A Closing Word

I will not pretend I wrote this from above you. I am a branch like you — connected, then drifting, then returning, dim more often than bright, learning the same lesson over and over because I keep forgetting it. Whatever in these pages was warm, it was not from me. I have had to chase kindness my whole life and fall short of it and chase it again, and God is plainly not finished with me. I write to you from the same road, still walking it, still slow.

And I will tell you the same true thing I have told you at the start of everything I write, because it does not change and it is the realest thing I know: this book cannot pour the love of God through you. Only God can do that, by His Spirit, from the inside. All these pages have done is point. The looking was yours. The becoming is His. If anything here did any good, it was only because the One who is love was already at work in you, and these words happened to be standing nearby when He did His work.

To Him be all of it.

A Word About Where This Came From

The Scriptures. Every verse here comes from the NET Bible, set apart from my own words on purpose, so you always know which is which — His word carries a weight mine never will. NET Bible® copyright ©1996–2017 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. Used throughout with gratitude.

The older book, and what became of it. The careful, proving work behind this one is The Sons of God, Volume VII of the Battle of Civilizations series. There was also a longer first version of this book — a research study that traced the high calling through the early Church Fathers in full, with all the sources laid out and every point argued. That study still exists, and if you want the whole scaffolding — the long historical work, the careful proofs, every claim defended at length — it is there for you. But this book is what that study was always trying to become: the room those proofs were meant to open into. I kept from the research only what a person actually needs to walk the path, and let the rest go.

The ones who walked ahead. I am not the first to walk around inside this truth, and the few I named in these pages were chosen because their notes keep a beginner from falling. Irenaeus, who taught that God became what we are to make us what He is — by grace, never by nature — and that this is a growing up, not a changing of kind. Athanasius, who paid in exile for the boldest sentence the Church ever spoke about our calling, and who never once meant by it that we become God ourselves. Augustine, who knew our hearts stay restless until they rest in God, and not until they become Him. Julian of Norwich, who turned the love of God over for decades and came back always to the same answer: love was His meaning. All of these have been in the public hands for centuries, and I am grateful to stand, a beginner, in their company.

And the One who actually does the teaching. I said it at the start and I will say it once more, because it is the truest thing in the book: I cannot pour the love of God through you, and neither can these pages. Only He can, by His own love poured into you by His Spirit, from the inside. If anything here helped, it was only because He was already at work in you, and these words happened to be near.

Michlaude Discipleship Project All of it is free. None of it is mine to sell. For the glory of God alone.

Soli Deo Gloria