Jeremiah 31- 32; 1 John 4 (The Message)

I met with a gal this morning….the conversation blessed my life…..
We are all so screwed up…
We are all so NOT what you want us to be….
YOU LOVE US ANYWAY

We wrestle with You and insist on having things our own way….
We try and convince You that what we want is right….
We struggle and fail and fall …..
YOU LOVE US ANYWAY

I have to go back to what I know……
I have to be grounded in YOU….
Mostly I’m not…
Mostly I’m trying….
Mostly I want to….
YOU LOVE ME ANYWAY
me

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe in the God idea, not God himself. ~Miguel de Unamuno


Jeremiah 31: 2-6 This is the way God put it: "They found grace out in the desert, these people who survived the killing.Israel, out looking for a place to rest, met God out looking for them!"God told them, "I've never quit loving you and never will. Expect love, love, and more love!

Jeremiah 31:33-34 "This is the brand-new covenant that I will make with Israel when the time comes. I will put my law within them—write it on their hearts!—and be their God. And they will be my people. They will no longer go around setting up schools to teach each other about God. They'll know me firsthand, the dull and the bright, the smart and the slow. I'll wipe the slate clean for each of them. I'll forget they ever sinned!" God's Decree.

The new covenant….Christ…….know me firsthand…..the Holy Spirit gives us that knowledge……..we must be born again……..to have the Holy Spirit to be under the new covenant??? What I know…. it HAS to be about Jesus….He is the new covenant…….

1 John 4: 1 My dear friends, don't believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
2-3 Here's how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God. This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is, sooner than we thought!
4-6 My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world. These people belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world's language and the world eats it up. But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.
7-10 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
11-12 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16 This is how we know we're living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He's given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we've seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
17-18 God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19 We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
20-21 If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.

Ok it’s NOT rocket science but it is connected and in the connecting it is HARD…because all that I have thought my whole life I have to ‘rethink’ and in the rethinking is fear…..is ‘but’ and ‘what if’ and yet in the midst of ALL THAT is such PEACE…….go figure……I think kids do less figuring and in THAT they KNOW it …..no wonder He says we must be like little children….what an Amazing God!