The experiences I have had of unconditional love have radically changed my whole belief system concerning who God is and therefore the reach of God’s love towards all of His creation.
God’s love is unconditional for everyone and everything and that love has no boundaries or limitations. God is love but…. There are no BUTS. God’s love is totally unconditional.
God is love if… certain conditions apply. God is love when we… do something. These statements arise from the fear based religious programming that keeps us doubting how good God is. I want to explode some more religious myths that kept me in a bondage that unconditional love has set me free from. Only our experience of unconditional love can bring us freedom from the religious deception.
In previous messages we looked at the truth about how God views sin, forgiveness, repentance and confession, faith, being born again, salvation and the Bible. We are going to look at the truth about the old and new covenants, duty and obligation.
In future messages we are going to look at the truth about the relationship between unconditional love and the restoration of all things and about God’s desire for us to live in health and immortality.
I’m realizing that as long as I have a “sin consciousness”, I will always see something wrong with me, big or small, that God is not pleased with. That will always bring guilt and shame, which makes us run from God.
Love, grace, and righteousness consciousness will always bring peace and joy. God is always smiling over us!
As I am still going through the process of deconstruction, I cannot not trust my interpretation of the Bible to help me, as that is what is really being transformed.
I am not the audience that the books and letters making up the Bible were speaking to directly. When love (and not the law or the Bible) is the plumb line (I use to measure everything against) then that gives a much more accurate method of discernment.
Evangelical myth: it can’t be true or trusted if it’s not in the Bible. Cell phones, cars, computers etc. The whole of our modern lives and most of modern history is not specifically mentioned in the Bible. The Bible has often been used by Christians throughout history to oppose progress and scientific discovery. To promote things like flat earth! Sola scriptura should not be our reference point for truth and discernment but Jesus, the Truth. We should be careful about using the Bible to create absolutes and rules concerning life and God: legalism.
Love definitely should make the world go around. All we need is love, therefore (God). When you receive revelation of unconditional love, it transforms life from slavery to duty and obligation into the freedom of a joyous love relationship of rest and creativity. Rest is a state of being that will positively influence everything we do in our lives. Thanksgiving and gratitude for unconditional love, limitless grace and triumphant mercy become attitudes that promote both physical health and mental and emotional wellbeing. Living loved, loving living and living loving is a state of consciousness.
Evangelicalism has conditioned believers into thinking that everything the Bible says applies to them and that includes our understanding of faith in God which is an old covenant foundation not to be laid in the new covenant, according to Heb 6:1-2.
Heb 6:1 Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do, if God permits. These verses were twisted and misunderstood in my past.
Heb 6:1 (Mirror) Consequently, as difficult as it may seem, you ought to divorce yourselves from sentimental attachment to the prefiguring doctrine of the Messiah, which was designed to carry us like a vessel over the ocean of prophetic dispensation into the completeness of the fulfilled promise. A mind shift from attempts to impress God by your behavior, to faith-righteousness in Christ, is fundamental. There is no life left in the old system. It is dead and gone; you have to move on. (Rom 3:27).
Heb 6:2 (Mirror) All the Jewish teachings about ceremonial washings (baptisms), the laying on of hands (in order to identify with the slain animal as sacrifice), and all teachings pertaining to a sin consciousness, including the final resurrection of the dead in order to face judgment, are no longer relevant. (All of these types and shadows were concluded and fulfilled in Christ, their living substance. His resurrection bears testimony to the judgment that he faced on humanity’s behalf and the freedom from an obstructive consciousness of sin that he now proclaims.
Heb 6:3 (Mirror) So it is with God’s prompting that we advance. (From the prophetic types and shadows of scripture into the substance of what God has now spoken to us in his son. The overcoming power of the resurrection has changed everything.
Dead works and all the other things mentioned in Heb 6:1-2 are old covenant doctrines that are no longer to be a foundation for new covenant grace-filled living in unconditional love. Unconditional love puts an end to old covenant obedience, duty and obligation.
“Walking by faith and not by sight”, is that belief – it is not something to be learned – it’s what happens to you in your awakening to what has always been true about you!
The only faith that matters is the one which is by the agape-driven love of our Abba, unveiled in the face of the man Jesus Christ – as in a mirror. We are no longer under the law but grace. We are no longer obliged to fulfil or be obedient to the law. All the law of God has been fulfilled in Jesus, and we are included in Him and under no obligation to man’s laws.
Just as there is no Hebrew word meaning ‘obey’, there also is no English word for shema. While this Hebrew verb translates as ‘hear’, it means much more than just hearing or listening: Hearing and responding from the heart with love. It is a saying of ‘yes’ before you even know what is being asked of you. So, if God isn’t looking for obedience from us the way we’ve understood it, what does God want? He’s looking for shema levot… for “hearing hearts”. A hearing heart is a heart that hears and responds. And a hearing heart is rooted in love (Deuteronomy 11:1; John 14:15; 1 John 5:3). “Understanding that obedience is a heart that responds ‘yes’ to ALL God says, even without understanding it, is a game-changer! It makes it EASY!
I entered the word obey (English) in Google Translate, wanting a Hebrew translation. The English word it gave me was to ABIDE! So easy! Obeying is simply abiding IN HIM with a hearing heart that responds YES! And Hebrews 5:9 in the Mirror Bible says that He has forever perfected our hearts to hear what He had heard! Your heart is wired by Him to hear and respond. Your heart is wired to abide! His obedience is your obedience!”
So many of those old covenant foundational doctrines are still central to evangelical theology. Repentance, faith, Washings or baptisms, laying on of hands, Resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. 17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
A law-based view of God and the mixing of covenantal components in our lives will keep us living in sin or lost identity consciousness. This will be a ‘less than’ kind of life and a major hindrance to our sonship. God is speaking to us directly today to help us navigate through the issues we face in our lives from a kingdom of God perspective. Abiding in a face-to-face love relationship is the key to knowing our identity as sons of Love.
Heb 1:1-3 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. 3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Heb 1:1 (Mirror) Throughout 1ancient times God spoke in many fragments and glimpses of prophetic thought to our fathers. Now, this entire conversation has 2 finally dawned in sonship. Suddenly what seemed to be an ancient language falls fresh and new like the dew on the tender grass! He is the sum total of every utterance of God. He is whom the prophets pointed to and we are his immediate audience!
Heb 1:2 (Mirror) In sonship, God declares the Incarnate Word to be the heir of all things. He is, after all, the author of the ages. We have our beginning and our being in him. (Sonship endorses heirship! See Heb 6:16-18.)
Heb 1:3 (Mirror) Jesus is the crescendo of God’s conversation; he gives context and content to the authentic thought. Everything that God had in mind for mankind is voiced in him. Jesus is God’s language. He is the radiant and flawless expression of the person and intent of God. He mirrors God’s character and exhibits his every attribute in human form. He is the voice of God announcing our redeemed innocence. This voice is the dynamic that sustains the entire cosmos. He is the force of the universe upholding everything that exists as the executive authority of God, enthroned in the boundless measure of his majesty. (“Having accomplished purification of sins, he sat down …”) His throne is proof of mankind’s redeemed innocence!
Like in James 1:24, we have forgotten what manner of people we are – we have forgotten the face of our birth! Jesus successfully rescued the real you, not the pseudo, make-belief you! God has never believed less of you than what he was able to communicate in the sonship that Jesus mirrored and redeemed! The elementary teachings about the Christ were like an old covenant schoolmaster to help them find Christ but in the new covenant we move on to maturity, not needing the old covenant teachings anymore. No one could keep or fulfil the law other than Jesus on our behalf.
1 John 4:16 And thus we have come to know and believe the love that God has unveiled within us. God is love. Love is who God is; to live in this place of conscious, constant love is to live immersed in God and to feel perfectly at home in his indwelling. We need to become unconditional love focused. This means we need to become inclusion focused. All are loved and all are included with no exceptions. Religious programming causes people to try to justify themselves, trying to attain what is already theirs. This makes religious people strive and put a lot of effort into their dead works; that just makes them tired and burdened.
Rom 5:18 “Therefore as by one man’s offense judgment came to ALL MEN resulting in condemnation, even so by one man’s righteous act the free gift came to ALL MEN RESULTING IN JUSTIFICATION” Rom 5:18 (Mirror) The conclusion is clear: it took just one offense to condemn mankind; one act of righteousness declares the same mankind innocent.
Rom 5:18 (Phillips) “We see, then, that as one act of sin exposed the whole race of men to condemnation, so one act of perfect righteousness presents all men freely acquitted in the sight of God!” “You can’t make what Adam did affect ALL but put conditions on what Jesus did for ALL. Religion would have you believe you had no choice with Adam, you were born into it, but when it comes to what last Adam did, it’s just an offer that you must do something to have. What a slap in the face of the finished work of the cross.” Our salvation, reconciliation and forgiveness are already true: we only need to come to that realization to experientially enter into what has already been accomplished for us by Jesus and be loved to live loved, loving living and live loving. Have you experienced unconditional love? Are you living in unconditional love? Are you demonstrating unconditional love? Do you have a heavenly vision of unconditional love