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<\/a>In the beginning,\u00a0 God created…<\/p>\nGenesis 1:1a<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
They path of discipleship is the path of love.\u00a0 Learning to love, and learning to lay down our lives for Him.<\/p>\n
In the process of growing, we have many things to learn.\u00a0 We begin as babe’s in Christ, and, as we mature, we see gifts, talents, and God’s supernatural power in our life.<\/p>\n
As we are being formed into the likeness of the Son, we pass through many trials.\u00a0 We are learning to be holy, to be righteous, and upright.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is in the process of this endeavor that we see are also shedding ourselves of everything that hinders.\u00a0 What appears to be a battle, sometimes,\u00a0 is merely us holding onto something that God wants us to let go.<\/p>\n
But, after that we have become fully committed, and paid the requisite sacrifice to know it’s worth, there is a\u00a0 ease in the letting go.\u00a0 While the daily sacrifice is always with us, taking up our cross to follow Him, there is a certain joy in the letting go.<\/p>\n
We are mature enough to realize that we can keep nothing.\u00a0 We are experienced to know that, like honey, we may eat just enough, but if we keep gorging, we will vomit.\u00a0 We are secure enough in our identity to no longer need to engage our souls to obtain what it is we want.<\/p>\n
Rather, simply relying on the Holy Ghost within, we breathe fresh the breath of salvation, and we enter into the joy of the Lord.<\/p>\n
That is all there is to it.\u00a0 While we do wrestle, we struggle against a defeated foe.\u00a0 While there are lessons,\u00a0 we are at rest in the Beloved.<\/p>\n
The battle comes on the grounds of the lie.\u00a0 The enemy has presented an image that he calls “holiness”, which is just religion–the world could do it if they put their minds to it.\u00a0 It looks like church, it looks like evangelism, and it looks like holiness.\u00a0 And, the young soul, eager to please, may well fall under the sway of the pattern presented by the world as “those religious types”.<\/p>\n
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable,\u00a0 then easily entreated.\u00a0 It is gentle and humble.\u00a0 It proceeds with better wisdom,\u00a0 which,\u00a0 when receiced, does not take one against a pure heart.<\/p>\n
The way is love.\u00a0 It is not in fear, bullying, or our own strength, but in a constant reliance upon Him.<\/p>\n
And, as every aspect of this life dims, so then the glory of the Lord shines that much brighter within.\u00a0 Even the forms of what “should” and “should not” be become dark reflections of the past, and we are left beholding the one who shines with a brilliance much brighter than the sun.<\/p>\n
In His light we see light, and with Him is the fountain of life.<\/p>\n
Psalm 36:9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The path of the righteous grows brighter and brighter until the noon day.\u00a0 All the forms that we either adopted or shunned we now reject, and we walk a life that is called truth, which no flesh can grasp or understand.<\/p>\n
This is the way of life; and this is the way of truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the beginning,\u00a0 God created… Genesis 1:1a They path of discipleship is the path of love.\u00a0 Learning to love, and learning to lay down our lives for Him. In the process of growing, we have many things to learn.\u00a0 We begin as babe’s in Christ, and, as we mature, we see gifts, talents, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[264,452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-of-the-beyond","category-devotional"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2MdeJ-Xq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/wpid-20141018_162216.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3878,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ChurchOfTheBeyond.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}