Hate is a living entity that has a spirit form that infected the soul of man, when he took on his shame-based nature in his fallen condition. It is the brother of pride and is in unison with the personality of Satan himself. This is why when Jesus was going through His earthly walk and gathering His disciples, He from time to time had to reprimand them because, in their ignorance, they would function back under their shame-based nature. At those times, Jesus would tell them, "don't you know what spirit is motivating you to say those things. It's the spirit of the devil who was once your father. I have come to save the world not to condemn it."

The more God reveals to me the warfare that we are involved in the more aware I am how critical it is to walk in the admonition of the Lord. It makes me thankful and hungrier to walk carefully and obedient to His every word. It's us understanding our position in Christ that empowers us to deal with a very real enemy. When we stay babies in our dippers and walk in a carefree indifference to our position in Jesus Christ, the real enemy we face is the person we see in the mirror every morning. When you're ignorant of God' ways; one can not love one self.

Unless we begin to understand what and how our shame based nature works and the way it hinders us from living free to think, feels and explores our relationship with God, there is no hope for mankind to reach his potential. I am talking about God's interpretation of potential. Unsaved man has no concept of God potential and I am grieved to say that the body of Christ has lived in mediocrity and the God we know about is only known on paper with rote words of understanding. When I say rote I mean, without spiritual intellectual attention to God's real heart felt feelings.

Now scripture tells us that, "perfect love cast out fear." As we participate with God and allow Him to lavish His love on us, we are constantly being delivered from a fear conscious mentality. It reminds me of the scenario "she loves me she loves me not." In James chapter one he tells us that a double minded man can receive nothing from the Lord because, he is unstable in all his ways.

When we function in double mindedness, this is a trait of the shame-based nature. Let me make my self-clear on this issue. If you are not a God seeker and mediator of the word day and night, you are still a slave to your shame-based nature in some form. Real life in Christ is us allowing the Holy Spirit to freely flow His thought life through our being in a prophetic way. This meaning, we receive instant revelation of the intents of God's heart at any given moment. This includes visions and dreams during our sleeping hours. This is the life style we need to have if; we are going to learn how to love ourselves.

We must have a healthy self-image, which gives us the desire to nourish ourselves as Christ wants to nourish us. Man being influenced by the Holy Spirit, is what motivates us to want to help and lessen the burdens on others. This same influence has to begin with us wanting the same for our own wholeness. You can't give God's fellow feeling for others unless you are participating in it and receiving it for yourself. We need to understand that, God's is not a miser or a person who holds aught. He is a God of more than enough. God always gives more than we need because; He knows that we have a need to give the overflow away, which allows the Holy Spirit to flow through us with no restrictions. This is one of the main principles for maturity.

This cannot take place if, we have a low self-image and really don't know this God of more than enough. It makes us self centered and protective in nature. For me the revelation of this is something I crave to understand and I want to be delivered of any low self image. Unless we allow God to show us how we can cooperate with Him and begin to flow in His unlimited desire to give in all areas, there will always be an underlined residue of us detesting, persecuting or loving our self less. Why? Because as I have said, our ignorance and lack of teaching and discipleship in our Christian walk has kept us from being fulfilled.

We have talked about hate and pride as this being the basic core of the devil's personality. He then propagates these two characteristics by inflicting a verbal attack of bombarding our minds with guilt and condemnation. When we buy into this spirit, our shame based nature flourishes. Unless a man is allowing God to show him his bondages and delivering him from his self-centeredness, he will live in a mediocre inept state in the power of the Holy Spirit. No man can truly love his wife in this weakened state because, he is not able to nourish himself with God's thoughts and become empowered to really show love in thought and action. The guilt and condemnation I hear coming out of peoples mouth at times is staggering. Now these are born again believers, many who have been saved for a number of years.

7.) For we are members of Christ's body as if a part of His flesh and bone. If you look at this verse with just our common sense, God is a Spirit and He has no body that has flesh and bone. The very thing that motivates us to meditate on the word day and night is us, discovering the way God reasons and the unique way He formed the universe and His wonderful plan for us to inherit everything He has. Since God has no body other then Jesus who now sits at the right hand of God in heaven. How do we become a part of His flesh and bone? Let's explore this idea.

In the Greek, the word for flesh is sarx: meaning, to have a kindred spirit and recognize our human frailties. The word bone is osteon: meaning, with intensity and a searching on our part of obtaining the character and life style of Jesus when He walked the earth. This idea of having a kindred spirit meaning, we are learning to have mercy on ourselves as God reveals to us our shame-based nature that is still wants to dominate our life. This idea of bone represents we have to be actively with great passion co-operating with the Holy Spirit in having Him purify our thoughts and motives.

In Hebrews chapter 4, 5, Paul talks about Jesus total passion in His quest to constantly seek after God His father and feel His love and compassion for Himself and the people He came to die for. I will paraphrase what he said. Unless we are participating in this symbiotic relationship with the Holy Spirit, the compassion of God and His feelings can never anchor our souls. Now this is a two-way relationship. I am not convinced that the body of Christ is aware of the human battle Jesus encountered on the earth to do His Fathers will. The real issue is; when we became born again, we became a part of Christ's flesh and bone. Nothing we do will ever change that, because we are permanently connected to Him. Unless we come to understand and connect in fellowship with Him in empathy ways, we never come to know the high position and esteem we hold in His eyes.

Paul states, "Now there is not a creature that exists that can hide their true intensions of their heart from God because everything is naked and exposed to Him for He knows the hearts of men. He is the mediator between God the Father and mankind because, He has run His race and has passed on into the heavenly realm. He now stands as our High Priest and defender to God for us.

He understands and is sympathetic and has felt our weakness and the temptation that comes upon us because, when He walked the earth He fought the same battle yet without sinning. Now if we really understand this, we can boldly draw close to God to receive His grace and feel His total acceptance, experience His hugs, and comfort just where and when we need it. Jesus in the days of his flesh prayed for specific things for not only the things that He wanted but for the things that He needed.

He did this with great passion and with strong tears and crying. God always heard Him because He walked with a reverence toward God because; He shrank from the horrors of being separated from the presences of His Father. He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. He is now the author and source of eternal salvation to those who listen and follow His example."

We have been describing in this chapter how our relationship with the Lord filters down to our relationship with our mate and to our children. It obvious to me that, we have to be anchored in our relationship to the degree that, we see and understand that Jesus gave up His divinity to become human so that, he could relate to His creation. In my conversation with people over the years, I don't thing we really relate to Jesus as being a human being. He is Jesus the Son of God and He is sovereign with all power and authority.

However, because we have never been discipled to know Jesus Christ the God-man servant, our understanding is that if, we don't fly right and conform to so call religious protocol, we will be discarded by God and man. This attitude does not promote an attitude of trust and hunger for more of God presence in ones life and that, is being understated. Where there is no relationship of a person having a passion and hunger for a vibrant walk with Jesus, it is impossible to experience his growing pains as He fought His temptations to walk in obedience to his Father's will for His life.

Philippians 2:7 says, "Jesus stripped Himself of all privileges and rightful dignity as to assume the outward appearance of a servant in that, He became like a man and was born a human being. After He appeared to people and related to them in human form, He humbled Himself further and carried His obedience to the extreme by dying on the cross. Because of this God has now made Him very significant. Because He (Jesus) has stooped so low, God has highly exalted Him and has bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee must bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue openly confess and acknowledge that Jesus Christ Is Lord." We have to come to believe that, God the Father looks at us as His children and love us as His first begotten Son and He also wants us to take our lawful place at His side.

Our shame-based nature cannot fathom this position. It boggles our mind in understanding how God could care for us like this. Being saved forty some years and continuing to fight the good fight of faith, I am constantly amazed how God continually encourages and comes to my rescue repeatedly with out judgment. He is relentless in His pursuit to free us from all the crevices of life we have a tendency to be caught up in. It is crucial that, we identify with God's holding power in our lives.

In Eph 3:16-19 Paul writes, "It is God's intensions for us to have the Holy Spirit so deeply anchored in our soul and personality that, we will live with an overwhelming security of knowing the holding power of God's love." He defines God's love as a breadth, depth, height and length. It is God's intensions for us to personally experience this in our entire being with our emotions; in turn, it ends up totally dominating our lives. It is this kind of relationship which empowers us to fulfill God's purposes super abundantly in our lives, which goes beyond our wildest expectations." We are not only talking about our financial needs here.

The basic core of life is loving relationships. It's us experiencing this relationship with God that, gives us the want to, to submit without intimidation to make Jesus Christ our Savior and become the Lord over our life. It's then that, we will begin to manifest an unending appetite in totally trusting in His mercy and grace, and openly confess our appreciation and walk in reverence and awe in us totally submitting to His example.

8.) For this cause, a man shall leave his mother and his father and join himself to his wife, and the two of them shall become one flesh. It says for this cause. We could put it this way and say, because of us now walking in an understanding of our commitment of two people saying, "I DO." I can now leave the milk diet of being nourished by my mother and fathers protected environment and start a new cell of growth and propagate the Lord's family, as He intended in spirit and in truth."

There can be no vital joining between two if, God is not nourishing and molding the relationship. Some times, I really wonder how many marriages are really God centered. This idea of learning about being married and how a healthy relationship needs to take place is for every one. You may have two people that are born again, love the Lord, and still be ignorant of how a married relationship was ordained to function as God intended.

Becoming one flesh is not to be interpreted as having sexual intercourse. I say that because, I have heard it over the years preached that way. When a loving spirit and selflessness does not exist in a relationship between mates, what we have is spousal abuse in one form or another. Our example of marriage is us having intimacy and a fellow feeling with God's thoughts and truly knowing internally that; God really cares for us. Anything less cannot motivate a healthy marriage. When we talk about intimacy we mean, a close and confidential friendship. At times, we sense things without words.

My wife and I have had to overcome some real co-dependant attitudes over the years and walk through some unfulfilled expectations. There has to come an awareness between two people that, marriage is an on going discovery through God of what He meant when He said. "It is not good for man to live alone, so I will give him a help-meet." This type of love relationship and us acknowledging our need for it, can be very painful at times. It depends how long you have been living in ignorance and a lack of vision of what God really intended between a man and a woman. Where this scripture says for this cause is the real issue. A cause is anything that produces an effect or result in ones life. If our choices are not grounded in sound biblical principles of God, the results is unnecessary pain, sorrow and loss. It can be in this case marrying the wrong person. In many cases a born again believer will marry a person not born again.

When this happens you violate one of God's decrees that says, do not be unequally yoked with a non-believer. One of the many things that cause divorce is over two people having different beliefs. Unless there are common goals set down before marriage and discussed, you end up with two people living together still trying to find their identity because, they are still children in their thinking. Married people can not find their identity in each other. Their true identity is found in God.

Marriage is a 100-100 percent relationship. There is much to be learned and discussed here if, your marriage is faltering in not understanding this principle. Unless two people know who they are and are totally independent in thought and actions, they never have the freedom to understand what inter-dependency is all about. Many marriages are formed on the idea that, where one is weak the other compliments the weakness. This couldn't be any farther from the truth. True inter-dependency says, "It is my joy to do for you. Your needs and wants are my desire. I choose this day by saying I do to put your desires first in my life before mine" Now understanding this, a person would have to step back and think, "Do I feel this way and want to do this."

In many cases, marriages that are not founded on this premise end in divorce. Some seek marriage counseling and manage with great pain and difficulty to save their marriage. Many marriages stay together but end up with people living in a survival mode mentality with no common vision of exploration and anticipation of new and exiting events. I don‘t believe that people understand that, they can still be living together but, really be divorced in their thoughts and emotions.

All trials of marriage are common to all couples. However, each trial or problem has to have tender and personal care for healing. This is where intimacy and fellow feelings heavily come to bear. Marriage counseling is needed at times. However, it must be sound and prophetically based. This meaning that, the one counseling better have his or her ear tuned by the leading of the Holy Spirit. Knowing the scriptures is imperative and that is an under statement. Knowing when and how to impart God's wisdom is absolutely critical. A doctor doing heart surgery had better know how to use His surgical instrument or the patient dies. I have heard of some ridiculous counseling techniques that damage relationships rather then healing them. Therefore, our cause better be sound and understood before leaving mom and dad's protective hedge.

9.) This mystery (Or dialogue) is very great, but I am using this example of marriage as the relationship between Christ and His body the church. What a statement to ponder and explore. If ever a verse described relationship between God and between two people, this confirms it. A dialogue is an open exchange of different points of view for the purpose of mutual understanding. It's the continual exploration of learning about God's heart and the heart of our mate. Because as I have said; man is wonderfully made by God and something to stand back and be admired. Even more, man is still at a point of being perfected and discovering who he will become. Our exploration of God showing us how highly He esteems us must be something we are interacting with Him because, it role models and fuels our relationship with our mates.

In Isaiah 1:18 God says, "Come let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool." Have you ever tried to talk to someone that you could not reason with? Where there is no reasoning, there is no healing, no growing or covenant relationship of common need and acceptance. When we reason with someone, intense feelings come to the surface and it takes a disciplined, committed attitude to endure some uncomfortable and at times distasteful comments that offend your integrity. We need to function in the gift of reasoning, which is a gift of God, and involve ourselves in a dialogue with God and with each other.

God uses these conversations to expose the truth of how we really feel inside. Scripture tells us that what comes out of our heart in words tells us what we really believe in our hearts.

When we really become independent, we know that God gives us a choice to decide whether, we want or not want to love, it is only then that love ceases to be an obligation. The real battle for intimacy between God and our mates is because; we don't realize that, what we believe is not in line with our emotions or feelings. What we do is lie to ourselves. That means we are co-dependent not independent.

Jesus in John 3:19 said, "He is the light of the world." However, man in His basic beastly shame-based nature is addicted to living in the darkness or in denial. When we begin to reason with God privately and let God heal all of our relationship with our mate and the people that come into our arena of life, some uncomfortable revelations are going to come into our thinking and we are going to have to ask God to forgive us and have to forgive ourselves as well some people we have offended.

Earlier when we talked about hatred, pride, guilt and condemnation as being all the qualities connected to our shame based nature, we can sense how powerful these emotions and entities are in our lives. These demonic powers main goals are to keep our hearts closed from receiving revelation knowledge from the Holy Spirit. Being addicted to these traits stops the Holy Spirit from delivering us from our co-dependent state. Unless we are letting the Holy Spirit view our hearts with His compassionate nature and making us aware that He loves us in spite of ourselves, we live in denial in this darkened state as the fig leaf mentality that Adam and Eve were contaminated with in the Garden of Eden. Whenever we hide from God in any form, this stops the flow of the Holy Spirit from washing our soul with His words of love and comfort. A healthy marriage relationship between Adam and Eve ended when they put their fig leaves on and hid from God and each other.

10.) So, let each one of you with out exception love his wife as he loves himself; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband and admires him exceedingly." Therefore, we see the conditions that a man has to conform to for him to love his wife and have his wife respect him. It is obvious that a man cannot love his wife in his own strength. He needs to love himself first and we have from scripture defined what has to take place for this to happen. It says that a woman needs to revere and admire him exceedingly. These are some profound orders from the Lord. The word revere means, with an attitude of awe and respect. When my wife and I began to see the idea of what marriage represents, because we had no training or concept of the gravity of what we committed to when we said I do, we have had to learn by trial and error. It has only been by the mercy of God and our endeavor to seek God and each other, which has kept our marriage growing over these many years.

There is one main principle that must be actively operating in our lives that heals and enriches our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. It is found in Ephesians 4:30-32, 5:1-2. It is the principle that made Jesus lay down His life for His creation.

Paul the Apostle states, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. You have been branded as God's own the day you made Jesus your Savior. Let all bitterness, anger, and demands or protests with a feeling of having a will to injure one another, be put away as your main goal in your relationships. Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you for Christ's sake because; you realize that, you are God's children. Walk in love by experiencing Christ's love for you because He offered Himself as a sacrifice to God as a sweet smelling savior."

It looks like we have come full circle. I never know when starting to write these articles where the Spirit of God will lead me. When it is all said and done the word that touches my heart is forgiveness. It is the Spirit of God's grace and His total unmerited favor. This is the Spirit that we need to swim in as we grow in our relationship with God and our mate. The word for forgiveness in the Greek is charizomai: meaning, granting a favor to someone. What we really need to understand is that our act of forgiveness has to be empowered and motivated by the influences of the Holy Spirits nudging with in us. It is the Spirit of forgiveness that binds us all together.

The more God informs me of the wealth He wants to give me in my relationships with Him and with my wife, children and all others in my life, the more I recognize my need to let go and let God have His way, so that he can answer my prayers. Life at times is a roller coaster ride for me. God has always been there on the ride. Sometimes I was aware of it and sometimes I wasn't.

Let me remind you as I remind myself. People that God has the closest to you, is the way we learn how to love. These relationships can inflict some deep emotional hurts that linger for a while. For me I am learning to avoid these types of skirmishes. I haven't arrived yet. One thing I am learning is to run to that secret place in my heart where the Holy Spirit and I have our daily meetings, where I get comfort for my growing pains.

Have you recognized through experience that, God never quits on you and He lavishes His forgiving Spirit on you to the point that, you long to have it shower on you night and day. When we married our mates, we married a relationship with God also. Remember when God showed up in the Garden, He had fellowship with Adam and Eve. The three of them had fellowship together. I haven't met any couples that have been married for what ever that have arrived at some perfect bliss. Over the years, I have heard statements from people that tell me things like. "I have been married for years and my wife and I never fight." The first time I heard that, I thought my marriage must really be bad.

When we were raising our children, it seemed like we were constantly fighting over money matters and fears of one kind or another. This brother who told me that he never fought with his wife; ended up in divorce because of infidelity. Marriage is a very real challenge, but the growing pains of two people growing together with God in the middle of it is more then rewarding. I don't have all the answers and after forty years, I am still trying to learn how my wife ticks. With God on my side, the next forty years with my wife will get better and better. As I have said, it is very meaningful when you have mature Christian friends that you can share your growing pains with. It is my prayer that you will allow the Holy Spirit to take a more active roll in your thought life. I have come to know that, He is the only counselor that must have priority in our lives on all our decision-making.