Word of the Week

Leaving Babylon pgs. 94-96

Our identity shows when we are abiding in Christ. In John 15, Jesus laid out for us the reasons why we are to abide in Him. We have already mentioned that we abide for God’s protection, but there are even deeper reasons for us to abide in Him.

In John 15, Jesus taught these deeper reasons for abiding, this continuing, this remaining, and this enduring in Christ. Abiding brings prosperity in your spirit, soul, and in every realm of your life. Abiding brings progress in the great purposes of God for your life. Abiding makes you a part of the great commission of God to save the world. Abiding brings the love of God into your life in such a way that you experience Him in every aspect of your being! His presence is clear and overwhelms you, and the truth of Christ’s words resounds through your spirit that “without Him you can do nothing.” You can do nothing of value, nothing worthwhile, nothing lasting. Only in abiding can you be truly His and reach your destiny to leave Babylon. In abiding in Christ your life, finally, has meaning!

The enemy of your soul will throw everything at you to keep you from abiding in Christ. Satan knows that your power lies in your abiding. He will taunt you to retaliate against others or respond to others who have harmed you in Babylon, but you must continually choose to abide in Christ. Outside of your abiding in Him, you will wither and be impotent. You will go through the motions but never produce anything lasting and relevant. You will spin your wheels in Babylon as your life waste away.

In defining the word abiding, there are key components to this crucial state of being in Christ.

Abiding means “to accept or act in accordance with (a rule, decision, or recommendation), comply with, obey, observe, follow, keep to, hold to, conform to, adhere to, stick to, stand by, act in accordance with, uphold, heed, accept, go along with, acknowledge, respect, defer to” (Apple Dictionary, 2009).

This defines your identity in Christ.

As you abide, you become like an adhesive to your Lord. You stay with Him when you are shaken, bumped, and rained on in this life. He is the one leading the way out of Babylon, and if you decide to go your own way, you will never find your way out. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” ( John 14:6, nkjv). Even after you accept Christ, there is still a continued coming to the Father, closer and closer to Him as you abide in Christ.

In the current political climate of our world, where biblical principles are being ignored and new legislation is becoming the law of the land, we must abide in Christ more than ever. We must be careful not to respond in our emotions but respond in the Holy Spirit. If we are to abide in Him in this day, we must concede to prayer and the principles of His Word. This conceding will take a surrender of your time and effort.

The Scriptures teach us, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him” (Isa. 59:19b, nkjv). We must understand that the Spirit of the Lord lives within His people. “My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth.” (Isa. 59:21b, nkjv).

However, the question is, how can the standard of the Spirit of God be lifted up in our nation if we will not abide in His Spirit? If we revert back to our own way and devices of fighting, if we revert back to what we learned in Babylon every time we are challenged with sin, how can we abide in His Spirit? Instead of lifting up the standard of God through His Spirit, we repress His Spirit and operate in our emotions. We reject the true weapons of our warfare. We cast off the armor of God. We fail to pray and attempt to save the world through human means. We have good intentions, but we are powerless against the spiritual forces of wickedness.

Continue reading in“Leaving Babylon, Unmasking the Great Prostitute”. Available at www.faithfights.com, tatepublishing.com/bookstore, Amazon.com

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Vengeance can manifest itself in many ways: through acts, words, or attitudes of un-forgiveness. Vengeance will keep a wound open and infected. Be careful, because the enemy of your soul will try and have you use your wounds to control the one who has hurt you, to keep you and them from healing.

Sessions in Pain, pg. 222 Vengeance Mine!

Author’s comments:                                                                                                        We  tend to embrace vengeance with a ravenous appetite; as though we are due this meal of anger wrapped in hatred, wrapped in judgement. But this meal will eventually sour in your stomach and cause you great pain. It is a  lie that vengeance will heal your hurting heart. Rather, it is forgiveness within the love of God that will bring your heart to its healing.

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As we look again at our friend Job, the enemy accused him and his friends also accused him, but he held on and rose up in faith until he saw his deliverance. Embrace deliverance! Lock your hands around it with certainty that the Lord will bring you out through the battle of change to a better day and a better life!

Sessions in Pain, pg. 179  Lock Your Hands

The  Scriptures teach us, having done all to stand we continue to Stand!  We “lock our hands”  around our Lord and his Word through our sorrows, bad attitudes, and hard days. We “lock our hands” within His, allowing Him to guide our thoughts and thus our behaviors toward His will. We lock our hands as the woman who crawled through the crowd to touch the hem of His garment for her deliverance.

Lock your hands!

Ref: Ephesians.6:13-14, Matt. 9:20

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David had to repent for his adultery with Bathsheba and for the murder of her husband in order to begin the healing of his soul and spirit. Certain things must be dug out and acknowledged, forgiven and released before we can go forward into healthy relationships with others and with God.

Session in Pain, pg. 217 Exposed Heart

The enemy of your soul will try to keep you trapped in shame, hiding your sins as it eats away at you. I encourage you to trust Christ with your soiled heart. He invested His life so that your heart could be healed. David trusted God enough to exposed his heart to God and repent knowing that whatever came God would be there with him.

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Leaving Babylon, pgs. 130 -131, Lost Beauty

Before sin, Eve knew perfect love that originated not from Adam but from God. God loved Eve perfectly, both directly and through Adam. Eve could love completely and unrestrained. Her heart was safe from the torment of the fear of rejection and betrayal. Eve lived and loved in God’s peace and joy.

God made Eve beautiful both inside and out. She displayed her beauty in all that she touched. Her very presence was beauty until the serpent, the thief and liar, stole away her  gifts.

Until this day, Eve tries to regain her beauty. She adorns herself with fabrics, jewelry, and makeup to try to recover her preserved essence, which is left by the mercy of God to tell her she is His handiwork of beauty. You can walk into any home, office, garden, or any other environment and tell if Eve has been there. You can look at a child and tell if the beautiful love of Eve has nurtured him or her. Many times in a crowd, we stop and pause at the beauty of Eve seen in a painting, a decorated room, or in a mother and child. The beauty of Eve comforts us and gives us hope that the world is worth saving.Until this day, the serpent plagues Eve with the lie that she is ugly and will never be good enough or pretty enough. The evil one pushes her into constant competitions of beauty with her sisters to keep her from loving them. Eve’s relationships with her sisters are often tumultuous. Eve fights with Eve. She knows her sisters, for they have the same heart. The serpent revels in Eve’s insecurity and continuous hatred of herself.

We have learned to be civil to each other through human maturity. Praise God, many of us have found true relief in Jesus Christ. We are learning to see and expose the serpent that plagues us with lies. He lies to Eve to push her into jealousy and shame. The source of jealousy and shame is the same. They are fear and insecurity brought through lies.

The jealous Eve lashes out with berating comments and wicked acts toward her sisters and others. She doesn’t see goodness in anything. She is in constant criticism mode as the serpent has told her that this is the way to be the best—the most beautiful. She lives like the evil queen in the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, constantly seeking to destroy that which she sees as more beautiful than herself. The serpent has convinced her that by destroying “Snow White,” she will be the fairest in the land!

The shameful Eve hides herself and is ever afraid of displaying her gifts, talents, and beauty to the world. She lives fearful of showing her face, for the serpent has told her that she is ugly and unacceptable. I have often seen teenaged girls and young women who refuse to take care of themselves and adorn themselves. They fix their hair so that it is always in their faces so no one can see them. They wear drab and baggy clothing, slump when they walk, and sometimes overeat to hide their beautiful curves from the world. They live to send a message to everyone that says, “I know that I am ugly.”

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You do not want to face God one day holding only the one talent that you buried under your wound. God is always available to give us strength to overcome our wounds.

Sessions in Pain, pg. 122 Buried Alive

How many of us have buried our living, breathing, and vibrant talents under a wound? They were alive in us, but we took them and buried them under our pain, disappointments, and self-pity. Through all circumstances God will give us all that we need to rise up through anything and display our talents…

and live!

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 Leaving Babylon pgs. 126-127

We live in a perpetual state of shame. We hide, fearing blame. We lie, fearing blame. We strive to be perfect before each other. Many of us live in a perpetual state of insecurity. We are afraid that the truth of ourselves will be revealed to others, the truth that we are flawed, that we are ugly, and that we are weak.

Rene Magritte was a surrealist artist, who lived in Belgium from 1898 to 1967. Rene’s mother committed suicide when he was only thirteen years old. The story goes that she had attempted suicide many times before to the point where her husband had to lock her in her bedroom. One day she got out and drowned herself in the River Sambre. It is reported that when her body was found, her dress covered her face. Later in his life, Rene painted several paintings, depicting the covered faces (The Lovers, 1928, by Rene Magritte). One must wonder about the powerful message he was trying to communicate in his paintings about hiding. Many contemporary artists have recreated the theme of his Lovers paintings with its honest message. The photo above is a contemporary recreation of The Lovers, although physically intimate, who are hiding from each other, perhaps, on emotional and/or spiritual levels. Is this what this artist saw in his mother? A woman hiding and full of pain but unable to take off her mask and expose herself and release her sorrows.

Rene Magritte clearly depicts what most of our relationships in Babylon have been reduced to. We live in the shadow of the pretense of intimacy, constantly, fearful of exposing our true selves because of humanity’s history of betrayal.

Although we often use the term lovers, true love can only spawn in the pool of total exposure. True intimacy requires that we reveal the deepest levels of who we really are. I see who and what you are, and I love you. You see who and what I am, and you love me.

This is why the love of God is so profound to us. The concept of His love eludes us because we cannot understand it or explain it in the shadow of Babylon. Why would a perfect omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Being love us? He sees all that we are, all that we have failed to be, all we have done, and yet He loves us. We began hiding in the garden after we sinned and have never stopped. Adam and Eve began as naked and unashamed before God; then sin opened their eyes, and they began to hide. Then entered into their lives the companion to hiding: blame. They began to blame each other. Blame led to more hiding and distrust. As with many couples, their love became suspicious and conditional.

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Our Lord Jesus Christ was our ultimate example of such humility and love. He was despised, rejected and tortured, partly due to the jealousy that lived in the hearts of the religious leaders. He had the greatest power in the universe at His command, but yet, He humbled Himself unto death by crucifixion. He was true to the only agenda that mattered—the agenda of God.

Sessions in Pain pg. 114    True Agenda

 In the end, all that will matter is how did you participate in carrying out the…

Agenda of God.

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