My Desire, God's Will**

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  With only a few days left, this year is rapidly closing and the hopes and dreams for 2019 are starting to come as the cross-over draws near.

For the last few years I have  made it a point to ask the Lord for a  promise out of His word to focus on over the ensuing 12 months on the earth calendar.  God never changes and neither do His promises.  My circumstances, on the other hand, can change rapidly so I find it quite necessary to anchor to His word before my boat starts to rock. 

Thinking of past years, the Holy One reminds me, "I am God of the impossible, able and willing to do and give more than you can think or imagine". 

The classic tradition of the New Year is to make resolutions; self-improvement goals that rarely provide anything more than great frustration within ourselves.  The goals are sound but the ability to achieve them in and of ourselves lags way behind the desire to see them accomplished.

The Holy One takes me back to my anchor, Psalms 37:4,  "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart".

I find that in His presence there is joy, while in the world of humanity there is trouble, heartache and sorrow.  For those of us who have made those resolutions as each New year begins, it seems that we really are revealing a heart desire to make ourselves or our lives better.

We know of this thing called desire but have no way of capturing it, so we settle for the lesser things that lust can provide.  Desire has for so long been associated with our flesh that we assume that it cannot be compatible with God's Will.  It is a mistake in failing to realize that true desire comes from the Creator Himself.

Our human desire and God's Holy Will are not as opposing as we might superficially think or as conflicted as legalism may try to teach us.  The Lord knows our every thought and scheme, and whether we believe it or not, the Lord has X-ray eyes.  Nothing we put on, not even a deceptive attitude can hide us from His penetrating vision. If we let those misgivings go unchallenged, we will be tempted to run away from the Lord and even deny or try to hide our desires. But almost worse than running is trying to fulfill those desires in our own way.

His word to me this morning cuts through all the self-effort I attempt in order to get what I desire for myself.  This promise starts with a directive but unlike  "eat healthy", or "stop smoking" or "run a mile every day", this directive is all about attitude.  "Delight yourself in the Lord' simply means, be happy in your thoughts about the Lord.  Think pleasurable thoughts about Him.  Rejoice in your relationship with Him.

The usual New Year's resolutions involve a pathetic self-focus, and usually some sort of pain, but as we delight in the Lord our attention is turned toward Him in a pleasant way.  I take note that the directive does not require me to go out and do something for God.This promise does not involve an exchange of "works" as in "you do something for me and I will do something for you". 

Getting past the formalities with God and into the Sacred Romance can take some time. We have been fed lies about the Lord God that corrupt our perspective and taint our understanding of Him.  We may believe that God is full of wrath or patently indifferent to His created or even non-existent.  All these lies are part of an antagonistic challenge to the directive:  "Delight yourself in the Lord".

Even a blood washed believer can falter in the call to "Delight" in the Lord and fear of desire can cripple the fulfillment of it.  The Holy One calls to me and as I answer, I find that my fears slowly begin to melt away.  There is peace in transparency and to my great "delight" I find acceptance in spite of all that I fear or hate about myself. 

However, one remaining fear. that my human desires would be at cross purpose to His will and therefore exempt from Holy fulfillment sends me back to the promise.  Is there an exception I have missed? 

As I take a closer look at this verse and re-read the promise, truth presents a new perspective.  When I delight in the Lord, He will not just give me the desires of my heart as in grant them, but He will give me the desires of my heart as in establish and provide them.  His will then is bound together with what I desire and what I desire is bound together with His will. 

With delight in my heart, the joy of the Lord fills me and contrary to the perception that human desire and God's will are polar opposites, I find to my great delight that they actually become one and the same.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him? 



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The Divine Set-Up**

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  This time of year and the celebration of the birth of the Savior Christ Jesus,always causes me to look back to the beginning of history and the garden of our origins.

The Holy One stops my nostalgic journey back through time and provides a provoking thought, "The Garden was a divine set-up".  It is easy for me, in all my flesh failure, to look at original sin with frustration for the weak-willed woman and her oh-so-manipulated partner. 

For  those of us on this side of the cross, living in the grace and with the continuous presence of the Holy Spirit, Who convicts and empowers us to step away from temptation, we may find it hard to understand and then forgive what led to our eviction from paradise at the fall. If only the pair had just obeyed that one rule.   However, as I process His statement and retrace my way through God's Word I begin to see the "fall" from a different perspective.

With the story of creation layed out before me, I realize how we usually look at the account and our Creator in one of 2 ways:

A.  We see God taken by surprise, almost wringing His hands at his "perfect pair" gone wild, and severely disappointed by their rebellious actions, Or....

B. We see God as the hard-hearted judge, full of fury at the regrettable but (to our human minds), slightly explainable violation of the rule.

As believers we can walk on the surface of the Divine, refusing to go deeper, but for me, I choose to take the plunge and head for the depths to better understand what Holy Spirit wants to show me.  That's when He points to things in His word that I never noticed before.

In Gen 2:15-16, after the Lord God did all the creating except for Eve, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, "you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for when you eat of it you will surely die."

When I recall that scripture in my mind I did not noticed that God said "when you eat of it", not "IF" you eat of it.  "When" designates an inevitability that "if" leaves as a possibility. 

It is easy to attribute to the Sovereign, the limitation in knowledge that we humans suffer.  But God is all knowing.  God knew all the players in the garden before they met up and He knew in advance what each would do.  Nothing takes God by surprise: not our sinful depravity or our human efforts to please Him and not even the intervention by the serpent called Satan.

We can be assured that if God knew what would happen in the garden, God also had a plan from the beginning that factored in man's rebellion and restoration back to the original love relationship with Himself.  Otherwise an all-powerful Sovereign could have and would have destroyed the disappointing humans.

To see the end from the beginning is God's perspective.  Outside of time and space He awaits this grace period to end when He will gather up all those who desire to be in fellowship and community with Him and with others who feel the same way.  Paradise lost was only the beginning and the call for the created to search for the Creator. 

We are given a little glimpse of Paradise to stimulate our desire for it.  Just as the life of our Lord gave us a little glimpse of the relationship with God to stimulate our desire for it.  From beginning to end, the plan was to make Heaven and the unity with our Creator available to those who would truly desire it.

Desire is made evident by a choice and a decision to pursue it.  Difficulties in pursuing desire make evident the passion for the desire and even test the desire itself.  We can say we desire to know God but not take the time or make the effort to read about Him from His word or talk to Him through prayer and conversation.  Our will must be equal to our passion or our passion will burn out, our desire will chill out and we will lose out on the delightful relationship He offers to all who call upon His Name.

From Genesis to Revelation God's plan is to share eternity with His beloved and the only catch is that we must accept the Kingdom of Heaven as His.  We are invited to come in, not as a right but a privilege. Free will is ours, to make that decision and accept the invite that is sealed by the blood of Jesus given in payment of our debt.  After that, free will ends and our lives become a matter of surrender, privilege replaces right and desire for relationship with the Lord becomes reality. 

The garden really was a set-up, quite necessary in the eternal schemes of things.  Rebellion was exposed and free will tested.  Heaven is a closed community and only those who love the Lord and are willing to surrender to His will and His way will enter His Kingdom. Rebellion brings chaos and will not be tolerated by the God of order.  Heaven is a kingdom and not a democracy. Jesus is a King and not a president.  The road is narrow that leads to life and the map has been given for us to follow. 

Funny how people are willing to accept the toxic fruit hanging on the forbidden tree but  reject God's antidote hanging from the other one.

The Spirit is calling. Can you Hear Him?                   

       

Burdens Made Light

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Heaven seems to have registered my grievance from last night.   I was inwardly complaining about the duration of life trials and the heaviness of the load the trials represent.

The Holy One knows my every thought, even though they are not directed at His heavenly throne.  I was just complaining to myself and did not expect Him to respond.  My intimate Counselor and friend recognizes the danger if those thoughts go unchallenged.  Grumpiness can lead to the far more toxic things like self-pity, victimization, doubts and ultimately the poison of unbelief.

He relates to me the account of a man born blind found in John 9.  During this encounter between the man and Jesus, along with His disciples, scripture tells us:

"As they went along, He saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?"
 
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.  As long as it is day, we must do the work of Him who sent Me.  Night is coming when no one can work.  While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world"

Having said this, He spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva and put it on the man's eyes.  "Go", He told him. "wash in the pool of Siloam".  So the man went and washed and came home seeing."

There is so much to be gleaned from this account of the man born blind who received the gift of  sight and I wonder what point the Holy Spirit has for me to see myself this morning?

Could it be the message that each trial represents an opportunity, "so that the work of God might be displayed" in our lives? 

Could it be the message and reminder that we are to represent the "Light of the world" as we are challenged by the darkness (blindness) in it?

Or could it be the message that we are not to judge others and the reason for their life trials as if they are suffering the direct or indirect consequences of "having sinned"?

Thoughts go deep and traverse many of the principles of Holiness.

But then, pushing past the grumpy mood, my Holy Counselor explains, "This man got up every morning blind with no hope of seeing the light.  His trial was "set" to be life long.  The day he met up with Jesus began the same way as every other day in his life, but ended in a glorious unexpected way.  Imagine the burden he and his family carried then weigh your own".

I really get His point this morning and see the relativity of those whose burdens are far greater than mine.  But my Lord is too compassionate to let that be the only message to my heart.  He goes on to remind me that there is hope for every trial to end with a glorious, miraculous touch of the Hand of the Healer, Jesus my Christ:

"Have you forgotten that He still provides miracles and works resolutions in His perfect time and His perfect way?"

Sometimes the realities of this earth life poison the hope of our heavenly one.  Miracles are the intervention by the supernatural hand of God into the natural world we inhabit.  Miracles are and should be a daily experience for those who have a personal relationship with the Miracle Worker, but are so often overlooked if we focus on the problem itself and not the steps in the process to the resolution. 

The process involves trust in how the Lord is working it out and then obedience if it comes with a directive to enact.  Spit and dirt?  Trust Me!   Go wash in the pool of Siloam?  Obey Me!

The discouragement of yesterday melts with the warm rays of the Son light streaming into my mind.  I confess my impatience and refusal to accept the Lord's timetable for resolutions. He helps me shift the load on my back and I suddenly realize He just took it all. His truth becomes my reality:

"My yoke is easy and My burden is light"

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?     
   

Salvation: God's Incredible Equity***

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  The brilliant sunrise is a very welcome change from the dark clouds that have been hovering over my world.  Winter is my least favorite time of the year but today reminds me of the hope for warmer days to come.

The Holy Spirit often uses the physical to speak of the spiritual.  "Your salvation is as reliable as the sun in winter; always there beyond the clouds that may darken the season or the day." 

While I personally do not question my salvation, there are those who do and yet more heart rending than questioning our own salvation is doubting God's amazing provision for it.

I celebrate my salvation, not because I am anyone special, but I celebrate my salvation knowing that I am not. If there is one thing about our Creator's plan for man's redemption and cause for all the thanksgiving our hearts can muster, it is God's clearly defined equity in salvation.

We live in a world of intense competition.  It seems that we have to vie for everything from a parking place in the mall to the one we find we want to spend our life married to.  In the world and from early on we learn that to excel, we must compete and there is only one 1st place.  The subtle idea of performance and reward takes root and can affect all areas of our lives.

The idea that all men are created equal gets scoffed at as we see the vast array of humanity struggling with handicaps, skin color, and wealth (or lack thereof).  That disparity is not found in God's economy nor in His coveted salvation as the eternal gift that it is.  Man's salvation is dependent on one thing only and it is in the grasp of everyone born.  It is called individual free will. 

Our salvation has been ordained by God the Father, provided for by God the Son, and activated by God the Holy Spirit within.  The only thing we can and must do as an individual beloved by our Creator is "choose".   We must choose Him.  We cannot earn our salvation.  We do not have to compete for it.  We do not have to be perfect to attain it.   But we must choose to receive it. We all must come just as we know (in our hearts) that we are: flawed, imperfect, and helplessly sin-prone.  Being able to confess our need opens the door for the Lord to step in and meet it.

The equity of God's justice leaves me almost speechless and the quality of His unconditional love is truly beyond words.  Where in the world can we go to receive equal treatment for sinful actions?  Sin in God's eyes is sin.  From the most grievous to the least offensive in man's opinion, God's judgment is based on His Holiness not man's relativity. 

In the equity of God's justice, all are condemned.  All of us have the same potential for condemn-able acts.  We humans weigh motives and judge actions according to our personal internal standards, but God's standard is Holiness.  It is absolute and any violation is punishable by death to the soul.

If we kill a man who gets in the way of our agenda, it is called murder.  If we kill a child before they are born, it is called an acceptable right.  There are countless examples of the same act bringing up differing judgements according to the standards of men and society. 

The equity of God's judgement is only exceeded by the equity of His pardon.  His pardon is our salvation and has nothing to do with the depth or weight of our individual sin.  Our salvation is based strictly on and found in His unconditional love and knowledge of His created.   Man (in his fallen nature) cannot rise in and of himself  to the level of atonement that Sovereign Holiness requires.  The standard cannot be changed so the Holy One took the penalty for our sin dominated nature upon Himself.

The equity of God's salvation blows my human mind.  It is a plan so equal to all and available to any, that it must be proclaimed as PERFECT!

The one thing each one of us has and that no one can take is our free will to believe.  Independent from anyone one else whether it be our parental unit or a "master captor", we all have the ability to think about and choose where we will spend our eternity.  (And for those who may have been born without such an ability, no worries, God's equity will make a way.)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through Him".  John 3:16-17

We love and quote John 3:16 but John 3:17 is equally powerful in understanding the Holy One and His incredible equity.  The world is all of us; each and every human born of woman, and all we have to do to qualify for "salvation" which is an eternal destiny and relationship with the Creator, is to believe in the One that He sent.  Everyone is included in the offer and no one is exempt from the gift. 

This is the season we celebrate the incarnate birth of God into our world.  Jesus is the One sent to save us.  With all the distractions and man's ignorant attempts to despoil the event and minimize the true gift that Christ Jesus is to the world, remember that the choice is yours, personally and individually.

Jesus is the Savior sent by the Father to pay the price for your sin and mine.  All you have to do is choose to believe.  Eternity awaits your personal decision and God will honor what you decide.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?   

      

Whose Servant Are You?

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  I am in need of grace.   God's grace is sufficient and mine is woefully inadequate.  I wake up confessing a grace-less attitude and the Holy One prepares to give me His.

He begins our conference with a question, "Whose servant are you?"  What sounds like a solid rebuke is delivered in a gentle tone,and I hear the loving reminder that I do, indeed, live and work for Someone else. 

It is hard when flesh is inconvenienced by demands that come from other people's needs but if I am to represent my Lord's interests in others, I will find myself inconvenienced most all of the time. 

Whose Servant Am I?

That simple question drives the point of today's conference deep into my heart.  Jesus modelled a servant's heart throughout His public ministry.  Jesus met the needs of the world of people wherever He found Himself in the temporal circumstances of life. 

Earth life is messy.  Human needs do not come at convenient times and even if they were more regimented, I wonder if there is ever a "convenient" time for our flesh to serve others? 

Jesus had a relatively short public ministry.  Once  He was revealed as the long awaited Messiah, His life became more and more dangerous.  The closer He got to the Cross and His ultimate life purpose, the more inconvenient it must have been to meet the physical needs of the people whose souls He came to save.

There is a very deep message to all of us in that aspect of Jesus's life.  How often do I press to do the more important and "greater" things and lose sight of the lesser things and opportunities that my Lord brings to serve His interests in other people who cross my path?

"Do not despise the day of the small things" in a way speaks to me about the "big" things and the attitude I must maintain as I navigate His highway of Holiness on earth.

On His way to the cross, Jesus fed 5000 people just one meal.   On His way to the cross, He gave a man his sight who had been blind all of his life.  On His way to the cross, He healed a woman who had an issue of blood for years when no one else had been able to help. 

On his way to the cross, Jesus poured out God's love in a myriad of "lesser" ways in meeting humanity's temporal needs even as His more important mission was to meet man's eternal one.

The question by Holiness to me today, pushes me past the circumstances I find need my inconvenient attention.  Selfishly speaking, if I am merely serving other people, my motivation will wane quickly since I have flesh needs of my own. But if I am here to serve the One who saved my soul, I will realize I am His servant and commissioned to serve His purpose in other people's lives. 

Meeting the temporal needs in a world of people who touch my life as a servant of the Lord is not the same thing as serving their flesh by and through mine.  It is a small but important distinction and yet one that provides for the lack of grace in me and then leads to the more important truth:  I simply do not know what other people really need nor do I have a clue about how to meet that need. 

I have been a "people-pleaser" and served in that capacity most all of my life.  It is easy to wake up in bondage to those I tried so hard to please.  That  "rabbit hole" unfortunately ends with self and actually represents forms of human control. 

Being a servant of Christ means I am a bond slave to Him and must be about the business of serving Him and His interests in other people.  In and of myself I can look at another person's life not really knowing what they need at that moment where our lives intersect.  With the help of the Holy Spirit and with eyes and ears trained on Him, I can begin to fulfill my role as a servant of Jesus the Christ.

Acts of love are priceless yet may cost us little more than a few minutes in our otherwise busy day or a few cents out of our otherwise tight budget.  But the small things pave the way for the bigger things as we are found to be trusted servants of the Most High. 

Who among the saved would not want to be a conduit for miracles, doing what the Lord did on His way to the cross?  And who has the Lord Jesus commissioned to do such things?  His servants!  

It is amazing how an adjustment in perspective changes everything.  Where serving man or myself  leads to grace-less internals, realizing that I am in service to my King mysteriously brings back the joy of the mission.

As a mom, I think back on Mary, the mother of our Lord, and her response to the great commission she had been given:

Luke 1:38, "I am the Lord's Servant.  May it be done to me as you have said".  Despite the human questions and even social ramifications, Mary's answer is the one I (and all believers) need to have on my lips. "I am the Lord's servant".

The question of Holiness,  "Whose servant are you?",  was not a rebuke but a reminder, and with that reminder comes the grace.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?       

One Glorious Translation*

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  The last four years of my earth life were been spent as caregiver for my 95 year old mom..  I  had much time to see a precious soul imprisoned in a worn out tent.  Earth can be a wonderful place to explore and investigate until the earth bound body begins to deteriorate with age or infirmity or is broken by accident or injury. 

Not one of us has the ability to stop the deterioration process.  It is a principle of the flesh just like the principle of gravity is to the things of our material realm.

The Holy One speaks as I wake up pondering the sadness of the hard reality of flesh mortality.  "Your spirit is ageless and one day your body will be too."   For me and all my old friends who share a lifetime of wonderful memories, we still relate to one another as if we are in our 30's.  In our minds we still "feel" that we are at that age even though the mirror tells us a different story.

God's Word exhorts us to live out our lives in light of eternity.  The Holy Spirit reminds me that someday I will experience a glorious translation that involves an immortal body and one that will replace the mortal worn out one I now inhabit.

Old age has its perks.  The body no longer so easily co-operates with things that, in our younger years, would lead to trouble.  We can still sin in our minds throughout our mortal existence but the body is less yielding as we age.  And, there is more time to think and meditate on what lies ahead;   more time to see the danger of youthful folly and the consequences that made for regrettable but profound life lessons.  But the truly best part about the age of "more time to think" is spending it with the Holy one and reflecting on all the wonderful promises in His Word.

Isaiah 46:4, "Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He.  I am He who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will sustain you and I will rescue you."  When I think about my rescue, I cannot help but see that I will need to escape the tent that houses my spirit and is breaking down with time. 

The whole subject of our bodies being made up of the very chemicals of the earth we walk upon is fascinating and supports the Creation story in the book of Genesis.  But the chilling words the Creator spoke to Adam on that fateful day are full of prophetic sorrow.  Gen 3:19, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat of your food until you return to the ground.  From dust you are and to dust you will return."  The indictment was in, the penalty for rebellion was written in the dust from whence man was formed.  

BUT GOD...

Who so loved the world and knew in advance what man would do and how he would fail, provided for the disaster, with the ultimate plan for rescue: kill the body and save the soul.

All that separates us from the Creator is bound up in our flesh.  We have the ability to valiantly protect and justify our carnal life or separate ourselves from its corruption.  We can take the hand of our Savior who promises to rescue us from all that represents death to our soul, and embrace a wild and crazy supernatural life that is eternal, forever, and without end.

For me, it is a no-brainer.   Since the body will die anyway, why not leap into all the possibilities of an endless future with the most incredible Being one could ever imagine? 

The questions flow and while there is not any real answers to satisfy my curiosity about the body I will someday receive, the clues abound if I take the time to investigate scripture. 

I think about creation and the very first man and woman.  I think about the resurrection and Jesus as the first and only example we have of an immortal body translated from a mortal dead one.  What I notice is the age at creation and resurrection.  Adam and Eve were Created as mature adults, in their "prime" if you will. Jesus died and was resurrected at approximately 33 years, again as an adult and in His prime as we might define "prime".   It seems reasonable then, that I will translate into a glorious body that represents my "prime".

As my brain thinks in a mature yet ageless time frame, I delight to hope for a body that would be the same,  If we are to live forever in a place that is timeless, it would make sense that our body be matched up with our soul and spirit that is eternal as well.

For now there is this season of confinement in a flesh body destined to pass away and I cannot help but wonder why we hold onto it so tightly especially as the testimonies of Jesus, (our model and hope) post resurrection are glorious.

Accounts of His life after death tell us that He was visible to all.  He appeared and moved from place to place.  He walked with the Disciples on the road to Emmaus.  He entered the upper room undetected to chat with Thomas and the other Disciples.  He was not ghostly but rather of flesh and bone, (Luke 24:39) and He even told Thomas to touch the holes the spikes of the crucifixion made in His hands and feet. 

Then, in His grand finale, He departed earth as we will one day: 

Acts 1:9, "After He said this, He was taken up before their very eyes and a cloud hid Him from their sight.  They were looking intently into the sky where He was going when suddenly 2 men dressed in white stood beside them.  Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?  This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." 

The promise of His return is fascinating subject matter for another day, but today the Holy One has had me focus on His glorious translation and what a glorious translation it was.  One that we, who believe in Jesus and call Him Lord,  are set to experience ourselves one day. 

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?          

       

Love the Lord With All Your Mind?

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Love for my Lord is the first conscious thought of the day.  And the Holy Spirit picks it up from there.  "Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind".

This is a continuation of a conversation that began yesterday as I was pondering the Lord's words regarding the 2 greatest commands.   In Matt 22:37, Jesus said this:  "Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest command and the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the laws and the prophets hang on these two commandments".

These are the words very familiar to the body of Christ and we know they are the basics for those of us who believe in Jesus as the Savior and Lord of our lives.  But today as I meditate on these verses, I notice something I never really thought about before and I am prompted to ask.   "What is mind love"?

To love the Lord with all our "heart" and even our "soul" is relational as we always assume love is a feeling; an emotional response to someone.  But how are we to love the Lord with all our mind?

I think about the intellectual crowd who can never quite wrap their brain around the truth of our Creator and settle for things like the "theory of evolution" or the religion of atheism. 

I have found through study of the Word of God answers to those deep questions about the origin of life and come to know delightful people who are scientifically geared or wired for logic who share my faith in the Creator God and His Son, Jesus the Christ.

Through the word and knowing these people who have what I consider to be great minds, I know that the Lord doe not want or need for us to check our brains at the door when we enter a church for encouragement or instruction. 

To all those who judge our faith as emotional and think we are helpless romantics at best or the stupid, ignorant mindless followers of a myth at the worst,  Jesus sets the standard and commands the opposite.  He said we are to love the Lord our God with all our mind as well as all our heart and soul.  

The mind is our place of reason, our place of will, and our place of decision making.  We are not told to love the Lord without our will and reason being involved.  I have come to realize that love is a decision, not an emotion.  Emotions factor into our love choices but true love is unconditional and that involves a commitment to a choice and decision that is not whimsical or subject to change when people disappoint my expectations of them.

God's love for us is unconditional.  Whether we throw bouquets or bricks at Him, Jesus in unconditional love gave up His life for all of us.  He is our model in commitment and love as being a decision.  Jesus left Heaven with that decision and commitment and no matter what it took, He was willing to make the sacrifice to love us to the very point of His death on a Cross.

The road to Calvary was lined with people of varying degrees of loyalty and betrayal, yet He walked it with thoughts ahead to the greater joy that was to come.  

To love the Lord with all my mind is to choose to serve Him even when it is hard or inconvenient.  To love the Lord with all my mind is to be thoughtful about every decision and how it will impact our Sacred Romance and His glory on earth.  To love the Lord with all my mind is to grow in the knowledge of Him and trust in the knowledge He provides. 

There is no subject that can be studied that doesn't come back to a logical Creator.   All the scientific principles relate back to the Divine Creator who set them in motion.  All the incredible inventions and advances in our world would not be possible without human minds provided by our incredible Creator God.

We humans are the crowing glory of a Majestic Sovereign Creator and He wants to share life in all it's wonder and mystery with His Beloved Creation..AKA us.

To love the Lord with all my mind is the call to outrageous thinking, creating, learning and growing, not by myself alone, but with the One who made everything for my good pleasure after He made me for His.

The Spirit is calling.  can you hear Him?