Introduction

1. Skinny-dip 1

When you normally think about skinny-dipping, Christ is probably the furthest thing on our mind. We have been taught and conditioned that skinny-dipping is wrong and immoral. This book is designed to display the context in which skinny-dipping is not only appropriate but encouraged.

There are three elements to skinny-dipping. Element one, you have to strip yourself of some things and become nude before God. Two, you must immerse yourself in Living Water. Three, you must swim by growing in Christ and operating in the Spirit. I pray that this book blesses your life tremendously and that you grow in Christ.

Sincerely,

Eric B. Blackwell

Getting Nude

In The Beginning

In this day and age, we as a people have a lot of things going on. We may have work, children, church activities, housework, homework, family issues, depression issues, school issues, and…well…I think that you get the point. We are truly the microwave generation. We prefer things that are hot and now. There are many times that we prefer speed over correctness. There are many of us that have the idea that we will just fix it later. Maybe we think that we are so important that we believe someone else should do the detail work? What I have noticed is that in this world there are many differences and diversities, but most of us tend to have one thing in common. We get up in the morning and we get dressed, but why?

I am reminded of a story that I read as a child called the "Emperor and His New Clothes". This story was about an emperor that was filled with pride, and was told that the fabric that his clothes would be made out of was magical in the since that only those with a good heart could see it. This by itself is amusing because why would you want the unrighteous looking at your nakedness!?!? Yet the King decided to order the clothing anyway because he did not want to admit that he could not see his new apparel and neither did anyone else. So everyone lied and said that they saw the emperor’s clothes and told him that Getting Nude - In The Beginning

they were stunning. So the emperor went out in public and everyone had wonderful things to say about his garments. Then a small boy pointed and stated that the emperor was naked. Everyone in the crowd pointed and laughed. How embarrassing! The emperor is out thinking that he looks nice and that he has everything together. This is very similar of how we live our lives, but my focus is not of the emperor and his pride. It is not even the fact that the emperor was not wearing the fancy garments that was promised to him. As a matter of fact, I believe that the emperor was fully dressed. As the emperor woke up for that morning, he did the same thing that most of us do every day. He got dressed but, he did it without putting on any clothes. As he woke up, he knew that he did not see his clothes. His servants and staff knew that they did not see his clothes as well. Yet that morning, the emperor put on his false security of being unrighteous and never spoke up about his imaginary garments. His servants woke up with the knowledge that they could not see the fancy garment that the tailor was talking about, yet they put on their fear. Maybe they feared that they were the only ones that did not see the garments, and they were unrighteous. Maybe they feared that if they spoke up, the king would execute them. As a matter of fact, all of the townspeople could have said something about the King’s apparel, but did not. There was only one person that was naked in the town, and it was not the king, but a child as he spoke out about the King’s lack of clothing.

How often have you woken up with fear, doubt, insecurities, stress, shame, or any other of life’s issues? When you were asleep, you were free. You were rested. Yet the minute that we all wake up, we start to put on our spiritual clothes. Our heart is consumed with life’s issues and we get burdened. This is such a vicious cycle that we have to question why we are here. Why are we on this Earth? What is the purpose? When God created us, why did He place us here and not in Heaven if that is the end result for his children anyway?

Capturing the Heart of God

Where is the Love

Sometimes it is easy to think of God without a heart. Sometimes we find it easy to think of God without emotions and feeling. Think about it, when was the last time that you thought about how God feels about the direction that your life is going? When was the last time that you thought about God’s feelings toward world events and society? Think about it for a minute. God has emotions. He is a jealous God, He likes your attention. God has been upset. Ok…I know that there are some people out there that are thinking that I am giving an ALL POWERFUL God, human emotions. This is simply not true. We were made out of God’s image. He does not have human emotions, we have divine ones. The only thing is that because of our flesh and our love (The worldly kind of love…lust) for the world, our emotions get distorted. Think about love, real love…the God kind of love. It is hard to love someone. I don’t mean conditional love that is based on how you feel or if they are doing things in your favor. I mean to really love someone, even when your grace is running out. This takes a big person with a big heart.