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!