Isaiah 61:1-2 states, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.”

If our intent is to be about our Heavenly Fathers business, we need to rightly interpret these two verses. We start with the word upon, which is really two words up and on, up meaning, being influenced by a higher wisdom then our own and an interaction with a living God who wants to play the vital role in molding and changing our thinking into His. The word on meaning, being in contact with this Living God and following a continual course of revelation and action described by Him to go to war and do battle. I never had a clue when I first got saved that, I was going into a spiritual warfare in my Christian walk because, the assembly that I first started attending never preached on it.

Meaning, fresh and full of enthusiasm in announcing and bringing forth good informative news. Our enthusiasm must be motivated by God’s anointing because we are full of God’s word and be prompted and energized by the Holy Spirits anointing from within us and not religious denominational beliefs. Good news is not only that Jesus loves us but it also means that the Holy Spirit wants to point out all areas where our thinking comes into conflict with God’s way of thinking. It’s not comfortable at times to hear these truths that come into conflict. However, it then gives us the choice to allow Him to mess with our attitudes for change or to continue in our own ways.

Meaning, humble, gentle and needy. First of all this idea of being needy, is us realizing how totally dependent we are on the Holy Spirit to grow us up to know Him better, as we learn to understand God’s supreme authority and what He knows compared to what we know. We then begin to realize how much pleasure it gives God to reveal Himself to His children. We open our heart up to His Spirit where, a reverential fear of the Lord begins to dominate our lives. Not a fear of punishment, but a hunger of not wanting to miss one word of what God is doing in these last days. This is what makes us easily persuaded by Him to grow up. We have to stay in a weakened condition of recognizing that without The Holy Spirit we can do nothing to change our circumstances.

There is a dependency on God that we have to settle into and it’s the principle of us learning to die to selfish ambitions and a fear with in us that, if we don’t help God out, we’re going under in some area of our lives.

The Apostle Paul in 11Cor: 7-9 was praying and having a conversation with the Lord. He states, “so that I would not get puffed up with pride because of all the revelation knowledge I was receiving from the Lord. The Devil began attacking and harassing me and this warfare was stopping me from being carried away with my own importance. Three times I cried out to God to deliver me from this warfare” and God’s answer was. “My loving favor, kindness and mercy are enough for you. This will enable you to bear up as a man and enable you to handle the trouble. For my strength and power can only operate to its full capacity and effectively as you realize how weak you are with out me.” We see here that God’s destiny is for Him to send us into battle and then have us cry out to Him and allow Him to fight it for us.

Our understanding of this principle can only be made very real to us if, we are participating with this type of relationship. When we approach God with a meek attitude, we allow God to plant His wisdom deep with in us and allow Him to write His desires on the fleshy table of our hearts. This meek condition should be multiplying in our hearts continually. Us learning to be submissive and stop trying to do it our way has to be our top priority if, we are to going to be all that God intended.

So I say to the one who wants to receive more revelation from God. Let the Holy Spirit check you out to see if you have a meek heart and when you are trying to persuade some one else to follow the Lord, make sure that they have a meek heart to receive instruction. Because if they are not at a stage of being meek, you’re wasting your time and your wisdom is falling on spiritually deaf ears.

God doesn’t send anybody unless He knows that they are prepared. There are many people in the body of Christ that think that they were sent by God and the reality is, they went on there own and some denominations are still building their own towers of Babel. Also many people in the body of Christ that God planned to send and He hasn’t changed His mind, have been taken out of the cocoon to soon and have crashed and burned. Leaving some crippling disappointments and many have given up in their quest for excellence. This happens because they become unsure of their calling. When this happens, the whole body of Christ suffers. This word sent means, appointed, to reach for and grow long. Simply meaning,

We need to be pursuing our call from the Lord and never look back and continue to continue in spite of all adversity. It’s going to take a persevering strength that only the Holy Spirit can give us. Most of the time the adversity comes from the very people that you are trying to help because, they are their worst enemy. It’s only us being rock sure that we come in the name of the Lord, which will allow us to maintain our resolve and be instant in season or out of season, when the word is welcomed and at times when it is not.

Jesus did not die on a cross to minister a weak watered down gospel with a halfhearted commitment. It’s the power of God to continually save and deliver His children from every demonic attack the Devil can devise. This is the foundation that must be laid, if we are going to know where our power comes from and the type of heart attitude we need to function in, as a God sends us into battle. The reason for this is to deliver us and others from certain types of deceptions that the Devil has laid on God’s children and those who yet haven’t accepted Jesus. We will now discuss what these conditions represent and what we were sent to do.

The word bind is chabash: meaning, to heal, govern, and rule or to take control. We said that up means that, God is influencing us and we are being empowered by Him. We are being empowered by Him to bind by taking control of these situations in His strength. The word brokenhearted is two words. Leb: meaning, our heart or will and intellect, where the center of our being exists and it also means that, we need to have a willing spirit to seek God for His wisdom. The second word for brokenhearted is shabar: meaning, to observe carefully, be patient and to be giving birth to a God given vision.

Scripture tells us that as our soul prospers, (which is our intellect, will and emotions), we will live in health and be whole. Scripture also tells us to guard our hearts where the issues of life are formed. All this binding has to be led by the Holy Spirits anointing operating in our lives with His words being spoken in us. We must have a fellow feeling and have patient love operating in our heart and doing it God’s way if, a change is to take place.

As we meditate on the meaning of this, we can see that this is not some instant prayer for deliverance, but a way of life and attitude. It takes time to observe, be patient and give birth to something. A physical baby takes nine months to be born. We have to be seeking with a concentrated effort a higher wisdom than our own and this is an attitude we need to be living in day after day. This Christian walk becomes very simple when it is taught with sound-minded concepts and being sought after with all our resolve.

The word proclaim is gara: meaning, to publish, call to, invite and to meet accidentally or in a hostile manner. The word liberty is derowr: meaning, to move rapidly and to be set free with a spontaneous overflow.

We’re not to do this by our own planning by formalizing it in our own minds but by a natural instinct from a sudden impulse and unction given by the Holy Spirit from with in us. We must have our spiritual senses alert and active if this is to take place. The word captive is shebiy: meaning, a prisoner, something taken, subdivisions, streamers, or a split into tongues. If we are going to function and stand in the gap for God, we must come prayed and grown up to do spiritual battle in our every day encounters with people, who are living as a prisoner in their thought life. Our main battle is in our minds because, of our ignorance of the word of God.

We are to do this as we are going about our every day activities in the market places of life. We are not talking only about church service and Wednesday night bible class. I would hope that we would not find a hostile environment in our church assemblies even though I have seen hostility and division within congregations of believers. We are talking about God’s kids so full of the Spirit of God that they have the boldness to size up a situation wherever they find themselves and know how to speak a word of wisdom to those who are being brought into captivity from the Devils devices in the market places of life. Jesus when He was on the earth was always ready to encounter sickness and demonic activity everywhere He went.

Now this definition of the word captive is very enlightening and profound in its meaning. Let’s talk about the Devils way of trying to capture us to do his will. From the meaning of captive, it’s obvious that the Devil wants to put division between God and His body and between each one of us. It says subdivisions meaning, one division built upon another. We have denominations teaching so many different doctrines, that sometimes I think when Jesus comes back to earth we are going to divide Him into pieces and take only the teaching they we agree with from Him. God’s army of believers are scattered in different camps and unless we learn to follow our Commander and Chief Jesus Christ in unison, we will stay a ragtime army with no cooperative and common vision.

The body of Christ is broken into pieces and split into many tongues meaning peoples. Isaiah 59:19 states that, “When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him.” This standard is in God’s strength, with a cheerful heart, which gives us great success. This word standard is nuwe: meaning, flit, vanish or to flight. The standard we raise up makes the Devils deceptions pass lightly and quickly. This has to be our proclamation when God puts us in places to raise up a standard. If we do not understand our Fathers business there is no way God can use us to proclaim anything.

Another deception of the Devil besides putting up walls of deception within the body of Christ is to attack us through our un-dead flesh. This word streamer means a shaft of light. Ephesians 6:16 says, “above all take up the shield of faith and then we will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.”

The word fiery is puroo: meaning, to glow, be inflamed or fire. The word dart is buwth:/bayth: meaning night, house or place of habitation. Scripture tells us that we are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit lives within us. Therefore, we can plainly see that the battle is within us. The Devils main tactic is to put doubt in the minds of the believer as to his potential in Christ. If we are ignorant and are not hungering and thirsting after God, our lack of wisdom of God’s ways keeps us living in spiritual darkness within ourselves. It’s as if we are trying to hide from God living in denial as His children. This condition absolutely keeps us powerless from God’s intended purposes of prospering us in our body, soul and spirit.

These darts of the Devil can attack at any given moment. It’s like losing your temper in a situation and letting your emotions rule you. We need to realize that our flesh has a will of its own. of its own. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians in 5:16 tells them “walk in the Spirit and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh.” It’s the Devils main purpose to give us a rush or a quick emotional rapture to satisfy our craving appetites. When we are addicted to our own fleshly appetites, that is an extreme bondage and we really are not living in the freedom that God intended to explore our relationship with Him.

Not only can we be addicted to sinful pleasure or lack of discipline but also, the Devil will influence us with raptures that are counterfeit spiritual type emotional experiences that have no power to crucify our flesh, but only enslaves us more in us doing our own thing. He tries to mislead us in our worship of God, where we are worshipping Him through our emotions and not from the core of Holy Spirit worship from within. within.

When we became born again believers our spirit became energized and we now have the capability to walk in the spirit. Our flesh was not saved or delivered. It’s only as we in God’s strength fight and put down these fleshly cravings that, we can walk in freedom in the Lord. If there is no hunger and thirsting with passion in our seeking of God’s nature then, you can forget about walking in freedom in the Holy Spirit.

As a man builds a house, you start with the foundation and its takes awhile of committed effort until you can put the roof on. We are in a battle of staying free or being captured by the Devil in any area because of our ignorance of God’s ways of thinking.

As we begin to define this, let’s realize that the Devil may already have us and others in a prison and already bound up in some area. You can’t be set free unless you allow the Holy Spirit to check you out to see if you are bound up within yourself. We see here that a prison has to be opened meaning you have to see the bondage before you can deal with it.

The word opened in the Hebrew is paqach: meaning, to open ones eyes, become observant and saved or delivered from bondage, which is causing us to lose our inheritance from God. The word them is nephesh: meaning, the soul of man, the mind, will and emotions of where the issues of life are formed and acted upon. This is where the devil attacks and puts people in prison.

The word bound is acar: meaning, yoked, married or becoming a servant to a slave master. We are held fast and are tied to attitudes and actions contrary to God’s will. We must allow the Holy Spirit by giving Him permission to inform us where we have missed God because; we cannot see these bondages with our own thinking and education. These are areas of being crippled in our being which has been put there because, of our ignorance of not knowing how to defend ourselves from demonic influences.

Just as Adam and Eve were deceived in the Garden of Eden to disobey God‘s ways, which made them receive a fallen shame, based nature and robbed them of God’s inheritance and His perfect will for their lives. I am convinced over the years of talking to many saved and unsaved people that, this warfare of God and Satan vying for control of God’s kids and the universe that God created is not being taken very seriously. The Christian church is not doing the spiritual battle in seeking the Lord in prayer and the dedication with intensity of a soldier in Christ’s service. Walking with the Lord is an extreme pleasure of life and easy when you are taught the laws of His kingdom and not denominational beliefs.

In John 8:31-32 Jesus talking to His disciples said, “if you are really my disciples you will be seeking the truth and it will constantly and continually be setting you free.” We really need to understand that once we are born again believers that, we need to grow up and be set free from our own fleshly thinking that we inherited from Adam and Eves fallen nature. Let me ask you a simple question. How much time do you spend with intensity seeking a continual dialogue with the Holy Spirit daily and allowing Him to point out those areas where the Devil is trying to deceive you from receiving all of your inheritance from God? Do you have an intense passion of daily meditating on God’s word and loving every minute of it? Is it something that totally dominates your life and something you have found that you cannot live without? It’s only God’s truth as the Holy Spirit reveals it to us that will make us free from demonic ideas in our thinking. These influences have to be caught and captured in our minds so that; they will not be turned into actions against ourselves and others. really my disciples you will be seeking the truth and it will constantly and continually be setting you free.” We really need to understand that once we are born again believers that, we need to grow up and be set free from our own fleshly thinking that we inherited from Adam and Eves fallen nature. Let me ask you a simple question. How much time do you spend with intensity seeking a continual dialogue with the Holy Spirit daily and allowing Him to point out those areas where the Devil is trying to deceive you from receiving all of your inheritance from God? Do you have an intense passion of daily meditating on God’s word and loving every minute of it? Is it something that totally dominates your life and something you have found that you cannot live without? It’s only God’s truth as the Holy Spirit reveals it to us that will make us free from demonic ideas in our thinking. These influences have to be caught and captured in our minds so that; they will not be turned into actions against ourselves and others.

We said earlier that proclaim means, we are to publish, call to, invite and to meet accidentally or in a hostile manner. The word acceptable is ratsown: meaning, voluntarily, with delight and our affections set upon this call because of a debt owed by us. The word year is shanah: meaning, a period of time, to speak or to duplicate. We see here a clear and marvelous example and a defined calling from the Lord to go and delight ourselves with a message of,

This calling on our lives is a vision that God wants to give us of, a great purpose that we can accomplish in His strength. This is a far cry of living a mindset of always struggling to not sin and checking ourselves out to see if, we are living in a life style contrary to God’s ways, just waiting for God to punish us. It’s so important for us to start knowing God as a total loving Father who is giving us a vision of confidence and total acceptance to do the same works that Jesus His first Son did before us.

Isaiah 49: 8-10 gives us a perfect example of a loving God that understands our struggles of life. He tells The Prophet Isaiah. “In an acceptable and favorable time meaning, God with great enthusiasm, delights and has great affection for us. I have heard your prayer and I am answering and preserving you because, I have made a permanent covenant with you, to raise you up among un-affectionate and ignorant people and I am restoring the ruin. I say to you, who are bound come forth; and to you, who are in and to you, who are in spiritual darkness, show yourselves by being honest about your hearts condition and come into the light and walk in righteousness. This will happen as you understand (My Unconditional LoveUnconditional Love) for you. I will feed you in all your daily travels where there will be an abundance of grassy hills with no deserts. You will not be hungry or thirsty. Neither will you be fooled by mirages in a desert. I will have mercy on you and I will guide your lives.” It’s my prayer for you who are reading this that; you will take this as a promise from God for your life.

This verse goes on to say, the day of vengeance of the Lord.. The word day is yowm: meaning, full of life, always or ceaselessly with passion. The word vengeance is naqam: meaning, to quarrel or punish. Now to many of you that will be reading this, you may come to the conclusion that, God is going to take His vengeance and displeasure out on you because, you are not living in total obedience to His will. The Holy Spirit is trying to tell us to put away this mistaken interpretation for if we judge ourselves like this, we will pass this same judgment on to the people we are trying to reach for Christ.

11Timothy 4:2 states, “we are to invite or share a message whether in an agreeable or hostile environment continually and with great enthusiasm” Now there can be no enthusiasm if we believe that, God is going to put vengeance on us. Now if it’s not true that God wants to put vengeance on us how do we co-operate with God in doing His bidding. Before we go on remember that vengeance gives us the connotation that it is with great force and violence. It also means to defend. Therefore, if it’s our intention to minister for the Lord and we don’t understand who our enemy is, we can cause great crippling harm to others and ourselves. So let’s define who our enemy is.

Ephesians 6:12 tells us that, “we are not having fights with physical opponents on a human personal level. But against master spirits who are the world rulers of this present Dark Age and against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) sphere.” As long as we continue to function in our own fleshly ideas and in our own understanding of people’s attitudes and behavior, strife will continue to win out in all of our relationships and walls of prejudice and ought will continue to take place. If we are being admonished in our church settings that God is trying to whip us up into shape with us hearing that God is going to take His vengeance out on us then, this is the same attitude we put on others.

Now if we want to be about our Fathers business with this attitude, there is no anointing on our words and the people we are trying to reach go deeper into their denial life styles and never confess their need to change and grow in Christ.

How are people to come into the light as Jesus is the light, when their told that only a regimented cleaning up of their act will be acceptable by God. The real bondage’s that people live in is the spirit of living by religious laws and regulations laws and regulations. God only instituted laws so that people could recognize that they could not keep them in their own efforts. Once you acknowledge the lack and confess your need for God. It’s only then that we allow Him to give us His mercy and grace to deliver us of those areas where the Devil has control over our lives. This is how our souls are anchored to continually receive God’s mercy, which is the power we need to hunger after Him. Now if you have been brought up to believe that God takes vengeance out on His children. You can’t be going about God’s business because, that’s not His nature.

In Luke 10:19 Jesus makes it perfectly clear where our focus needs to be. He says this to His disciples “I have given you power to trample upon serpents, scorpions and over all the power that the enemy possesses and nothing in any way shall harm you.” This word scorpion in the Greek represents a sly cunning malicious person, meaning Satan. As long as Satan keeps us focused on behavior in our lives.

He can hide in the shadows and continually cause strife, which is His main weapon.

James 3:16 tells us that, “where there is envy and strife there is confusion and every evil work.” One of many examples that I could use in the bible of people who loved God and were trying to follow Him, but had not yet understood whom the enemy is can be found in Luke 9:53-56. Jesus in His travels with His Apostles came to a Samaritan village and the people did not accept Jesus with the grandeur that the Apostle felt appropriate. When James and John observed this, they said, “Lord do you wish us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, as Elijah the Prophet did in the Old Testament.” Jesus turned reprimanded them and explained His disapproval of this statement. He said “Don’t you realize the sort of spirit operating in you to make that kind of statement. I didn’t come to destroy men’s lives, (or take revenge) but to save them from the penalty of eternal judgment.”

I find this bit of Scripture very revealing. First, we see that these Apostles were deceived as how God’s deals with people. They were following the Lord and trying to live the Christian life, yet still able to be deceived. We see here that they wanted to bring vengeance on these people. This was their flesh talking in their ignorance. In spite of this, they received their reprimand, received God’s revelation knowledge of the truth and went on to be all that God intended them to be as His children. Another interesting thing is, they knew that they had the power to call fire down from heaven with out any doubt. We in the body of Christ don’t even recognize yet the power we have to do the works of Jesus on the earth. WHY? We’re to busy playing church.

It’s only as we know with passion and are being prompted by the Holy Spirit from within that will give us the determination and ability of know how to bind the powers of the Devil that have kept people missing God’s perfect will from operating in their lives. People are not our enemies. enemies. It’s the ignorance and bondage’s that we live in because of our lack of knowing a loving God who gave His life on a cross for our freedom. I am talking about saved and unsaved people alike. Just because we are born again believers that does not give us some high-minded liberty that we have God in a box and have some kind of freedom to point fingers and give the appearance that we have arrived.

The last statement in this verse is, we are to comfort all that mourn: The word comfort is nacham: meaning, to breathe strongly, have pity, repent and have sorrow. The word mourn is abel: meaning, to express sorrow. Hebrews 4:15-16 says, “ for we have a High Priest who is able to understand and sympathize and has a fellow feeling with our, lack of strength, character flaws and things holding us back because, we are being challenged in our minds with wrong desires.

This is the key to all callings on our lives if we are really going to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the power that ties the body of Christ together. For the one who comes to minister in the name of the Lord has to be in agreement with the one to be comforted because,

Ministering in the name of the Lord is not some collar you wear or some choir robe you put on or wave some incense as an act of worship in a church service. The word empathetic means, to identify yourself and experience the sensations and emotions or thoughts of the one who is in mourning. I say this for myself first when I say, “ thank you Lord for your total loving kindness and mercy in having such patience with your children when, we in our childish attempts, come in your name with such a lack of commitment and humility in total abandonment to you and only you in carry out your wishes.”

To walk and function with this kind of empathy you have to constantly be drinking and eating at the table of the Lord. It might be those early morning risings being prompted by the Holy Spirit to come away from our daily chores of life. It may be times when you’re watching a great football game on the tube and the Holy Spirit passes by and says I need to talk to you about an encounter you’re going to have with someone. You will find at times that, the Lord will lay someone on your heart, you may know them or not. However, some where down the road, you cross their path and God says give them the word I gave you for them.

We need to understand that if we knew the whole bible and we were not in touch with the leading’s of the Holy Spirit, we wouldn’t know what word was needed for situations for ourselves or for others. Romans 13:14 tells us, “to put on or clothe ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and make no room to gratify our flesh.” Meaning, (Don’t put your physical desires before the pleadings of the Holy Spirit.) For me to say as I have heard many times from others teachers, we need to come in the name of the Lord prayed up, would be an under statement. Why? I don’t believe we fully understand the meaning of coming prayed up.

There are too many in the body of Christ that are crisis Christians. They only put Jesus on when there is a crisis in their lives. This should not be so. What a waste of effort and the precious life that God has given us to take the Lord of Glory so lightly. It’s with a feeling of wanting to help that I plead with you who are reading this that, you allow the Holy Spirit to search your heart and see if you have been deceived by the Devil to squander your calling on frivolous endeavors that, have no eternal consequences in God’s plans. We all are under the Devil’s constant attack. It’s my prayer that you can see the commitment that it is going to take to walk as God’s ambassadors. It’s not as difficult as we have been led to believe. All you have to do is make a decision to be hooked on Jesus. He will never let you down. Jesus. He will never let you down.