The word for judgment in the Greek is krima: defined as, a decision for or against or a decree, which is an authoritative rule. The word for mercy is eleeo: defined as, a kind and compassionate behavior shown to an enemy or an offender or the power to show clemency or forgiveness. It is also is described as the grace of God, which is His unmerited favor. It is a free gift given by God and all you have to do is recognize it, to receive it.

In this chapter, we will attempt to define how these two traits, which are characteristics of God, work together in our lives and what effect it will have on our commitment to follow Jesus Christ. Unless we recognize God’s way of dealing with us as individuals, we will not know how to operate to our full potential in the Lord. In our decision-making, we reap the consequences whether for our profit or loss and there is no escape for anyone on what I call one of God’s main laws or decrees of life.

In 1Peter 4:14-17 Peter talks about suffering for Christ’s sake when He says, “If you suffer abuse for Christ’s sake you are to be envied because, you have Christ’s favor. Do not judge yourself by an external judgment and second-guess yourself or be double minded because, the Spirit of God is resting on you. God’s word and reasoning may be being spoken by the person you are trying to help, with blasphemy or falsely, but as far as you’re concerned, God is being glorified and raised up by you. Now it is o.k. to suffer for Christ’s sake, but you are not to suffer as a murderer, or thief, or any type of criminal or mischief-maker, infringing on other peoples rights.

Now if you are suffering as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but be thankful God that you are having the opportunity to suffer for His namesake. Now the time is at hand where, judgment will begin in the household of God. His judgment begins with us who are born again, yet we do not know what will be the end to those who do not believe the Gospel.” We see here that there are two types of judgment. There is a judgment that we can put on our selves in evaluating our own importance, or a judgment that can be put on us from God as we allow Him to do the evaluating.

The first type judgment is one we put on our selves which represents a second guessing mentality. This indicates a feeling of not being sure that what we are doing is correct in God’s sight and our motivation is through selfish ambitions. We live in a state of double-mindedness and we are constantly being influenced by outward circumstances and compromising our stand to meet the pressures of life. Our integrity standard is constantly changing from day to day because of the pressures of being accepted in the sight of man. When we function in our own ambitions, we actually murder, or steal and become a troublemaker by blaspheming the word of God. When we blaspheme, we do not represent the love, mercy and grace of God and we damage the other person who we are talking to in their Christian growth. When we proclaim God’s appraisal of a situation and it is received by the other party or parties, it will set the other person free to explore their relationship with God with more liberty. If it is not received, the other person will become offended and vent their displeasure on you.

In Matthew 13:21 it says, “When a person has no real root of God in their life, they hear the word, but because they don’t participate or meditate on it, it only lasts for a little while and when it comes into conflict with their false interpretation and learned behaviors in their believing system of life, they at once begin to stumble and get offended and fall away.” They get offended by what they are hearing from the word of God. They don’t not want to come to grips with there none committed life style in hungering after God, therefore we who are sharing the truth suffer the rejection and slander from the party we are trying to help. Now we need to define God’s judgment and decrees and by us knowing what they are, we will be able to speak them out of our mouths.

Isaiah chapter 50:4 says, “The servant of the Lord should be saying and living this type of life style. 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. God wakes me morning by morning; He wakens my ear to hear as His disciple and to be taught by! (Him)!” If we are participating in a very real relationship with the Holy Spirit and speaking out of our mouth what He is leading us to say, it is only then that we can proclaim God’s judgments on the earth, on our selves first and then others. With this type of relationship with the Holy Spirit that we entered into the day we were saved, we need to be careful what comes out of our mouth. Because what we confess, is what we will receive. Confess life get life. Confess death get death.

Unless we have God’s word stored in our memory and rooted in our heart the word cannot come out of our mouth. There is no in between living in self-judgment verses living in the life of the Spirit. Self-judgment is accomplished by us leaning to our own understanding. As we confess and call things in the world as God does, this will bring us the same results Jesus had when He walked the earth. As He is so are we to be.

An example of this is the encounter Peter the Apostle had with Jesus in Matt.16:13-19. Jesus was talking to Peter and He asked him, “Who do you think I am” Peter’s answer was “You are the Christ the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him “Peter you are most blessed because you received this revelation of knowledge from my Father in heaven and not through your own thinking. Because you are now receiving revelation knowledge, I can now allow you to participate with me in the building up of my church and the powers of hell will not be able to hold out against you. I can know give you the keys of the kingdom. What ever you bind, that is declare improper and unlawful on earth must be already bound in heaven, and what ever you loose on earth, declare lawful must be what is already loosed in heaven.”

You will notice that Jesus said with revelation knowledge, no powers of hell can win out against the church because; we have the power to bind and loose. You must understand that, this scripture says that we have to come into agreement with God because what we say has already been loosed or bound from the beginning of time and God’s decrees have already been set in motion in heaven. Unless we know God’s decrees, we cannot speak loosening and binding statements and declare God’s edicts on this planet. I need to stress that, the church cannot make up God’s decrees and expect them to work in building His kingdom. A simple example would be us building a house. In the process, you may need a twenty-four foot ladder to do the job. Instead of getting the ladder, you get a bunch of wooden boxes and pile them on top of each other so you can get the height you need. Well you are just looking for an accident to happen. The church is supposed to be building God’s Kingdom His way.

The word for church in the Greek is ek- klesia meaning a calling out, an assembling or a community of saints on earth or in heaven. The prefix of this word is ek, meaning the point or origin where motion or action begins. Only born again people can get in touch with the point of origin where all action begins. Peter’s origin and point of action came from God the Father Himself, not from some self-made religious philosophy made up by man. We need to constantly be reminded that, we who are born again believers must continue to get divine revelation from the Holy Spirit and not lean to our own understanding in our seeking after God. Unless we understand God’s authoritative rule and stay committed and focused on God’s heavenly purposes, our works for the kingdom will be wasted and we will be building in vain and according to our own purposes. Therefore, our judgments and statements have to be God’s judgments already set in heaven from the beginning of time.

My entire focus on writing is to be as informative and direct on exposing to hungry people the true interpretation of God’s love and His personal opinion on all matters. In my communication with different people over the years, my greatest concern is for the born again people that I encounter in my daily travels, who love the Lord. Many of them have been saved for years yet, they have no clue as to what it means to walk in the revelation knowledge of God through the Holy Spirit. They either have no vision of God’s ordained purposes for their lives and if they have a vision, they have no experiential knowledge of what God thinks and how He feels.

As I study scripture and meditate on it, I see a continual theme of deception that the Devil perpetrates on human beings. To the born again believer this deception is more difficult to be delivered from then the none saved. I perceive that as a born again believer, there is a perception that once we are saved we have arrived. Our attitude becomes, it is time to do the best we can, work hard to pay our bills, make something of our selves, attend church, pay our tithe, etc. There is an attitude of everything is o.k. I can stay afloat. It appears like a departmentized life style of; this is the show that must go on. Every thing in its place yet nothing is umbilical cord connected to the Holy Spirit.

In place of passion, we have hype. In place of anointing, we have emotion. In place of revelation and new vibrant life, we have an old familiar complacent attitude. It is a statement saying, “We have been serving God like this for hundreds of years”

The scripture that we have been using says, “God judgment will first begin in His house.” We who are His children are His household. I know we have to win the world to Christ. However, what about His children, we who are born again that have to grow in the Grace and Knowledge of our Heavenly Father? What do we do, ignore our responsibility and our decree given to us by God to mature in Christ? What kind of love and passion can a Christian have for God if he or she is not a God seeker and a word mediator by day and night? The one who is being awakened by God early in the morning, so He can share His thoughts of the day with them.

In 11Cor.3:10-18 Paul gives an example of this reoccurring theme that goes through out the bible and shows us how we can become vulnerable and deceived. He compares the Old Testament decrees against our newfound covenant decrees in Christ. He states, man came to recognize God’s decrees by knowing the Ten Commandments, given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Once these people knew God’s commandments or decrees, the only way for them to have their sins forgiven was by the sacrificing of animals once a year by Priests who stood at the altar as a mediator between God and man for their sins.

When Moses was on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, God’s glory was so bright, that when he came off the mountain, he had to put a veil over his face because, the people could not handle the light and glory of God that was on him. Paul says, if the Old Testament decree had such power and splendor, it now has become obsolete because, Jesus has now become the mediator between God and man. If we are walking in the Spirit of God as He intended, there is an awareness of a splendor of intimacy with God that transcends Moses experience and we have much more liberty and freedom in Christ then Moses, because, he had to hide God’s splendor back with a veil over his face from the people. The reason Moses could not show them the countenance of God, which was on his face, was because their minds had grown calloused. They had become dull minded and had lost the power of understanding. To this day when these people here the gospel read to them, they still have a veil over there hearts and minds and have not come to realize that Jesus is the sacrifice not animals for taking away our sins. Moreover, He is the one through the Holy Spirit that now speaks to us with an inner voice, telling us what His thoughts and purposes are for our lives. This original condition of callousness that existed back then, pertained to the Israelite people.

He goes on to say, when a person in this condition repents and turns toward Jesus Christ as being the Son of God. This veil of not understanding God’s decree is lifted off their hearts and mind. When we give the Holy Spirit full reign in our lives and allow Him to search our hearts and expose those things that hinder our relationship, we can only then experience complete liberty and freedom. As this freedom grows, more and more of this veil keeps coming off. This makes us become transfigured into God’s glory, but this can only happen because we allow God’s Spirit to weave His thoughts through our minds constantly by living in His presence.

Now this is the deception. Non-saved people have this veil over their minds because they have no idea of the spiritual dimension. Therefore, unless they become born again people, which make them see the spiritual dimension, they will be forever blind to the truth of Jesus and having Him become the center of their lives. This is the Devil’s intent to keep them in darkness to the truth by keeping a veil over their spiritual perception so they cannot behold God’s glory.

Now this is what’s baffling and sad. When born again believers do not hunger and thirst after a relationship with God. Even though, they are born again, their hearts become callous and they become dull of hearing in spite of the fact that they have the Holy Spirit living in them. A born again believer with a veil over his spiritual perception, nothing can be more grievous or pathetic?

I personally have family and friends that I have tried to encourage and never given up on to this day. I finally have come to recognize that, there comes a time when, you as a born again Christian can live estranged from a vibrant healthy relationship with the Holy Spirit. You can still make heaven your home but, there comes a time because of a lack of total commitment to God, you fall between the cracks and never operate in your total inheritance from God. I personally find it very difficult to let go of people like this but, it needs to happen because, you have to go on and have fellowship with born again believers that have an insatiable appetite for more of God.

Now I said all this to point out the seriousness of this condition that now exists with in the born again community. This is what God is dealing with when scripture says, “God judgment will first begin in His house.” We who are His children are His household. If there has been a secret or any thing hidden from the born again community because of a veil over their mind it’s that, God is trying to reveal to His children to REPENT for the days are evil. We have to change our thinking and allow God to show us His mercy and grace. This veil only becomes thicker over the years because the body of Christ has become lazy in their pursuit of righteousness.

In some circles, our righteousness is not even being preached. We end up with a form of Godliness but no power to back it up. We are missing God’s best because, we will not become a sold out God seeker. It has become a statues quo of playing a game of church attendants with no independent thinking. An attitude that says, “I am just a follower and want to go with the crowd.”

Scripture tells me that if we have Godly wisdom working with in us. We will be having a hungering for God and an intense desire to listen to the Holy Spirit and have Him check us out to see if we are violating some of God’s decrees. Without us really knowing the Holy Spirit and being His personal friend, we have no standard to filter truth through and in turn, we who are born again believers are being seduced and becoming as sheep being led to be slaughtered.

Scripture says, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The first person we have to accept who comes in the name of the Lord is the Holy Spirit. He is our teacher and comforter. If you cannot recognize Him in your thought life and know that inner voice, you end up being a follower of any body. Why would anybody want to put their destiny in the hands of another man or woman? Isn’t where we spend eternity and how much of God’s favor we are receiving while we are on the earth, something to concern ourselves about? If we don’t love ourselves enough to put that as a first priority in our life, I say we were failing miserably. I have met scores of people who have such a low self-esteem that, they do not know the value of the life God has given them.

We are describing a condition that exists in the hearts of saved and unsaved people. There is a spiritual warfare that exists to blind the hearts of God’s creation to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not a living person on the planet that is not being affected by this deception. Some people I talk to have no awareness of what is going on. Some know they are having some problems but cannot identify them. Unless we confess and acknowledge to God that there are things going on in our lives where we have a lack of peace and we are searching for the answers, it could happen that we could be the one falling between the cracks and never reach our potential in Christ. From scripture, we have just described what God is saying in His judgment or decree on His evaluation of man’s dilemmas. You can see here that God’s judgments are not a fire and brimstone teachings, but reasoning and probing of asking you to allow Him to search your heart.

David the King was known to be a man after God’s own heart. Forty years ago when I first read that, I said that is what I want. I said, “God what type of attitude do I need, to be like David.” I found my answer in Psalms 139:23-24 David says, “Search me thoroughly, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way of being strong for ever.”

We are defining from scripture two characteristics of God that we have to relate with to reach our God given potential in Jesus Christ. We have explained God’s decrees and judgments for our lives and how we have to participate in His authoritative rule which He sets down in His word. Scripture tells us that the truth will set us free. The only way to be set free is to explore our relationship with the Holy Spirit who is our teacher and the one who comforts us in our decision making on our daily travels. Once we know the truth, we then have to walk in obedience to it.

Now remember we are building our entire structure of life on the bible, which is God’s decrees, and road map of walking in obedience to His authoritative rule. We are searching for an understanding of God’s heart and ideas of what wholeness of life is all about. We will see a huge difference between what man’s idea of mercy is verses God’s ideas of mercy and grace. We have described mercy as, a kind and compassionate behavior shown to an enemy or an offender or the power to show clemency or forgiveness. It is also described as the grace of God, which is His unmerited favor. It is a freely given gift by God and all you have to do is recognize it, to receive it. Now we first need to understand where mercy comes from.

Everybody should know the foundation scripture in John 3:16, which describes God’s decree of how we need to be born again. It states, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes and puts there trust in Him will not perish but, inherit eternal life.” This scripture is the core and main foundation for all truth and revelation into our spiritual walk with God. Jesus is the essence and total fragrance of the God of the universe and there is no other name given among men where they can be saved and adopted into God’s family. This principal is the main root that the Holy Spirit wants to plant very deeply in to our very being. The first time we experienced God’s mercy was when we received it at the cross. This root began when God planted His D.N.A. within us the day we made Jesus our Savior. We were told that, if we received Jesus by believing that He died for our sins, rose from the dead, and confessed with our mouth our belief in this, we would have a witness from with in us that we have been born again, and totally accepted by God and we would spend eternity with Him.

Scripture tells us that, this is God’s first gospel decree and it will be preached all over the world before Jesus comes back to this earth. There has been a lot of money, effort, prayers and tears put into this message for years. It is God’s decree that this should be so. This was the beginning for us who call ourselves Christians. The word Christian means, the ones that follow the anointed one. His name is Jesus the Christ meaning, God the Christ who stepped out of heaven, gave up His rights to be God, and became Jesus the man. In the Hebrew He is called the Messiah, the Anointed One. He is Jesus the Messiah anointed by God to give up His life for mankind to save them from their broken relationship from God. Now this is a universal truth to us who are born again people if we have had this experience. We must now go on and not fall asleep in our continuing hungering and thirsting after God. We need to now go on to experience His mercy, grace and subject ourselves to His authoritative rule. I believe that, we who are born again must come into agreement on this principle. It is now my intent to explore how God’s mercy has to continue to affect our lives.

First, we need to realize that! God is mercy Himself! It is we experiencing His mercy that keeps us motivated to follow His judgments and decrees. Like His glory which could not be shown to the people, which was on Moses face, because of their lack of commitment, His mercy has to be revealed to us in our continuing exploration and seeking of Him through the Holy Spirit.

In Roman 5:6-11 Paul the Apostle describes God’s mercy verses mans mercy when he says, “While we were yet in weakness and powerless to help ourselves. At the fitting time, Christ died in behalf of the ungodly. Now it is an uncommon thing for one to give up his life for a pure and modest man, all though maybe a person may give up his life for a man with a lofty linage or someone might die for a lovable and generous helper. However, God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that, while we were sinners, Christ the Messiah, the Anointed one, died for us on the cross.” Paul is trying to separate in our thinking the difference between what man’s desire for good is all about and what he would invest his life for, and in contrast what kind of people Jesus invests His life for. There is a limit in what man will invest his life for as Paul states, “These traits that a man would invest his life for are something uncommon and hard to find in a man.”

Let’s discuss the condition that man was in and why Jesus died for them. This verse defines us as being sinners, before we accepted Jesus into our hearts. What is a sinner in God‘s eyes? By the very definition of God’s merciful view, it states that, we were an enemy and an offender in a weakened and powerless condition to help ourselves before we met Jesus as Savior. This is very different then what we defined a man would die for. An enemy is one who hates and has ill will towards another person and is a competitor and one who injures the sensibilities of man. Since we were made in the image of God, in the book of Genesis after God made man, God came into agreement with Himself and said, “I did a fine job on how I made man.” When Satan entered the picture, he lied to Eve and made her believe that she could do better and that God did not make her complete. In reality, Satan’s plan was to damage the sensibilities of God’s prized creation. When we do not follow God’s decrees, what we do is, violate God’s protected rules to keep us safe and whole. Since we are His prized creation, we stop Him from protecting us from harm, and we miss operating in our inheritance that He gave us when we came into the family. When we talk about sensibilities, we are talking about our inability of recognizing our feelings in our emotions, like compassion, sympathy or empathy. When this happens, we cut our selves off from receiving God’s fellow feelings towards us and in turn, it stops Him from being a loving father to His prized creation. This makes us become our worst enemy.

When we function in an unconscious awareness of God’s mercy, and how He sees us. It then causes us to not understand what really took place in the fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden. What we do is reject God’s mercy and live in a sinner’s vulnerability like before we accepted Jesus as Savior. The word for garden in the Hebrew translation means, a protected hedge. God did not hold it against Adam and Eve because of their failure to believe Him. Adam and Eve rejected God’s mercy because they made fig leaves to cover the shame of their failure from God. This is why the body of Christ from the pulpits of the world need to stop preaching on behavior and passing judgment in their own evaluations who has the right to be saved and delivered and who is called for what purposes.

In addition, they think that this is everybody else’s growing pains but not their own meaning, the ones preaching the message. God is not the author of confusion and He does not have a bunch of misfit children who are unable to be healed. Just last night in watching some Christian programming, there was a conversation going on of how God loves His church into wholeness. This was very good and it was the truth from scripture. People are looking for the truth in this critical hour, including myself. Now what is very disturbing is that the parties doing the teaching made a statement that they felt the presence of the Lord was on the stage. If that was so, why did the statement come out of their mouths that they were sick and tired of Christians complaining about the pain they are going through in their walk with the Lord? What type of compassion and patience do these so-called leaders in the Christian community really possess?

It is sad to say that, Christians have been misinformed and are living with a diseased soul that needs some anointed prayer and a vision of a hopeful future in their lives from mature Christians who know what’s going on. It is time for the so-called leaders of today to come down off their arrogant thrones of leadership and get in the trenches with the people of God and minister to them where they are, with out judgment. It is very disturbing to me when I see leadership in the pulpits of today that started because of their humble attitude and were raised up by God. However, because they have forgotten their beginnings, they have an attitude of, I have arrived and have become caught up with works, (their own works) and have no real fellow feeling with the people they are teaching by showing God’s mercy verses man’s concept of what they think mercy means.

There are loads of scripture that have been misinterpreted with man’s judgments of people. We must interpret scripture through the eyes of the Holy Spirit’s mercy, grace and forgiveness. When man uses a judgmental mentality rather then a mercy mentality in understanding God’s way of dealing with man, he is cut off from total healing. That’s why the church is forever learning and never coming to the truth.

In the book of Revelations chapter 3:15-20 John the Apostle wrote a letter and gave a word from the Lord to the church at Laodicea. He writes, “I know your record of works and know what you are doing; you are neither hot nor cold, it’s my desire that you be either hot or cold! So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth! For you say, I am rich and have prospered and grown wealthy and I am in need of nothing. With this attitude, don’t you realize that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked? Therefore I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined and tested by fire, that you may be truly wealthy, and white clothes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nudity from being seen and eye salve to put on your eyes that you may see. Those who I love, I tell their faults to and convince and reprove and instruct them. So be enthusiastic and have a passion to talk to me and follow my advice at all times. Allow me to change your mind and attitude. I stand at your hearts door and knock asking permission to come in and have a very real relationship with you.”

One of the most devastating and false interpretations of scripture that I have ever heard is this interpretation that says, because these people had this condition of self-sufficiency and because they thought they had arrived, they made God sick to His stomach and He was going to vomit them out of His mouth. It’s these kinds of false conditional love themes with out mercy being preached and taught, that keep Christians in this mentality that makes you not sure how much God really loves you which keeps us from receiving His mercy. It is only God’s patience and mercy being received by these people teaching this stuff that will stop them from preaching and teaching it. There is a terrible need in the body of Christ to unlearn some of these false teachings and learn the truth, so people can be set free to explore a real relationship with God.

Let’s now rightly interpret what God meant, by vomiting us out of His mouth. The word of God has to be interpreted through an understanding of God’s great desire to continually restore us to a place of wholeness at His side. This battle of wholeness cannot be communicated through God themes of Him losing His patience or becoming fed up with His children. When we do this, we stop receiving God’s mercy because there are conditions being attached to it. This stops us from having a passion to love God and in turn love others as ourselves.

Hebrews 1:3, tells us that, “Jesus is the sole expression of the glory of God. The light being, the out raying of the Divine. The perfect imprint and the image of God’s nature upholding, maintaining and propelling the universe by His mighty “WORDS” which is His power. When God speaks, things happen. Let us go back and see when God first spoke. Genesis Chapter1: Says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water and God said “let there be light” and God saw that the light was good and God divided the light from the darkness.” God spoke eight more times, and every time that He spoke, there was a created miracle that took place.

Out of God’s spirit, from His inner most being He spewed forth an extension of Himself and created life on the planet. Everywhere God speaks forth and it is received, it brings life. He is the life giver. God doesn’t love us when He has a good day and not love us when He has a bad day. His whole nature and force of life as He exists is His love, mercy and grace. God wants to spew His wisdom into our thought life. He doesn‘t want to throw us away but, plant His being deeply with in us. When we interpret God’s word and believe that, He is fed up with us. It puts a wall up that stops God from spewing or speaking His life force, which is His word of mercy into our spirit and changing us to His way of thinking.

These people were lukewarm because, they were not seeking God with zeal and their focus was on their earthly possessions. They (were not hungering and thirsting after God,) because, they believed that they had arrived at some secure stature of life. The simplest example I can give on why God wanted them to be hot or cold is this. In the physical on a cold day, there is nothing like a nice hot drink to warm you up and on a hot day, there is nothing like a nice ice cold drink to cool you off. We can not grow up spiritually if we are not becoming sensitive in our sensibilities with God’s fellow feelings, so we can give to ourselves and others a hot or cold drink in the spiritual realm as the need presents itself.

God wanted to sensitize there sensibilities of His desire to protect them from harming themselves. Man with out the influence of the Holy Spirit has a vulnerability to try to control his own destiny. He will constantly try to lean toward his own understanding to handle his life’s problems. Judgment from people who are in a seat of authority and are being looked at for direction from people who are looking for help in their searching for wisdom, have a moral and sacred responsibility by God to show His mercy and compassionate desires for His prized creation always. It is the anointing of the Holy Spirit that brings this about.

We as born again believers must become strong in our discerning skills and learn what James 1:19 states. “We must be a ready listener, slow to speak and slow to get angry and take offense.” A person can only learn to be a ready listener if, he or she is getting to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit talking to them with in their spirit. Now remember, He is a grace and mercy Spirit not a judgment spirit. As we experience this relationship, we become more secure in trusting His inner voice. In turn, we hunger to hear this voice because it anchors us and it drives out the fears we have of loss in all areas. We become our worst enemy, take offense, and get angry because of us judging ourselves by making bad decisions. It makes no difference whether you are in a church setting or going through your daily walk in the world. This judgment spirit is at work influencing us in our mind and emotions everywhere we go. It is sad that we have so much of it going on in the born again churches of today.

We as Christians must become strong with in ourselves and become bold to believe what the Holy Spirit is showing us as we go about our daily activities. We must learn to become independent people set apart unto God and value ourselves and the abilities God put in us. We are not to be followers of any denomination or any spirit other then the Holy Spirit. At times, I have found this to be an intense battle with in me because, we all have a terrible need to belong and be accepted. I would like to tell you that you will never make a mistake, but that would be a lie. We must become strong rooted word people who are learning how to fight against this judgmental spirit, which I believe is running ramped everywhere. Scripture tells us that the Devil is the accuser of the brethren. It gets to be serious business and a great concern when the so-called leaders in the pulpits of the world lay guilt and judgment on God’s people. When this happens, these leaders become the Devil’s advocate. This also has a dominos effect. It is passed on in our fellowship with one another. In reality when we do this to each other, it’s like committing murder in the spiritual world. When we judge ourselves, we commit spiritual suicide.

David the King in Psalms 23:6 states, “goodness, mercy and unfailing love shall follow me all the days of my life; and through the length of days of my being, I shall be constantly living and experiencing God’s presence.” The word for follow in the Hebrew is radaf: meaning, to pursue, chase and hunt. It states that most of the time this is done with a hostile intent. Well we know or should know that God has no hostile intents to do damage towards his children. What we have here is God’s total resolve to complete His purposes in mankind with great intensity. God’s jealousy and love for His people is so intense that, He will pursue His children no matter how many thickets of life they are caught up in.

By exposing our emotions and feelings with deep passion, it strengthens our resolve and power to live with Him.

In Luke 1:50 it states, “His mercy (compassion and kindness) toward the miserable and afflicted is on those who fear Him with a Godly reverence, from generation to generation.” When we have a reverential fear of the Lord, there is created in us by the Holy Spirit an attitude that, the first place we run when there is a sign of trouble is to God to receive His mercy and grace. Our strength and security is when we acknowledge our need for God in our thought life. As we mature, this becomes a necessity of life for us who are born again believers. It is His mercy and His empathy feelings that we recognize and receive from Him that protects us from ourselves. It will only happen as we flow in His Spirit of Mercy, which strengthens our resolve to follow His decrees.

On the wall in my office I have a prophetic word that God had given me in a time of trial and great travailing. Since God is not a respecter of persons and if you are His child take it for yourself. Isaiah 49:8-10 states.

“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 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 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.”