To Be A Good Fig

I am in a place of renewed wonder, awe and bliss. The reason for this is my experience of God's faithfulness toward me. The reason for this is my experience of God's love for me. He cares about my heart, my dreams, my hopes. I resolve to testify from my experience of God. May the fruit of my lips always speak from the fruit of my life - ah - just remembered..."Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks...". Hmm. The meaning of that, to me, translates into speaking in, or with, authority.

Why were people amazed at Christ's authority when He spoke? They knew He was a great teacher by what He did. That's in scripture.

I believe the Holy Spirit is stirring the Bride from a slumber of Greco-Roman thinking and awakening her to her true identity in the life of Jesus Christ. He is restoring her to the reality of what Jesus walked, and the early church succeeded at, before popular secular thinking (religion)corrupted the expression of the Body of Christ. That said, I have come to realize that in general many people have a warped view of what "religion" means or looks like. I have come to realize that it actually cannot always be discerned with the natural eye, but with the eyes of the Spirit. Religion can have the appearance of being spiritual and the spiritual can have the appearance of being religious (in the natural). Spiritual discernment in these days is crucial.

I can only preach what I do, and hopefully I do the Jesus walk. In doing so, I will be relevant to my culture regardless of my hairdo. For if I preach what I don't do; I am a hypocrite. That is religion. That is what has repelled the world from much of the church. When they get close enough to see through the latest veneer, do our lives look like theirs - or Christ's? For even Christ had no fancy exterior appearance to attract us to Him...but word spread about what He did...

I call that living from the inside, out.

That's my goal.