This life—the life that I have given you—is simple. It is so simple, in fact, that you have to be like a little child to receive it. That’s what I told my disciples, remember?
But sometimes the simplest things need to be explained, because they seem complicated at first. That’s what this life seems like to you: complicated. But it’s not. It’s the simplest thing.
Before we start, I want to let you know that I won’t be saying a single thing in these lessons that is new. I’ve already said it all in the book you call the Bible. I breathed that book through people who knew me. It lasts forever, and my Spirit teaches you through it. Unfortunately, what it plainly says has, in many cases, been obscured under layers of human reasoning. As a result, what should be as clear as day, isn’t.
As we go through these lessons, I will include in each one what I said before in the Bible. As you look at what I said before, it will be clear that what I’m saying here is not new. Nothing needs to be said that hasn’t been said previously. You simply need to hear it freshly.
Here’s how I want to begin: as if you and I had not yet met one another. If we started where you are right now, we’d have to sort through a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings. These have produced your current frustration.
It’s understandable that you are frustrated. You hear me say, “I came that they might have abundant life,” and you are thinking, “Great. Where is it?” Your frustration is not without purpose. It has opened your heart to what I want to teach you now.
My plan for you from eternity past is greater than you know, and things have already happened to you—wonderful things—that you haven’t fully understood. So let’s back up. Let’s start at the beginning, as if you and I don’t know each other at all. That way we can lay a proper foundation. And you will see how simple this life really is.
Here, then, is what I would say to you, who don’t yet know me.
My name is I Am That I Am. I created the universe, but I am unlike anything in it.
I am perfect love.
I am infinite power.
I am infinite knowledge.
I am perfect holiness.
I have no beginning and no end.
I am everywhere.
I hold the seemingly endless universe in the palm of my hand, and it is as nothing before me. Yet I made it with perfect precision and care for and sustain it in tender love. I sustain you with tender love.
Among all of my creation, I designed one being in my own image, with the capacity to imagine, to create, to choose, to love, and, above all, to know me. You are that being. And what I created you to be is amazing.
I didn’t create you to join a religious institution.
I didn’t create you to perform religious duties.
I didn’t create you to follow lists of rules.
I didn’t create you to deny you anything good.
I didn’t create you to be anxious, or guilt-ridden, or bitter, or stressed.
I didn’t create you to be unfulfilled or incomplete.
I didn’t even create you primarily to get you into heaven.
Here’s what I did create you for:
I created you to share in, and forever enjoy, and show to the universe, the overflowing life and love of the infinitely happy God.
How?
In a way you have likely never imagined.
But first I want to tell you something else, something very important:
You are eternally, infinitely loved.
You have heard that I am love, and you have assumed that my love is like human love, only a bit better. Human love is almost always conditional. Behave well enough, and you will be loved by people. Behave poorly enough and their love will fade.
But my love is nothing like human love. My love is unconditional. Your performance doesn’t affect it in the least. Your performance can’t affect it, because love isn’t just something that I do. It is who I am. I am love. I love you because it’s my nature to love you. I keep on loving you, no matter what your behavior sometimes is, because it’s my nature to love you.
The closest humans ever come to this kind of love is the love of a parent for a newborn baby. The baby does nothing to earn being loved. She cannot really love in return. She is loved simply because she is. My love for you is like that, only infinitely more so. You are loved simply because you are.
My love is like the ocean. If you are in the ocean, you can’t escape the wet. It surrounds you. It envelopes you. There is nowhere to go where it isn’t with you. My love surrounds you, envelopes you, is always with you.
My love is like the air in the earth’s atmosphere, miles deep, that presses down upon you. You can’t escape it. You can’t do anything to make it go away. My love always presses upon you.
When you were mean for the first time to one of your childhood playmates, I was there loving you. When you disobeyed your mother or father, and lied, and deceived, I was there loving you. When you scorned a friend for the sake of an offer that seemed more appealing, I was there loving you. When you suffered the bad consequences of your actions, and felt devastated, I was there loving you. And when you were badly hurt by someone close to you, I was there loving you, and hurting with you.
I was loving you because that’s who I am.
In love I created you. In love I sustain you. In love I have designed you for something incredible. And in love I have done everything needed to make that a reality—at a very great cost to myself. What is that incredible something? I will tell you.
I’ve said all of this before:
… the good news of the glory of the happy God. (1 Timothy 1:11)
We write this to you so you can be full of joy with us. (1 John 1:4)
He … is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. (1 Timothy 6:15-16)
For by Him all things were created … He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
In Him was life … (John 1:4)
God is love. (1 John 4:8)
“I have loved you with an everlasting love …” (Jeremiah 31:3)
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us … (1 John 4:10)
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