When Jesus said in John 10:10 that He came so we could have and enjoy life, He didn't mean when we got to heaven we'd have it. He meant that He would restore our relationship (our life) back to the Father as it was intended before the fall of Adam. This Life was to be the very presence of God on a continual basis. We would never be out of fellowship or be cast out of God's presence again.
We were created and made by God our Father, for fellowship and joy in His life as well as the joy and fellowship in our lives. Jesus brought us back to the place in God's heart that had been lost in the Garden. We never actually lost our place in His heart, but we lost His presence. The continual plan of our Father was always at work to bring us back. We have been wholly restored back like Adam's fall never happened.
Because we were cut off from God, we never really knew what it was like to be His family. We walked in death and darkness for thousands of years. We learned how to walk in the world and only by the flesh and the five senses. God was always at work, but only from the outside and not from our spirit.
Now that Jesus has come and brought spiritual life back into God's with His sacrifice, we have to learn how we were meant to live from the beginning. Through great patience and understanding, God has given grace for our childish ways as we learn what it means to be alive unto Him. As new babies, we make many mistakes while we learn. We have lived and behaved the same way we did before being saved. We still try doing it on our own because that was all we knew.
The Holy Spirit is always at work in our lives bringing life to God's Word into our spirits. Every child must learn as they grow into maturity and we are no different. As natural men and women, we have made many mistakes as we grow, just like all babies do.
As we now learn not to live from the senses, but by the Spirit, it is all new to us. We find ourselves under condemnation at our continued mistakes and failures. We find ourselves trying harder and harder to get it right, but we always end up failing or messing up somewhere.
Learning how to live is a process that will be with us for all of our natural lives on this earth. We can only watch the life of Jesus and follow His example of how to live. Jesus said that He only says and does what the Father says and does. So, like our example, we must follow Him when we treat others kindly and when we hear the Father's voice and move on it.
We were never in the place that Adam and Jesus were in at the beginning. They were both in God's presence from the start. We however, were trained and taught by the world and the "Spirit of disobedience" for most of our natural lives. Now that we've been brought back to life through Jesus, we must learn a completely new way of living.
We try disciplining our flesh and controlling it by the same means we did before we were saved. Only the Holy Spirit can bring this to pass in our hearts. This new life we are learning to live, is actually God's life living through us. As we learn to listen to our Heavenly Father, He will instruct us just like every father does.
Our earthly father taught us how to "become men" in the only way they knew how. Mostly though, unless your father was born again (mine was not), he could only teach you what they have learned through the natural life. Some didn't even do that much. We grew up with no or very little knowledge about God. We lived what we were taught, both good and bad. Some people grew up without an earthly father or father figure.
Once you've learned something and it's already lodged in your brain, it's hard to unlearn or dislodge it or ignore it. Our minds were to be filled with the knowledge of God and never to be erased. Once the thoughts and knowledge are in our minds, learning to renew our minds to think differently is a life long process. The old memories of our disobedient past are still there. All of the wrong things we did still haunt us and seem to always make us feel unclean in God's presence.
Even though we struggle to be right and do right, we fight this battle of faith over our past. Placing faith in what Jesus has done for us is the only way we can ever hope to approach a Holy God and help us feel unclean. Even when we read His Word about Jesus' sacrifice, we still seem to meditate more on our mistakes than on the victory. We mediate more on Paul's snake bite, shipwreck, and his beatings and stoning. We still refer more to his "thorn in the flesh," which didn't come from God, but was a messenger from satan sent to buffet Paul. We seem to miss the abundance of the revelation of Christ and the works in the Church that God gave him.
This learning to live message, is a new way of thinking about who you are now in Jesus and not who you were before you were saved. It almost seems to be a contradiction in our lives to say we are now righteous because of remembering who we used to be. Sometimes, it makes you feel like you are lying when you say you are clean in His presence.
We struggle walking in the truth of our salvation and restoration because of our past and our mistakes. The contradictions of our flesh with God's Word is a constant battle in our walk with Him. Our carnal mind still says that we don't deserve it and we keep working so we can feel justified for His favor. The truth about this new life is that we didn't deserve it and it was all by His grace. This is somehow hard for us to deal with.
In our life before Jesus, we had to work hard to get anything. When you got a paycheck, it was something that was owed to you and you felt justified in taking it because you felt deserving of it. Now, all these things that God has granted us, come by grace. It's backwards to everything we ever knew.
Learning how to receive from our Father is a whole new way of doing things and we must learn how to live this new life by faith in Jesus' finished work and not by our works. This doesn't mean we can do whatever we want to do, but it also doesn't mean you should constantly beat yourself up because of your mistakes. Surely, you can't believe that our Father didn't foresee the fact that we would have to learn and would make mistakes when He sent Jesus.
Jesus' Blood didn't merely take care of our past, but our future too. It's hard to believe we can be blessed even when we fail. We still try punishing ourselves for our mistakes instead of believing, by faith, that Jesus bore our punishment. It's hard to understand from our old point of view. We still feel like we don't belong sometimes. And, we can't come into God's presence until we feel we've made restitution when we're under condemnation for our mistakes. This hurts the very heart of God because He made provision for this in Jesus. Jesus bore everything that was due us, so that we could not only be in God's presence, but abide there always.
When you make a mistake (and you will), don't run from Him, but run to Him. You won't catch Him by surprise. That's what His throne of grace is all about. Grace made a blanket of the Blood of Jesus that covers us for all time. As we stand in God's presence, He only sees the Lamb and not the one who brought the Lamb. Every time we pray in Jesus' Name, we present the Lamb. Every time we praise Him in that Name, He sees only the pure, sinless Lamb and not you.
We need to learn how to rest in our sacrifice that was provided for us and not in our own performance. Learning how to live in God's presence, is learning how to stay in faith with our sacrificed Lamb. When the Lamb is pure, you are pure. Amen.
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