We will refer to the interpretation of a child being, somebody considered to be created and strongly influenced by a particular environment, period of time or an historical figure. Just as we have heard people say, "I am a child of the sixties or so on." We are all children living in an environment that is constantly trying to control and imprison us from our freedoms of expression and ability to prosper and fulfill our God ordained destiny. It is either in our financial independence or our ability to make quality decisions or relationships with others however, primarily it is our struggling of learning how to receive and give love.

In Mark 10:13-16 we have an account where the children wanted to approach Jesus, but the disciples felt that they were being a bother to Him and tried to stop them. When Jesus saw this; he became annoyed and was grieved. He then said, "Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive, accept and welcome the kingdom of God as a child shall not enter the kingdom at all. He then took the children up into His arms and fervently invoked a blessing by placing his hands on them."

We are living in a dispensation of time, where it would be suicidal to try and stay as a child and deal with the cares of life with our own ability and natural senses. Today we are living in a environment of greed, disloyalty, betrayal, uncertainty of future events, people crying out to have a say for their particular persuasions to be heard, perversion obscenity with acts on the air waves, and peoples heart failing them because of fears dominating their lives. So my question was when I read this part of scripture, what was Jesus trying to tell us when he said this?

With in our human nature there is a child, the real us. God made us that way and it is this child that He gave His life for on the cross. It is my contention that, the child with in all of us has been ignored, been taken for granted and literally abused in some form or fashion for as long as man has been on this plant. Even though I was raised in a God fearing family who loved God, I did not know Jesus on a personal basis. I was not raised in the admonition of the Lord as I could have been if my parents knew the Lord personally. After I received Christ at the age of twenty five, I had the opportunity to lead my parents and brothers all to the Lord over the next five years. That is not talking about many of my aunts and uncles. This is not a complaint on how long it took me to become a born again Christian, but I state this for the main reason of making us recognize how important it is to be grounded in Christ at the earliest possible time in one's life.

When we get saved in our later years, we become more infected with the products of our environment and pick up the worlds ways of living that create great scars and cripple ness in the heart of the child with in us all. I have come to realize over the years with in my self and with all of the many people that I meet that, there is a crippled child with in all of us and some much more crippled then I. This at times saddens and frustrates me in trying to help with some word of wisdom those that I meet who are bruised and it makes me feel helpless to heal the real child with in each one of us.

What really saddens me the most, I have seen in many situations with in church assemblies that, there are those who have the same lack of awareness as Jesus disciples did of the way Jesus looked at and understood that, it must be a healthy child with in each one of us who has the ability to participate in God's kingdom and all it represents. Since Jesus came to die on the cross for the child, it is the child inside that must be discipled because, in the child is the warrior spirit that God uses to persuade and convince the people in our arenas of life of the great love He has for them. A crippled child has a difficult time entering God's kingdom because, they have become self conscience to their pain and have a mistaken mistrust and do not want to suffer any more abuse in their lives. Most of them are not even aware of this condition existing with in them.

In many born again assemblies, those who are caring for God's children; should not look at them as rebels living in sinful pleasure and condemn them as intentionally sinning. Rather, they should look at them as crippled children who have a need for a spiritual doctor and they should have a fellow feeling for their crippled state. This false concept of judging rather then loving has been going on since Jesus left the earth.

In the book of Galatians it tells us to bear each others burdens and then we will be fulfilling the law of love of God's kingdom. It is no wonder that Paul the Apostle in his letter to the Romans, starts out in Romans 8:1 and had to remind the people by saying to them, "Now therefore, there is no condemnation, no adjudging guilty of wrong for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit."

When people walk after the flesh, this does not mean that, they as born again believers are to be condemned because of their flesh walk. A born again believer who has Jesus living in their heart, because of their crippled or immature state, has no other choice and is unable to walk in the spirit and participate as God's child with joy and purpose in the family business. This is what happens when they sit under a ministry of behavior teaching and the Lord's love is being raised up with conditions attached to it which causes the child to become more crippled. Any time there is an atmosphere that hinders God's grace (His unmerited favor) which is what heals us in all areas is not having its own way; God's sheep are being led to be slaughtered.

When law in any form is being taught through obligation and fear tactics, the people perish. In my office I have a sail boat that my daughter gave me many years ago that states on the sail, "The grace of God will never lead you where the grace of God will not keep you." Unless the body of Christ begins to define with God's grace at work in their lives, they will be God's crippled kids living as people who never function in their inherent righteous state in God's eyes. Paul reminds us in Romans 8:2-4 "For the law of the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus (the law of our new being) has freed me from the law of me focusing on my sin consciences ness which causes death."

Sin conciseness makes a person sick and tired of hearing about something over and over and having to deal with it.

Paul goes on to say, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, (meaning man with his human nature without the Holy Spirit living in them.) God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for our sin, subdued, overcame and deprived it of its power over all who accept Jesus as their Savior. In turn, the righteous and just requirements of the Law can now be fully met in us who live no longer in the flesh, (having a mental conscience warfare in our minds of trying to measure up to God's Laws,) but now, we are to be controlled by the Holy Spirit speaking to us with our new nature.

Unless the born again believer understands how to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and lets Him break the bondage that most Christians live in today of judging and being a slave to fault finding inadequacies with in themselves, they will be forever learning and never be edified and lifted up to see their Saintly condition as God already sees them.

Paul also says in Galatians 4:1-7. "As long as the inheritor (heir) stays as a child and under age, he does not differ from being a slave, although he is the master of the estate. Therefore, he is under guardians and administrators or trustees until the date determined by his father. So we as born again believers also when we were minors were kept like slaves under rules of rituals and were subject to the elementary teachings of a system of external observances and regulated rules. However, when the proper time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman and born subject to these same rules that we were born and obligated to follow. He was born into this world to purchase our freedom and He restored us to Himself by dying on the cross and to deliver us from the bondage of being a slave to trying to obey these rules. This took place because, we were adopted into the family of God and we are now recognized by Him as being His sons and daughters just as Jesus is His first begotten Son.

Because; we are now His sons and daughters, we have the Holy Spirit of His Son living in us and we have a witness from Him by knowing a loving Father who we personally with passion can call our Daddy. Therefore, we are no longer slavers or a bond servant but a son; and if we are his children, then it follows that we are God's heirs as we allow God to empower us through Jesus Christ."

When one is a bond servant, (they are imprisoned by a rope or chain and are bound by a living spirit which makes them feel; they have no rights to think and decide their future but; are being obligated through force by fear and the outcome is loss in some area of their life. In Paul's dialogue, he wants us to recognize the difference between us being a new creature in Christ verses forever trying to obey God's commandments and struggling to clean up our own act.

Knowing the Ten Commandments and being condemned with in ourselves that, we are breaking the commandments of God; is what keeps us as cripples and forever living in a repetitious mode of a sin conscience mentality.

God gave us the Ten Commandments so that we would know that we were sinning and breaking them. However, we need to grow out of this understanding by us being raised to a higher spiritual plain and have God give us a vision of what God says we have become after salvation and what power we now have to be His ambassadors in the earth. In many churches that I have visited and the majority of the Christian programming that are on TV, those that are in leadership and proclaiming the gospel have an awareness that the body of Christ is in a weak feeble state as to their maturity in Christ. Many will not address the issues and so business goes on as usual. Some are addressing the problem and are trying a quick fix or working even harder in inventing some alternative and putting a band aid to cover up their inadequacies.

There are a few and they are scattered that recognize that, it is only teaching what our righteous position in Jesus Christ really represents, that are making any head way in producing warriors for the kingdom. It is only by us raising the banner of grace; that will mature the family of God. In spite of all this noise and emotional confusion, God is patiently at work turning our ignorance and apathy around because of his faithfulness not ours, and He waits at our hearts door and asks for our permission for Him to come in and have a true emotional love relationship with us.

We all need to realize that; this spirit of deception is the warfare that David described in Psalms 23: when he said, "Ya though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil." Anything being taught and being digested into the heart of the believer that is contrary to our righteous position that we hold in God's sight, brings crippled ness and death to the Warrior Spirit with in us. Once we become born again and the Spirit of God now lives in us, we need to continue daily to have born again experiences with the Holy Spirit that matures and heals the crippled child with in all of us.

This is not done with an attitude of constantly rededicating our self over and over and never becoming diaper trained. It is us growing in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that will enable us to go out in our arenas of life and do the works of Jesus. It is evident to me since I walk in this arena daily that, the born again church has no idea of their call and their arena of life is a pew in a church building week after week. There is a time to be discipled and taught however; God does not want His children to continually live in kinder garden.

Over the years, I have ministered with in the Christian structure of a church building, but mostly outside of the church structure. It is really sad that not all but many of the born again believers have been brain washed by tradition and have been told that, because they belong to some denomination, they hold a special favor in God's eyes. Church assembling which is supposed to be a training nursery for babies to grow up to do the work of Jesus in the market places of life has become a financial business in many areas and a holding pen of keeping God's Saints in an infantile mentality of pray for me, teach me, keep me safe and intercede for me to God. This takes place because, they are constantly being reminded, what an inferior condition they are in by telling them, stop doing this and start doing that and you will eventually be like God and mature when; you do enough.

There are scores of scarred, hurting emotional bruised believers today sitting in churches every Sunday that are living as prisoners with in them self and have to be ministered to by mature Saints that really know the love of Daddy God in their own lives. Denominational teachings in any form keep God's kids as cripples all of their life. Scripture tells us that, "what we hear and meditate on is what we become."

The healthy trusting child with in each one of us is the anointed warrior that God always intended to take the kingdom back from the devil, whose roving spirit of deception has blinded the true believers to their rightful inheritance in the earth.***

Let me give you a simple example that will explain the difference between staying a baby in your diaper and becoming a strong warrior in the Lord. We have something in the Christian vocabulary and believing system called, the acts of omission and commission. The word omission means, something that has been deliberately or accidentally left out or not been explained and done. It is an attitude being portrayed of being incomplete. It represents the same deception in Gen. Chapter 2 when Eve had a séance with Satan in the Garden of Eden and she told Satan that, God said, "she and Adam could eat from every tree in the Garden, but of they ate from the Tree of Good and Evil they would surly die." Satan then made her doubt by saying "did God really say that."

This deception when listened to; puts a doubt in a believer and makes him think that, he is not complete in Jesus Christ's act alone of Him dying on the cross. In turn, he focuses on his incompleteness and this makes him live in shame the same as Adam and Eve had by making fig leaf aprons to cover their nakedness. All religion represents is a fig leaf mentality and makes a believer hide in the dark when God comes along to have fellowship with him because; the believer feels unworthy and the boldness to represent Christ in the earth is surrendered to be,

Forever learning and trying to get better but, never knowing their authority.

Paul states in Eph. 5:26-27. " Jesus sanctified the church and cleansed it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church not having any spot or wrinkle or any such thing; only that, it should be holy and without blemish." Jesus is the word of life; that now lives in us A sanctified person should know that; they are freed from a sin conscience mentality that keeps them in bondage to commit unrighteous acts. A born again believer must be going through a edifying process by being constantly reminded that Jesus purified them with His own blood at the cross and they have become a new creation in Christ and are know saints not sinners in God's sight.

Their shame based nature was buried with Christ and when He arose from the dead, they arose with Him and were delivered from their old nature and became a new creation the same as He did. The only thing left for us to receive is our new immortal body that will live for ever with Him.