God calls us to be like him.  What is he?  What are his characteristics?  We who have believed in Jesus as LORD and Savior have received the earnest of His Spirit.  So, let’s start with the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Paul tells us in Galatians 6 that the first fruit of the Spirit is love.  Now, you be love.  How?  What is love?  The ways are endless, but begin with I Corinthians 13.

Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, Does not behave itself rudely, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, keeps no record of evil; Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 KJ2000)

So, consider these attributes of love, meditate upon them, and become them.  Be love.  Next, be joy.  How?  Smile at your wife, your son, your boss, yes, even your enemy.  Greet others even if they don’t greet you.  Be friendly.  Let God’s Spirit come out of you and be seen by others.  Similarly, be peace, be patience, be kindness, be goodness, be faithfulness, be gentleness, and be self-controlled.

God is calling us to be a free people, fully at liberty, who have the royal law written on our hearts.  He is preparing a people in secret and in silence who are learning to be.  He withdrew the feelings of his presence (never his actual presence) from them in order to test them, in order to see if they would stand and walk in his ways on their own.  Many have now learned to just continue in the way they know to be right and true, even in the midst of adversity from the world.  They never feel the sweetness of God’s presence that was so real, so tangible, so common ten or twenty or thirty years ago.  Yet they go on seeking God’s face and walking in his ways.

Be you not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, else they come not near unto you. (Psalms 32:9 KJ2000)

God is coming for his bride, for the one that is now like him, the one who will become one with him.  Be not like the horse, be not like the slave or the servant who need to be told what to do and how to do it.  Be a free man, like the Son of God, who knows the will of his Father and does it, not out of compulsion, not because he has to, not because he obeys a set of rules, but because his will is the same as his Father’s. 

Simply be because your Father IS!