Walking outdoors, listening to birds sing, these are just two of the things that can help us face ourselves honestly and regulate the feelings and thoughts inside of us that we typically avoid facing. However, our feelings operate within us whether we face them or not. The Holy Spirit brings us to truth, helps us face them honestly because He also brings us Jesus' compassion.

In many ways, Jesus' compassion frees us from the bondage of lies and shame that create chaos and pain in our lives. Compassion strengthens us with the courage to address our feelings and start regulating them so we master our feelings instead of our feelings mastering us.

There are things we say "no" to that God knows we need. For example, I said "no" to dogs for our family for years. Now we have two who were sitting with me as I taped this episode. God knew I needed them to get me out on to the nature trail when I was really depressed. It's His saving grace that provides for our truest, deepest needs.

Rest in Jesus grows you and me identity as His beloved. We experience more completely how well-loved we are by Him. Jesus put a promise into time itself on the seventh day of the first creation account. He fulfilled that promise on the cross so you and I could have new life living in love through the Holy Spirit. The gospels fulfill the promise of Genesis 2:2-3 of seventh day rest.

Rest in Jesus isn't just an abstract idea, an intellectual thought, a construct to admire and ponder. This fulfilled promise is our rest in Jesus that is lived out from His completed work to overcome darkness in each of us. As the light of Jesus grows over time more bright in us as we give Him more attention with our time, the whole earth will be filled with the light of His love. Because of the love of God grows. Love grows in us, through out, to others until we live together with Jesus in love. Together at rest in relationship with Him. This is the good work He promised to complete in us so we could completely rest in Him.

This is how Jesus is growing His family members into His family.

You and I have our original identity as God's beloved. Sin shifted our sense of identity onto a foundation of shame and selfishness/narcissism. Love didn't leave us there though. Love meets us right where we are but love doesn't leave us unchanged.

We exercise our freedom to choose at those crossroads. We can choose to allow love in to soften our hearts and minds toward God's way or harden against love by going our own way. Going God's way brings us into truth, reality and relationships that grow in love to grow more love over time.

Being restored as God's beloved fulfills our original identity God describes in the first creation account. It is a maturing process as we give God more and more of our attention with our time so He can change our heart and mind space.

Jesus promised rescue from sin for us into time and space itself when He began creating our world. Then Jesus brought Himself in human form to live within the constraints of this time and space that He Himself had made to fulfill His promise to us. Jesus experienced the pain of sin, committed to trusting His Father and Spirit to overcome the pain of sin and was powered by the Spirit to overcome darkness with His light. Light shines in the darkness and darkness cannot overcome the light.

Jesus is trustworthy.

We can rest in trust because we are completely loved by God.

Small moments of attention on Jesus can add up! They start to create focus on Him. The more attention we give to Jesus, the more we experience being loved by Him, the more we begin to be freed from lies that create our pain, the more we repent of those lies leading to our self-righteousness. There's joy in repentance, turning from our own way, our own understanding and choosing Jesus.

It's messy work allowing Jesus to overcome darkness in us with His light.

We need Jesus to do this work in us!

We need His light in our darkness so we can repent.

Repentance repairs damage from our darkness and the darkness around us.

Repentance begins transforming us into people of light and love.

Repentance is a work of love Jesus is doing for us.

Today, let’s repent and rest in Jesus.

Sometimes we get things backwards. We focus on loving others while struggling to love each other well with our own efforts. When we read in the Bible that Jesus tells us to love each other the way He loves us in the Bible, we often skip the most important step in this development - first being loved by Jesus!

Attachment theory provides an explanation for our backwards ways. Three styles of insecure attachment point to lack of attunement from parents and caregivers. Insecure attachments get us stuck developmentally, keeping us from giving Jesus attention with our time.

Inviting the Holy Spirit to help us experience Jesus' love changes our insecure attachment to one that is secure in Jesus. His Spirit grows our eyes to see, ears to hear, heart & mind to perceive Jesus' attunement toward us. As we grow real safety with Jesus, our identity as His beloved grows too. It is from this identity that we genuinely love each other as we mature in character.