Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
~James Baldwin (1924- )
And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks ford a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in Luke 11 and Matthew 7
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Ephesians 2
There is, beloved, an astounding transition for those of us who have come to belief in Him. We were evil. We were broken. And even though we knew how to give good things to our children and to others, it was something of a rarity for us to even do it.
And beyond this, all of the people within our families were just as fallen. They too knew how to give good things to each other. But in our fear (read looking away from the Solution), we chose to keep whatever limited strength and love we had to ourselves. Or worse, we even tried to take from the others.
We dodged
We yelled
We accused
We hurt
We were ungrateful
We stole
We cheated
We lied
We abused
We wanted out
We wanted something better.
We were following the liar. We were following a fallen prince who played on the desires within our flesh, and teased us out into deeper and deeper waters that we might drown and be pulled down into his lair. All of us (read every single one of us) were once in this space. We were despairing of hope.
We, those of us fallen, were using our freedom to allow ourselves to be destroyed. However, what we did not know was that we were being destroyed. We thought we were just going through life. And though there was a bit of a dull ache in the back of our brains about the eternity ahead of us, we really didn’t pay it much attention.
Thankfully though, G_d is free as well. And He exercised His infinite freedom in such a way that it would buy us a completely new kind of freedom. A freedom exceedingly and abundantly beyond the rebellion in which we actually existed.
And in this freedom of G_d, He chose to not just free us from the lies of the evil one, He chose to free us from the bonds of time and space, and to give us an entirely different perspective from which to look. He showed that we should in fact, be both looking directly at Him by our side, and down at the situation we are in.
This is because our problems are no longer beside us, we are beside Him. The place we are sitting is far above the place where the circumstances of earthly life do roil. We are seated with Him in heavenly places. And places like this are not liable to being changed by changeable things like problems or worry or doubt or fear.
Can we see it? In coming to know Him, we are no longer the evil fathers Jesus spoke about. We are the beloved brothers of Christ, and sons of our Heavenly Father. We have a completely different identity. And in coming to know who we really are, we abandon the place wherein we would cheat or lie or abuse or abandon anyone. We begin to learn to Love.
We accept responsibility
We listen
We affirm
We heal
We live in gratitude for people
We give
We make whole
We speak the truth in Love
We protect
We stay
We have something better.
So, are you facing trouble with how your family is working? Are you believers in our precious Savior? If not, believe on Him tonight. If yes, perhaps it is time for you to believe something else. Tonight is your night beloved, time to believe the place to where He has already saved you. You have not just been saved from hell. You have been seated in the heavenlies.
