Three Houses

It was such a huge joy to be able to spend yesterday morning & this morning with our friend Lenka. 

She lives in another city, Hradec Kralove, but from what we’ve been experiencing together I know that the union of the whole universe in & under Christ as the ultimate end of the gospel is not God’s impossible utopian dream but an actual reality to be entered into — our own opinions & thoughts crucified with Christ & enjoying His one heart & mind together!  It was so amazing to share & discover that He’d been revealing & speaking the exact same things to both of us during the same period of time. 

What He’s been been opening up is the revelation of the gospel of the kingdom as the gospel of His Son (as Paul puts it in Romans 1) as the invitation to enter the kingdom by receiving the sonship the Father has conferred on us before the foundation of the world.  It’s opening my eyes to what it means to be known by God & I’m seeing that the heart & point of life is to receive the Father’s love & the life of Christ as the expression of it so as to be able to love Him & others in turn. 

I’ve heard these words all my life but have been chronically religious - ever hearing & never understanding, ever seeing but never perceiving - & therefore not being known & knowing these realities in the Hebrew sense.  He’s been revealing my heart & I can’t agree more with Jeremiah that the heart is deceitful above all things & desperately wicked.  I have no illusions about the human heart.  Its’ defenses & rebellion against the love of God wear innumerable disguises, the most effective being religion.  Indeed, who can know it except that He gives us the revelation of His love in Christ with the accompanying grace to believe/receive it.  Thank you Abba, Father!