In His Likeness w/ AntTBri

There are some of us who have the ability to grow and develop within sequence.  Life and love for you happens in pattern (the way it’s supposed to occur)…your story when told is equivalent to a checklist rendition of perfection. You were born without occurrence or offense went to the right schools… excelled in your studies, secured the right career, met and married the right person, birthed beautiful children…you live in the beautiful house on the hill behind the white picket fence with the dog that brings you the morning paper and the cat that huddles at your feet while you eat your perfectly balanced meals. Life and love as you’ve experienced and expressed it is great…what most would deem as perfect.  How enviable an experience of life and love you’ve been blessed to express.  I am inspired and intrigued by such testimonies because it serves as a parallel contrast for my life and love.

Unlike the previous group but liken to another group that grows and develops out of sequence… life and love develops perfect.  At first this baffled my understanding of life of love.  It buffeted my experience and expression not to mention bombarded or burdened me with a silent mental checklist of comparison and competition. After all, “they” are no better than me.  I am a child of the KING (royalty), the head and not the tail, above and not beneath. I am called, chosen…purposed and destined for greatness.  I lived and loved from a platform of entitlement. God I’m your child (so I deserve)…you want me to have the BEST (money, houses, cars, people etc.) in my life.  I represent you so…faith (salvation) in concept was a beautiful depiction of perfect but a far cry from my experience of life and love.  For a long period of time I professed faith but doubted its reality.  Faith was applicable to those who had and a dream or hope for those who didn’t.  It for me was a safety net…a just in case God is real…I need Him on my side (I don’t have anything else going for me).  He was my back-up plan for life and love.  My get rich quick scheme… my plan, my prayer…my process of experiencing and expressing life and love differently… for a while my relationship with Jesus was all about proving to myself that I was worthy or just as good as all those other folks. I lived and loved in hopes of attaining the blessing that makes me rich and adds (takes away sorrow) for me. I figured I had lived on the sorrow side of life and love and now I wanted to collect my 200 hundred dollars and to go pass GO.  Sign me up I’m selling Jesus.

It took some time, but eventually my first impression of life and love in His Likeness grew and developed into the correct perspective.  Life and love in His Likeness happens as a result of a DEVELOPING WORD.  While things are void, without form, in an abyss of darkness God speaks forth His purpose of being…life and love is about our coming into agreement with what God decides, desires, and determines for our living and being.  Faith is about believing in God’s WORD not seeking His works.  Our living, loving, lasting relationship with Him is sanctioned, secured, and sustained by a Developing Word that is determined, decided, and delegated to us.  We then decree and declare it to be so in the earth realm.

The DEVELOPING WORD happens as a result of our participation in the process.   It is proactive, progressive, and prophetic and almost always grows and develops the virtue of Patience.  Life and love in His likeness requires the investment of time, the growth and development of temperament, and the tenacity to TRUST in the plan, purpose, and provision of God for our life and love for all the right reasons as they occur be the in or out of sequence.  May our only aspiration be to experience and express His heart toward us?  May we forgo the right to decide, say who, when, where and how (like the character played by Julia Roberts in the movie Pretty Woman)…we get the dream.  Can God gift you with the version and vision of Perfection as He deems plausible and purposeful for your life and love?  Loosing and letting go of the misconception of what life and love in His likeness should be, means, or entitles us to could very well be what excavates, executes, and exacts the DEVELOPING Word…according to your faith be it unto you. Live and love to experience and express His heart toward you~AntTBri