gaze upon your face

These lips you formed to kiss my beloved

I was made, I was made for intimacy

These ears you made to hear your rhythm of love

This voice you placed to sing songs of grace

This hair you wove, you numbered every strand

This gaze you love, it captures you with a glance

I was made, I was made for intimacy

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 20 - Freed from Death, Freed from Judgment

• Death and Judgment, sounds so ominous and terrible! And yet – since the gospel means ‘good news’ and there is only good news and no bad news in the gospel, then thinking on Death and Judgment and Christ’s finished work is only going to bring GOOD news!   I want to take some words that have seemed like such bad news, carried such negative imagery, and see those concepts in light of the good news of grace:
  
  Death – He identified with me even in my death state and even went down to death, letting people kill Him. He took into Himself and absorbed into Himself my ‘death state’ and then He rose again, taking me with Him! I am forever freed from the eternal hold of death, death can’t have me, for He did not allow His holy one to see corruption and didn’t leave His soul in the grave, so the same will be true for me, tied as I am to Him! It’s already true in the eternal realm and my body WILL catch up with this reality, wow!
  Judgment – There is a legal verdict of ‘guilty’ that comes upon a lawbreaker. We had put ourselves under law (God never wanted that for us, never put us under it, His language is and has always been grace and not law!!) and so incurred judgment and had a legitimate debt we owed to God. (I love how He let all sin be against Him so He would be in the position of being able to let the debt go, and that is just what He did. It helps me understand the verse saying ‘He shut up all in disobedience so He could have mercy upon all.”…I also love how Andre pointed out that He judged sin in the flesh – He wasn’t judging me myself, my true self; instead He was judging sin that had taken hold of me in my body, judged the fake identity – flesh – that wasn’t the real me at all! It is almost like I felt guilty, I felt deserving of punishment, I felt I needed to die, I was judging myself as evil, but God wasn’t judging me or wanting to punish me! He was seeing the root problem behind my actions – the sin and lies that had ‘infected’ me like a virus! What a relief to find out He is a non-judgmental, non-punishing/punitive God! I am just finding out such wonderful things, and that helps me understand judgment in a better way, a way that brings such relief..but getting back to how Jesus dealt with judgment…I am always too long-winded, lol…) Jesus came and took all that judgment onto Himself when He identified with us in that low place of guilt and judgment and shame! He absorbed all that into Himself, and it is gone! God cancelled the debt against me – that’s forgiveness, wow, it means we don’t have to ‘pay’ for a wrong done, we’re released from owing anything or having to ‘make up’ for our wrong, that’s all cancelled!
  
  Sin – Not only did He absorb my guilt, judgment, feelings of alienation and shame, He also absorbed all the sin/unbelief that caused it, and He eliminated it, wiped it out, expiated it. And with the sin actually taken away and wiped out, absorbed and blotted out by Christ in His body, then my sins and iniquities are not only remembered by God NO MORE, they actually ARE NO MORE! I love how Andre Rabe says if it doesn’t exist in the mind of God, it doesn’t exist at all!
  
  Law – Jesus took away the document stating my guilt – the law – and nailed it to the cross. So I’m not under law anymore, I’m freed from it by going through death with Him! And that pretty much takes care of judgment and punishment all around, for if there is no sin to be judged and no law to do the judging, then I am home free and won’t ever be punished or held liable for any of my wrongs, unbelief, etc.! Where there is no law, there is no transgression..I am not even a transgressor at all anymore! Not a lawbreaker! For you can’t break a law if there is no law there to break! Wow, this good news just keeps getting ‘gooder and gooder’ – smile!
  
  Punishment - I want to say that just using that word ‘punishment’ is so uncomfortable now..I feel it isn’t the most accurate word to use…yet I was raised on such talk, and it is tough to get free of the penal substitutionary ideas I have heard all my life and ‘assumed’ were correct! The more I learn about non-violent atonement, Christus Victor and the healing model of the work of Christ, the more relieved I feel that God never wanted to or needed to ‘punish’ us, Christ, or anybody! Since the debt was owed to Him, He could choose whatever means He wanted to deal with it, and He chose to let it go, to forgive! When you forgive, you don’t demand a punishment/payment first in order to forgive, for that isn’t forgiveness at all but retribution, isn’t it? Forgiveness is when you let the debt go and don’t make the other party pay..they are off the hook, free and clear. It helps people be friends again..it is restorative! So I wanted to say I don’t like using that word ‘punishment’ and I don’t see our dear Papa as a punishing God anymore..love does no harm, and THAT is actually fulfilling the law – to love, to do no harm! How amazing is that! I always thought the law demanded my punishment! But Jesus fulfilled the law not by punishing me or being punished for me so much as by forgiving me even when I/we killed Him, by not retaliating! His love for me/us was the ultimate fulfillment of the law, wasn’t it, the ultimate obedience of loving God and others! He truly fulfilled the law in a way I hadn’t thought of before..oh, how wonderful He is..
  
  My friend Andrea made a statement in response to this post that I want to include here:  "So beautiful how you say, “It is almost like I felt guilty, I felt deserving of punishment, I felt I needed to die, I was judging myself as evil, but God wasn’t judging me or wanting to punish me!” Yeah…So our judgment and our punishment were self-imposed, could that be? We hid (in Adam), we ran, we covered up, we accused… wasn’t all that kind of a self-jugdment? Whereas God looked for us, sought our fellowship, called us, clothed us… but we would not be able to bear His glory, His love, His fellowship. Because we had decided to do it our own way, to judge things through our own eyes. We had fallen into perceiving everything “after the flesh”.
  Now, could it be that is was our own sinful perception that was nailed to the cross? Wasn’t Jesus – having been made sin (2 Cor 5:21) – nailed to the cross? Could it be that it was our self-imposed VERDICT, judgment and punishment that hung nailed up there? The handwriting with our names on it? The handwriting written in our own names… ?!"
  
  
• Andrea's comments blew me away, for she wrote so clearly about self-judgment and how that maybe was what was nailed to the cross, wow! That He never was judging/condemning us as guilty or bad, but we were judging ourselves!  I want to really ponder that! That whole perception of ourselves being nailed to the cross, the handwriting we wrote against ourselves, wow! He was never against us! It is so freeing to see just how good He is, better and more loving than I ever imagined. I still have lots of questions about the law and why it was given, etc. But it is slowly coming together in my mind that HE was never about law and judgment, WE were because we were living in that way of thinking (good and evil, trying to become better and stop doing bad, demands and restrictions, rewards and punishments, performance based acceptance, judgment)..but HE was always about grace, acceptance, love and union relationship without regard to good or bad, performance, earning, etc.! 

It is so great to go forward into new and grace-filled ways of thinking about Papa and the cross and to discard some of the old and hurtful, shame-based, fearful ways of thinking about them! Truly when we see what He has done we want to just melt into His arms, we feel no fear, we know that there is nothing hindering our access to Him, and really we find we are already with Him and have been all along! Christ is truly the living way of showing us our perfect and unhindered access to the Father, showing us the fellowship and intimacy that is ours for the enjoying, now and forever!

I've seen I am

Walking with Jesus from Incarnation to Ascension - Day 19 - Pictures of Redemption

 [For] You know that in the past you were living in a ·worthless [meaningless; futile; vain; way, a way passed down from ·the people who lived before you [your ancestors]. But you were saved [ransomed; redeemed] from that useless life. You were ·bought [ransomed; redeemed; like a slave whose freedom was purchased by a payment - not a payment to the devil or to God, but simply what it cost Jesus to enact His rescue plan, what He was willing to do to get us free], not with something that ·ruins [perishes; spoils] like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like ·a pure and perfect lamb [a lamb without defect or blemish.   
1 Peter 1:18-9  Expanded Bible

I find it hard to wrap my mind around the meaning of the word “redemption” – when I think of the way the word is used in this world, I think of someone who has ruined others’ opinions of him by doing some wrong act, and how that person may try to ‘redeem’ himself in the others’ eyes by acting in a good way..almost as if he is trying to show he is not all bad, that there is still good in him. I think of the word redeem and how it is made up of a prefix and root – ‘re-deem’ – and I know that to deem something would be to value it, to judge it worth something, so to re-deem must be similar to showing something as valuable again. Perhaps this thing's value has been forgotten, and now it is revealed and seen again, thus it is re-deemed as valuable.  I don’t know if my thinking is correct, but it helps me to think that even though we did some very wrong acts when we lost sight of who we truly we (and whose we were!), that there was still inherent value in us, that we were not ‘all bad’ even in the midst of our worst actions, thoughts and words. Jesus redeemed me – maybe that partly means that He still saw value in me when I had lost sight of it, still saw the good nature deep within me (the image of God Himself, His own DNA in my framework!)..He saw me as someone worth rescuing from the lie-trap I had gotten into. He saw me as valuable, worth saving, worth having..He saw me as worth His own precious blood, He deemed me valuable and caused me to be re-deemed – re-valued in this life and world. So I can value myself again, I don’t have to be floundering in shame or guilt! There is something beautiful in me, always has been, always will be – it is the good inner core person that God made me to be from eternity past, the inner child, in union with God in essence, purpose, desire and nature! I am worth having around! I am actually good, a ‘good egg!’ I am even worth dying for, for that is what He was willing to do to ‘redeem’ me…

I am reminded of the verse in the Message Bible in Is 43:

“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you.
I’ve called your name. You’re mine.
When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.
When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place,
it won’t be a dead end—
Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Savior.
I paid a huge price for you:
all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!
That’s how much you mean to me!
That’s how much I love you!
I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,
trade the creation just for you.
So don’t be afraid, I’m with you…”

He sees me as so valuable He would trade creation itself to get me back to enjoying the fellowship with Him that is my birthright as His child! The fact that He would give up His own life, shed His own precious blood (for that was what it cost Him), to free me from the trap of lies and bondage of sin gives me value and shows my worth to Him – thank You, Jesus! Redemption includes that very act, doesn’t it, that act of Jesus freeing us from bondage to lies, the enemy, sin, etc. He freed us from it all, hallelujah! Slowly I learn what redemption is, and how big and beautiful this word truly is for us!

The picture came to my mind of a little girl who was lured away from her family and taken captive by an evil man, enslaved by him and told over and over that she was an unwanted nothing with no home or family…so after a while she begins to believe and live out of this lie, an empty life of drudgery and hopelessness and shame. But then one day a regal man comes to the evil person’s residence..and the evil slave-owner shrivels in fear and hides from the man’s presence! He is truly royal and great in bearing, yet there is an amazing gentleness about him! He has been on a great journey, perilous and costly to himself, yet he will not stop till he succeeds in his quest..He looks around and suddenly a flash of recognition comes to his face! He points to the young girl in her tattered slave clothes, and with great authority in his voice, says, “This one is not an orphaned slave, she is my Father, the King’s, own child!” The girl looks up into the man’s gentle face and sees that she closely resembles him, with the same mannerisms and features, the same smile and tilt of the head, even! Could it really be true? Her heart leaps at the thought…The kind young man takes her in his arms and carries her safely home and runs up to the throne and puts her right on her royal Father’s lap – and the Father hugs her tightly to Himself as all her fears and anguish from all the lonely years just melts away…and they lived happily ever after! This is redemption to me! Someone comes into my enslaved existence and declares that I belong to and with Him, for He has a prior claim on my life that is before the slave-owner’s claim! He comes and claims me for His own, claims me as His valuable dear one who is related to Him and of the same source, the Father Himself – oh, how much value I am shown to have!! And He frees me from the grip of the slave-owner! And we live happily ever after with the Father!

I can imagine the voice of Jesus saying what I feel is the message of redemption to the trapped young girl, to me: “You’re not forgotten, you’re wanted. You’re not neglected, you’re cared for. You’re not forsaken, you’re embraced. You’re not lost, I’ve found you. You’re not hopeless, I’ve taken up your cause. You’re not alone, I’m with you. You’re not broken, you’re whole. You’re not sinful, you’re good. You’re not wretched, you’re lovable. You’re not vulnerable, you’re safe. You’re not spinning out of control, everything is all right now. You’re not estranged, you’re part of the family. You’re not a nobody, you’re my somebody! You’re not trash, you’re a treasure. You’re not ruined, you’re restored. You’re not bound, I’ve freed you! You’re not an enemy, you’re my friend. You’re not distant from me, I’ve got you in my arms. You’re not cast away, you belong with me! You’re not a misfit, you fit in with me. You’re not unnoticed, you’ve got my full attention. You’re not an orphan slave, you’re a royal daughter! You’re not unimportant, I’d give my life for you! You are delivered, you are safe, you are worthy, you are REDEEMED!

As the old song says, “Redeemed how I love to proclaim it, His child and forever I am!”

"Happy" by Pharrell Williams

Our family loves this wonderful song from a movie we saw recently..and I just wanted to share it here..a happy day to all!  So thankful that HE is our inner happiness, no matter what, yay!