Supernatural Nature

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that you joy may be complete.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you"

That last line right there should be an easy one to follow, but if we look around at our church, is it something that we obey? If we look at our home and families, is this something that comes naturally?

Um, no.

That's the point of this entire thing. Nothing that is of God comes naturally to us. It's not in our nature to be like Him. Unless, of course, we have been given a new nature. Ah, that Jesus we have been given one! Therefore, we can only rely on His super-nature to create us in us a new, supernatural nature.

Follow?

We must remain in Christ to love like He did. We must remain, cut close to the vine to have His life-giving sap change us to His likeness. What how has the Father loved Jesus? By making what is God's, Christ's. By making them inseparable, congealed, cleaved, and one. By being in Christ and Christ in Him.

It is the same for us. And through that love, through the inseparable love of Christ in us and we in Christ, we too can love others.

This is the way of the supernatural. We are a Branch, an extension of the True Vine, designed to take on the very nature of the vine and yet rebellion lives in our hearts.

I pray we, I, humble myself to the Vine. I pray that I am so close the heartbeat of Christ I can hear it over the roar of life's busyness. I pray that this love of God, this love of Christ would well up in me joy unmatched.

He prayed that our remaining in Him would bring HIS joy to us and would fulfill our joy. Are we going to take Him at His word?

I pray we do!

I pray we find ourselves seeking the face of Jesus to know this love so that:

His may be in us!
Our joy may be complete!
Our love can be freely given through the power of Christ in us to others!

"What the Father's love was to Jesus, His love will be to us. If that love made Him the true Vine, His love can make us true branches." Andrew Murray, The True Vine