The Will of Man

This morning I will endeavor to pen words, words that describe the depth of the will of mankind. The will, the ability to choose, the will possessing powerful tools and weapons of the mind, heart belief, and motivation of that heart belief to follow its passions. Following those passions until the will holds in its realtime earth hands the results of that deep emotional desire.

The will to pursue something or someone until the heart belief, through the imagination, planning, and sometimes plotting achieves what the lesser part of our complex created beings chooses. The will the part of us used to develop, motivate, pursue and conquer that something or someone regardless of the end result. The WILL, my ability to use my inner power to take an ideal or imagination and choose each step to follow until I possess the thing my will desires! The human will is used daily to create good or evil.

I believe the WILL of man is the strongest force in the earth we live in. Even God will not over ride my will. Is God all powerful and in that power have the ability to stop my choices? Yes, but God also can not lie or change His mind when He decrees a thing. He gave me free will, not conditional will based on if God likes my choices or not. I don’t have selective will I have free will. God has designed into each of us a will. The ability to think through our minds, imaging a thing or event, and fueled though the emotions pursue, build and accomplish the thing imagined. God Himself said in Genesis “nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible for them.”

(Amplified Bible)Genesis 11:4-6“And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top reaches into the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do, and now nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible for them. (underlining by the author)

(Amplified Bible)Genesis 11:7 Come, let Us go down and there confound (mix up, confuse) their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

Please listen closely. Follow the words and pictures created by my words. Look beyond me, the one putting them into a form that can be used to examine the thoughts and intents of the heart of man. I ask that you prayerfully read and see them through the reality of the examples that have been left in the scripture for us. That you would see them through the eyes of one who holds them up to the light of truth and have the courage to see yourself and those you love in them.

I like King David am a woman after the very heart or belief system of my God. Full of love, many words, and sometimes poetry and song. My passion and call is to put thoughts and ideals into words that paint a picture of a real life reality. Words that provoke thought and create pictures that bring the distant end result of the choices we make into a very close reality. Words and thoughts that create the “what ifs” which are creating, provoking, and releasing, devastating anxiety, mental and emotional disorders in the lives of so many, myself included.

I desire to hear the voice of the Father through the Holy Spirit to pen and paint word pictures that no longer allow the body and emotions to be driven into panic and melt downs. Words that hold up bad choices to the light of truth allowing for us to face the reality that we alone are responsible for these choices. Words anointed by truth and revelation giving us the understanding through real life events and scriptural examples. Bringing with them the courage and understanding to take back the center of our human being. Our very soul.

Using the will, mind and emotions of the God given design of the soul of man. To think and imagine a thing and with sound mind and healthy emotions, governed by wisdom utilize the power God gave us as His creation to govern our own spirit, souls, and bodies.

Too many times we look at the decisions and behavior of others condemning them through the limited knowledge and understanding of our own knowledge and experiences. We justify our own selfish lusts by putting the spot light on someone else we think is worse than we are. Sometimes looking at our previous behaviors, or the behaviors of others and reasoning that we didn’t suffer any consequences when we did this same thing before. Telling ourselves we aren’t hurting anyone.That happened to them because they are bad. In doing so we decieve ourselves into thinking that what I do is right because it feels right. Not because it is right in the eyes of God or man.

In todays society there is a mental war taking place in the mind of each person alive. We have justified our own rebellion against the design manual of the Creator, by reminding Him and others that someone else’s sin is far greater than my own. Self-justifying my lusts while forgetting the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is the absence of knowledge or experience. Stupidity is literally being struck senseless, mentally slow, in applying what I already know through past experience.

God doesn’t love us on a sliding scale. God is LOVE! Love isn’t an emotion, love is a decision. God’s love decided that He would make a way to redeem us from the plunge Adam took in the Garden of Eden. A decision that took Adam from walking intimately together with God on a daily basis. To wandering, gathering, defending and providing for himself. Adam and Eve’s decision encompassed me. I was in the future of Adam. So were you.

Just as you literally came out of your parents, and they out of their parents, your children and future generations will come out of you. Bringing with them the DNA of the past in seed form waiting to be watered, and fertilized by the decisions I make. Good, bad, indifferent, life sustaining, or life killing. My will, seeds the ground with the inherent life of my past dictating the outcome of my future.

The very earth cries out for redemption. Before the fall, there was no need to work the garden. It existed and maintained its glory from the very spoken words of God at creation. It and all nature obeyed the design of God. God gave this garden to Adam and Eve. The garden then responded according to their words as the rulers over this gift from God. Their actions and choices decided the condition of the things around them. They had been given dominion over everything that creepeth. They had been given authority and dominion over the serpant. They abdicated their position to satan when they listened and proceeded to use their will to eat of the tree.

They were sent out of the protected place because the dying of which God spoke to them about wasn’t ceasing to exist, this dying was being separated from intimate fellowship with God. It was their choice not His. His unconditional love removed them from the Tree of Life so that they would not make the choice to eat from the other tree God ask them not to partake of, and be forever sentenced to live in this fallen, self providing, state of being forever! They left the garden bringing all of the seed of mankind in them with them.

How many future real life people will come into this earth planet out of my DNA pool? How many people that my life touches will be forever affected by their interpretation of my choices as they observe or are influenced by my choices and decisions?

No matter what I teach my children or those around me. It is their own heart belief and experiences in life that will govern the choices they make. Along with a healthy or not so healthy ability to choose what they will do with the truth they have been taught and exposed to. The willful choices of my forefathers will unleash a supernatural legal right for the enemy to use that influence to try to beguile me to choose the present knowledge over the wisdom of asking the designer how this will effect the outcome of my future and the future of generations to come through my willful choices. As parents we set boundaries to protect and teach our children. So does God!

Children often think that parents set boundaries to punish them. Boundaries are set to create a garden of safety, protection, and provision. There are warnings of consequences if boundaries are crossed. There is a building of trust and safety between us when our parents follow through with discipline when our choices step over the safety of those boundaries. In the moment of living out the consequences our emotions are carrying us down the rapids of anger, rage, self justification, and self defense.

The roaring of these emotions will distort our hearing and bounce us off of the floatation device of family and godly counsel into the rushing waters of self will. As parents we know that establishing rules and setting boundaries is the healthiest path to achieve the intended goal of getting them to see before they experience the dangers of emotional choices. We take no pleasure in following through with the discipline for rules broken or boundaries crossed. No matter how hard it is in the moment I know that it is my duty before God to instruct and guide them to hear the voice of God through the experience of first hearing the voice of their parents.

God gave His most valuable possession, His only begotten son, up to death for me. God didn’t demand, pressure, manipulate or pull rank on Jesus to be the blood sacrifice that would allow me to enter into Sonship. Jesus choose the cross because through His relationship with God, He understood the world needed a savior.

Jesus choose to be intimately acquainted with the Father God. Through daily interactions and prayer, Jesus through real experiences and conversations with God, became the friend of God. This friendship between Father and Son was validated through the miracle power demonstrated in His daily life. Jesus only did what He saw and heard the Father saying and doing! He had the same mind, will and emotions we have. He obeyed His heavenly Father by obeying and respecting his earthly father. His decision to go to the cross wasn’t made as a child, or adolescent under His earthly fathers authority. His decision to die for me was made as a full grown man in His 30’s who had proved His relationship with His heavenly Father through the deeds He accomplished in the earth. Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him!

I believe His choices are what set Him apart and qualified Him to be the once and for all sacrificial payment for my sin and separation from God. His selfless choice allowed me to know God as Friend. So that through the death of the son of God, who was also a son of man, I could have access to know Him on the level of not just Judge, or Father, but as Friend!

King David a real life example...

King David was an amazing King, but a sinful and selfish man. His real life example shows us the struggle in the soul of man. A struggle to put down the fleshly desires to be able to take up the true purposes and plans God the Father has for us. God’s foreknowledge of the future life of David was revealed to the Prophet Samual. David was chosen by God when he was a boy to be king. He was found tending his fathers sheep, he was anointed as king by the prophet and went back to tending sheep. In doing the family business he experienced killing the lion and the bear to protect the sheep. This experience instilled in him confidence and courage that prepared him for the greater event of killing the giant. I believe David’s time alone in the pastures and fields watching over the sheep, found him talking and singing to the creator of the sheep. I am convince that David had many questions about this Prophet coming and anointing him, a shepherd boy, as future King. What must the conversation have been like between this child king and the God of the Universe? I believe this path of his daily life opened up an intimate and personal opportunity to see God as protector, provider, and friend which stirred David to worship the One who’s presence was in the stars of the heavens at night and the hot sun of his days. The twenty-third Psalms reveals some of Davids understanding of his relationship with the Lord.

David used his anointing in music to sooth the anxious mind of King Saul. King Saul turned on him and tried to kill him. David had several opportunities to kill Saul, but obeyed his upbringing and the word of God, to not touch what God had anointed. The enemy wanted to disqualify David as future king, the enemy wanted to disrupt the delicate timeline of Heaven and rob the future that would trace David, not through DNA connections but through divine connections to the earthly parents of Jesus.

King David’s soulish, selfish sexual desires lead him to look on a naked married woman. He spent time thinking planning using his free will to plot the selfish fulfillment of base lust. He then took the steps to have her brought to him, he had sex with her, got her pregnant. Her husband was a captain fighting for his King, risking his life to lead the soldiers of David’s Kingdom in battles to protect all King David stood for.

King David’s selfish lusts and actions, must have consumed his mind and imagination as he pondered on how to cover up his sin. This King devised a plan to appear to the public that he was doing a normal thing by checking with his captain on the status of the battle. He called Bathsheba’s husband home from battle to inquire of the battle and David sent her husband home to her to try to cover his sin. Thinking that her husbands absence would cause his sexual desire for his wife to be satisfied and cover the fact that Bathsheba was already pregnant with the Kings child.

Uriah was a man so dedicated to the King and his men fighting that he would not allow himself the pleasure of the comfort of his marital bed. When King David’s plan didn’t work he sent the husband to the front lines of the battle so he would be killed. King David then took Uriah’s wife into his palace. She gave birth to a son, who was born sickly and died. Not because God killed Davids son, but because the wages of sin is death.

David choose and he lived to experience the consequences of his chosen sin. Uriah, Uriah’s family, Uriah’s men, the Kingdom, and Bathsheba also suffered the consequences of that sin as well. Did she choose willingly to sleep with the King? Was she flattered at the King’s attention?  Was she a totally willing player in the death of her husband? Was she scared not to have sex with the King? No matter what the true answers to those questions are, her choices caused her to suffered along with King David. Being a King didn’t exempt him from the consequences of his choices. Marrying the King did’t exempt Bathsheba from hers. David repented and served God, but was disqualified to build a temple for God’s Manifest Presence to dwell in. Which had been King David’s greatest desire.

Samson a man of strength and weakness...

Let us take at look at another Bible example of a man who used his will to travel a path that resulted not in Gods best for him, but was still used to save his generation. In Judges 14 thru 16, we find a man named Samson. Who was dedicated to God before conception by his mother. He took a vow to not cut his hair or drink strong drink.

Samson had supernatural physical strength. He too experienced physically killing a lion. Which had to have effected his ego and self esteem. Sampson saw and wanted a wife from a tribe of the Philistines, his parents tried to get him to seek a wife from the tribes that were under covenant with them. But Sampson was determined to have what his physical desire dictated. He refused godly counsel and choose to lived a series of life events that left death, heartache and destruction in its wake.

The wife he chose was terrorized into betraying him, the men Samson made a deal with if they could solve the riddle, threatened to set fire to her and her families home if she didn’t give them the answer to the riddle. She wept and nagged for days until Samson told her the answer to the riddle, by revealing the answer to the riddle to the men of the city she betrayed her husband. Sampson then killed thirty men of the city and gave the spoil to the men he had made the deal with if they solved the riddle.

His father in law gave his wife to Samson’s friend while he was gone. Supposing that he hated her because of her betrayal. Samson found out his wife had been given to his friend when he returned and his father in law refused to allow him to sleep with her because he had given her to Sampson’s friend. His father in law, offered his wifes sister as a substitute. When he found out that the Philistines had threatened to burn his wife and father in law. He caught 300 foxes, tied their tails together two by two set them on fire and burned the Philistines, corn, vineyards and olives crops. This was real life drama. In retaliation the Philistines burned his wife and father alive!

This was the reality of Samson’s life. When the Philistines came to camp at Judah to destroy it and take Samson. He willingly allowed himself to be bound by the soldiers of Judah and taken to where the Philistines were encamped. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him and Samson killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. Literally think about that. Samson killed 1,000 real living breathing Philistine men. Not with a knife, sword or gun, but with the jawbone of a donkey! His calling and gifting was a mighty one and God was with him. The gift and calling is with out repentance, God does not remove the gifting that gives us our strength. God is a God of everlasting covenant. Samson’s choices as with our own will dictate the outcome of how we use the authority and power of that gifting.

Then Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah she lived in Sorek a Philistine territory. She too was one with out covenant with God. A Philistine. The leaders of the Philistines came to Delilah to get her to find out the source of Samson’s strength. He played riddles and games with Delilah, in the enemies territory. In pride of his secret strength, he allowed his lust for a women to cause him to play games and she deceive him. She kept on wearing him down until she found the secret of his strength. She shave his head, call out to his enemy and he was taken, beaten, blinded and put in a dungeon. Samson’s lust and arrogance cost him his future. While the secret of his strength and vow regrew, he wated to use it to destroy the enemy. His life consisted of  blindness, shame and misery. He died destroying the enemy by pulling down the support pillars allowing the structure to fall on them. I'm sure his lustful choices devestated his parents, cost him many losses of relationships ,shortened his life, and buried him together with his enemy.

Where does God go while I sin?

I think sometimes as Christians we think that if we still feel the presence of God that what ever we are doing has the approval of God. Not so, in my opinion and scripture bears it out. God is always present. Always right here right now with me. He protects my right to choose. Will I follow godly counsel? Will I heed the voice of the Holy Spirit? Or will I choose the lust of my flesh and deceive myself into thinking that God is in agreement with my rebellion and sin?

When we choose to sin where does God go? He said He would never leave us or forsake us. Does He close His eyes, stop His ears and turn His back while we commit spiritual and natural adultery? Does He say Oh, go ahead do what ya want, just tap me on the shoulder when you are done and we will continue with our relationship?

God created a safe place for Adam and Eve...

From the safety of boundaries...to NO boundaries...

Have you ever thought about the fact that God sent Adam and Eve out of a Garden with boundaries into a world with no fences or boundaries? The boundaries that God sets through the Scriptures is like the Garden of Eden. These boundaries are choice boundaries. Solely in my power to choose. In the Garden of Eden there was total peace, safety, and provision. No need to even think about if there was something beyond what they were experiencing daily.

In this life, in our personal positions in the earth, there are also two decisions or trees to eat from. The decision to choose to eat only from the tree of knowledge. A tree holding the information and experiences of men. The tree with the good looking fruit that is pleasant to the eyes. The tree of choice that feels good in the moment, but carries a lifetime guarantee of death or separation from the level of safety and the depth of intimacy God desires with us. We are born into the world that Adam and Eve were sent out into after the fall. There were no set boundaries to protect us. The boundaries of our lives are set by our parents teaching and training us to stay within the safety of the governmental law of the country, state or region we live in.

The tree of knowledge or making decisions on what is already known. Making choices from what I can see. That which is pleasant to the eyes, and well, Eve hadn’t died from her eating first, she said it tasted good, so why not? The tree who’s power isn’t in the taste of the fruit but in the safety of obedience. God’s words are life. Obeying the words of Life brings us the fruit from that tree. We can’t always see the consequences of the end results of our decisions when we make them.

Actually it is impossible to know the end results of our right now choices. But God does. When we choose to eat from the tree of knowledge we have limited scope of vision and are taking a chance on our fleshly emotions and lusts to guide us. When we choose to eat from the Life tree we receive access to what God sees and knows. God possesses unlimited knowledge of what has happened in the past as well as what lies ahead in my future. I don’t believe that God has my life all planned out and that I have to follow a script to accomplish that end result. God is so vast and all encompassing that He contains the beginning and the end of all things within Himself. Thus having clear access to ALL knowledge of mine and my ancestors lives and experiences. He knows the vows and covenants that they and I have made with Him and others. He sees the secret places that no man can reveal to me through knowledge and the possibilities of future outcomes if and when I respond or choose a certain thing or relationship. He is LIFE! He is LOVE. All of our living experience are what we label as life. I believe that God sees my life not just from my living experiences but those of generations past and the promise of generations to come.

The tree of Life from the Garden of Eden may still be there. But God has given us a tree of Life through Christ Jesus. An ever abundant life sustaining fruit when eaten regularly will help me to see and hear the voice of the Father walking and talking with me through out my days and nights.

Jesus is the fruit of the Tree of Life. This one time decision to seal our life through receiving the Blood of Jesus as the One and only Way that was made to reconcile us back to the intimacy of the Garden of Eden experience. To choose Life even when living outside the garden where there are no boundaries except the ones I recognize, set and obey. Gives me the choice to listen to the intimate voice of the Father as we walk in daily fellowship in real time in this life. This Life tree doesn’t mean I loose my ability to make my own choices. It just gives me the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and teach me how to function in this earth life. Complete with the knowledge fueled by wisdom that comes from beyond our own ability to see the whole picture.

God gave me a free WILL! He will never change His mind and override my will. Men may over power me physically or emotionally influence my decisions. But NO ONE can get into my head and make that heart decision for me. I can use others as an excuse for why I react the way I do. I can even blame my parents for their methods of setting and enforcing boundaries that may have caused me to believe or respond a certain way when I was a child.

Although horrible abuses may have occurred in our lives against our will, though the over powering of our bodies. I still have the ultimate power of deciding what I will think and do as an adult with the results of those things perpetrated against me. Will it be hard? Oh, YES. Will it take me dealing with the horrible emotional results of those detailed events? Again, YES! Will I have to forgive those who used me and caused the emotional hell I have lived through? YES! Will my forgiveness give them a free ride and exempt them from their own consequences? Absolutely NOT!

As an adult I and only I will give an account for my choices. In todays society the convictions that come with moral living have been relegated to the garbage heap of the political arena. If someone doesn’t believe like they do about an issue. They want to kill you. You must conform to their ideals and designs or you are wrong. This mindset is rampant and is very satan controlled. Even in the church.

My choices and convictions will govern the decisions I make daily. The decisions I make when alone may not be seen by others but they will manifest and birth very visual results. I may be able to hide my pregnancy but I will have to kill or abort that which is conceived to stop others from seeing the result of my indiscretion. In my opinion this is why abortion is such a huge topic and decision. We want to use the fact that we have dominion over our bodies, but over ride the sin of murder when the selfish choices I make reproduce a new entity. It is in my body, but a separate life that is developed in a world where the life of another outranks my selfish desire to hide my part in creating it.

The enemy today wants to get us through the laws in the land, to condone and pay for the murder of innocent babies. Giving him a doorway and foothold into greater authority over the minds and emotions of men and women. He wants us to give up the greatest gift and power we posses. The ability to create human life. To see our own selfish lusts as more important than the lives of the future righteous seed of the earth. In our ignorance he understands the eternal consequences of this choice, we may not understand the consequences today but will live to experience the devestation of this vial act. 

God set Adam and Eve in a special location. Surrounded them with Himself and gave them the dominion and authority to rule over all the elements of their Garden. They had free will to make daily, moment by moment choices just as we do today. They had no past examples of other’s choices or experiences to go by. They were innocent. Satan manifesting through the serpent was not innocent. He had lead a rebellion in Heaven. He knew that the free will choice of the angels of Heaven had determined their destination as well as his.

I believe satan was cast down into the earth, when he lost his rebellion in Heaven. Genesis describes the earth as formless, where darkness was upon the face of the deep. Satan had no creative power to create life. Life was created by God, taking nothing and making something. Satan is the creator of lies. Lies are created from something already with substance. Then distorted and represented in another manner, and portrayed or presented as absolute facts. Or at least a shadow of facts to cause confusion. The goal being to get us to abdicate ones true authority for a lessor authority through deceit, or the appealing to our lustfull human desires.

Satan, is darkness and light is not in him. He is the author and creator of lies, the truth is not in him. He can not present or re-present what he does not have. Satan stirred up rebellion in Heaven. Rebellion was found in him. God is light and there is no darkness or even a shadow of turning in Him. He is the creator of truth and light. He can not present or re-present what He does not have. God settled the rebellion with the truth that is in Him. He kicked that rebellion out of the arena of light and truth and then came into the little piece of His own creation in the universe and set up a Garden of light and truth. In Genesis God's first declaration was let there be light! Light already existed, He God was light! He light was reproducing Himself as light in the earth!

In the middle of the Garden God placed the free will choice and access to the fruit from the rebellion in open access to Adam and Eve, protecting their free will to choose to follow His voice of light or to be enticed by the enemy to choose darkness through knowledge of good and evil. They only knew what they had experienced up to this point in life. Good. The serpent offered them something they had no experiential knowledge of. They had to trust the words of God that He knew best or they had to choose to experience for the first time their will used to shape a future through the lust for the unknown.

We all know what they chose. We too now are destined to choose in reverse the tree of the knowledge of the unknown or to trust the creator that knows everything to bring us into the new place of peace and rest through simply believing His words with out having to have an experience to prove Him right or wrong. The Tree of Life -vs- the Tree of Knowledge. One comes through trust the other through experience.

God who created the planets, stars and the angels. Kicked satan out of His Presence in Heaven, where he is described as the cherub who covered. He had instruments of worship built into him. He lead worship and became so self absorbed in his abilities and design that it appears he thought he could govern Heaven better than God!

Maybe God decided to come to His planet earth where satan was cast down and design a little light and life! Create mankind and give them dominion over satan. God spoke let there be light and where did this creature of darkness have to go? But to the ones given dominion and use his wisdom and past experience with rebellion to get them in their innocence to choose his words over the Words of God.

Will we be the people who take back our first state by choosing the Life of God in Christ Jesus and put the serpant once and for all under our feet?

We don't have to agree...

You don’t have to believe like me. I don’t have to believe like you. We both have the right to believe what ever we desire. We both have the right to state our views and beliefs publicly. We don’t have the right to try to destroy, defame, or hurt another person because their view of this world is different than mine. God protects my will to choose. I need to protect, and respect everyone else’s. I am not talkig about denying sin. I am not the judge. I am called to be an example of righteousness. Yes, a fruit inspector, but not a tree destroying inspector. I can inspect the fruit to decide if I want to eat from that tree. I have to let God decide when and how much the tree needs trimming and when it is time to cut it down.

The consequences of the secret decisions in my heart belief system will eventually come to full term and be birthed for all to see. God provided a manual called the Bible to help us see who He is and how He has responded to past situations I may be facing. The Bible especially the Old testament is a history of mankind, God's promises and attempts to partner with mankind to rule over their part of the earth. It is an account of their personal experiences with the God of creation. It isn’t just made up fables and stories to entertain us.

The New Testament is more of an account of the genealogy and testimonial of the life of Christ. Recording experiences and events of Christ and His Disciples. Real people who left us some wise instructions as to how to engage with God and man. Through a better covenant ratified or paid for by the Blood of Jesus. A real living human who gave His very life and blood to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Giving each one of us the opportunity to once again walk and talk on our own individual merit with the God who created all mankind.

Preaching the Gospel isn’t condemning everyone who doesn’t believe what I believe. Jesus lived the Gospel, or good news. He went about doing GOOD because God was with Him! He didn’t go about throwing stones and carrying out the law of the land on those caught in sin. He didn’t deny sin. He just knew it wasn’t His place of authority to bring judgement or judicial justice to men. There were legal channels to do that. When He encountered it He addressed sin in the religious camp and gave Himself freely using His power to save, heal and deliver. He didn’t argue His point, He demonstrated it! With signs, wonders and many different kinds of miracles!

We all have personal struggles...

In my personal life I am dealing with situations with family members. Who in my opinion are making really dangerous decisions. Playing on the cliffs edge so to speak. Dabbling with emotions and lusts that they know are wrong. Choosing to put themselves and others in a position to receive some very grave and life changing consequences. They have been delivered from situations with the same people in the past, but insist that they've got this. They are Davids and Samsons choosing to follow their own lusts and wisdom instead of the counsel of God and others.

I am struggling with the letting go and letting them experience the consequences their adult self will indeed experience. My focus has to be on the thing in me that triggers the feelings of danger and the fear of life long consequences that are inevitable in their situation. My focus has been on trying to save them from the pain of the consequences. Thus saving myself from having to revisit the past emotions of this situation. Fearing a much worse outcome this time.

When in fact my focus needs to be on recognizing the negative emotions and anxiety that the enemy brings in my life through this situation. I have the power and authority to progress toward healing in myself, but I don’t have the power or authority to change the process of theirs.

I am working on me. Hard and painful work, but OH so satisfying! God is always with me but is not here to over power my will to choose. I believe He takes great delight in me when I do the hard work of not focusing on another’s supposed sin, but concentrate on my own Friendship and communication with Him allowing Holy Spirit to show me how to respond here in my everyday natural realm.

My motives may be pure, but my delivery can be way off. It is easy to be blinded by the smoke of the fire while frantic with emotions trying to get someone out of a fire when they may or may not have already escaped through another exit. I am trying to come out where the air is breathable and send in those clothed and equipped to handle a fire of this magnitude. I have burns and past scars from fires that I was caught in. Fires that were started by those I love. I have emotional scars that impede my emotional ability to move more quickly away from making this same mistake again. I am still a regular patient at the Holy Spirit Burn Unit, working to get the mobility back in my emotional movements that require trust in another’s decisions. Especially decisions that are combustable with knowing they are not ignorant of the possibilities of their decisions, but decisions that are just plain willful choices to follow their lusts no matter what the outcome or who gets hurt.

Everyone has an opinion...

Daily I look around me and everyone has an opinion. I want to only follow the path that the scripture has laid out for living with peace and joy in this life. To do that I have to decide if the fences or boundaries I am erecting are to keep people out or to keep safe those in my care who would be in danger outside those boundaries.

Being a Mom to all adult children has been a long joyous and painful transition for me. I am finding that the fenced in yard that was put in to keep them safe, has been outgrown by them. I can now take the fence down and use their once large play area to put up a garage, build a she shed, or maybe even a prayer room.

The memories are bittersweet. When they were young I could keep them safe by keeping them in our garden. Now that they have tasted of the tree of adulthood, they are out of the gate and off to places unfenced and unknown.

They may be absent from my presence but never from His!

The same God who is always with me, it also with them. I am having to remember, as my daughter reminded me this morning, a promise God gave me over my first born many years ago. He said: “He may be absent from your presence but he is NEVER absent from mine.”

I had forgotten the peace and comfort that those words brought to me through out Heath’s life, and especially at his death. God has also assured me that this Word also applies to all my natural, adopted or spiritual children. No matter how old or where they are geographically. He GOD is present with them ALWAYS!

(NKJV)Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

My children, friends, and family members have been taught about this Jesus. Most all of them have confessed Him unto salvation. What I or they do with Him now is a personal choice. One which will bring life or death into each of our individual lives. I can not justify my words or actions in treating them as sinners or outcasts, because I see something different than they do. I can warn them of potential consequences. I can intercede in prayer for their eyes to be open to God’s truth not mine. I can remind myself of King David and know that God will lead us out of our adulterous, murderous, selfish, self centered choices and never leave us even if we tie His hands of protection with our own selfish wills and have to suffer the anguish of burying the offspring that were the results of our unchecked willful sin.

(NKJV )Hebrews 13:5-6 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we may boldly say: “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?”

So today my friends and family. I boldly say” “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?”

I will place my trust in the Lord and rest in knowing that He who has begun a good work WILL bring it to completion! In those I love and in me.

Choosing to not forgive is like drinking poison and excepting the other person to die.