The safest place on earth

In Fathers arms.

He has never been an angry father. Often Old Covenant portions have portrayed him that way. But He never operates with anger like we often do. He never loses it. He is never frustrated. He doesn't get pissed off. His wrath is an expression of His love and is only used against the thing that is destroying the object of His affection.

I am that object. So I am always safe in his arms. In His arms is the safest place on earth.

As a parent who has sometimes out of anger been abusive with my own kids; He has never once been abusive to any of his. He has never had to apologize to me for losing His cool. If you really want to know him spend time in the Gospels with Jesus the friend of sinners.

Jesus was the exact representation of his dad. Like Father like Son.

Our Father is always approachable, always long suffering and kind, never envious, always secure, never rude; He doesn't get provoked, thinks no evil towards us, He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. His love never fails.

Two Cultures worlds apart

One; Need Shame and Fear based; The other Honor and Love based.

Good works and performance the bi-product of one; Super-natural and organic Fruit the evidence of the other.

One I can boast in; the other I have nothing to do with.

One; something I must strive for; the other, the genuine response of a transformed heart.

It can be very confusing. They both often can look the same from the outside. But the difference between them is astronomical. They are actually poles apart.

(NT scripture sometimes refers to fruit as works as in James “show me your faith without works and I will show you my faith by my works”, but the context of the new covenant and primarily Jesus teaching is “fruit” not works. And the difference is astronomical.)

“Works” are the sweat of performance. Sometimes it’s survival instinct. Other times it is just plain sweat. And the end result is religion and or burnout.

Whereas “Fruit” is organic, the natural response of “abiding in love” or as a friend of mine says “Living loved”.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all of thine heart” is an old Covenant command. I honestly have tried to work and sweat that one out for most of my life…and never arrived. How many times have you been beat up with the scripture in Revelations about losing your first love, trying to conjure up something lost along the path of busyness and neglect? So many times I’ve failed…

But “Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thine heart” is no longer a commandment. It is now a new covenant PROMISE, the fruit of a relationship with your Father empowered by the Holy Spirit. And first love is the cross. (Here in is love, not that we have loved God but that He has loved us”)

The only way you will genuinely love is with a “revelation” of the love of Christ. And don’t even try to conjure it up. Revelation doesn’t come that way. Revelation is just that, it is the revealing or pulling back of the scales until we see not with our eyes but with our heart….”the eyes of your heart being enlightened.” And it often takes time.., even sometimes decades for some one so steeped in religion like me.

Loving God can be work or fruit and the difference is night and day; they actually are worlds apart. You can get accolades for both but one is New Covenant…the other is the old. Jesus was the dawn of a new day, He went about the earth turning everything upside down, on its head. No wonder he was killed. It was absolutely contrary to everything they had learned from the old covenant while at the same time being the fulfillment of the hopes, dreams and promises found in it.

The dividing line between the two worlds was and still is the cross. Post the cross everything changed…

yet we for the most part are still unbelievably in the dark about it.

Jesus said, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”. We get it for the first twenty-four hours of our new life in Christ and from then on we are drug back into the performance and pretending that Jesus rebuked the religious class for; until we become the elder brother with no understanding of the relationship we actually have with father.

It’s not a fear-based relationship. It’s an Abba and son relationship, a relationship where we get to sit in his lap at our very worst, not our best.

This is our promise! And it comes little by little with a revelation of the cross, the pinnacle point of all history; the pivot point upon which the story stands; the culmination of everything that exists!. The crux is the crucifix.

I always rushed through the cross thinking that the power was in the resurrection. I used to condemn the Catholics for the crucifix, that memorial to the greatest of all historic events. I now own one, not that it in itself is worth more than a hill of beans. It is a reminder for me of a story so grand. Not a story where an angry dad whacked his son instead of whacking me. No a story where a father and son displayed such honor and a love so incomprehensible, so unimaginable and so defining of everything they were and are, to redeem a lost humanity back to themselves. Such love, such wondrous love! On the cross in the very person of Jesus the power of sin over a broken world was destroyed.

Now transformation happens not by our effort but "Completely", "Miraculously", "Super-naturally" by his effort as we learn to abide in His love. Sin is now a powerless nothing! It holds no power over us! It is no longer my concern or my focus. As darkness flees from light so sin is displaced in us and our worlds are transformed as we abide in his love.

I’m not saying that there is no sweat. There often is but there is also such Joy and Peace. In Fathers arms is the safest place on earth.