The Eastern religions have it right: the goal of the universe, of existence, is oneness with the Ultimate. But it’s not the oneness they imagine: merging with an impersonal universal force in which you lose all your individuality, all your personality—all that makes you, you. There is no good news in that. Rather,
you were created to be one with me,
the infinitely loving, infinitely happy God.
But what does being one with me mean? It means your human spirit is actually joined to me, becoming so united that we are one. Not that you lose who you are. You will always be you, the person I created you to be. Rather, just as male and female are temporarily united in flesh, your spirit is meant to be permanently united to me. This is what you were created for. I am spirit, and you were created in my image, for your spirit to be one with me.
Once you are united to me, my life is actually infused into you. I come to live in your spirit. And I bring who I am into your heart: love, peace, joy, inner rest.
Think of the stress you experience, the conflict, the anxiety, the striving. Do any of those feel like you were created for them? No? That’s because you weren’t created for them! You were made for so much more. You weren’t made to strive to make life work or to attain the right behavior. Rather, you were made to be joined to me, so that I live my perfect, loving life through you. You become the expression of me to all the universe.
That is oneness with me. That is what you were created for. It is an eternal adventure beyond your wildest dreams, and is the source of meaning and fulfillment beyond anything this world has to offer.
That’s the incredibly good news.
This is what I intended humans to be from the very beginning. But humanity chose another path. It chose to try to make life work on its own, apart from me, its true source of life. That choice plunged humanity into darkness, selfishness, rebellion, and a desperate search for meaning.
Don’t you see this in the world around you? The divisions, the strife, the hatred, the rage, the selfishness,the bitterness, the stress, the anxiety, the envy, the tearing down of everything meant to be good—this is not the way humans were intended to be. Isn’t it obvious that something has gone very wrong?
You see this in your own life as well. You may have made a fairly nice life for yourself in the here and now, but deep down, you know something is amiss. Your heart tugs at you. You were meant for something higher. You were meant to be connected to Someone greater. Everyone, in the depths of their heart, knows this to be true.
You were made to be connected to, to be brought into, an eternal community of love. That is what we are. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit. We have never been alone. We have been loving one another, delighting in one another, for all eternity. We made you to be part of our community of perfect, limitless love. Forever. This is your true home, your only home. This is what you were created for: to know, and receive, and live in the infinite love of God.
The religions of the world offer their rules and rituals, and through them people try to work their way back to God. But no rules and no rituals can accomplish that. How are rules and rituals going to make you one with us? It’s impossible. Becoming one with us is never, ever something you can achieve. Making you one with us is something only I can do for you.
So I offer this—oneness with us—to you as a gift. It isn’t something you can earn. It isn’t something you have to strive for. I simply give it to you. It is everything you were designed for, everything your heart longs for, everything you could possibly need and even want, forever.
You have but a single part to play. You must choose to receive it.
I will tell you how.
But first, I must tell you what I have done, and what I do, to make this wonder, being joined to us, a reality.I myself do everything necessary to bring you back to us, and enable you to be what we created you to be.
I’ve said all of this before:
“… that they may all be one [with us], just as You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us … I in them and You in me …” (John 17:21, 23)
“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” (John 14:20)
The one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1 Corinthians 6:17)
“I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 17:26)
… the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested… which is Christ in you … (Colossians 1:26-27)
“… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
“Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:15)
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