We are united by Love

Many of us have turned to attack one another as we react to fear. A fear we would not have if Love were the master of our lives.

We have to be very careful at all times, but these times are particularly treacherous. There are many trials we are facing, but the main one is our ability to love one another.

When so many people start preaching violence, neglect and exclusion as means to do what is good or build a peaceful community, the darkness of this world is in full effect.

We don’t pick sides, but we must take a stand. Love is our stand.

We are not called to be silent and live in a spiritual cave, but to use every opportunity to be agents of peace.

We are not loving one another by keeping silent to avoid conflict, when our hearts feel strongly against what is being said or done. We can, and should, show our love by speaking peacefully and firmly as we assert our values founded on Love.

We are not called to oppress, but to speak up for Love, forgiveness, compassion, peace – and this not at the expense of others.

We don’t have to speak against anything or anyone. Let’s raise our voices to speak only about the Love that can unite us and not join any other conversation that is focused on dividing us.

Only Love can renew our thoughts

Love rescues us from the darkness that tries to rob us of our divine peace. As the Lord fills us with his love, our thoughts are renewed and we enjoy peace that exceeds all understanding.

It is this new nature, from God, who is love, that we can now put on. So let’s seek to say only what is good and helpful, so that our words may be an encouragement to those who hear them.

Finding cure in divine forgiveness and Love

When I was an atheist, two psychologists helped me navigate and cope with a series of life events that crushed me. But they never healed me. I never healed until I surrendered to Love.

To say that I was hanging by a thread would be an understatement. And although I have a lot of appreciation for deeply humane and loving psychologists like the ones who helped me, there’s only so much they can do. 

I couldn’t imagine myself going one week without therapy. At that point I felt emotionally crippled. My life was a full-time burden.

That’s when I did the unimaginable. One night I surrendered and asked God for help. Being an atheist, I had no idea what I was doing. But I had a crushed, humble heart as I called him. And God listened.

God healed overnight what two different psychologists couldn’t heal in years.

For the first time in my life I knew that there was one who loved me just the way I always wanted to be loved. And his divine love set me free.

God’s love worked in me to forgive others who had been the root cause of a lot of emotional turmoil in my life. And he also taught me to forgive myself.

Without God’s love, I could never have healed. 

It is his divine and eternal love in me that makes it possible to forgive everyone and the world everyday, regardless of merit. And heal.

I Love, therefore I Am

Love is the I Am. The almighty power that created the universe and gave us the divine ability to be conscious of ourselves.

We know Love when we believe in it, seek it first in the spirit and express it by loving one another.

Love makes it possible for us to love those who love us, those who hate us and everyone in between.

If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them!

Jesus via Luke

When we are fearful or afraid, Love is lacking in us, so we cling to the world. But the world and everything in it is going to pass.

U2 faithfully sings it in their worship song Love is all we have left.

I wanted the world but you knew better
And that all we have is immortality

U2

Jesus teaches us that love has no fear, because perfect Love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.

God is Love. Anyone who knows Love lives in peace and makes a conscious decision to love others, regardless of merit.

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

Jesus via John

Nothing can separate us from the love of God except our own freedom to deny him. But why would we?

When we know Love and live in Love, we know God.

Love is God’s imprint on our spirit.

We know we are forgiven when we repent

Genuine repentance, sincere and fruitful, produces change of mind, attitude and posture. But we are only capable of repentance when God forgives us. 

God’s forgiveness is what produces repentance. 

The blessing of repentance comes from God. He crushes us, provoking our heart. He knows us, he wants us, and he forgave us through Jesus across time and space. 

Yet we are creatures of spacetime and, every time we sin, we need his eternal forgiveness to provoke our repentance. 

Without divine forgiveness, there is no repentance.

Repentance is always preceded by divine forgiveness. We have to be crushed by God’s sovereign forgiveness that turns us inside out to surrender. As we surrender, we are transformed. 

Our spirit recognizes a sovereignty that comes before any human conclusion. So even those who don’t genuinely believe in God experience repentance. Repentance is God’s power at play.

When we repent, we know that God has forgiven us.

Love gives us eternal life in a world full of deadly fears

Have we finally given in to the world and its fear of death? So many have started using worldly language and imposing limits on our lives. Most look for answers in the media and start relying on what governments can or cannot do.

But what can governments do? What can I? What can you?

We know there is very little that any of us can do in a world that is dominated by darkness. We know only an almighty power can overcome this world and, in fact, it has already overcome it. 

This isn’t a time to figure out creative (and profitable) ways of connecting with the aid of technology. It is a time to face our difficulty to rely exclusively on the One who made us.

We experience his power when we seek him. And his power is love. Not what the world thinks love is. Divine love. The world only knows a shadow of it, yet love already shows an unmistakable power to change our lives for the better.

Love is the power that made and moves the universe.

What is expected from us is that we love one another. It is through this love that we have eternal life and that the poisonous death that consumes this world is defeated. 

When we love one another and rely on his power, he makes the impossible possible. Because nothing is impossible for the One who made everything and conquered death with love.

Love saves us when we accept it

A few years ago, shortly after my conversion from atheist to believer, I joined a group of believers trying to plant a church in a very, very atheist Canadian city: Vancouver. One night a man joins us and the pastor, as well as some of the others, who were always so welcoming, seemed uneasy about him. He was a Christian universalist and, back then, I had no clue what that meant.

Now, friends, there are a lot of differences across religions. And we know that a relationship with God has nothing to do with any religion, but we are called to be patient with fellow believers who are blindsided by religious beliefs.

Christianity itself is a religion: Jesus did not found it and does not belong to it. He was always very critical of religion and if he would show up today, he would not be any less critical of Christian denominations.

But believing that we are all saved regardless of believing into God. Without making the decision to do his will. And without being willing to know what that will is. That is not just a difference. That’s a different story.

I completely understand the complexity of separating a relationship with God from religion. But while God will raise anything, and anyone, as a means to reach out to us, a relationship with him does not happen while we continue to pursue the things of the world and live by its standards.

What saves us is precisely our belief into God. This belief allows us to share his divinity and live a forgiven, peaceful and joyful life in a world of struggles.

The thief on the cross who believed and repented at the very last moment is an example of how God does not give up easily on us. Instead he gives us every single opportunity to leave death behind.

But ultimately we are free, and if we choose this world instead, we have to live with the consequences: death in the physical and spiritual sense.

This is all to say that when God calls us, we have the choice to answer or not. And it is only when we do answer that he can save us.

Becoming a home to Love

True spirituality is a holistic, transformational rebirth that shatters our worldly ways. You know it’s true when this spirituality unfolds as a personal relationship with the One who made us and loves us unconditionally.

As spiritual beings, we don’t need a group or a place to come in contact with him, because he already makes his home in us. While it’s wonderful to meet others like us, we are also here to be the salt of the earth, not in the bubble of a denomination.

When we are given an experience that reveals the singular, exclusive power of the One who created everything that we see and don’t see, we have no desire to pursue any other practices that this pagan world likes to call spiritual. From meditation to rituals, none of it produces a relationship with God.

The only way to establish a relationship with God is to answer his calling for us to love one another. When we do, God’s grace operates in us and we are blessed with a life of joy and peace.

And Jesus, who is God incarnated, is the perfect model of how a human can be that God provided so that we can emulate him.

But we can’t emulate him out of our own efforts. We have to believe in him and allow him to make his home in us. Then we will reflect his love and shine like luminaries in this dark world.

Forgiveness is an act of conscience, not feeling

If we relied on feelings to forgive people who hurt us, we would rarely forgive anyone. God calls us to forgive everyone, everyday, including ourselves. And that is possible because genuine forgiveness is an act of conscience that we exercise with God as our helper. 

There isn’t a worse type of slavery in this world than an unforgiving heart. It wraps us and drowns us in darkness, bitterness, hopelessness and an overwhelming feeling of evil. And yet we all suffer from that. 

Only God can heal our unforgiving hearts. And it is through his Grace that he can set us free by infusing us with the loving conscience to forgive. All we have to do, as always, is to be willing. And God will make everything else possible.

Trust the way out that gives you peace and endurance

Have you ever had a situation in life when you thought you had found a solution for a problem, only to realize later that the solution was worse than the problem you were trying to solve?

In the past few years, I made certain decisions in hopes of solving problems, and these “solutions” ended up causing even more problems in the long term.

This happened often when I tried to rebuild broken relationships and in choices I made in my professional career. But I raise it here as a basic principle of life:

The solution should not be worse than the problem.

In this fallen world, we don’t always have a choice between good and bad. Sometimes situations are complex and leave us with a choice between the lesser of two evils.

And when we find ourselves torn between two choices that are not good, having the peace from the One who loves us unconditionally gives us confidence to make the right decision.

I pray that we are all blessed with this peace that exceeds all understanding whenever we are presented with difficult choices. May love be our leader and a forgiving spirit our armor.

Remember, we never experience a situation that is beyond what we can bear. And every time we face a problem, we are provided with a way out so that we can endure it.