Luke 6:43- (the Message)…if you work these words into your lives…

Why are you so polite and say ‘yes sir’ and ‘that’s right’ but never do a thing I tell you? If you just use my words in Bible studies but don’t work them into your lives…the dumb and smart carpenters.
- not just words in the scriptures, but everyday words I hear Him speaking to me, like: ‘start planning as if you have provision and when you need it, provision will be there!’

Luke 12:29-34 if you steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provision, you’ll find all of your human concerns will be met.

Luke 12:47,48 if you ignore the Father’s direction, expect discipline, heavy if you ignore and insolently do as you please, light if you were ignorant, didn’t hear clear, were uncertain. It’s a learning curve. If you when you think you hear something, do it and it turns out it wasn’t God-initiative, Father smiles and corrects you. It’s the intent to please Father and obey that counts. Jesus didn’t use this story to tell us we have a slave/master relationship with Father who waits to soundly thrash us, but that there is a difference in Father’s response between when we insolently do our own thing and when our intent is to hear and obey, but we mess it up.

Luke 12:54-58 natural wisdom is learned through repetition and observation. You are smart enough to learn from experience natural wisdom, so don’t tell me you can’t learn to hear God-initiative. You don’t have to be a genius to understand and learn to hear. Don’t wait till you’re standing before God to agree with Him that you can hear His voice and obey Him, do it now while you are on the way.

Luke 13:23-25 It’s not enough to just hang around. You have to work these things into your everyday walking and talking lives if you want to participate in the banquet. The prerequisite is knowing Him not knowing about Him. How do I get to know Him? By walking in His love, not by working for Him.

Luke 17:31-33 if you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms

Read Luke 19:11-26 Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and you’ll be left holding the bag.
GOD-REALITY
‘Why do you keep on chasing a better house, a better car, a secure, safe healthy retirement, the ability to go on wonderful vacations, etc., etc. Your vision is earthbound! Very short-sighted! If you grasp and cling to life on your terms you’ll lose it. But if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms! I get to participate in my Father’s business, who just happens to be the KING OF THE UNIVERSE! I can’t worry about that stuff anymore.

I have to live in ‘reckless confidence in the Source.’ I want to steep myself in God-reality, God-initiative, and God-provision and let Him meet all my human concerns. If I have any ambition financially it is to be debt-free so I can immediately and freely be a steward of anything the Father chooses to entrust to my care.

Risk your life and get more than you ever dreamed of. Play it safe and you’ll be left holding the bag. I only ever chased those things because I was conned into believing they would make me happy, satisfied, secure, safe, anxiety-free, free period. What a joke! It’s a load of crap.

There’s only one way for that and that is to be the ‘beloved son in whom I am well-pleased’ that the Father created me to be. To reflect the image of Himself, that Father made in me. To accurately, efficiently and lavishly represent my Father, and display His glory: to take a wrecked human being, full of flaws and failures, and with His love, heal and forgive me and love on me till I become an ‘oak tree of righteousness, planted by God to display His glory!’

‘Work’ is what I do, as opposed to who I am. The value and effectiveness of my work is dependant on whether I do it out of genuine love, see I Cor. 13: 1-4. It seems important to get ‘love’ first as opposed to ‘work’.

But I can’t love until I have experienced love, it’s not in me, I am simply not capable of it. All of my outward expressions of love that are not rooted and grounded in God’s love for me, have ulterior motives. It may even feel good to the one receiving it, but if I am loving for some selfish motive, it is dirty and not God’s love or God’s work. I am not capable of unconditional ‘God love’ until that kind of love has entered my spirit, soul and body and transformed me from my self motivated kind of love to the Father’s real love. See I John 4: 17-21 To the degree that I have let God’s love penetrate and heal me, to that degree I can love others purely.

‘Work’ comes out of love. It’s not so important that I get a lot of work done in my life as it is that I get to know and grow in love. Not even just loving others. What I mean is for me to learn to receive love from the Father, to realize His great unconditional love for me, the whole package, just as I am, warts and all, sins and failures, past, present and future. I can begin to let that love seep into my soul and even my body. I can learn to love myself.

I can shrink the ‘imposters’ role. I can be who I am regardless of who’s watching or not watching. I can learn to be my real honest to goodness son of God self, not a ‘poser’ trying to cover my inadequacies with whatever I hope will hide them. Can you see the potential of a son who lives like this? Can you see the potential of a church that lives like this? Can you see the potential of a generation who lives like this? When I hear the Father tell me what to say or what to do, I don’t have to filter it through trying to seem or sound or be, acceptable. I can just do it and laugh!

My first job in life is to be loved, to be the ‘beloved son in whom He is well pleased’, before any ‘work’. Watch the progression:
I John 4:16: We have ‘come to know’ and have believed the love that God has for us”. It’s a process. To walk in it, live it, breathe it, speak it out over myself, let it penetrate and change my soul and my personality by speaking into my insufficiencies, inadequacies, and failures and fears.
V17- to clear up forever any worries or anxiety I have over ‘judgment day’ because His love for me includes being granted the same standing before Him as Christ.
V18 - To allow His love to bring healing to the wounds which have caused so much fear to become a part of my soul, my personality. Until finally, I learn to love myself, because after all, my Father who just happens to be the King of the universe, absolutely adores me, so I guess I can accept the fact that I am loveable.
V19 - Then I can purely love because I am loved. Then I can love my neighbour as I love myself, because now I actually do. (Luke 10:27)

Most of us are now, ‘loving our neighbours as we love ourselves’, which isn’t very much! The enemy perverts the fact that we are to love ourselves by twisting it into selfishness, pride, arrogance, comparison. The self we are supposed to love is not the ‘old sin nature’, it’s God’s unique creation of us, the son of God within groaning and crying out for freedom!

Trying to drum up love for others when I don’t love myself is futile. Trying to work the works of God without being centered in The Father’s love for me is futile. Remember I Cor. 13: 1-4?

‘Work’ may and indeed will happen, but it’s out of ‘Love’. I will ‘love God with all my heart, mind, will and strength, and love my neighbour as myself’ because that’s who I was created to be and am becoming, not because I feel compelled by some quota system of work to become acceptable to God.

Father doesn’t love me so I’ll work for Him, as if His work was far more important than having loving relationship with His kids.

Remember the ‘central fact of the universe’: God, who is first and foremost a Father, decided to have children who He could have relationship with. That is the purpose the universe exists! He didn’t create Adam to have someone to watch over His new creation. He lovingly made the universe as a backdrop or setting in which to place His sons and daughters!

His priority is love, not work! He doesn’t ‘drug’ us with love so we will get busy serving Him. He doesn’t ‘tithe to get blessed!’ He doesn’t love to get work done, He loves because He IS love. There is no mixed motive here. He is just being who He is.

Anywhere our ‘love’ is to get something, it’s not God’s love, we’ve been conned. I want grow in displacing my attempts at love with learning to love with the love God has for me.

THAT IS WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO HIM THAT WE BECOME OURSELVES AND NOT ‘POSERS.’ We are to become who He created us to be because we are made in the ‘image of God’, so just like He naturally acts out of who He truly is, so are we to. Our life’s ambition is to become our true, beloved son of God selves, through getting healing from all the wounding that ‘wrong choices’ have wreaked on us, causing us to hide, masquerade and deflect, to be ‘posers and imposters’.

Being ‘born again’ doesn’t make us a mature son of God fully reflecting His image in us, any more than being born naturally makes that helpless baby a full grown mature man. Jesus used this kind of example for a reason. It’s both an instant miracle, and a lifelong process.

He wants us to BE WHO HE MADE US TO BE! Is that so strange?

“You are who you are. I have made you in my image. Don’t be afraid, only trust. I will continue to show you ways in which you are still hiding and together we will banish them and so let a little more of my image shine through, my original creation of you.”

“Father, forgive me for all the ways in which I hide from your love. Show me one area of ‘fear’ in my life that You want to touch with Your love. Thank you that Your love drives out all fear. I’m asking your love to invade my body, soul, personality and spirit and drive out this fear that I still function in, that still drives me, makes me hide, makes me pose, controls my actions, keeps me from walking in my true nature: Your son who You love lavishly and unconditionally, living the life you have given me, hand in hand with You. I want to be who You made me to be!

Teach me to love myself in the way that You meant when You said: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. Teach me to ‘steep myself’ in this God-reality: That You love me, I am to love myself, that love will drive out fear, and anything I do out of that place is ‘working the works of God’.”