WORD TO PONDER:  REWARDS FOR OBEDIENCE  4/25/07

For years you have walked in My training so that you would grow in maturity and finally make righteous choices that please Me.  These training sessions have taken you in circles, because you have not accepted that I HAVE been raising you through consequences to your choices. 

You have wrestled strongly to find your freedom between following the law and liberty of My Spirit.  Your pendulum has swung radically between those two poles.  You have walked in all or none and never found the balance.  When you made poor choices, you went through a whole season of such that put you into captivity until I bailed you out.  Then you put the flesh away and walked in good choices and received wonderful rewards.  You were schooled in both sides but never understood the balance of what it means to walk in maturity.  It is true that outside of sin, all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. 

Beloved, you have chosen to go all the way with Me.  You want 100 fold giftings, fruit, and relationship.  100 fold harvest costs something; it requires more seeds in the ground through death to self.  It is true that you have learned obedience through the things you have suffered.  It is now time to graduate beyond the schooling and walk in the training of self discipline.  Allow what is edifying back into your life, but with your own maturity to separate yourself from the spirit of the world.  I will reward you with years of unanswered prayer and you will finally move forward and graduate into increase.

1 Cor 6:12 NKJV

All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

1 Cor 10:23  NKJV

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.

Rom 8:5-8 NKJV

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

James 4:4-5 NKJV

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"?