Hey everyone. I know it is very late, so some of you might already be in bed on
East Coast, but I wanted to pop on real quick and talk to y'all about the thing
that I figured was the first thing that needed to be addressed in learning, you
know, how to operate a business out of rest, how to rest from work so that we
can work from rest. And the very first thing, even before identity, interestingly,
because you would think that our identity is the first thing that we need
to deal with, is the first thing that we need to address, but a lot of times, and
this is what I was noticing when I was writing out, you know, some notes about
what it is that I wanted to discuss about identity. I was
realizing, you know, some of these things are very difficult for us to receive if
we're in certain stages of our understanding in our relationship with
the Lord, because we don't feel loved. We don't feel loved enough by the Lord to
be able to receive any new understanding of the depth and the
extent of our identity, because it is pretty wild. I mean, the things that we're
going to be talking about, about our identity, about our oneness with Christ,
are pretty extreme. Pretty extreme from anything that you've ever heard before,
probably. Anything that I had ever heard before I was, before the Lord just kind
of opened my eyes to this, but I realized in writing all of that out, it's like, you
know, the first thing that needs to be talked about is love, so that's what I
wanted to address today. So, this is something for you to, again, as everything,
take before the Lord and pursue this in your relationship with him. Ask him to
reveal himself to you, and so I'll be talking about that later at the end of
the discussion, but I wanted to mention, first of all, that Brendan Manning said
something that was very interesting. I don't know if y'all know Brendan Manning,
one of my favorite authors. He talks a lot about love, so he was a Franciscan
priest who introduced me, through his books, introduced me to the idea that God
was a love that I had no idea that he was, and that he loved me to a depth, to it, to,
with a wild abandon that I did not understand and couldn't ever, and hadn't
ever been able to see in scripture before. So, the way that he described it
one time was that Christianity is not an ethical code, it is a love affair, and the
more that I've read the Bible since then, the more that I realized that is
very true. God had no intention whatsoever of giving us an ethical code,
no intention whatsoever of us choosing to operate by some ethical code. What he
was wanting was he was wanting relationship with us. I'll talk about that
later on, but, you know, in other videos, but I just wanted to mention that real
quick. So, before we get into it, I wanted to just highlight some verses that talk
about the extremity of the way that the Lord loves us. There's a gajillion
verses in scripture, but I really wanted to highlight the ones that I felt kind
of would grab our hearts in a very unique way, because we're not really, even
though we've probably all read these verses, they're very difficult for us to
digest and to receive. And that is, Hosea 2.16 is,
In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and you will no
longer call me my master. Extremely important for us to get. That's the very
first verse that I wanted to talk about. Hey, Steph! Hey, Holly! So, he wants,
we're so used to thinking of ourselves and our relationship with the Lord in
relationship to obedience. God is not interested in obedience. Obedience is
very old covenant, and he had actually given the law to the Israelites
because they had rejected a covenant of relationship with him. We'll talk about that
at some other time, but the point is that under the new covenant, everything is by
relationship. Everything is by our identity as a son of God, and the fact
that we are loved by him, not that we are always having to operate in obedience
anymore. There is an element of obedience, but it's obedience that naturally flows
from a love relationship, not from a command and a yes-or-response. So, then
in a Song of Solomon 4.9, it says, this is the lover. Remember, there's a
there's a lover, and then there's the beloved. The lover is Jesus, it's Christ,
it's God, and then the beloved is used to describe us. So, both of these verses that
I'll be quoting from Song of Solomon are the lover. And that is, you have stolen my
heart.
My sister, my bride, you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.
And that is how we affect the Lord.
So I highly recommend that you go back through and read the Song of Solomon again.
And, hey Cheryl, I highly recommend that you go back and read the Song of Solomon again.
And from the perspective of understanding that the way that the lover and the beloved are talking
is the way that we currently talk to the Lord in the spirit today.
Not what our relationship will look like when we die and we're in heaven,
but today our spirits commune and we'll have a relationship with Him
and are in union with Him and interact in the same way that the lover and the beloved talk to each other.
The lover allows himself to be affected by what the beloved has just said.
And the beloved taught allowing herself to be affected by what the lover just said.
The lover might have said something different, but because the beloved responded to his first thing like this,
well then now he's going to change what he's going to say and he's going to respond in a different way
because he's now affected by it.
So he desires in a relationship for there to be flow that creates change between the two individuals
because of the relationship to one another.
God allows himself to be affected by and changed by us.
So then the second verse that I wanted to read from Song of Solomon is found in chapter 6, verse 5.
So after he's just talked about the fact that you've stolen my heart with one glance from your eyes in chapter 4,
in chapter 6 the lover says, turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.
Now, I don't know about you, I am not used to seeing the Lord as being that affected by me.
I mean, I'm His creature, right? He created me. I'm His creation.
And yet it says that He is so affected by me that the lover is telling the beloved,
turn your eyes from me because they overwhelm me.
So God has an overwhelming love for us and He loves us with complete and utter abandon.
So the Song of Solomon is interesting because it describes the power that we have over God's heart
because He allows it. The power that we have over His heart.
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
and then I'll walk us into it.
The Song of Solomon also shows that God is sexually aroused by the presence of His people.
Now remember that sexual arousal is all we understand in the physical realm.
But anything that we see in the physical realm is always a type and shadow of what existed prior to earth in heaven.
So there is something, there's some type and shadow that it's describing of what is going on in the spirit.
So I know that it's a little challenging for us to sometimes think of it in terms of saying that
well God is sexually aroused by us and all of that.
Understand it's not in earthly terms. It's in whatever those earthly terms are a type and shadow of
of what is happening in the spirit.
So I just wanted to kind of like gently transition us into a different way of understanding
of understanding how to repeat the Lord's words back to Him.
God is the one who's saying that He interacts with us like this.
That He loves us like this.
What we now need to do is we now need to believe Him.
We now need to approach Him saying,
okay well Lord you said this, I don't fully understand it but I'm going to receive it.
As opposed to shutting it off and saying well that can't be right.
He's the one who said it first.
We're just repeating it back to Him.
Coming to Him like children going Lord I don't understand.
Can you walk me into this new knowledge?
It's also very difficult for us to receive this amount of love.
It's very hard.
So we tend to shut it off.
And so we tend to turn on our reasoning because when our reasoning is going on in our brain
it shuts off emotion.
They can scientifically show that the parts of our brain that are lit up
when we are in very powerful emotion gets shut off
the more logic, the more of the logical side of our brain is being turned on.
They can exist at the same time but the more that the logic is being turned on
it overpowers and shuts down and shuts off emotion.
So it's very important that we learn to stop trying to reason so much
because it's taking us up into our head as opposed to allowing ourselves to be moved by the Spirit.
So remember that God loves because of his nature. God is love. So he's the very
definition of it. He's the very essence of it. Love does not describe God as if
it's an adjective. It's his very nature. Love is God and anything else
that we describe as love just kind of looks kind of sort of similar as a type
of shadow of what the nature of God is. So when he loves us, he's loving us out
of his nature and he can't help it. So we can't... and everything in his...
everything about the character of God is always, always, always, always, always
subject to his love.
Everything. All other characteristics are always subject to his love. His power is
subject to his love. God's extremely powerful and he always presents that
power is subject to love. So when we're reflecting God's character... total
sidenote... when we're reflecting God's character and we're becoming more like
God and we're displaying more God-like characteristics out here on the
earth and we're manifesting heaven into earth, one of the things that is
challenging is the fact that the power that God gives us, because we're
one with Christ, the power that he gives us, God insists, in order for us to look
like him, insists that that power be subject to love. That we must love more
and that that must always overcome any power that we might have in a
particular situation to cause a particular thing to happen. Love must
always triumph over it and it must always be the final decision-maker.
So another thing to mention is in the Song of Solomon, you'll notice there's a
couple of different things that we need to accept about the Lord's love that
that God introduces us to. He also introduces us to it in, say, Ezekiel
or Hosea, and that's the fact that we need to be aware that God loves in two
different ways. He's very tender when he loves, in which case he might say, you
know, come to me because I desire to comfort you and I want to be gentle with
you and I want to hold you and I want to do everything that's going to make you
feel comfortable. But then there's that other side that is wildly passionate,
that is very difficult for us to receive because it is a driving force and it's
coming at us. And that's a side of God that's a wild, passionate
lover aspect of the Lord in which he would declare something like, do not
think that you can keep me at a safe distance from yourself because I'm
coming and I won't allow myself to be separated from you. And he does that
with extreme passion. He does that with extreme strength. Again, it can be very
difficult for us to receive, but I'm trying to introduce these things to us
so that you can then take it back to the Lord and allow that a newness of your
relationship with the Lord to develop as you learn to receive a greater
expansiveness of his love into your life. Because his love is there, but if we
can't receive it, then we're not going to be feeling it. We're not going to be
experiencing it, and it's going to limit the depth of our relationship and our
connection with him. So, I find this very interesting, very
important to think about that, again, he is subject, everything in his
character, to the fact that he is love. So, everything in his character is subject
to his love, and you are the object of that love. That tells you your
significance, period. God subjects everything within his own
character to the very nature of his essence, which is love, and you are the
object of that love. That is your significance. I mean, it isn't any wonder
that so many of the fallen angels, you know, fallen angels, Lucifer,
you know, Satan, were so upset when we were chosen instead of them. When Satan
wanted to be like God, and God said, no, they're gonna be like me, and I'm gonna
love them this much, where I'm gonna allow them to be, I'm gonna allow them to
be one with me. Not just like me, but one with me.
Let's talk about all that unity later. That's what I was going to talk about tonight and then I
realized I think that was a little... I think we need to talk about the love first.
Kind of ease ourselves in a little bit. So, okay, so this is kind of like what I
wanted to get everything down to right here. That is the fact that someone's
love for you does not obligate you to either receive the love or to return it.
Even God's love. It's extremely important to accept because love is only by free
will. If someone is not giving love out of their free will, in other words, no
feeling of obligation, then it's actually not love. So we can start to question,
have I really been loving God or have I felt like I was supposed to? So in order
for us to learn to freely move into being able to truly love God the way
that we were created to and the way that he desires us to, the very first thing
that we have to let go of is our belief that we are obligated to love him. So
understand that he died... like how can we know this? So if you... if you wanting and
loving him was not even required for him to desire you when he died on the
cross because you hated him, you killed him, pulled out his beard, whipped him, you know,
on his back. We hated him, it says. It says that while we hated him, he died for us. So
if we killed him and therefore our wanting him and our desiring him and our loving him
wasn't even required for him to love us back, why on earth do we think that it's
required for us to keep his love afterwards when we become Christians,
when we're born again? Why do we think that there's anything that's required of
us in order to keep it up? There's nothing. We are under no obligation to
receive his love. We're under obligation in order to become
believers, in order to become one with him. We do have to believe him, but we're not
under obligation to receive his love or to return it. And once we understand that,
then we can finally realize the extent to which God gave us free
will because he desired us in free will to love him back. And we don't have to
worry about whether or not we're going to love him back. God's not worried about
whether or not we're going to love him back. Why? Because what breeds love other than
what creates love other than being loved and naturally responding back to it. So
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.
The reason why I struggle loving him in any in a particular area of my life or
to a particular degree is because I don't, that's to the degree to which I
believe he loves me. The degree to which I believe he loves me is the
degree to which I naturally respond without even trying the way that I
naturally respond back to him in love. So, but I had to learn first in order to be
able to freely give that love. I had to learn first and accept the fact that I
was under no obligation to receive or return his love. I'd still get it anyway.
He'd still love me just as much as he says he does in Song of Solomon or in
Hosea where he marries the prostitute who keeps hurting him, you know. Or in
Ezekiel, which is a really interesting passage, I recommend that you read
Ezekiel 13. Oh wait, sorry, it's not 13. Ezekiel 16, 6 through 14. It's really, really, really good.
It describes everything.
describes how God saw us when we were nothing and we were not desirable and he
chose, and it says that he declared over us, live. So he declared
life over us and then when we grew to a particular point where he says that we
were ready for love, he said he took us into himself and it says that he made us
his and then he adorned us with all these jewels and he did all of this. Nowhere in
this passage, nowhere in verses 6 through 14, does it describe what we did at all.
It didn't describe our response. It doesn't describe anything that we said,
anything that we thought. It is all based on the character of God. So the fact that
God loves you and the fact that God has what he does for you and the fact that
he has given you the abundance of the inheritance that he gives you as a son of God is all based
strictly on his character, including the clients that you get, including the
profitability of your business, regardless of whether or not we're in a
pandemic and a quarantine. It's all based on his character because those things
that I just described, those are tiny compared to these things, tiny compared to the
essence of our life and our very existence and our very being and him
wanting, him doing whatever he possibly, whatever was necessary in order to make
us one with him. All of those other things are small in comparison. So just wanted to mention all those things.
I recommend that you really sit with and receive the understanding, not just the
understanding, but receiving your heart and accept the fact that you're not
under any obligation to receive or to return his love. Then you will notice, you
will feel this weight drop off of you and suddenly you'll be drawn to him
because it's no longer out of obligation, no longer out of a sense of requirement,
no longer out of a habitual sense of duty, responsibility, shoulds and
shouldn'ts. You will find that you will love him in a different way and
right now there's too many other lies in the way. So one of the things that you'll
discover that's going to be a theme throughout this whole month is what is
where I am. I believe that we are to learn things and that is really that in
life we're unlearning things. That we were born perfect. We were born in Christ
completely perfect. And the problem is that we had all of these lies added in. We
believed all of these things that aren't true and we can't hear the truth
underneath. So what we're going to be doing this whole month is not adding new
information. It's reminding us of what we've forgotten that we knew and it's
removing the layers of the lies. So the first thing that we need to do is go
ahead and be honest with ourselves. You know, okay well I'm not sure if I have to
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.
And then, once you've let all that go, you'll feel that weight fall off of your back.
Kind of like Covenant's Progress where you had that big burden on his back. You'll feel it fall off.
And then your soul and your heart will naturally be drawn to the Lord.
So, two more things. So how do you know that you're loved? You observe the one
who says that they love you. That is how you know that you're loved. Because the
love is always about the giver. The love is not... it's the same thing with gifts. Love and the
giving of gifts is not about the receiver. It is always all about the one
who is giving. It's an expression of their nature and what it is they desire
to pour out into someone else because of who they are. And so that's why
love is not dependent on desserts. So, in other words, whether or not somebody
else deserves it. It's not dependent on it at all. It's dependent strictly on the
giver. So, we don't have to worry that, oh, I might be able to lose God's love. Or,
what if he doesn't like me? Or, what if he doesn't love me? Or, whatever. It was never
based on you anyway. It's always based on him. So, when we see his love and
experiences love, it's telling us more about who he is. Then, when we let him back, it's
expressing...
who we are. He desires us to give us to Him. And now, yes, He created us, He put
us, He put Himself in us, correct, but He desired, He was perfectly sufficient
without us. Before He even made us, He was perfectly sufficient, so He must have
created us. He didn't need a servant. He must have created us because He desired
that fellowship. He desired us to give back to Him because He desired, again, He
desired that fellowship. And it's a feeding loop in which each party allows
themselves to be fed by and affected by the other. So, all of this is very
important for us because we trust God, our businesses, etc. We trust God
according to the degree that we believe that He loves us. And we surrender to God
in our life according to the degree to which we believe He loves us.
So, that's why, one of the reasons why all of this love is, talking about this love is also important.
So, the last thing I wanted to say is the exercise. So, the exercise that I highly
recommend, not required, I highly recommend it though, this is what taught
me how to, how much Jesus loved me. Because I couldn't, I couldn't see it in
Scripture. I'm 35 years old, almost 36, and I've read Scripture all my whole life. I've
been a Christian since I was four years old. I've read it all multiple times. I've
read through the Bible multiple times, but the same passages in Scripture are
probably 20, you know, and it, it, it wasn't helpful because I was seeing it
through those old filters and I couldn't look past them and I needed a personal
connection. I needed Him to look at and love me because reading it in black and
white was not getting through because I've read the same passages for so many
times. I needed a fresh revelation. I needed the person of Jesus. I needed the
being of God. So, what I highly recommend that you do is what I, what I do, and in
fact, I still do this. Imagine that, that, like maybe, I don't know, you could be
wherever. You could sit outside, sit on your bed, whatever. Give yourself at least five
minutes. Doesn't make, I don't know if that's going to sound very long, but trust
me, when you get into this exercise, it's going to feel like a very long time. Give yourself five
minutes and imagine that Jesus comes and sits in front of you and looks at you
and so you look at Him in the eyes. Make eye contact and allow Him to love you.
Feel the love. See it in His face. See it in His eyes. And yes, imagine all of this.
Imagine it and I believe because understand that even though we're
imagining it, it's actually real. It's actually happening, but we're not
believing that it's happening. We're not actually believing that we can see in
this growth that these things are happening. So, we're having to create it
up out of our own imagination, but we're doing it because God says that it's
actually happening. So, we're not trying to make up something that's not true. So,
anyway, imagine that He's right in front of you and that He looks you in the eye
and that He loves you like a lover and just sit in it and do not break eye
contact and that's gonna be hard. Why is that gonna be hard? Because as you sit
there and you don't break eye contact, the intensity of the love that you feel
increases. It feeds on itself. It starts going, you know, it starts going maybe
just like one-to-one to like to squaring. So, then it's, you know, one times
one and then it's two times two and then it's four times four and then 16
times 16 and then 132 times 132. It's gonna start squaring. It's it and so it'll
just kind of feed on itself and there's two things that you're gonna want to do.
You're gonna want to break eye contact to break the pressure because it's too
much and you and the reason that it's too much is not that you weren't created to
receive it. You were created to receive that love from your Lord. It's that
there's issues in the way you don't feel that you deserve it and that in
that love is what needs to break down that under that belief that you
don't deserve it. The other thing that you're gonna want to do is you're gonna
want to love him back. I highly recommend it.
If it just naturally comes out, don't worry, don't feel like you're squelching it too
much or something. But try, but try to not love him back. And here's why.
That's another way that people... battery... it says there's a... it's another way in
which we try to break the pressure. Because when we're feeling that
intensity increase, we feel a bit of relief if we can kind of give it back.
Kind of like the sun shining on the moon and the moon reflecting it back to the
sun. We want to reflect it back. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to
relieve it. Like, okay God, you're giving me this and I don't feel that I deserve
to receive all of this and just sit here. I should be giving something back to you.
So here, let me give something back to you. No, we've been doing that our whole
lives. We need to just sit for five minutes, not for forever, for five minutes
and allow yourself to be loved without trying to love him back. Because what
it's going to be trying to create a bit... you're going to be trying to create a
bit of relief for yourself because it's going to be hard to receive that next time.
So anyway, that's just a recommendation from me. I cannot, I cannot honestly
recommend that highly enough. Probably out of all the exercises I'm going to
request, this one is the biggest one because it's all about the love
that you get, the love relationship and the love affair that you are in with the
Lord. And it is from that place that literally everything else stems. Everything.
Your understanding of identity, your acceptance of new revelations that he
gives you, your trust in stepping out in faith in the things that we'll be
talking about. All of that stems from do you believe that you're loved? And this
isn't a one-time exercise. I highly recommend that you do it as much as you
can. And the more that you do it, the more that you're going to love doing it. And you're
going to start talking to him and he's going to start talking back to you. You're really
going to enjoy it. So anyway, yes, Cheryl, it is a challenge, but it's so precious
because he says that he loves us and our sense of, we are, we do not realize how
much, and Jesus was talking to me about this a while back, that I don't
realize how much I'm limiting what I know I can, because I'm struggling,
because I can't receive it and I'm just resisting. And so, he can't show me the
extent to which he loves me, because I keep, I keep limiting and saying, oh, you
know, I can't, I can't receive that. I don't deserve that. It's too much. It's
whatever. And we have to allow ourselves to just sit in it. And he will heal us.
He will, his love will break down those walls. We don't have to work really hard
to break down the walls and expose ourselves to invulnerability. We just
present ourselves and his love is the most powerful thing in existence and it
will break down those walls. So anyway, good to see all of y'all. I'm shocked y'all are on
really late at night. And I'm sorry, I'm on late at night. I meant to get on
earlier. It has been a very, very, very heavily spiritual day for me today and
yesterday. Very much. I'm exhausted, but I have, I have something else I've got,
actually got to go to now. Some things that the Lord was talking about last
night and I need to share it with someone. So, anyway, my, my day is not done, but I
hope that y'all have a really good night. Love visiting with y'all and love
getting to hear all of the activity in the, in the brief and in the posts. Anyway, love each
one of y'all. Bye.