This week we’re continuing the series “What the Cross Means for You and Me,” adapted from Brilliant TV.
This article, as with the last handful of our articles, is based around Graham’s landmark book, “The Nature of Freedom.”
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Today we’re focusing on just taking a deep breath and soak in the affection God has for you.
He is in you… He is for you… He is delighted that you’re spending this time with Him.
And you’re going to notice in the coming days and weeks that His ways are becoming more of your ways. You’re going to encounter more and more of His truths that are bringing you into greater and greater freedom.
You’re coming into an experience of life with Him that is full of everything He is:
- Full of His love and passion for who you are… and who you are becoming in Christ.
- Full of His joy when He thinks about your life with Him.
- Deeply at peace and in complete rest about this journey that you are on together.
- Loving you as you are loving the learning.
- Happy with you, walking with you, talking about what He adores about you and about Christ in you.
This is why God is not in a hurry, because He loves this life with you as He loves Jesus.
When I used to walk with my children to the park, or when I’m walking with my grandchildren now, I love the feel of their hand in mine.
I know they’re excited to get to the playground, but all the while, I’m trying to slow down just to be with them a little longer.
Beloved, when you feel God is moving too slowly, maybe it’s because He just loves being with you a little longer.
Read these words that He wrote you in today’s portion from the Nature of Freedom:
“This all sounds wonderfully important and grand, doesn’t it? And so it is!
After all, you cannot be in Christ and be ordinary, right? You cannot be filled with the Spirit and be mediocre.
We are making you like Us! We are amazing.”
— “The Nature of Freedom,” Letter #2
When we live our lives fully aware of Jesus in us, walking and talking with God, just as Jesus adored walking and talking with His Father during His time on earth, then there is no way that we can live an ordinary life.
How could we?
How could we be in relationship with Someone as beautiful as the Father, Someone as glorious as Jesus and Someone as joyful and powerful as the Holy Spirit – who all live with us and through us – and then be dull and ordinary? It’s not possible!
The cross didn’t upgrade our relationship with God. It created an entirely new relationship, the one God always desired from the beginning, where He was no longer just visiting people… He could live inside of them.
John 17:23, “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
WE are His habitation! The Father loves you with the same love that He has for Jesus! And Jesus loves you with the same passion He has for the Father!
Every day He wants to astonish us with that love. Every morning He is coming and saying:
“I love who I get to be for you today. You are my beloved. You are my child. You are my friend.
I adore being relentless in my love for you.
I revel in sharing My joy, so that you can be strengthened.
I smile when you encounter Me as Peace that bypasses your understanding and goes straight to how magnificent I am for you today.
I want you to be amazed at how I never, ever change. I’m delighted in who you are today. And I’m excited about who you’re becoming tomorrow.”
So, how does hearing that make you feel? Does it seem too good to be true?
The world says if something seems too good to be true, someone’s about to get conned.
But in the Kingdom, if something is too good to be true, it has to be God…because that is what He is really, really like.
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There’s a lot more to this series, “What the Cross Means for You and Me” which you can find on here on Brilliant TV.
Also, you can find the book that this series was based on in our Store: “The Nature of Freedom.”
