What Would Jesus Say to You Over a Latte?

The Father Loves You!

“You have to know something—something you’ve missed ever since we met. The Father loves you exactly as He loves Me. You must know, in the depths of your being, how deeply you are loved. A parent’s love for a newborn baby is the best illustration on earth of what our love for you is like. It’s the closest most humans ever get to mirroring God’s love. Most human love is performance-based: do well enough, act right enough, please the other person enough, and you’ll be loved. If not, you’ll be rejected. But a newborn can’t do anything to earn her parents’ love. All she can do is gurgle and nurse and poop. But she is deeply loved, simply because she exists. She is loved unconditionally—no performance required. That’s the Father’s heart toward you.”

Photo by Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot

Endless Love

“Nothing you can do can make us love you less. And nothing you can do can make us love you more. That’s because our love isn’t based on what you do; it’s based on who we are. We are love. Our love isn’t a possession. We can’t give it away as a reward to those good enough to earn it. Love is simply who we are. We love you because of who we are. You were created to be the object of our love. Nothing you do can change that. God is love. That hasn’t penetrated the depths of your being. God is love. If God simply had love, we could love you today and withhold our love tomorrow. But no, God is love. That’s our nature. Loving you is as natural to us as breathing is to you. We never stop loving you. Everything we do toward you, we do in love. Our love is like the air around you, which you live in and can’t escape. The air constantly presses down upon you. Our love is that way. It presses down upon you. Endlessly. Infinitely.”

Photo by Evgeni Dinev

Love, Joy, Peace ...

“Newborn babies are like toys—batteries aren’t included. But toys have to have batteries to operate as designed. For people, the battery is God’s love. Without personally knowing how deeply you’re loved, without living in our love, you can’t function. Not as you were designed to. Being filled with God’s love means being filled with God himself. And someone who overflows with God will bear all the fruit God ever intended—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. We produce the fruit of the Spirit through you when you are filled with our love. You become an expression of our love. It has nothing to do with keeping rules or trying as hard as you can. It’s about being filled with us. Everything we allow in your life, we allow for that purpose: being filled with us, and expressing us.”

Photo by Africa

Everything a Blessing

“You’re a part of Me. When God looks at you, He only sees Me. He sees Me being expressed by you. Your sin is not the ultimate reality to him. He knows it’s temporary. He uses its consequences to train you. The sin issue is done. I took care of it at the cross. Our discipline is always for training, not for punishment. Everything we do toward you now is out of love, not punishment. If we discipline, it’s to train you so you can be more like us. So even our discipline is blessing. Everything we do toward you is blessing. Deserving isn’t the issue. The Father never blesses people based on how good they’ve been. He blesses based on His love and His purposes.”

Holy and Righteous

“You have no idea what happened to you in the realm of spirit the moment you believed. You’re still thinking of yourself as a sinner at heart, as someone for whom it’s natural to sin. God took out your old spirit, just as He said He would. Ezekiel 36. He birthed in you a new human spirit. It is like I am, holy and righteous. And when God says He took your old man—the inner being you were before—and crucified it on the cross, with Me, that event was real. Your old spirit was placed on the cross, judged, and executed with Me. That’s why there can’t be any condemnation. There’s nothing left to condemn. The old you is gone. You have a new spirit, created in My image. God sees you as righteous because He has made you that way in your deepest being.”

Photo by Danilo Rizzuti

Walk in Love

“You’re not the one God expects to fulfill the commands. I am. You must remember that you are a container of Me. I created you to live through you. Now, having done that, I’m hardly going to turn around and ask you to try to live the life on your own, am I? But that’s how you’re trying to live. You’re no longer under any law but the law of love. I’ll cause you to walk in love. Because it’s Me in you living My life, which is love. What’s wrong with a list of spiritual to-do’s is that its starting point is always you. ‘Here’s what you have to do to get your act together.’ ‘Here’s what you have to do to get spiritual.’ But that doesn’t work. The starting point for this life isn’t you. It’s Me.”

Photo by Dr. Joseph Valks

Completely available

“You’re not the one who lives the life. It’s My life. Only I can live it. That’s what God’s commands are—a description of My life. I made you to be a container of Me, that I might live through you. Your role is faith—looking only to Me to do it. It’s not “what would Jesus do.” It’s “what will Jesus do.” Through you, I walk into every circumstance. You may not like being there. You may not feel loving, or kind, or patient. But I am complete other-love. I always do what is best for the other. So you stop and say, “Jesus, what are you going to do here?” You’re abandoned to Me, completely available for Me to live through. And through you, I will love in the way I want—often to your complete surprise. I’m living the life, but it will always look like you. Just as it always looked like Me when the Father was living His life through Me. That’s all that was happening when I was here on earth. I couldn’t do anything on My own. He was living through Me.”

Photo by Rawich