If the Shoe Fits...

 When we are bound in the carnal world, we see through a glass darkly. We judge by appearances, thinking that what we see is all we've got. In that realm we dwell in a state of hopelessness, defeat, disappointment, confusion and perpetual sorrow. This can hardly be called victory in Jesus! Nor can we truly say our will is free when we are bound this way to the world. We call our wills free, in the carnal world but actually, they reside in tiny cages, restricted, held back, pushed down by the countless influences that affect our understanding. When we choose to align our wills with God's, it is the ultimate freedom and we will reap maximum reward.

God does not cause our suffering and pain. In Genesis, when God initially created us, we were "unfallen" and He supplied our every need. He did not cause the first couple any pain when they were freshly created. However, once they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and adopted judgment as a way of life (as well as rebellion), they (and we, to this day), live outside the Garden in a make-believe world that is filled with sharp edges and unexploded mines as we base our lives on the appearances (judgments) around us. God didn't rebel against us, we rebelled against Him. Therefore, we have redefined ourselves and, consequently, cause ourselves much pain in the process. Our redefinition of ourselves is sort of like trying to fit our feet into shoes much too small. Everything we do, based on the premise that we must be independent from God and struggle to fend for ourselves, is like walking in those shoes that cause us so much pain. It is hard to take a step without wincing and squinting our eyes shut so tight that tears race down our cheeks at each agonizing step.

Jesus has come to rescue us from our false definitions of who and what we are, which manifests as sin. He also assures us of our eternal lives through His shed blood on the cross. Now, we can be defined back into what God initially created us, and thereby live our lives FREE of the curse of the original sin, because Jesus took all our sins away by His death and resurrection. We MUST learn to see through His eyes. Once we allow Him into our hearts, He dwells there in us (as we dwell in Him). With our free will, we need to grant Him full access to our minds, hearts and bodies. No longer under the curse of judgment ourselves, we can stop walking in judgment towards others and not only forgive those who provoked us but in our hearts we can actually thank them because they bring our own infestations to the surface, which leads to our healing.

God sends people into our lives to help us. When they treat us unfairly, or cause us any pain, we must go to Jesus, and allow Him to be active in our minds (renewing them) as we submit all to Him. We want to do that instead of continuing to rebel and judge, which only causes the world's carnality to tighten its grip around everyone's throat a little more. In other words, our focus needs to be on CHRIST, not judging others, defending our puny selves or attacking people.

 Matthew 7:2 says that God will do to us what we do to others. Jesus also said if we judge others, others will judge us. Often we choose to wear blinders, ignoring our deeds, words and thoughts about others. Then, when the time of reaping comes, we will think we are totally innocent in judging others and will think we are being attacked without any justification. This is most likely not so. The reason God wants us to forgive is not so we'll be nicer and good (although it is true, we will be nicer). God wants us to forgive so that He can heal US. Unless we do this, we will live under the illusion that the world is nothing but a stinky, rotten place, filled with tons of pain. We will build huge defenses and fight wars we've created in our minds.

If Christ is truth, then the world must not be. Appearances tell us the world and Satan are victorious. At a glance, this certainly seems true. But that is all we must give it. Just a glance, then we must turn to face Christ, dropping the temptation to give any credence to what Satan, or this world's appearances, says is true. We contribute to its fallen state by NOT incorporating Jesus into every dark corner of this wretched world. By knowing the truth and by believing the truth, we are set free as Jesus said we would be. Jesus said, among other things, He IS the truth. If we reside in Him and He resides in us, is there any area of our lives where the truth (Jesus) cannot be? We tend to deny God's power that is found in Jesus, accept what we see as all there is, hang our heads in shame, and make up sad country songs proclaiming the pathetic state of our lives, but somehow, with Jesus' help, we'll make it. This is NOT victory. This is resignation. Victory comes when we use our will in conjunction with God's will and proclaim victory through Jesus Christ in all we see. The tentacles of the world must not be given power that they don't really have. Why? Because through Jesus Christ, the world has no power at all. We give it power by our belief in it. Jesus said what we believe will come true. Therefore, we can surmise that it is not the world or Satan that is making itself true. It is our incorrect perception that the world and Satan present obstacles that we cannot get through. When we, then, choose to resign to these depressing obstacles, we have taken on a burden unfit for a child of God. We have said, “it is so,” and by our incorrect use of our “free” will, we have proclaimed victory for Satan, and victory for the world of appearances. Is this really what we want to do?

Perhaps the worst error we make as Christians, is the obsession with correcting God's children. God is real and only He corrects. The notion that God can't heal our brothers and sisters and that we must be the healing agent, has cost us much pain. Our correction is always from the vantage point that the sins others are committing are insurmountable unless we “help.” It is therefore a judgment of deep fallibility that we would lay on a child of God. This is why it is called a “judgment.” When we accuse others of being weak, God will show us that WE are weak. When others reflect our judgments back to us, we could use these slings and arrows as motivation to see differently. We can allow God to heal us instead, through our forgiveness of others. Otherwise, our shoes are very tight as we handle problems in this worldly light of understanding (which is really darkness). This causes us excruciating pain because of our actions which are based on so many false premises, or assumptions we are making. This is why we should pray for others, while we love them unconditionally. Truthfully, wouldn't this be what we'd want others to do for us? Is not this properly utilizing the Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12?

When we insist that others must get their act together and stop behaving the way they are, they perceive us as attacking them. It is better that they be nurtured in unconditional love, therefore setting the stage for a holy moment when they can receive a nudge from the Holy Spirit. This type of learning is painless for it is learning that comes from God and is spoken to them within and is therefore a personal experience with the almighty, loving Father. When we believe that others are totally ignorant and must have the truth somehow siphoned into their inadequate minds, we are calling for that very scenario to occur to us (because of the law of God found in Matthew 7:2).

It is with love that I suggest we have been taking the wrong approach. Jesus said to "resist not evil" (and He demonstrated that, even to the point of going to the cross, forgiving and being resurrected three days later). He did this for us, taking on our sins in a mighty demonstration of unconditional love. We can never thank Him enough for this. We, in our fallen state, must pick up our crosses and forgive--even as we are being "slain" and allow God to heal us and make us new in Him. It is in our necessarily weak imitation of doing for others what Christ did for us, that we will become anchored in faith and showered with God's love. It is the tight shoe of pride that would tell us to win at all costs. Pride tells us we must never submit to another human, even as it sticks a shard of fossilized leather in our ankles. Pride insists others must be told they are wrong and we are right! But as this is done, we are setting ourselves up for a fall.

God does not need us to defend Him. We need Him to defend us. As children of God, it is our pride that tells us we must defend ourselves. When we defend ourselves, we are literally praying for defeat because the truth is “of ourselves we can do nothing.” We, then, are making an error by practically telling God to back off, we'll handle this ourselves. The only way God can defend us is if we follow His commands and pray for those who abuse us, pester us, and otherwise push our buttons. It is only then that we are giving up our own worthless goals and sidling up to our Creator in true affection. Then we learn that with God all things are possible. What was impossible through our own efforts now becomes completed through Christ. God will not reward our efforts to take on burdens ourselves. He only rewards our efforts to give them up to Him. It is not of ourselves that this impossible task of forgiveness is done, but only because of Christ. We complicate things horribly, but God makes things effortless.

When we take it upon ourselves to defend our most high God, we are assuming He needs our defense because He is weak. If that were the case, the Scripture should say, “With people, all things are possible.” Then, if we carry this absurdity a little further, God would need to pray to us for His safety so that we might eliminate His fear. Ridiculous! God is God. Period. He has no fear. We need Him, and apparently He desires us, because we are His children whom He loves.

As part of our worldly list of things to do, we, the children of a most high God, sometimes think it is necessary to take on God's job and fight evil. Think, for a moment, what fighting evil implies. It implies that we must build huge defenses, amass tons of swords and other weapons, and prepare for the battle to end all battles. We quickly become caught up in the embattled cares of this life—responding in a base level to worldly concerns, believing the appearances around us are true. Like Don Quixote, we slash at illusions, forgetting that we war not against flesh and blood, but principalities. We become focused upon physical battles while our spirit dwindles. Through Christ, Satan is already defeated. The battle is in our “beliefs,” in our minds only. If this were not so, Jesus and His disciples could not have told demons to leave the bodies they were occupying. The demons would not have obeyed. They would have stayed. But they do not have any power over Christ.

Who has the power here? Jesus. Where does Jesus reside? In us who have accepted Him as Lord and Savior. Sometimes if the evil appears to be resisting our declarations of the truth, Jesus said by prayer and fasting we will obtain our victory. This allows God to increase our faith as we take our minds off food for a while and increase our prayers in which we praise our Almighty God and know that through His Son, Jesus Christ, we are the victor over all things. Our prayers must not be weak prayers. They must vehemently proclaim, the truth. We have to know, really know, the truth. Our prayers to Christ, whose Holy Spirit is in residence in our hearts, bolster us and our faith lets us know He is the victor over all things. I do not say this lightly! The power of victory lies in our alignment with God's will, not in judging by appearances.

When we judge by appearances, we are being led, blindfolded, to the worldly gallows by a triumphant but hooded Satan, whom we cannot truly recognize. Satan is hard to recognize because as we erroneously proclaim one “evil” person as the cause of our problems and eliminate him, another one, almost like the first one, pops up in our history and now we must deal with him. But, really, it is Satan, who preys upon our weaknesses, our propensity to find fault ONLY in others. Therefore he makes fools of us as we chase our tails; run on his treadmills; and go round and round the mouse wheel.

It is not people who are Satan in disguise. They are merely fallen, like we were. They need love and prayer so that they might be helped up from this dusty carnal floor. The Lord, Jesus Christ, through us and our desire to truly help, will extend His hand, through ours, and lift the fallen to Him. If we choose to eliminate rather than help the fallen, we are going about our problem solving incorrectly and, though it will appear that the “problem” will be gone, new ones will crop up proving that the problem is still here, after all. Forgiveness, non-resistance, and unconditional love is the only way to eliminate our problems. If there were another way, Jesus would have told us or demonstrated something else.

People are sent into our lives by God to eliminate the fortresses we have built up AGAINST God. The mightier the “evil” person appears to be in our lives, the greater the fortress against God we have built. We must choose between eliminating the person and keeping the fortress against God, or forgiving the person of his sins and allowing God to break down the fortress we've built against Him, so that we might know Him as He truly is and not how we have fabricated Him. Remember, wise people bring gifts as the Christ child is being born in us. The worldly way to deal with Christ being born is to try to destroy Him, but, being of God, Christ will never stay in the grave. Neither, too, should we who have Christ, stay in the grave. The stones that have sealed our fate are rolled away by forgiveness. Praise God for this!

Everything Jesus did counteracts the eye for an eye mentality of the Old Testament. And for a good reason. Besides dying on the cross for our eternal salvation, He gave us the key to a triumphant life here on earth: A life in Christ, compelling others to join us, not by force of will, but by the acts of our hearts as we walk our walk. Our hearts, then, must be "in Christ" as we follow Him, behaving as He has requested.

We should not try to recruit others into God's Kingdom if we aren't healed in Him ourselves. The hypocrisy of us trying to make others come to Him when we haven't done this ourselves, will drive others away from, not toward Him. So we must (if we are in the service of Christ) be healed first so we can be good examples of the walk in Christ. Our love, our non-judgment, our compassion will put us in the leadership roles as we "bring in the Sheaves." And though our walk will initially have some pain required as we submit all to Christ, the shoes will not be a tight fit anymore. We will be suffering in compliance with Him, not in defiance of Him. Suffering in compliance with Him means we are walking in perfectly fitted shoes, our pain gradually subsiding, on the road toward the peace, God promises all who truly follow His Son, Jesus Christ.

God's shoes, though initially uncomfortable, DO conform to our soles (souls) and lead to the only comfort we can possibly have in this world. Our shoes we forced on ourselves in our rebellion, do not conform to our soles (souls) as we walk, defiantly, painfully, with eyes focused only on ourselves and our survival in this carnal world. We must lose that self-centered life before we can have the abundant life Jesus promised us. Please take this step!

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