I love the beautiful, victorious, matured combination of sharp wisdom and pure innocence. Justice is most often doled out by those that are wise as serpents and innocent as doves. If you are wrongly convicted of a crime you are going to want the best, most brilliant and most honest and hard-working attorney you can find to defend you. Innocence combined with wisdom is the sharpest tool in the shed. It is fully awake. It does not compromise with or cower away from evil nor does it back away from it in fear or out of it's uncertainty. It also doesn't underestimate evil but understands its enemy with sobriety never charging foolishly outside of God's grace. It stands upright looks demons in their eye and knows its authority to rebuke them back to hell...but only by the will and Spirit of the Lord abiding always in His love with childlike faith. It knows how to keep its peace and order and choose its thoughts. Wisdom and innocence is powerful, brave and true and is always humble and submitted to God. It speaks the truth with teeth sharp with perfect love and temperance that cut through chains and rescues captives. It cuts through the "bullcrap" and cries out truth that no one near can ignore but knows when silence is the righteous choice. It causes others to be repentant and question the motives of their hearts, but always with eyes filled with compassion and understanding. Most of all wisdom and innocence is an instrument of the Lord most High. It serves Him selflessly without compromise, approaches His throne with boldness and fights the good fight of faith to the awe and inspiration of anyone around with half a brain or a conscience. It is a beautiful thing...and a fearsome thing to behold. Praise God for His refined Ones who have embraced the fiery process that shapes them into such a person. They are the salt of the earth and lights upon the hills.
Matthew 5:14-16
14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
I have A LOT of firsthand experience with the consequences of suppressing feelings. For many years I avoided my pain and my feelings because they felt so intense and scary (now I understand that is partly because I'm highly sensitive and that makes feelings a bit more magnified). Anyhow, when the Lord started taking me through deliverance and inner healing about 7 years ago, He had me facing all those suppressed feelings and asked me to feel and address them once and for all. It was really scary and confusing still for a while because it often felt like regressing into the effects of long years of trauma... but...God proved Himself faithful and over time the waves of sadness, grief, fear and anger began to die down as He guided me through feeling it all. It is so much more wise to let ourselves feel and be present when life happens. I've been learning to do that as God has carried me along with His amazing loving Presence.
And...He will give us the discernment we need to figure out if what we are feeling is from Him and a path to walk down or if it is something self-indulgent or a counterfeit of the enemy. Many Christians teach that feeling feelings is a bad thing as if we have to live life perpetually pushing beyond our feelings in the idea that we must "pick up our crosses and deny ourselves"...but this can be a very dangerous idea and a Scripture, along with many others, that is often taken out of context. There are times when the enemy will tempt us to self-pity or into a manner of feeling that is UNHEALTHY, however, this is to be carefully decided by the wise and mature who understand how to discern the source of their feelings. The wise don't go to extremes with all this as there are many feelings that, if we do not face, will come back later with a vengeance until we acknowledge and walk through them. Our feelings are not inherently evil nor are they mostly our enemies. They are most often gifts that God uses to mold and shape us into who He's called us to be and a necessary part of our human journey in a broken world. Thank You Lord for feeling in healthy ways.
I have said this before and will say it again, most of the time it is not our responsibility to decide whether fearful thoughts or negative thoughts are realistic or not. It is our job to throw them in the trash, press into God, choose to trust Him and live in the present as children who completely rely on their Daddy. The devil would have us believe we have to process every bad thought, examine it to see if there's truth to it and figure out how things are going to be ok in light of that thought. This is a lie. God holds our tomorrows and will let us know what we need to know for today. And the thoughts God has toward us are "thoughts of peace, and to give us a future and a hope." (Jer. 29:11) Every thought from God given to us to process something we need to face will always have empowering grace attached to it and will always be filled with love and compassion. Any other kind of thought is trash for the trash can and poison to our souls.
Deception is a slippery slope nurtured by a sneaky enemy who loves to mix in a bit of truth with every lie he tells you. He appears at first to be charming and sensible but the leaven of his lies begin to spread like yeast slowly corrupting the human soul which is his target and victim. Deception is conceived and brought to life through rebellion and sin...the moment you make one compromise and decide you know better than God and what His Word says and well, if you don't know His Word, that process of total deception can be smooth sailing for the enemy. The truth of God's Word is a double edged sword...a tool for the wise to fight with to divide truth from lies. But deception makes the Word of God flimsy in the mind of those who've been listening to it and without being convinced of the validity of the Word of God a man has no defense for deception. Opinions and carnality begin to rule the heart of men and the truth starts to sound like foolishness and becomes offensive. That is why the way to God and to truth is a narrow road that few find.
- This is probably the biggest thing the Lord and I have been working on in the last few seasons: living in peace, manifesting peace in my mind and my soul. Receiving fully that I have the mind of Christ. If we don't have peace how can we help others find peace? The Lord has me practicing peace and staying in peace and receiving His love and acceptance just as His child not for anything I've done. Such an incredibly important revelation and restoration to get.