If we could somehow live in reality  we would never be disillusioned.  The only reason we are disillusioned is that we live in our illusions.......

So.....did you think about what Jesus was trying to communicate to Peter in that little play on words from John 21? Did you see anything? What did you see? Send me a note.

For me, this Agapao kind of love thing is all about my relationship with the One who is love. For you, it is all about your relationship with the One who is love.... our relationships with the King of God's Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is relational....far above all of the other things that it is..... it is a love relationship. It is His love first reaching out to us...then touching us....revealing Himself to us...

I promised to talk to you about love and the difference between the the Greek words Agapao (God's totally selfless kind of love) and Eros (the worlds totally selfish variety of love)... then there is a 3rd word in the Greek, Phileo (just ordinary human love...I love my mom, my kids, golf and the Red Sox!)

Read this text from John 21 and look at the word love each time it appears and see it in context.

We live in the me first  generation. I'm gonna get mine  and the rest of you will just have to deal with it. Selfishness is king. It rules our lives. Ever since Adam and Eve decided they wanted to be god....mankind has been sitting on the thrones of our lives. It really is time to get off the throne.

I was musing on what the puddles have done to the raw unleashed power of the Kingdom of God. Think on this for a minute. If I was God's enemy and saw the Niagara Falls cascading down on this earth for God's people to tap into....the outpouring of God's Holy Spirit is also the outpouring of His very life into us His people...His church...the Kingdom here and now in His people.....yes...if I was God's enemy I would try very hard to blind God's people to the reality of the Kingdom God... the reality of His Niagara Falls...

Have you ever been to Niagara Falls? Totally unreal experience....almost 30 years ago.... Ellen and I were sitting in the boat that takes you right up to the falls...just looking up in awe....watching the mountains of water pouring over the edge above.... almost right on top of you....the mighty roar of the water eliminating any possibility of conversation...but nothing needed to be said....stunning....raw power...un-contained....no beginning...no end.... we just saw God in a way we never had before.

I found myself being motivated after all that scholarship stuff I wrote about yesterday. So...for one day only...Philip decided to be a scholar. Those numbers Mumford mentioned about Jesus referring to the church 3 times while talking about the Kingdom 104 times did get me thinking a bit. So I did my own study this morning. Not that this was such a great effort since all I had to do was pull up my Bible Study Program on the computer and type in 2 words....... gospel of.....

I opted out of higher education early on.....quit college after only one year because I hated to study.... things haven't changed a whole lot....almost anything physical to do will pre-empt my reading time.  Sorry....it is the way that it is in my life, lo these 73 years.

I listened to my first Mumford tape way back in the beginning.... 1968... 40 years later I am in my car today listening to the latest Mumford tape...er...uh...CD.....   :)