I also said those who choose to. I am sorry to say that, there will be many in the body of Christ that will make heaven their home for eternity. However, they will go to heaven as cripples because, they never totally committed themselves in making Jesus the Lord over their lives. The problem is we haven’t understood how it’s supposed to happen. He says the way to do this is by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. We must confess God’s understanding of being righteous and not our own understanding of it. This very concept is a matter of life or death to the believer. We said where there is no shedding of blood; there can be no forgiveness for sin.

We talked about how we are to participate in the blood that Jesus shed on the cross for our sin and how we need a continual washing of His blood by seeking the Holy Spirit. We do this by seeking His counsel so we can continually function with God’s thinking and not lean towards our own understanding. Now let’s reason together. How can a co-dependent really have a testimony that is alive and functioning in their lives with power as we stated earlier when, they are living in denial and lying to themselves because, they haven’t realized that they’re falling short of a total brokenness and commitment before God. Therefore, they miss the relationship they should be having with God who is their Heavenly Father.

It also says that, as a Christian who is growing, they will make a willful decision to surrender their lives for the sake of others, just as Jesus gave up His life on the cross for us. How does a baby Christian understand anything like this? So without a testimony or healthy life experiences with the Holy Spirit, what do they know about giving, when babes are takers not givers. How can we have rejoicing when we are having no victory?

It says, if you are in the young men and women stage or independent phase of your Christian walk you will be victorious over the Devil. We said a person could be many physical years in the Lord and still be a child inside because of a stunted growth being brought up from a dysfunctional family background and un-righteous thinking. This condition exists from an absentee fatherhood role modeling in the child’s stage of development and can continue in an environment of religious and legalistic codes of teaching.

If we are still a child inside that has not learned about ourselves, no matter what physical age that we are in, their is no victory over the works of the Devil in any form. In fact, a person in this condition doesn’t even realize the tactics of the Devil and has fallen prey to every evil abomination that the Devil may want to inflict upon themselves and upon the planet. These verses in Rev.10-12 are stating this by John the Apostle as he says, “the Devil has come down to accuse and destroy not only God’s kids but also every person on the planet.”

In 1Peter 5:8 it says, “Be well balanced and live in self-control. Be sober and sound minded or be rational in your thinking. Be alert and watchful for danger at all times, for that enemy of yours the Devil, roams around like a lion (in a fierce hunger) seeking someone to seize upon and devour.” If we put the Devil in a physical form and he decided to go after one of our children. Unless we were watchful and grown up enough in ourselves to protect them, what chance would they or us have. You’ve seen National Geographic I presume, how they show the lions going after the calves and sickly wildebeests and killing them for food. When are we going to come to grips that this Christian life that Jesus gave us is not something to be abused and taken lightly because of our own pleasures of life and our own comfort zones????????

We see here that if we are still children, a child does not know about self-control and rational thinking that this scripture says we must have to overcome the Devil’s devices. If we consider ourselves to be adults and grown spiritual Christians, we need to be looking after the young ones to see that, they don’t fall back from receiving God’s grace, favor and love, by straying from the truth or not knowing it. We need to raise the children and encourage the young. These are the ones that are becoming independent and finding their identity. There is a difference between raising and encouraging. You teach kingdom principles to the babies and inspire the young to go out a practice what they have been already taught. You only learn confidence by being in battle. You can’t encourage and send the children into battle they’re not ready. We are sending them to a certain death. This is one reason why we have so many crippled spiritual children in the kingdom of God. We get them saved and active to keep them so busy so they won’t backslide and go to hell.

You don’t beat the child and throw him out with the bath water. Beating people with the word is a dis-grace. Meaning an absents of the grace of God. 11 Peter 3:18 tells us that, “we need to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As I said earlier, when we do not go through our healthy periods of messing our physical and spiritual diapers as we are being nurtured into the independent stage, it becomes much more difficult emotionally to grow up in our later years when we become aware that God wants to heal the child inside us. These are things that have been there for a long time because we have never dealt with them by having a lack of understanding. Remember it’s the child inside that he died for. The real us. The one that some how got lost in the religious preaching of your either a good or bad person that I have heard preached in so many born again churches. This as I have said, causes the body of Christ to regress and go deeper into themselves in denial, when they are infected with this type of legalistic atmosphere.

It is my observation through prayer, my own growing pains and interacting with other Christians that, God is heavily dealing with his people at this time. Me included, as I am a part of the family. I believe that there are some extraordinary trials going on in the body of Christ where God is coming on the scene to show His children what a great love that He has for them. I personally believe that the emotional pain that many of us are going through are late growing pains. And its my prayer that who ever is reading this that, there are older, wiser and loving Christians that are on the same page as God and really know what God is doing, so that you can be encouraged and not become amazed and condemned at the trial that we are all going through.

I have heard Pastors and Teachers over the years that have had a concept of sin and this includes myself at one time that, I believe has been distorted to the point, it is making it more difficult to reach the lost and help the saved ones. If we look at sin from the standpoint of rebellion and a flat out weapon that people use in their lives against God, we will do more judging and condemning then, loving the people who are addicted to it in its many forms. I have described sin from the Hebrew and Greek as erring; missing Gods perfect will and not receiving or using Gods allotment or inheritance that He has given us. We need to look at sin as a sickness or a cancer to the soul. Medical science is still trying to find a medical cure for physical cancer. They’re not euthanizing cancer patients. However, through surgery and chemotherapy and diet they are doing all they can to save people. Why don’t we treat the people with the decease of sin with the same loving care?

Now scripture tells us that, “the just or born again believer should live by faith. It says, faith is walking in obedience to every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God for our life.” I agree. I have also heard from pulpits that we cannot live by our feelings. I also agree. However, we have forgotten to preach that we have to get in touch with our feelings, not live in denial, and stop lying to ourselves. If we ignore our feelings, how do we go to God and have Him reveal to us those areas of pain when we cannot define the meanings of them? We said in part one that a healthy independent person doesn’t put judgments on himself or his feelings in any form. Our feelings are part of the make up of our being. God loves all of us all of the time in whatever condition we are in and He is with out ceasing trying to prove it to us. Feelings are great identifiers that God can use to get our attention in those areas that we need help. Our feelings are controlled by our thought lives. What are we meditating on in our lives, our ideas of health or God’s ideas of health?

Let’s name a few feelings so you can get in touch with yourself as you are growing. Now I am using my own experiences and many people that I have talked to over the years and basing my judgment on people in scripture that have gone through the same growing pains. We said that guilt is the main ingredient that God is trying to deliver us from. Co-dependents have guilt dominating their lives. We said guilt makes us unstable in our decision-making. Let’s remind ourselves that these growing pains are necessary feelings that take place in all of us. We said, we should not put judgments on these feeling as being good or bad. These are all normal feelings. Depending on where you are in your growing pains at times and in varying degrees, you need to have an intense hunger and wanting mercy from God and wanting appreciation from others.

At times, you will have a fear of not knowing the outcome of your trial of growth that God is taking you through. At times, you will become very weary in the length of time to get through this season of learning. It can be very difficult to give up control of your life because of the length of time you have been doing your own thing. The longer you have been doing your own thing the harder it is to surrender to God. We said that as you go through this process that we need to confess our faults one to another and pray one for another. In turn, we will continually be going through a healing and growing process of healthy relationships with God and each other.

A perfect example of a person attempting to grow up is found in the story of the prodigal son, which is found in Luke 15:11-32. The story is really about two sons. Both lived at home with their father until the younger son decided that he wanted to leave the nest and strike out on his own. Since his father loved both boys without conditions. The younger boy asked his father for his inheritance and because his father loved him, he gave him and his older brother their share at the same time. The older stayed at home where the younger boy struck out on his own to find his identity and meaning of life. Therefore, the boy came out from the physical watchful eye and counsel of his father’s voice and it says he wandered into a foreign land that he was not accustom to. This world that we live in is a foreign land and the bible says this is not our permanent home. We are kingdom people and we are to live in heavenly places with Christ Jesus now. It’s the spiritual world of the kingdom of God.

For us who are saved the kingdom of God is in us and we need to function under kingdom rules. There is a totally different interpretation of kingdom rules in comparison to what is being taught in the majority of our born again churches today. I will in an up coming article elaborate on the differences. However, for now let’s go on. The younger son in this process of searching for his own identity got involved with other people with different ideas then he had heard at home. After a period or season of time, there was a famine in the land. This word famine means, there became a lack of fulfillment in this boy’s life. Because of his poor decision-making, he squandered his inheritance given to him from his loving father and ended up in a pigpen or field eating the food of the pigs because of the addicted life style that he found himself in. This took place because; he created a self-imposed imprisonment within himself of living in denial..

In verse 15-16 it says he joined himself to a citizen of that country and the citizen sent him into his field to feed swine and he would fain or was (reluctantly willing) to fill his belly with the husks that the swine eat and no man was willing to help him. A pig will eat anything and does not discriminately watch what he eats. If we are going to grow strong and straight, we had better begin to care about ourselves and watch what comes in our ear and eye gate so we don’t plant seeds in our thought lives that produce co-dependency.

Let’s define some of these terms so we can interpret it correctly. Let’s look at this as a condition of our souls meaning, our thoughts and reasoning power that controls our feelings. This word fain in the Greek is epistamai: meaning to put your mind upon and be aquatinted with new ideas. The word belly is koilia: meaning, heart or womb or what the bible defines, where the issues of life come from. The word husks; is heras: meaning, in a dilemma of choosing between two different alternatives.

This is a process that, we all go through as we become free to make choices for ourselves without guilt. This is a painful process at times because it is delivering and changing us into the independent growth stage of our being. As this takes place in us, it brings us great hope and joy as we change. What Jesus was doing here was trying to make the people he was talking to realize and identify with their process of growing up.

There is no word in the bible, Greek or otherwise to define this term prodigal. This term prodigal is what the writers of the bible came up with, as a definition to use to define this parable and you will only find the word in the margin. This word prodigal doesn’t only mean that he squandered his money. It also means that, in this condition he squandered his time and the allotment of its proper use. Remember what we said sin was. It was erring and falling short of God’s perfect will and squandering our inheritance that He gave us when we were saved. This is what happens when we don’t have our priorities in order.

We know that Jesus gave examples in parables and we, as Christians need to use the spiritual ears that God gave us to understand the meaning of what He meant hear. This son was going through the normal process of learning how to define what his loving father was telling him and trying to use his own reasoning on how to start thinking for himself. He was feeding on wordily concepts and these concepts were coming into conflict of what his father had told him. In turn, he was torn between two different alternatives. The bible says that by us going through this process, we will be fighting the good fight of faith. If we’re supposed to fight, then that means we’re going to have conflict. We need to stop judging this process from an outward appearance of right or wrong and realize that it’s all part of us learning to grow up.

It doesn’t matter how much church you attend or how much bible you read or how much prayer in seeking God. We still are going to miss God at times, be stretched and at times perplexed. This was God’s intention from the beginning. Somewhere in the process of preaching we lost the vision and purposes of God, as if we are living in some vacuum of none or wrong feelings. It’s always the feel goods and all we hear is someday we will receive if we continue to believe. It becomes an endless circle of playing in the playpens of life and some how hanging on until Jesus comes back. We have to stop using Novocain on our feelings and start getting real with ourselves and others.

The physical body hurts when something is wrong. It tells us something has to be fixed. How about our souls when it hurts. Let’s start loving the real person inside us. When are we going to come to the reality that, we are all prodigals in some areas of our lives and need the tender patience and loving affection of God and people around us? I have heard more preaching on condemning the prodigal, rather then giving him credit for him trying to grow up and challenging himself to make a difference for good in this world system of man. When we condemn and judge the prodigal, we condemn and judge the body of Christ. You wonder why there are so many walking wounded in the body of Christ today. Let me make a very important point before we go on.

Meditate on this statement for a while. This parable goes on to say, while this young son was going through his ordeal and struggling with the lack in his life, he started to come to his senses and started to remind himself of all that his father told him. His fathers ! (Loving words ) ! brought him back to the roots or seeds that his father planted in him when he was at home, safe and secure. As he meditated on this, he wrestled with great guilt because he felt unworthy to come back as his son and heir. He thought I will go back and ask him to make me a servant. In this process of thinking, he made a decision to come out from his condition of denial and deal with the immaturity that still kept him bound to his childish thinking and behavior. As he returned it says his father saw him from a far off and had compassion on him and hugged him around the neck and kissed him. He then told his father that he did not feel worthy to be his son because; he had sinned against heaven and in his sight. However, his father didn’t hear him and put a ring on his finger and gave him a new robe and shoes for his feet.

Let’s discuss the meaning of these words. This word robe in the Greek is stole: meaning a long robe that represents dignity. It also represents a supernatural strength and a power that enables and keeps us free from worldly entanglements. It’s our righteousness position in in Christ that we should be living in. The word shoe is hupodeo: meaning bound to or in submission and hidden. Scripture says we are to be hidden in Christ or our security must be in Christ. The ring he put on his finger represents a covenant of an eternal bound relationship that cannot be broken no matter what ever transpires between a father and son. The camaraderie might have been broken but the blood relationship could never be terminated..

At times as the Holy Spirit gives me the revelation of His thoughts, it makes me so thankful for God’s patience and mercy as He is absolutely unrelenting in pursuing every one of His lost sheep in their wanderings that are being caught up in the thickets and crevices of life. Like a shepherd watching His sheep and as a parent watching their children as they learn to crawl and walk in their physical lives. All of us in the body of Christ have to stay in a child like trust in God our Father‘s care.

I want to make an observation. You will notice that the older son got his inheritance from his father at the same time the younger did. It’s obvious that he did nothing with it. He became complacent because, when the younger brother returned and he saw, how his father lavished his affection and threw this big party for him, he got angry, lashed out at his father and said, “You never threw any party for me and I have been obedient, stayed at home, and never left your side.” His father’s answer was. “You could have always interacted with me and experienced this joyful relationship I am having with your younger brother. Why haven’t you interacted with Me and attempted like your brother to find the giftings and purpose of your life.”

Is it possible that there are many sitting in the pews of churches today going through playing church and because, they do not understand how to get in touch with themselves and have a passionate relationship with God, they are living in a more acute sense of denial then the throngs of Christians living out side the camp today? If you are finding it difficult at times understanding the will of God in your life and you feel that you’re failing in all areas. If you find that, you are dealing with a lot of anger at situations not going your way. I say too you, you are most blessed for God comes to help the ones that get in touch with their pain and begin to confess and cry out for help.

In Hebrews 5:13-14 Paul the Apostle writes, “every one who continues to feed on milk is obvious unskilled in the doctrine of righteousness. In turn, we cannot conform to God’s divine will in purpose, thought and action because we are mere infants, not able to talk yet. But solid food is for full-grown men, for those whose senses and mental faculties are trained by practice to recognize the difference between what is morally good and noble and what is evil and contrary either to divine law or human law.”

We see hear that if we are functioning as a young man or woman, are off the milk and are now able to eat meat, there is a condition that defines this stage. That being, we have to be skilled in this doctrine of righteousness. It says that our senses and mental faculties are trained by practice to discern between what is good and noble verses what is evil and against either God or man’s laws. To function in the concept of righteousness, we have to have the main ingredient, which gives us the powers of young men and women in the Lord.

The word of God has to be richly stored in our heart and we need to be meditated on it day and night.

This word discern is the spiritual awareness given to us by the Holy Spirit that energizes our being and we talk about it with great joy and with a firmness of belief. This means that, it’s on your mind and you can identify with the Holy Spirit talking to you. It’s a dimension called walking in the Spirit. 1 John 2:14 says, “you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, you are now able to overcome the wicked one.” Lets look at this word abides and see exactly what it means.

First of all what it does not mean is, having a data bank of scripture in your head that you whip out on every opportunity you get to show how knowledgeable you are in the word of God. This word abides in the Greek is meno: meaning, to stay in a relationship of expectancy or a prospect of a hope to come. It also means to tarry and continue to endure or to long for. This word tarry means to wait. In the Hebrew abides is chakah: meaning to adhere to or to be moved upon sharply or deeply, as with emotion or pain. It also means to penetrate as if seeing into and understanding a mystery.

Isaiah 40:31 reads like this using the Greek and Hebrew definitions we just defined. “When we wait or stay in a relationship of expectancy for God to open our eyes to new mysteries of His ways, there will be created in us a great passion, emotion and pain as we are changed into His likeness. In turn, we will be renewed like the eagle and be able to run and not be weary in our growing pains. We will walk and not faint.” As you can see here with only our logic, knowing the word of God is meaningless if, the relationship is not a living emotional oneness of God and us allowing Him to make us into a God-man like our brother Jesus as He walked the planet. If this is not happening in your life, don’t live in denial and a false concept of your walk with the Lord.

If you know anything about the eagle, every so often he goes into hibernation, sheds his feathers and beak, and gets new ones like a young eagle, which makes him soar higher over the earth. This is the example God gave Isaiah in this scripture. God intention is for us to constantly be renewed as His Children. This process and relationship must be going on with the Holy Spirit if we are to experience what Hebrews 5:13-14 is talking about when it says, “We will be able to conform to God in purpose, thought and action.”

As we become skilled in the doctrine of righteousness, we will know that God loves us with out conditions. out conditions. When we were sinners, He died for us and we did nothing to deserve His sacrifice. We need to continue to grow in this understanding or we will stay on the milk of the word and continue to live as babies.

This concept of righteousness and to become skilled at it is nothing more then letting God love us through a living relationship with the Holy Spirit daily. Man in his basic nature has no concept of what love is. Love to mans basic nature is Hollywood stories. When true love comes on the scene there is no strings attached to it. In reality only us allowing God to role model this love to us as we interact with Him, and us allowing Him to open the spiritual ears we received when we made Jesus our Savior is what transforms us like the eagle. This Christian relationship of us becoming a new creature in Christ started with a supernatural experience when Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit came into our lives. We are continuing daily to be changed into His likeness when, we participate in the on going miracle that took place the day we met Christ for the first time.

In Zechariah 4:1-6 we have a story of an encounter that Zechariah the Prophet had with an angel of the Lord. It says that, “the angel woke him up in the middle of the night and asked him what kind of a dream he was having in his sleep. He said he saw a lampstand of all gold filled with oil on the top and seven pipes and two olive trees. The angel asked him what do you believe this means. He said. “I don’t know.” The angel said. “This endless supply of oil that you see is the word of the Lord saying” “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” (The oil being a symbol of God’s Spirit.)

I am afraid, as Zechariah did not understand we don’t understand either. All the church preaching and laws of ifs and maybes. All the meetings and cavalcade of stars walking across the stages at our meetings, the patting on the backs of our great ministries and giftings, and numbering how many were saved last week. All of our tithing and giving for every cause under the sun and I could go on and on. In essence what is it going to take for us to be delivered from the flesh controlled business of preaching a gospel of self, so we can start to grow up to be a young man and woman in the Lord. Let’s define what I last underlined in this verse of what the angel told Zechariah.

This word might in the Hebrew is chayil: meaning a force, ether of men or God. It represents strength, activities and a host of power. It also means chiyl: meaning to twist and whirl, to dance to bring forth or to travail in childbirth, to be wounded and tarry. The word power in the Hebrew is kowach: meaning to be firm in a good or bad sense. It also means the possibility of producing chameleon people verses people who have a strength and wealth in the Lord. How more plane can God make it that, anything done in our flesh can have the appearance of Godliness but what we are producing are children of co-dependency. I said earlier that, co-dependent people are chameleons because they have no identity and just follow the crowd.

We need to be growing into young men and woman and really walking in a healthy understanding of God’s love and know our true identity in Him. If not, we are producing crippled children and the cycle continues to go on. Like a curse being passed down from one generation to another. We are supposed to be producing God-man not chameleons.

As we become passionate in our commitment to the Lord and become an independent young person in our relationship with the Holy Spirit, our testimony will be what is stated in Isaiah chapter 50:4. It says, “The Lord has given me the tongue of a disciple and of those who are taught, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. Every morning when I wake up God’s voice stirs in my spirit and I recognize that I am His disciple and He continues to give me insights into Himself and He teaches me His way of thinking.” Every morning when I wake up God’s voice stirs in my spirit and I recognize that I am His disciple and He continues to give me insights into Himself and He teaches me His way of thinking.”

We have to not only be skilled in this doctrine of righteousness in our thinking but, we have to be participate with the living entity of Christ‘s life that became one with our being when we were saved. This life of righteousness has to be fed by the Holy Spirit and we need to be taking our daily spiritual bath by being washed from the contamination of a continual bombardment of conditional love themes from the world and I am sorry to say from the church of Jesus Christ. Righteousness is the doctrine that was engrafted into our spirit the day we had our first supernatural encounter with Christ.

We said earlier that when Adam sinned by eating from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It wasn’t eating from the tree that caused the problem; it was the new equation and entity of life that came into his being. This was a demonic influence. His eyes were open and he began to reason in his mind mind in a right and wrong concept of does and don’ts. This became his standard in judging morality in his life. God never intended for this condition to exist. Before he sinned, Adam was always thinking in God’s thoughts of righteousness and total acceptance. Adam and Eve saw themselves with no shame and guilt in their relationship with God. They were totally naked in body and soul before Him.

We are attacked by the devil with the same tactics he used on Adam and Eve today. We are still constantly living in the world system that is controlled by demonic forces. It’s the Devils main focus to do all he can to continually distort and make us live in the concept of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as Adam did. If we are going to come out of childhood to become young ones who will overcome the Devil, we must be living in this relationship with the Holy Spirit as Adam and Eve did before they were deceived or, it’s impossible to mature. All the church going and what ever is meaningless unless we have this on going relationship with God. You who are reading this ask yourself this question. What are you producing in you family or churches, God-men and women or co-dependents and chameleons??

Let’s talk about the difference between the attitudes of God-men and women verses a chameleon. The way we become young people who are overcoming the Devil is us realizing that, this whole process which I have stated in many ways is us allowing God to work in our hearts and minds and change us because, unless we change and see our potential in Him, there can be no growth. So this whole concept of growing rests in us being chastised by our Heavenly Father in heaven because, we are His children. This is the basic process and core of growing.

Hebrews 12:6-11 says this, I will paraphrase it. “The Lord corrects and disciplines every one whom He loves and scourges every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart. You must submit to and endure correction. God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not train and correct. Now if you do not subject yourself and come under God’s rule of correction and are left without it in which all of God’s children share, then you are illegitimate off spring and not a true son. Our earthly fathers discipline us for a short time on what they thought was proper to them. In turn, our Heavenly Father disciplines us so that we can share in His own holiness and the legacy he has for us.

Holiness meaning, God sees us as pure and blameless in His sight. We have to come to participate in this process and see ourselves the same way He sees us.

“For a time discipline is painful and not joyous but after, it will yield the product of righteousness and it will cause us to conform to God’s will in purpose, thought and action.” Remember we said to function as a young person we have to be participating, and yielding to this doctrine of righteousness.

Not with legalistic judgments and being brought up in homes of dysfunctional fatherhood roles. This meaning, we are being beaten into submission because we will not measure up to a standard or submit to the ones in authority on their timetables or whims. Just recently on the news a father holding a one year old was caught on camera beating his infant because, he would not stop crying. I hope you get my point. Because of all this type of child raising in homes and church settings, it has given a bad example to many people that God our Father is some kind of taskmaster just waiting to inflict physical and emotional pain on His children. This is so far from the truth that at times I get upset having to talk about corrections that have to take place, because it side tracks me from talking about the love that God has for all of us. However, this is what chastisement is all about.

Being co-dependant for many years can cause people to live in a lot of remorse. In turn, because of this, one can feel that they have wasted years on false hope and it has caused too many Christians to give up on their walk with God. This happens because they have never been grounded in the word. Where there is no pure basic love motivated teaching, there is nothing but abuse. When this happens, there is no staying power in their life and they become offended and give up.

I believe it’s about time that for us that have been called into leadership by God to take some responsibility for the little ones and those that are still hidden within themselves and there are multitudes. We must realize that, chastisement is a safety net built by God. , chastisement is a safety net built by God. In turn, this guards and keeps us in His loving holding power under His shadow of protection, free to think clearly and equips us to deal with the cares of life properly. My prayer is that who ever is reading this, the love and mercy of God will give you a spiritual awareness that will transform your life.

It is so vital that we allow the Holy Spirit to be our teacher and expose those areas that have to be healed in there proper order so we can grow healthy and not become deformed in our understanding of the love of God.

If we consider ourselves to be God-men and women, then one of our main priorities will be, having a vision and a goal in our lives of going about our Heavenly Fathers business. Jesus call in His life on this planet is our example. As He told His parents when they thought, He was lost in the Synagogue. “I must be about my Fathers business.” Other outward manifestation of this the bible tells us is that, while your taking care of your daily needs on this planet you will be talking about the Lord in your daily conversation with family and the people you meet. You can’t help yourself because of the fresh revelation from the Holy Spirit that you’re getting is blowing your earthly mind as you and Him discuss and relate together. You become like a sieve oozing and enjoying what the bible defines as the oil of gladness.

Let’s talk a bit and define what takes place as we begin to define our identity as God sees us. We said that to begin to function as a young man or woman you have to find your identity and have the word of God richly stored in you heart. In reality, you begin to realize how much potential and importance you are to God. There is a growing thankfulness that begins to spring out of your being as you begin to realizing how much God is interested in what you have to say, and how much He values your opinion. There is a growing awareness that if you were the only man or woman on the planet, Jesus would have died for you alone on the cross, with all the millions of children that God has. Your begin to marvel at the hunger God has to reason with you and the care and the total undivided attention you get from Him as you are talking to Him. The revelation of these things cannot be absorbed through the mundane or worldly religious observances going on in many of our churches today.

You begin to realize that you are not an anybody going nowhere and that you to realize that you have a purpose, but even in spite of this, the relationship you’re having with Him is what you are really enjoying. There is a self worth that begins to grow and an appreciation with hunger to know Him better. It even takes time to believe this love relationship that God is showing you really exists between Him and yourself.

I hear in the voices of leadership a theme that says, individuality and private opinion in peoples seeking of God is a sign of rebellion. This is absolutely nonsense’s. We are not to leave our brains out side when we attend church services of any kind. You will find as you grow up in the Lord, that there is a commitment that challenges you to be sold out to Christ even if it means separating yourself from family, friends and possibly some brothers and sisters in the Lord.

You will find that as you grow your priorities will change in your life. The only thing that will cause us to want to change is enjoying His presence and fellowship. We become addicted to His loving presence as we continue to seek His face in every thing we do. You begin to guard your heart and walk softly knowing that He forgives every fault and mistake we make contrary to His will. As we grow into independent people, you will avoid strife in all of its many forms. In reality you find, the still small voice of the Holy Spirit within you begins to become more real and the only thing that you learn to trust. You learn to live by hearing and seeing God in all people and things. You trust the Spirit at work in you more than what any man tells you no matter what you hear. You will find that there will be many that will not have your vision at times. You perception of what is God and what He isn’t will become clearer and clearer.

Just to live in a growing stage of knowing God better is really, what life is all about. If God never gave His children anything of material value or ministry or any thing we could physically touch with our hands, just the privilege and the freedom to just have Him, as our friend is what counts. At times just walking with Him in silence and just being with Him is enough. Continued in part 3