WEBVTT

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Hey everyone. I know it is very late, so some of you might already be in bed on

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East Coast, but I wanted to pop on real quick and talk to y'all about the thing

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that I figured was the first thing that needed to be addressed in learning, you

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know, how to operate a business out of rest, how to rest from work so that we

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can work from rest. And the very first thing, even before identity, interestingly,

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because you would think that our identity is the first thing that we need

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to deal with, is the first thing that we need to address, but a lot of times, and

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this is what I was noticing when I was writing out, you know, some notes about

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what it is that I wanted to discuss about identity. I was

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realizing, you know, some of these things are very difficult for us to receive if

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we're in certain stages of our understanding in our relationship with

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the Lord, because we don't feel loved. We don't feel loved enough by the Lord to

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be able to receive any new understanding of the depth and the

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extent of our identity, because it is pretty wild. I mean, the things that we're

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going to be talking about, about our identity, about our oneness with Christ,

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are pretty extreme. Pretty extreme from anything that you've ever heard before,

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probably. Anything that I had ever heard before I was, before the Lord just kind

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of opened my eyes to this, but I realized in writing all of that out, it's like, you

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know, the first thing that needs to be talked about is love, so that's what I

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wanted to address today. So, this is something for you to, again, as everything,

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take before the Lord and pursue this in your relationship with him. Ask him to

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reveal himself to you, and so I'll be talking about that later at the end of

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the discussion, but I wanted to mention, first of all, that Brendan Manning said

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something that was very interesting. I don't know if y'all know Brendan Manning,

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one of my favorite authors. He talks a lot about love, so he was a Franciscan

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priest who introduced me, through his books, introduced me to the idea that God

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was a love that I had no idea that he was, and that he loved me to a depth, to it, to,

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with a wild abandon that I did not understand and couldn't ever, and hadn't

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ever been able to see in scripture before. So, the way that he described it

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one time was that Christianity is not an ethical code, it is a love affair, and the

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more that I've read the Bible since then, the more that I realized that is

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very true. God had no intention whatsoever of giving us an ethical code,

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no intention whatsoever of us choosing to operate by some ethical code. What he

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was wanting was he was wanting relationship with us. I'll talk about that

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later on, but, you know, in other videos, but I just wanted to mention that real

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quick. So, before we get into it, I wanted to just highlight some verses that talk

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about the extremity of the way that the Lord loves us. There's a gajillion

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verses in scripture, but I really wanted to highlight the ones that I felt kind

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of would grab our hearts in a very unique way, because we're not really, even

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though we've probably all read these verses, they're very difficult for us to

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digest and to receive. And that is, Hosea 2.16 is,

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In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and you will no

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longer call me my master. Extremely important for us to get. That's the very

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first verse that I wanted to talk about. Hey, Steph! Hey, Holly! So, he wants,

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we're so used to thinking of ourselves and our relationship with the Lord in

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relationship to obedience. God is not interested in obedience. Obedience is

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very old covenant, and he had actually given the law to the Israelites

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because they had rejected a covenant of relationship with him. We'll talk about that

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at some other time, but the point is that under the new covenant, everything is by

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relationship. Everything is by our identity as a son of God, and the fact

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that we are loved by him, not that we are always having to operate in obedience

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anymore. There is an element of obedience, but it's obedience that naturally flows

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from a love relationship, not from a command and a yes-or-response. So, then

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in a Song of Solomon 4.9, it says, this is the lover. Remember, there's a

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there's a lover, and then there's the beloved. The lover is Jesus, it's Christ,

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it's God, and then the beloved is used to describe us. So, both of these verses that

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I'll be quoting from Song of Solomon are the lover. And that is, you have stolen my

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heart.

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My sister, my bride, you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.

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And that is how we affect the Lord.

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So I highly recommend that you go back through and read the Song of Solomon again.

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And, hey Cheryl, I highly recommend that you go back and read the Song of Solomon again.

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And from the perspective of understanding that the way that the lover and the beloved are talking

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is the way that we currently talk to the Lord in the spirit today.

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Not what our relationship will look like when we die and we're in heaven,

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but today our spirits commune and we'll have a relationship with Him

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and are in union with Him and interact in the same way that the lover and the beloved talk to each other.

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The lover allows himself to be affected by what the beloved has just said.

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And the beloved taught allowing herself to be affected by what the lover just said.

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The lover might have said something different, but because the beloved responded to his first thing like this,

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well then now he's going to change what he's going to say and he's going to respond in a different way

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because he's now affected by it.

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So he desires in a relationship for there to be flow that creates change between the two individuals

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because of the relationship to one another.

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God allows himself to be affected by and changed by us.

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So then the second verse that I wanted to read from Song of Solomon is found in chapter 6, verse 5.

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So after he's just talked about the fact that you've stolen my heart with one glance from your eyes in chapter 4,

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in chapter 6 the lover says, turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.

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Now, I don't know about you, I am not used to seeing the Lord as being that affected by me.

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I mean, I'm His creature, right? He created me. I'm His creation.

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And yet it says that He is so affected by me that the lover is telling the beloved,

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turn your eyes from me because they overwhelm me.

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So God has an overwhelming love for us and He loves us with complete and utter abandon.

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So the Song of Solomon is interesting because it describes the power that we have over God's heart

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because He allows it. The power that we have over His heart.

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And now this might be a little difficult for us to swallow so I'm going to say it and it's going to sound shocking

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and then I'll walk us into it.

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The Song of Solomon also shows that God is sexually aroused by the presence of His people.

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Now remember that sexual arousal is all we understand in the physical realm.

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But anything that we see in the physical realm is always a type and shadow of what existed prior to earth in heaven.

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So there is something, there's some type and shadow that it's describing of what is going on in the spirit.

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So I know that it's a little challenging for us to sometimes think of it in terms of saying that

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well God is sexually aroused by us and all of that.

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Understand it's not in earthly terms. It's in whatever those earthly terms are a type and shadow of

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of what is happening in the spirit.

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So I just wanted to kind of like gently transition us into a different way of understanding

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of understanding how to repeat the Lord's words back to Him.

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God is the one who's saying that He interacts with us like this.

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That He loves us like this.

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What we now need to do is we now need to believe Him.

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We now need to approach Him saying,

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okay well Lord you said this, I don't fully understand it but I'm going to receive it.

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As opposed to shutting it off and saying well that can't be right.

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He's the one who said it first.

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We're just repeating it back to Him.

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Coming to Him like children going Lord I don't understand.

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Can you walk me into this new knowledge?

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It's also very difficult for us to receive this amount of love.

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It's very hard.

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So we tend to shut it off.

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And so we tend to turn on our reasoning because when our reasoning is going on in our brain

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it shuts off emotion.

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They can scientifically show that the parts of our brain that are lit up

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when we are in very powerful emotion gets shut off

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the more logic, the more of the logical side of our brain is being turned on.

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They can exist at the same time but the more that the logic is being turned on

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it overpowers and shuts down and shuts off emotion.

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So it's very important that we learn to stop trying to reason so much

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because it's taking us up into our head as opposed to allowing ourselves to be moved by the Spirit.

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So remember that God loves because of his nature. God is love. So he's the very

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definition of it. He's the very essence of it. Love does not describe God as if

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it's an adjective. It's his very nature. Love is God and anything else

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that we describe as love just kind of looks kind of sort of similar as a type

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of shadow of what the nature of God is. So when he loves us, he's loving us out

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of his nature and he can't help it. So we can't... and everything in his...

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everything about the character of God is always, always, always, always, always

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subject to his love.

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Everything. All other characteristics are always subject to his love. His power is

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subject to his love. God's extremely powerful and he always presents that

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power is subject to love. So when we're reflecting God's character... total

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sidenote... when we're reflecting God's character and we're becoming more like

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God and we're displaying more God-like characteristics out here on the

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earth and we're manifesting heaven into earth, one of the things that is

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challenging is the fact that the power that God gives us, because we're

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one with Christ, the power that he gives us, God insists, in order for us to look

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like him, insists that that power be subject to love. That we must love more

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and that that must always overcome any power that we might have in a

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particular situation to cause a particular thing to happen. Love must

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always triumph over it and it must always be the final decision-maker.

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So another thing to mention is in the Song of Solomon, you'll notice there's a

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couple of different things that we need to accept about the Lord's love that

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that God introduces us to. He also introduces us to it in, say, Ezekiel

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or Hosea, and that's the fact that we need to be aware that God loves in two

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different ways. He's very tender when he loves, in which case he might say, you

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know, come to me because I desire to comfort you and I want to be gentle with

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you and I want to hold you and I want to do everything that's going to make you

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feel comfortable. But then there's that other side that is wildly passionate,

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that is very difficult for us to receive because it is a driving force and it's

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coming at us. And that's a side of God that's a wild, passionate

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lover aspect of the Lord in which he would declare something like, do not

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think that you can keep me at a safe distance from yourself because I'm

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coming and I won't allow myself to be separated from you. And he does that

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with extreme passion. He does that with extreme strength. Again, it can be very

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difficult for us to receive, but I'm trying to introduce these things to us

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so that you can then take it back to the Lord and allow that a newness of your

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relationship with the Lord to develop as you learn to receive a greater

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expansiveness of his love into your life. Because his love is there, but if we

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can't receive it, then we're not going to be feeling it. We're not going to be

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experiencing it, and it's going to limit the depth of our relationship and our

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connection with him. So, I find this very interesting, very

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important to think about that, again, he is subject, everything in his

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character, to the fact that he is love. So, everything in his character is subject

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to his love, and you are the object of that love. That tells you your

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significance, period. God subjects everything within his own

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character to the very nature of his essence, which is love, and you are the

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object of that love. That is your significance. I mean, it isn't any wonder

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that so many of the fallen angels, you know, fallen angels, Lucifer,

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you know, Satan, were so upset when we were chosen instead of them. When Satan

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wanted to be like God, and God said, no, they're gonna be like me, and I'm gonna

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love them this much, where I'm gonna allow them to be, I'm gonna allow them to

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be one with me. Not just like me, but one with me.

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Let's talk about all that unity later. That's what I was going to talk about tonight and then I

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realized I think that was a little... I think we need to talk about the love first.

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Kind of ease ourselves in a little bit. So, okay, so this is kind of like what I

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wanted to get everything down to right here. That is the fact that someone's

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love for you does not obligate you to either receive the love or to return it.

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Even God's love. It's extremely important to accept because love is only by free

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will. If someone is not giving love out of their free will, in other words, no

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feeling of obligation, then it's actually not love. So we can start to question,

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have I really been loving God or have I felt like I was supposed to? So in order

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for us to learn to freely move into being able to truly love God the way

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that we were created to and the way that he desires us to, the very first thing

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that we have to let go of is our belief that we are obligated to love him. So

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understand that he died... like how can we know this? So if you... if you wanting and

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loving him was not even required for him to desire you when he died on the

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cross because you hated him, you killed him, pulled out his beard, whipped him, you know,

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on his back. We hated him, it says. It says that while we hated him, he died for us. So

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if we killed him and therefore our wanting him and our desiring him and our loving him

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wasn't even required for him to love us back, why on earth do we think that it's

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required for us to keep his love afterwards when we become Christians,

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when we're born again? Why do we think that there's anything that's required of

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us in order to keep it up? There's nothing. We are under no obligation to

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receive his love. We're under obligation in order to become

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believers, in order to become one with him. We do have to believe him, but we're not

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under obligation to receive his love or to return it. And once we understand that,

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then we can finally realize the extent to which God gave us free

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will because he desired us in free will to love him back. And we don't have to

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worry about whether or not we're going to love him back. God's not worried about

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whether or not we're going to love him back. Why? Because what breeds love other than

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what creates love other than being loved and naturally responding back to it. So

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God's not worried that we're not going to love him. And I'm not worried that I'm not going to love him.

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The reason why I struggle loving him in any in a particular area of my life or

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to a particular degree is because I don't, that's to the degree to which I

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believe he loves me. The degree to which I believe he loves me is the

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degree to which I naturally respond without even trying the way that I

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naturally respond back to him in love. So, but I had to learn first in order to be

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able to freely give that love. I had to learn first and accept the fact that I

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was under no obligation to receive or return his love. I'd still get it anyway.

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He'd still love me just as much as he says he does in Song of Solomon or in

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Hosea where he marries the prostitute who keeps hurting him, you know. Or in

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Ezekiel, which is a really interesting passage, I recommend that you read

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Ezekiel 13. Oh wait, sorry, it's not 13. Ezekiel 16, 6 through 14. It's really, really, really good.

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It describes everything.

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describes how God saw us when we were nothing and we were not desirable and he

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chose, and it says that he declared over us, live. So he declared

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life over us and then when we grew to a particular point where he says that we

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were ready for love, he said he took us into himself and it says that he made us

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his and then he adorned us with all these jewels and he did all of this. Nowhere in

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this passage, nowhere in verses 6 through 14, does it describe what we did at all.

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It didn't describe our response. It doesn't describe anything that we said,

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anything that we thought. It is all based on the character of God. So the fact that

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God loves you and the fact that God has what he does for you and the fact that

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he has given you the abundance of the inheritance that he gives you as a son of God is all based

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strictly on his character, including the clients that you get, including the

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profitability of your business, regardless of whether or not we're in a

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pandemic and a quarantine. It's all based on his character because those things

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that I just described, those are tiny compared to these things, tiny compared to the

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essence of our life and our very existence and our very being and him

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wanting, him doing whatever he possibly, whatever was necessary in order to make

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us one with him. All of those other things are small in comparison. So just wanted to mention all those things.

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I recommend that you really sit with and receive the understanding, not just the

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understanding, but receiving your heart and accept the fact that you're not

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under any obligation to receive or to return his love. Then you will notice, you

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will feel this weight drop off of you and suddenly you'll be drawn to him

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because it's no longer out of obligation, no longer out of a sense of requirement,

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no longer out of a habitual sense of duty, responsibility, shoulds and

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shouldn'ts. You will find that you will love him in a different way and

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right now there's too many other lies in the way. So one of the things that you'll

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discover that's going to be a theme throughout this whole month is what is

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where I am. I believe that we are to learn things and that is really that in

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life we're unlearning things. That we were born perfect. We were born in Christ

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completely perfect. And the problem is that we had all of these lies added in. We

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believed all of these things that aren't true and we can't hear the truth

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underneath. So what we're going to be doing this whole month is not adding new

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information. It's reminding us of what we've forgotten that we knew and it's

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removing the layers of the lies. So the first thing that we need to do is go

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ahead and be honest with ourselves. You know, okay well I'm not sure if I have to

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Okay. Just let it all go then. Let go of the sense that you are under any obligation whatsoever that he's holding you to any obligation.

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And then, once you've let all that go, you'll feel that weight fall off of your back.

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Kind of like Covenant's Progress where you had that big burden on his back. You'll feel it fall off.

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And then your soul and your heart will naturally be drawn to the Lord.

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So, two more things. So how do you know that you're loved? You observe the one

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who says that they love you. That is how you know that you're loved. Because the

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love is always about the giver. The love is not... it's the same thing with gifts. Love and the

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giving of gifts is not about the receiver. It is always all about the one

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who is giving. It's an expression of their nature and what it is they desire

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to pour out into someone else because of who they are. And so that's why

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love is not dependent on desserts. So, in other words, whether or not somebody

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else deserves it. It's not dependent on it at all. It's dependent strictly on the

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giver. So, we don't have to worry that, oh, I might be able to lose God's love. Or,

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what if he doesn't like me? Or, what if he doesn't love me? Or, whatever. It was never

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based on you anyway. It's always based on him. So, when we see his love and

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experiences love, it's telling us more about who he is. Then, when we let him back, it's

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expressing...

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who we are. He desires us to give us to Him. And now, yes, He created us, He put

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us, He put Himself in us, correct, but He desired, He was perfectly sufficient

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without us. Before He even made us, He was perfectly sufficient, so He must have

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created us. He didn't need a servant. He must have created us because He desired

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that fellowship. He desired us to give back to Him because He desired, again, He

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desired that fellowship. And it's a feeding loop in which each party allows

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themselves to be fed by and affected by the other. So, all of this is very

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important for us because we trust God, our businesses, etc. We trust God

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according to the degree that we believe that He loves us. And we surrender to God

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in our life according to the degree to which we believe He loves us.

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So, that's why, one of the reasons why all of this love is, talking about this love is also important.

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So, the last thing I wanted to say is the exercise. So, the exercise that I highly

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recommend, not required, I highly recommend it though, this is what taught

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me how to, how much Jesus loved me. Because I couldn't, I couldn't see it in

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Scripture. I'm 35 years old, almost 36, and I've read Scripture all my whole life. I've

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been a Christian since I was four years old. I've read it all multiple times. I've

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read through the Bible multiple times, but the same passages in Scripture are

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probably 20, you know, and it, it, it wasn't helpful because I was seeing it

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through those old filters and I couldn't look past them and I needed a personal

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connection. I needed Him to look at and love me because reading it in black and

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white was not getting through because I've read the same passages for so many

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times. I needed a fresh revelation. I needed the person of Jesus. I needed the

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being of God. So, what I highly recommend that you do is what I, what I do, and in

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fact, I still do this. Imagine that, that, like maybe, I don't know, you could be

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wherever. You could sit outside, sit on your bed, whatever. Give yourself at least five

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minutes. Doesn't make, I don't know if that's going to sound very long, but trust

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me, when you get into this exercise, it's going to feel like a very long time. Give yourself five

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minutes and imagine that Jesus comes and sits in front of you and looks at you

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and so you look at Him in the eyes. Make eye contact and allow Him to love you.

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Feel the love. See it in His face. See it in His eyes. And yes, imagine all of this.

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Imagine it and I believe because understand that even though we're

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imagining it, it's actually real. It's actually happening, but we're not

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believing that it's happening. We're not actually believing that we can see in

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this growth that these things are happening. So, we're having to create it

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up out of our own imagination, but we're doing it because God says that it's

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actually happening. So, we're not trying to make up something that's not true. So,

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anyway, imagine that He's right in front of you and that He looks you in the eye

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and that He loves you like a lover and just sit in it and do not break eye

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contact and that's gonna be hard. Why is that gonna be hard? Because as you sit

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there and you don't break eye contact, the intensity of the love that you feel

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increases. It feeds on itself. It starts going, you know, it starts going maybe

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just like one-to-one to like to squaring. So, then it's, you know, one times

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one and then it's two times two and then it's four times four and then 16

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times 16 and then 132 times 132. It's gonna start squaring. It's it and so it'll

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just kind of feed on itself and there's two things that you're gonna want to do.

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You're gonna want to break eye contact to break the pressure because it's too

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much and you and the reason that it's too much is not that you weren't created to

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receive it. You were created to receive that love from your Lord. It's that

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there's issues in the way you don't feel that you deserve it and that in

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that love is what needs to break down that under that belief that you

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don't deserve it. The other thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna

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want to love him back. I highly recommend it.

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If it just naturally comes out, don't worry, don't feel like you're squelching it too

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much or something. But try, but try to not love him back. And here's why.

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That's another way that people... battery... it says there's a... it's another way in

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which we try to break the pressure. Because when we're feeling that

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intensity increase, we feel a bit of relief if we can kind of give it back.

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Kind of like the sun shining on the moon and the moon reflecting it back to the

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sun. We want to reflect it back. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to

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relieve it. Like, okay God, you're giving me this and I don't feel that I deserve

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to receive all of this and just sit here. I should be giving something back to you.

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So here, let me give something back to you. No, we've been doing that our whole

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lives. We need to just sit for five minutes, not for forever, for five minutes

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and allow yourself to be loved without trying to love him back. Because what

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it's going to be trying to create a bit... you're going to be trying to create a

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bit of relief for yourself because it's going to be hard to receive that next time.

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So anyway, that's just a recommendation from me. I cannot, I cannot honestly

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recommend that highly enough. Probably out of all the exercises I'm going to

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request, this one is the biggest one because it's all about the love

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that you get, the love relationship and the love affair that you are in with the

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Lord. And it is from that place that literally everything else stems. Everything.

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Your understanding of identity, your acceptance of new revelations that he

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gives you, your trust in stepping out in faith in the things that we'll be

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talking about. All of that stems from do you believe that you're loved? And this

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isn't a one-time exercise. I highly recommend that you do it as much as you

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can. And the more that you do it, the more that you're going to love doing it. And you're

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going to start talking to him and he's going to start talking back to you. You're really

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going to enjoy it. So anyway, yes, Cheryl, it is a challenge, but it's so precious

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because he says that he loves us and our sense of, we are, we do not realize how

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much, and Jesus was talking to me about this a while back, that I don't

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realize how much I'm limiting what I know I can, because I'm struggling,

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because I can't receive it and I'm just resisting. And so, he can't show me the

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extent to which he loves me, because I keep, I keep limiting and saying, oh, you

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know, I can't, I can't receive that. I don't deserve that. It's too much. It's

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whatever. And we have to allow ourselves to just sit in it. And he will heal us.

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He will, his love will break down those walls. We don't have to work really hard

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to break down the walls and expose ourselves to invulnerability. We just

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present ourselves and his love is the most powerful thing in existence and it

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will break down those walls. So anyway, good to see all of y'all. I'm shocked y'all are on

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really late at night. And I'm sorry, I'm on late at night. I meant to get on

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earlier. It has been a very, very, very heavily spiritual day for me today and

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yesterday. Very much. I'm exhausted, but I have, I have something else I've got,

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actually got to go to now. Some things that the Lord was talking about last

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night and I need to share it with someone. So, anyway, my, my day is not done, but I

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hope that y'all have a really good night. Love visiting with y'all and love

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getting to hear all of the activity in the, in the brief and in the posts. Anyway, love each

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one of y'all. Bye.