Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Divine Ecstacy and the Ecstatic Life


Before I started learning about divine ecstacy, and the ecstatic life, I wouldn't have thought of ecstacy when thinking about God, or the new creation life that we've been given as a gift. However, now that I've learned more about the trinitarian life, I can't stop thinking about divine ecstacy.  For whenever I hear someone talking about union, or oneness, I immediately think of the ecstacy of God. For the gift that we've been given from God is this ecstatic life in Christ.¹ So let me define what this ecstatic life is. The ecstatic life is the intense pleasure of knowing that God loves us, and the intense pleasure we receive from loving God. It is knowing that being united to God, one with God in Christ, is way more than knowledge; it is an ecstatic union that we have with God, and with one another. God is an ecstatic. John Crowder says the source of all pleasure is Ecstacy Incarnate.²

God is love. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have for all eternity, lived in unity. One God, but in three "persons." God has always lived  a life of cruciform love. Everything that God has done, does, and will do, is because of love. Love is not something we work up. Love is aroused within us - because God lives in us. When love is aroused in us, we experience intense pleasure and sometimes uncontrollable joy. This ecstatic love is active. It's present within us, and contagious. Because of what God has done in Christ, we have been re-created to experience God, and to share in the divine life. 

The Great Awakening is now! In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you (John 14:20 NASB). God is opening our eyes to see who he is - who he has always been. Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. Jesus has revealed the Father to us. Through Christ we have been enabled to share in the ecstatic union - the life and love of God. 


Watch my video, "Divine Ecstacy, and the Ecstatic Life."


 

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1. We can't talk about union without recognizing that the life of God is a life of divine ecstacy. It's not a boring religious life that God lives, or gives. 

2. John Crowder, The Ecstacy of Loving God (Shippensburg: Destiny Image, 2009), 23.

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