Love and the Divine Echo - David Mitts


Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (1Co 13:4-8).

Click here to listen to "Love and the Divine Echo"

Love never fails.  We have been pursuing this truth for a number of weeks looking at each quality of love that we can activate in our hearts and minds and live out in the living epistle that is our life.
I don’t totally understand why, but there is in man a desire to freeze life into something we can formularize and control.  The diet industry sells us this kind of logic every day. Just do this, buy this, eat this formula or set of foods and you will lose that weight and live the life of your inner desires.  So we faithfully read the latest book, buy the super supplement, or embark on some plan that will help us freeze ourselves into the image and likeness that we desire on the inside.
Being in the health industry, professionally, I have meditated on this thinking for a long time.  Whether it is an herb, a vitamin, salads, high fat, low fat, or protein we seem obsessed with image control.
Even Christians who have heard the instruction NOT to worship an image, keep trying with lotions and potions to work toward an image on the inside.  The image may not be about physical dimensions but it may be about behaviors or success however it is defined.  Ultimately the image is the “me” I think I am supposed to be, frozen once achieved.
Of course, this never actually happens. Instead a hunger for that image drives us consciously or unconsciously.  Behind the image and undergirding  is the emotional state of fear.  We fear change, we fear aging, we fear death, we even fear life.  Into this fear based reality, God sent His Son to die for us to liberate us into love. Hebrews 2:9-15
But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. He says, "I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters; in the assembly I will sing your praises." And again, "I will put my trust in him." And again he says, "Here am I, and the children God has given me." Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil-- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Heb 2:9-15)
You see the fear of death is an idol.  An idol is any thought of image that is empowered by belief in it over our lives. In the case of this scripture Yeshua’s death was specifically accomplished to break the idolatrous power of him who holds the power of death, the devil. The fear of death is the worship of a kind of life that is hopeless, doomed to annihilation.  In Yeshua we have the reality of breaking the twisted life that the power of death and its thought patterns hold over our lives.  In order to live in that reality, we need to access love.  
Death implies loss.  When we die, we lose all that we had in life.  There is no life that crosses the barrier of death.  While death is certain for all of us physically, mentally and emotionally, it is NOT the barrier for our eternal nature, our identity in Messiah.  We cannot die in our true nature, that is birthed through Messiah.  We only die in our old nature, the sin nature. This is the crucifixion that Yeshua took for our death-nature.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in (of) the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)
Faith in the Son of God is possible because of love.  He came and experienced all that He experienced because of Love.  The way of faith follows the pattern of His life and of His Love. It is only when we recognize that our eternal life is because of His love, and made possible because of His love that we can come to terms with how to live it, in His love!
This is why we have pursued the Way of Love!  It is not just an attitude of the heart but the very Being of God in our heart.  Love comes alive in our hearts when we decide to follow Him, because He is love.
The irony is that it is by embracing death at the cross that we get delivered from death by the cross.  We die in Him to live eternally through Him! We die like sheep in a slaughter and live as kings and queens of love!
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:35-39)
So, we are eternal love-beings alive through death in a hate-filled world.
How then, should we live?  By faith of the Son of God, who loves us and gives.
Today I want to look at what I am going to call the divine echo. 1 Corinthians 13:5 states love does not act in an unbecoming fashion. Some translations use the word “rude”.  Others use the outcome called the “dishonoring” of others.  All are pointing to an inappropriateness of being. Let’s dive deeply into what is being said here, so we can surface in the waters of love.
The Greek word being used here is “aschēmonéō”. The purest definition is to operate without a scheme or outside of the design parameter.  I like the word inappropriate.  What we call rude or dishonorable is at its core, a disregard for what is right or righteous, in harmony with the truth and correctness and order of life.  This word is derived from a deeper root “echo” which means a oneness of being where there is a coming together of those meant to become one.
The word picture is of holding hands with another.  It is the image of what happens when the seed of the word is spoken and received and then can bear fruit.
Love is not inappropriate. Instead it is the echo, the holding of hands, the oneness of speaking and receiving that produces fruit of that union, fruit of the Spirit.  Love is the pattern, the rightness of things. This is part of why love never fails.  Even in spontaneity, there is the appropriateness of being spontaneous.  This is what we call the life of the Spirit, the life of appropriateness, what I am calling the divine echo.
You see what is an echo?  It is the same sound repeated.  It is the ultimate reproduction of the original sound but with reverb, with a richness.
Then you might ask who is an echo?  One who is sensitive to the Voice of the speaker or singer.  God is the Word. He is the primal voice and when we come into oneness with Him, then that place of love is the echo, the reverb, the harmony of oneness.
What is beautiful about appropriateness is that God can harmonize with us even when we are out of tune.  This is called grace.  He listens to our brokenness and then speaks life which harmonizes with the brokenness.  BUT it goes one step further, His Voice heals the brokenness and then releases a new sound.  This new sound is transformative because it is the fruit of love.  It bears a completely new reality, because out of the pain and sorrow of our weakness, comes forth the fruit of Life.
Also, the Hebrew “kavah” which is translated as waiting as in waiting upon the Lord in Isaiah 40:31. A deep inspection of the word is to bind oneself to.  When we speak of waiting upon the Lord is not a passive state as in waiting for the mail. No! It is an active coming into unity that is pictured in the word kavah, to bind.  The waiting is like a bride knowing God has the exact groom for her and when she sees him, she binds herself to Him.  This is the heart of the divine echo.
This is the Life of the Spirit which contains the characteristics of love.
Rudeness or the unbecoming is an act of discord.  It is a breaking of harmony and the dance of life.  Unfortunately, we through fear can get frozen in habits of behavior that are out of sync with life.  Our addiction to rituals as reality causes us to try to freeze life.  This is what we like to think of as our “truth”.  Yet in reality what these decisions are reflects the arrogance of judgments.  We decide that things will be done in such and such a manner and so close our ears to the harmonies of heaven.
Yeshua warned us of this kind of false, fear based life when He said:
so that, "'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" (Mar 4:12).
This statement was a quote of Isiah 6:9-10:
He said, "Go and tell this people: "'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." (Isa 6:9-10)
Notice a couple of distinctions in Isaiah’s verses:
First notice the term “callous” or hardened of heart.   The Hebrew word here is shemen, which means oily or waxed.  It means a heart that is coated with a wax, insulating it from compassion or feeling the effects of sin.  How does that happen?  It happens by listening to another gospel, the words of traditions and frozen truths, or dogmas.  The effect is to make the ears incapable of hearing and the eyes incapable of seeing which results in a heart that is incapable of understanding and becoming one.
Second, notice the last word is healed, raphe.  Healing includes forgiveness but it also means a restoration of life.  This is the life of appropriateness.
In ancient medicines the physicians diagnosed roots that were causing disease.  Most of the time these roots were emotions that became frozen in the physiology and thus manifested out of sync with life, inappropriately.
This inappropriateness became the sign of an imbalance or a hardening of the heart that would skew the individual and their ability to flow with life.  Through Ancient Paths, we have learned that these places in the soul of a person cause pain and limit life.  In the context of the seminar we see the Holy Spirit minister to these choke points by revealing the lies believed, which are another gospel.  These lies come with intense trapped emotion which is released in the process of the Holy Spirit bringing a true word which sets the person free to be healed.  The healing then returns a freedom of Being that allows the Word of God to bear fruit in that person’s life.
This new freedom allows appropriateness to flow.  This is true experiential repentance which comes when we apply our being to hearing, seeing and then understanding.  This is true love.  When we can shema Yisrael, Adonai elohenu, Adonai Echad.  Listen, hear with an open heart oh Israel, hear that the Lord is God, not the pain, not the violation, but the Lord.  Only he has the power of life and death, not the ones you feared or what you feared. That is idolatry. He is Lord.  And in that place of hearing with your heart and surrendering to His Being Lord, He becomes echad with you, one with you, the divine echo.
Activation: Ask the Lord what attitudes or behaviors are ones where you get stuck in or would be considered as inappropriate?
What other gospel or ungodly belief is embedded in the behavior?

What is God’s truth that will set you free to be appropriate?

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