In 11Peter 3:15-18 he urgently pleads with these people by telling them, "It is the Lord's longsuffering (His slowness in avenging wrongs and judging the world) which we can count on because, we are participating in salvation. It is this that anchors and furnishes our souls with a security in God because; we can receive the benefits of His attitude of having a slowness to avenge wrong when we fail. Paul the Apostle our brother in Christ has also written to you and talked about this at times.

He also has been empowered by the Holy Spirit to understand the mystery of the meaning of being saved through Christ. Now there are some things that Paul writes about that are difficult to understand, which the ignorant and the unstable twist and misunderstand to their own utter destruction, just as they distort and misinterpret the rest of the scriptures. Let me warn you, that knowing these things beforehand, you should be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of troublesome people and lose your position of having a secured faith which will give you peace of mind.

Therefore knowing this, we must learn how to grow in the grace of God which is His (undeserved favor and spiritual strength) which will produce the true knowledge of God and we will understand Our Lord and Savior and what He gave us at the cross."

"We have to participate in salvation." When we became born again; that was only the beginning. Unless we have a total resolve to seek the knowledge of God's ways and be on a constant vigil of meditating and thinking with our spiritual minds, the confusion and hundreds of interpretation of God's word today; will continue to totally blind and cause people to believe that there is no absolute truth and standard for living. The body of Christ today has no united front. We have to get back to preaching Jesus Christ crucified and the true meaning of this and how to participate with His sacrifice in Him laying down His life for mankind. Thank God for His longsuffering and mercy.

If there was confusion in Paul and Peter's day when the church was just getting started, we desperately need to repent and change our minds today and get grounded and become secure and anchored in knowing our total acceptance by God. I have said this over and over again and I will continue to say it.

"It is the true knowledge of God and the entrance of that knowledge into our hearts and minds that will keep us free to make choices with out intimidation or fear of retaliation by God or man."

Our Christian walk is a mystery to be discovered and not a game of, we seek God today and we do our own thing tomorrow. The least thing we can do, if we really care about ourselves is to once and for all make a quality choice to seek God or to not seek Him. You will find if you don't know it.

It is allowing yourself to stay quiet and give God time to prove to you that, He is real and allow His holding power of love to keep you safe from all harm.

That's why, "we must run our race with patient endurance and stead fast persistence only as the Holy Spirit shows us." It is in the quiet moments of deep thought and peace that God speaks and gives us a word of wisdom and knowledge of Him that, we can truly understand. We can't live a life of eating fast foods in our searching for true knowledge. God's truths have to be mined like gold or precious diamonds. At times I think most Christians don't really want to know the truth and they try to run away from themselves.

6. Reverence: = (A feeling of profound respect mingled with awe and affection and having a gracious and courteous behavior.) When there is a reverence towards someone, we pay close attention and focus our thought life towards the feelings of that person. Paul in Hebrews 12:24-29 gives us a vision, direction and the attitude of the reverence we need to have in running our race of faith. "Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaks of mercy and gives us a better testimony and gracious message than the blood of Abel whom was killed by his brother Cain in the Old Testament because, Abel's blood cried out for vengeance.

See then that when God speaks to you that you do not refuse to listen. For the people who lived by the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament before Jesus died on the cross for our sins did not have His power of His grace in them to obey Him. When they broke the Law they paid a terrible price here on earth and did not escape the consequences of their actions. We now also will pay an awful price if we do not heed the voice of the Holy Spirit because heaven is now in us and we have a more excellent covenant and more to loose.

At Mount Sinai where God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses His voice shook the earth. Yet once more God's is not only shaking the earth but also the heavens. Now this means that, God in this last dispensation of time is determined to shake every thing He created in order to get rid of anything that does not line up with His perfect will in our lives. If we truly understand God's resolve and motivation in doing this let us receive and live in this type of kingdom by receiving His grace which is pleasing and acceptable to Him and it will produce a reverence and a Godly fear of Him. For God is a consuming fire"

Let's get forever persuaded that God is a jealous lover and He will not allow one of His children to miss there appointed task and purpose that He ordained for their lives. As I have stated, there is a big shaking going on in the body of Christ through different circumstances and God is determined to set His people free from every encumbrance and weight that has so easily captured His children. This happens because; of their ignorance of not knowing what type of resolve He has for them and how much He loves them. What is also amazing, we even have to receive God's grace to have the power to reverence Him.

I am continually reminded by the Holy Spirit, "Let go and let me do it for you" If we are going to boast; let us boast of the Lord. When we boast in self; it's another fruit in our lives of the shame based nature that keeps us as cripples. God is a consuming fire. His act of dying for our sins and as we become symbiotic in our relationship in dying with Him, we were raised to a new life in and through Him and His spirit and our spirit have become one. As we meditate on God's word daily, the Holy Spirit's leadings clears up our misunderstandings and anything operating in our lives contrary to us operating in Jesus faith.

7. Obedience: = (To do the bidding and be guided by certain laws.) We now come to putting the Faith of Jesus into works of righteousness. These first six characteristics have to be in operation or there is no obedience to walking in God's statutes. In John 14:23, Jesus says, "If a person really loves me, he will keep my commandments."

Blind obedience without love will maintain order, but does nothing to enhance a loving relationship. Blind obedience without recognizing its value is destined for failure. Love gives the reason to obey and gives us value and worth. The hungering heart will seek with Passion the kingdom of God. The complacent heart or the self absorbed person will grow restless in his walk with God.

A prolonged mind set of trying to live by "dos and don'ts" distract us from God's intended goals. When we are receiving God's love, we can truly love one another. I have learned that without the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit, my mind drifts into a thinking mentality of faultfinding about others and myself. Jesus did not come to earth to impose the law or to rule over us with a dictating and dominating attitude. He came to empower us to be able to keep the law by His love and the Spirit of grace working on the inside of us. He came to bridge the gap between,

! Our limited capability to live the Christian life; by giving us an awareness of His devoted love!

God's love can only be described as His "forgiving grace." God knew that while we are learning, maturing and growing spiritually, we would stumble and fall short and violate His perfect will for our lives. However, like the loving Father that He is, His grace intercedes and covers our faults. This in turn gives us the power to maintain and continue our loving relationship with Him. Only by learning to receive and live in God's power of forgiveness will man find and feel true peace. The key to obedience is in this word forgiveness. Let's define and meditate on this word before we go on.

The word forgives in the Greek is aphiemi: it means to lie aside, separate, or a departure from blame and obligation. In Matthew 26:28 When Jesus celebrated the last supper with His disciples; He refers to His blood as, "The blood of the New Testament (or the new covenant) which He would shed for the remission of our sins." The word remission means, a release from the penalty and consequence caused by a crime. When we respond and walk in the Spirit of forgiveness; only then can we walk in obedience to God's statutes and not feel that we are guilty of committing a crime. God's spiritual nature is the Spirit of forgiveness. Our first encounter of tasting forgiveness was at the cross when we had a born again experience and received our new nature in Christ.

1Peter 1:19-23 he tells us, "We were bought with the blood of Christ because He offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb. He was faultless and not guilty of ever doing anything wrong. It was God's plan from the beginning for Him to offer Himself up in this way. It is in us believing that He was raised from the dead and our faith should be focused on this one act alone. If you are going to walk in obedience, you must know and be participating in the truth of this and it can only be reveled and lived through the workings of the Holy Spirit. This relationship with the Holy Spirit will keep our motives and attitudes pure and unsoiled and in turn, we will be able to love ourselves and the brethren."

I believe that the body of Christ has got caught up with going through the rote operations of the words of the bible and do not realize that the Spirit of forgiveness is the personality of the Holy Ghost. We need to continually be having saved experiences with Holy Spirit daily. I am convinced that the majority of the body of Christ is fighting a battle with in them of self hate. We badly have to let the Holy Spirit have access to out hearts and mind and set us free to rest in His arms.

I have found in my own life a need in me to surrender and allow the Holy Spirit to probe my inner being and erase and restore areas of my life that have been acquired through ignorance of His ways over these many years. There are weights that Christians have carried around for many years that have them demonically oppressed. It is only as we are experiencing the love of the Lord and His grace, which will allow Him to operate in those areas of our lives that are raw and sensitive. It is time if we really want to know the real love of the Lord to let Him invade those areas and not cover them up with religious hype, emotional rhetoric which is nothing more then a camouflage and living in denial. It is as we learn to love ourselves that; we will be able to love one another.

When we live in self hate in any form, we can not see value in ourselves and we give the quality of our own self worth in our own sight to each other. When this happens we participate in prolonging the curse and cripple ness in ourselves and our relations with others. We have ministries at work with in the body of Christ where people have to be delivered from bondages that have controlled their life for years. After they get delivered they have to go on and not live in error as to how they are to submit their lives to God. We must be teaching them how to stay free once delivered, or they will go back to a worsened condition.

If I haven't made it clear to you yet, this is a disease of the curse and a sickness that can no longer be ignored anywhere and especially in the body of Christ. It is time for us to take the medicine of forgiveness from God and continue to take it as we mature in our adventures with Him. This is the key that will make us healthy and we can walk with authority in our Godly pursuits in and to the world. We need to be aware of the fact that, we need to allow God to continually save and deliver us from ourselves.

This must be a way of life not a set of rules.

It is these seven characteristics of the Holy Spirit that we have defined from scripture that causes us to walk in our righteousness in Christ and empower our warfare. Along with God's characteristics we also have our weapons of warfare that God gave us the day we became born again. Paul states in 11Cor.10:3-4 "Even though we walk in fleshly bodies, we are not to carry on our warfare according to the flesh and use mere human reasoning. For the weapons of our warfare are not (physical reasoning of flesh and blood,) but they are mighty through God for the overthrowing and destruction of strongholds."

When scripture uses terms like through or before it means that, we have to put away our own human reasoning and begin to think with the mind of Christ that we received the day we made Jesus our Savor and follow the Holy Spirit's advice only. No one wants to admit that there could be strongholds in one's life however, we were born into a flesh and blood body and David the King in Psalms says "all men are beasts with out the Holy Spirit's leadings."

Our born again experience is something that we have to maintain through discipline, tenacity and passion with a total leaning of our entire personality on Jesus Christ. If we are going to reach excellence, we must be healed of our cripple ness and the strongholds in our lives by studying and meditating on the scripture to know that, we are approved by God to do the work of the ministry of Jesus on the earth. I am talking to all of us not just the five fold ministry in the public eye.

The five fold ministry is supposed to equip the body of Christ to do the real work of the ministry in the market places of their personal lives. The day of the people sitting in the pews Sunday after Sunday with their mouths open like chicks being fed by the mother in the nest must come to an end. I believe God is saying the same thing He said to Pharaoh back in the Old Testament when He told him, "to let His people go, so that they could go on to real maturity with a Promised Land mentality to fight the real giants in the world around us."