There is a fresh, new wind blowing through the Body of Christ this December. It is unlike anything I've felt for about twelve years. It is the true Spirit of Love, overtaking us and causing us to lay down the judge's gavel and surrender to the One who is Love. This calls for a transformation into His image, as never before.
This morning the Spirit led me to 1 John 3 and the Message version eloquently speaks, "My dear children, let's not just talk about love, let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living in God's reality. God is Love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of Love, we live in God and God lives in us."
Permanent residence in a life of Love! How do we do this? Prophetess Phyllis Ford just released her Prophetic Word for 2016 and it falls seamlessly into line with all that the Father is speaking to me right now. In her word she wrote, "The more we acclimate ourselves to who HE is and what HIS ways are, the further we progress in that transformation. Some of us don't look like God because we have become unacquainted with who He is. We must seek to know Him so that we are able to understand the spiritual aspects of ourselves in a new and better way. We then lay hold of who He is and who we are so that the transformation process can begin to bring forth harvest."
Last night, together with a sister in Messiah, I stood knocking on the door of a "flea-bag motel," my arms laden with gift bags of cookies, oranges, a warm shirt and some little learning toys for a three-year-old boy and a gift basket of pampering items for his young homeless mother. She opened the door and her bouncing little boy ran to us yelling, "Presents!" He had on blue jeans but no shirt - despite the freezing temperature - but his face radiated such joy. I asked his name and he proudly exclaimed, "My name is Christopher!" My heart skipped a little beat. That's my own son's name and I remember when he was three and what a beautiful home we lived in, and how blessed our family was. But now there was a chance to bring love and warmth and joy into one little Christopher's heart and perhaps give his mama some hope that someone cared; a chance to look like Yeshua, being acquainted with who He really is.
Yes, the Spirit of Love has to overtake us. The world is so filled with little Christophers and their battered, drug-addicted, lost parents. We are not going to reach them by staying home and folding our judgmental arms and pretending that these unmet expectations of a Christmas season and these desperate needs all around us are not real. My dear little children, let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living in God's reality.
Abba Father, thank you for re-awakening us to Your reality. Thank you for stirring my heart once again to remember that the sum of the Torah - is Love!
