these are the life and rhymes...of mine inspired

^{1 John 2:3}We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. ⁴The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. ⁵But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

I guess my entire life's pursuit has been to please the Father, you know, the ultimate would be to hear, "well done my good and faithful servant." Yet even more I'd say that I've spent the majority of my life just trying to get it right...fighting off the condemnation that comes when I drop the ball and realizing that His work was not to condemn me but to save me. But still, if I don't obey, then I don't fully know or understand His love?

So where's the balance? 

I think what I'm realizing now more than ever, is that what comes naturally as a result of His love being made complete in me, is a heart of obedience. It's a natural response to receiving love. Rules aren't rules, laws aren't laws, I'm not faced with a laundry list of do's and don'ts...only with the reality of what will be my response to receiving the love of Christ.

^{1 John 3:1}How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

So the appropriate response to a love so real that He calls us His sons & daughters, is that we will live pure, that we will look a little more like Jesus. Well isn't that what a Christian means...to be Christ-like? So why do we always miss the point?

My goal is not to follow the letter of the law, it's to live a life of obedience as a result of the love that I have received when I accept that I am a son of God. It's in this heart of obedience that His love is made complete and we begin to look a little more like Christ.