I’m disoriented.  I thought I knew what live in Jesus is, and then all my paradigms get thrown off, kattywomper.  Is that how you spell it?  Anyway, this is mainly to process what I’m thinking.

Jesus is not about improving my life; He’s tranforming it.  And it’s not just my life that He lives in and me in Him, but a different reality.  Abram was told to leave and go the land God will show him – a picture of us leaving one reality and entering into a whole different reality.  I knew there was something to reality!  That’s what I’ve been praying for, for years!  Give me a true reality!  I guess I didn’t have full understanding of what I was truly asking for!  It’s a whole different land.  All the visions and prophecies and miracles are only a foretaste of what is to come in the new reality.  But the best part is, this is not a reality we have to wait for when we get to heaven!  It’s a reality that is already alive inside of us. 

  But we are so blinded.  We are surrounded by darkenss that is our natural mind/reality.  Obviously, we can’t reach the true reality by ourselves because God is the only one who can shed light.  But that’s what it is!  Light!  For years, I’ve been praying for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to open up the eyes of my heart to see Jesus, and I feel like it just now is.  And it’s disorienting!  You know how when you’ve been sitting in a really dark room for quite a while and someone suddenly turns on the light?  It hurts your eyes!  But that’s what I’m feeling.  It’s painful because the lights are turning on in my heart and I’ve never “seen” this way before.  It’s discombobulating!  But it’s a different reality. 

  There’s lots of talk that’s been going on about giving birth in my homegroup lately b/c one of the girls is about to have have baby boy.  I was thinking about this, ironically, as I sat on the toilet, and realized this new reality is kind of like giving birth.  Jesus has already put the new creation within us – Himself – but we don’t automatically live out of that creation/reality.  It’s a process of lots of pain that we come into the light and are birthed into a new reality! 

  Pain.  I always new that was a must in our walk with Jesus.  But I didn’t understand, and perhaps I still don’t understand fully, the connection between pain and living in a new reality.  But I feel like this explains it and is scriptural b/c Romans 8 talks about the pains of childbirth!  It makes so much sense!  Pain is only so that light can shine!  We have so say yes to the process because our minds are so darkened that we cannot see what is best for us.  And, it coincides with Hebrews 2 where it says He was made perfect through suffering!  We must suffer to come into a new reality!

  It is like he said, when we come into a new reality, the past reality feels so foreign.  Now that I’ve said yes to the cross working itself out in my life, I can’t remember how I used to think.  Now, it feels so just to allow suffering in my life because I know the fruit it brings, the reality it brings.  Justice!  A totally different view than the muddleness that IHOP told me.  It’s true fact to me now.  So, now my issue is, how do I deal with the fact that no one is hearing this?  And I don’t feel like I have enough grasp on this reality to be able to impart knowledge of this reality to others.  But I know I’m only at the beginning of the beginning, so I don’t really have to now.  And surely, Jesus will cover whatever I say that is not truth.  Or maybe I should just keep my mouth shut until I have more of an understanding!  OMG!  Where have I been my whole life?