Here are the ‘answers’ to the the ‘questions’ asked at the Higher Grounds bible study last night.
A verse where God promises us peace:
“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” –John 16:33
And here’s a thought about us being slaves or free:
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” –John 15:12-17
I was reading that section in John where Jesus is talking to his disciples before he dies, explaining everything to them. I don’t think that I have ever read that passage as much as I should have in the past; it seems like there are a lot of new things from it that I never realized before. For instance, look at John 14:7-15. In this passage Jesus is explaining to Philip that He is the Father, but He doesn’t go right out and say it like that. Instead Jesus says, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” He also says, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.” Now, here’s the part that blows me away, it’s what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit:
“He [the Holy Spirit] abides with you and will be in you.” –John 14:17
It’s exactly what Jesus said about God abiding with him, and in him. It is like we are walking on this earth the same way that Jesus did.
Reading this passage makes me wonder about something I think we quite easily overlook, that Jesus is what we would have been like had the fall in the Garden of Eden not happen. And with that thought in my mind, I suddenly feel very small. I mean, that is how short I have fallen. The difference between Jesus and myself is the relationship that He has with God. I would have had that relationship too, but the fall broke it. Sin was not separating Jesus from God.
The fall may have broken my relationship with God, however:
“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” –John 14:20
Jesus restores it.
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