Bless Me Indeed #1 (Meaning of "Bless" in Hebrew)

Bless Me Indeed #1 (Four Part Teaching)

(Meaning of "Bless" in Hebrew)

The Lord speaks a lot about blessing His children and being a blessing to others.

People no matter who they believe in want to be blessed. Jacob deceitfully came to his father and asked him to bless him. "Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your firstborn; I have done as you told me. Get up, please, sit and eat of my game, that you may bless me." (Genesis 27:19 NASB)

Esau wanted to be blessed by his father Isaac, and he was very upset when his father had no more blessings for him.

What is it about blessings?

What does it mean to be blessed?

What does it mean to be a blessing?

I would like to focus on the word "bless" and its meaning in Hebrew. I will share with you through this insight what the Lord meant when He mentioned the word "bless, or blessed" in His word, and through this insight I believe this teaching will deepen your walk with the Lord as He will bring more understanding.

Understanding helps our house to be established (Pro 24:3).

It is a man of understanding that can draw out of the depth of his heart what the Lord planted in him. (Pro 20:5)

Let's dig in.....

"Blessed" in Hebrew Means

The word "blessed" (ברך be-rech) in Hebrew is the same word as "knee" (ברך be-rech).

Both words have the same root (ב,ר,כ).

Be-rech (blessed ברך) means:

ברך

Knee

לברך

to congratulate; bless; greet; praise

בורך

be blessed

להתברך

be blessed with; praised; brag

להבריך

to cause to kneel; to bring down on the knees, to replant; figuratively: to have offspring

להבריך

• לגרום כריעת-ברך, להוריד על הברכיים; לנטוע מחדש, לשתול ענף, להטות ענף; להעמיד צאצאים When the Lord blesses us He not only greets, congratulates and gives us a benefit, but He first bows His own knee and serves us.
• As the Greatest, He is the One who humbled Himself and gave His life for ones who are the least.
• The Hebrew describes those least as "the zeros of the Earth (Psa 2:8, 22:28, 59:13, 67:8, 98:3, Isa 45:22, Jer 16:19). The English translates them as "the ends of the earth".
• These are the ones the Lord bent His knee for and came to their darkness to shine His light.

The One who bowed His knee to His creation and having His mouth shut lay His own life for His children, is also the One to whom every knee will bow down and every tongue will confess that He is Lord.

It is the Lord who blesses first. He always gives first so we can give Him back what He put in our heart. If we want to bear His fruits of love we need to personally experience His love for us. We need to come to a place where we learn to receive His love, and allow the Lord to pour out His love for us. Then, and only then, we can give Him back the love He has personally shown us. We give Him who He is for us.

It is after we experience the love of the Lord for us that we can feed others with the fruits He fed us.

There is no way we can love others with the love of the Lord before we let the Lord reveal His love for us. Why? Because we cannot bear any fruit by ourselves. We love because He loved us first. We give because He gives us first.

This is why when the Lord blesses us He also replants us (as a new creation). He put us in Christ and He causes us to have an offspring. In other words He causes us to bear the fruit of His love in us. He makes sure our spiritual womb is not barren and the fruit that comes out of our womb is ... Christ Jesus in us.

There is nothing we can give to the Father but the works of His own hands – Jesus in us and His finished works. Bearing fruits means giving Him back the image (glory, nature, heart, mind) of Christ in us. We do not bear that image by our own effort. It is by faith. Once we are born again we ARE already in the image and form of Christ (God). It's not of our own making, by our works, by being good, or doing good. It's by grace through faith.

This means we have faith in the One who saved us and built us in Him complete. The Word says "we are complete in Christ" - then........... what's missing in what God has built?

Jeus is the First Fruit and we give the Father back the same fruit that He put in us - Christ who lives in us. Messiah in us is already the glory (image) of God. (see the teaching on "Seek My Face")

In our walk with the Lord we find out WHO God has already made us in Christ. We start in Him as a complet creation and we get our mind renewed to find out who we are in Him.

God blessed us with the most precious of all blessings - His Son Jesus. And He gave Him to us for free not by anything we have done. It's only because we believed (by faith). Now he also helps us find out who Christ IS in us. He reveals Him to us so we can see and understand who we are as a new creation.

The more we find who we are in Him, the more we become a blessing to others.

Do you see?

God blessed us with Christ and as we grow in faith we can become a blessing to others - as we witness the revealed Christ in us.

The only thing the Lord is pleased with is when we give Him back a Lamb - His Son in us. We are as He is and we bear fruit as we see and understand and know who He is in us. It's like a process of giving birth. It's as if God put a baby Christ in us and the more we know Him the more He can be revealed through us. Only the thinkg is......... the Christ in us is not a baby - He is fully God who chose to live in a Temple He built.

Mary who gave birth to Jesus is the picture of the Bride of the Lord (Church). The Father put Him in our hearts (our spiritual womb) and we are all spiritually pregnant with Christ in us. We cannot see Him, but we know He is there. Only... it's US (you and I) who need to grow from glory to glory until we know the One who is in us. The more we grow in faith and our mind is renewed about who Jesus is, the more we bear the fruits of righteousness. Now Christ flows from us.

To be a blessing means to bow the knee, to be humbled, to serve others even "the least of them".

Therefore, when the Lord blesses us He humbles Himself and becomes a servant to the point of death. As a result He helps us bear the same fruit we have eaten from His heart. The Lord blesses us so we will bear fruits and bless others. We bless them as we give them to eat from the fruits the Lord fed us with. As the Lord bows the knee and serves us He also helps us to bow our knee to others. We start bearing fruit as we learn to see who we have become. We serve the same way Jesus, who is the First Fruit of the Father, served and gave His life for many.

It is the Lord who comes down to us in our darkness (Acts 7:34). His coming down to our mess allows us to be brought up. Therefore to be blessed by the Lord means to experience Him as a servant who bends His knee and comes down to us. It means to allow Him to minister, give and pour out who He is for us.

His ascension to heaven could happen because He descended from heaven and was brought low to do the will of the Father. (John 6:38, Eph 4:9-10, Jonah 2:6, John 3:13)

You cannot bow your knee to the Lord and become a servant in your heart, if you do not allow the Lord to bend His knee to you and serve you - if you have not experienced Him come down to your darkness, minister to you, serve you, pour out His heart and reveal His love for you, bend His knee as a servant and a loving Father to care for you as His child.

This is why Jesus told Peter, if you don't allow Me to bow the knee to you and serve you by washing your feet you don't belong to Me (have no part in Me). If I cannot give you who I am and personalize it in your life, so you can find your identity in Me, you have no part in Me. This is when Peter realized, "I better let Him sow into my heart.

Imagine, Peter walked with the Lord for three years but still did not know who the Lord really was for him. It was fun using his name, healing the sick, setting free the possessed, being fed daily, being close to the Lord, but he needed his heart renewed by having a new revelation of who the Lord is for him. Unless the Lord downloads into us, we have nothing to give to others.

John 13:4-8 NLT So He got up from the table, took off His robe, wrapped a towel around His waist, 5 and poured water into a basin. Then He began to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with the towel He had around Him. 6 When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to Him, "Lord, are You going to wash my feet?" 7 Jesus replied, "You don't understand now what I am doing, but someday you will." 8 "No," Peter protested, "You will never ever wash my feet!" Jesus replied, "Unless I wash you, you won't belong to Me."… 13:12-17 After washing their feet, He put on His robe again and sat down and asked, "Do you understand what I was doing? 13 You call Me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and you are right, because that's what I am. 14 And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet. 15 I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. 16 I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the One who sends the message. 17 Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

The blessings, the fruit of our spiritual womb, the change in our heart, the transformation into the Lord's image, come after the Lord bows down the knee (blesses) to you. He comes down to minister and serve you, and then you can bow the knee (bless) to others.

In being a blessing our pride is being removed. The Lord by His Holy Spirit helps us to become a blessing as we bow the knee. We come down to where others are and we serve them. It means we let go of our pride, status, accomplishments and titles, what belongs to us and who we think we are, and we accept others and willingly give to them as unto the Lord. We give Him back in humility the same fruit He gave us to eat.

It is after we taste and see that the Lord's fruit is good, that we can bear that same fruit and give others. This is the meaning of being blessed and blessing others.

Imagine what really happened to Eve when she ate the fruit that the snake gave her. She had so many fruits to eat from in the Garden. All she needed to do is taste the Lord's fruits so she can bear His fruits in her. She needed to taste and experience for herself the Lord's goodness, kindness, peace and joy. It is not enough that the Lord's fruits are there, we need to eat them for ourselves. This is why we pray "Give us today our daily bread". Instead of tasting and experiencing the Lord's fruits she chose to taste and experience the fruit of accusation, and fed her husband with the same fruit. Then they both gave birth to this same bad fruit and accused each other. This brought death upon them.

There are so many fruits in the Lord's heart that He wants us to taste (experience, encounter) DAILY. It should be a daily experience of tasting and eating the food He has for us. This food is always Himself – His heart and mind for us, so we can become as He is. Each fruit we taste will transform who we are and help us bear that fruit we have experienced.

It is not enough to see the Lord's fruits in others. We need to seek Him so He can let us taste of His fruits for ourselves and be changed from glory to glory. The thing is, religion took away the key of knowledge (knowing the Lord personally) from those who want to come in and taste and see that the Lord is good. (Luke 11:52).

Luke 11:52 NLT "What sorrow awaits you experts in religious law! For you remove the key to knowledge from the people. You don't enter the Kingdom yourselves, and you prevent others from entering."

I love the Message paraphrase:

Luke 11:52 MSG "You're hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won't go in yourself, and won't let anyone else in either."

The Lord's enemies were not the Romans. It was man-made religion with its restrictions, heavy burdens, judgmental and critical mind, accusations, doubt, passivity, victim mentality, and "I know" mindset. He came to set prisoners free from their own religious hearts.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians saying I am not good for you if I do not come to you through my own revelation or knowledge (of the Lord):

1 Corinthians 14:6 NASB 6 But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in tongues, what will I profit you unless I speak to you either by way of revelation or of knowledge or of prophecy or of teaching?

Paul wanted to bring the Lord in him. As a good spiritual father to his children he wanted to take them to new places that Lord has taken him, so he can lead them to new experiences with the Lord. He was a blessing to them. He fed them with the fruits he himself was fed with.

Paul thanked God for the grace given to them, for being enriched in Him in all speech and knowledge, and confirming the testimony about Messiah. They lacked no gift and waited eagerly for the revelation of Yeshua (1Co 1:5-7). Paul wrote to them, that they should stop sinning, for some of them have no knowledge of God (1Co 15:34).

This means there are those in the Church who need to know God personally in their life and on that revelation they will be able to bear good fruits and be built.

This is why Yeshua asked His disciples if they knew Him (if they knew who He really was). "Who do YOU say that I am?". They all gave Him a distorted image of who He is. They walked with Him but didn't know who He is. It was Peter, by a personal revelation from the Father who said "You are the Christ (Messiah)". Yeshua, excited that one of His disciples received a personal revelation of who He really is, said to Peter "on this foundation, on this revelation, on this truth, I will build My Church".

Why was it Peter who received the revelation? Because he had already had a personal encounter with the Lord. Remember the Lord blessed him with many fish? Peter had experienced for himself who the Lord really is. The Father used Peter's changed heart to reveal to him who His Son is.

The only way to be built on the Rock and stand in any storm is to be built on your personal revelation of who Yeshua really really is for YOU. The more you know Him, the more you will know who you are in Him and you will become as He is as you bear the fruits He gave you.

In other words, the more He blesses you and you eat of the fruits of His heart, the more you will be able to bless others with who Yeshua is in you.

One such fruit the Lord wants us to taste and experience is His humility. In God's Kingdom a servant bows himself before his Master because he has experienced his Master bending His knee (blessing) to him and serving him. Our Lord gave His life and all He had to His children and as He blesses (serves) them He gives them an example and multiplies Himself in them - He makes disciples who become as He is. This is the true meaning of blessing others.

I will post the other parts of this teaching soon.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, shine His face upon you, smile on you, give you peace and reveal who He is to you. May you be built on who He is for you, and become a blessing to many.

Love,

Elana

Dead Fish Stink

Dead Fish Stink

We live together as a family of believers and we're learning to love, accept and build up one another. Becoming one and united in love does not come in a day. It is a process. Part of becoming as the Lord always involves "friction". We cannot grow without resistance, affliction, tribulation, or storms.

Why?

The Bible says we're dead in Messiah. Our baptism was one of death so we can live in Messiah. We're supposed to be dead, but since we still bring our flesh back to life, the Lord allows resistance to help us grow in Him and forsake the lust of the flesh.

As iron sharpens iron, people and situations in our life are many times like sand paper. It's as if He says "Let Me teach you how to deal with this situation now. Let me help you grow and know how to respond to that the way I do". He trains us in righteousness through real life situations.

Whenever we react in the flesh to situations it means we still need a personal revelation of the Lord in that area. I believe it is our personal encounter with the Lord that builds us in Him and on Him as our Rock.

When the Lord asked His disciples "who do you say I am?"

They gave Him a distorted image of who He is thinking He is a prophet, Elijah. But Peter had a revelation of who Yeshua was for him. The Holy Spirit revealed to Peter that Yeshua is the Messiah. Now Peter jumps and says "You are the Christ" (Messiah). When Yeshua heard that He said to Peter, "On this foundation, on that revelation, on that truth I will build My Church".

Meaning the Lord builds YOU on the revelation of who He is in your eyes, who He is personally for YOU and in your life. This personal revelation of who He is, is your foundation and it only comes from the Father who wants to reveal His Son to you. This is why Yeshua prayed "Father, reveal My glory to them" meaning, reveal to them My image, My nature, My heart and who I really am. He wants us to be built on our revelation of His glory. The glory of the Lord is His image, His nature and His heart. (see study on "Seek My Face")

The more YOU experience and know who the Lord really is for YOU, the more you are founded, grounded and rooted in Him who is love. We seek and He helps us find His glory.

We are on a journey with the Lord, learning what it means to be dead to our flesh, but at the same time learning what it means to be alive in Messiah. We are finding who He is in the inside of us, and who we are in Him. We are finding our true spiritual identity in Messiah and dying to our natural identity in the world. It is a journey of growing and learning to live in and through our inner man (spirit man).

Resistance and friction help us grow in the terriroty of our heart. We get an opportunity to find the Lord in either a deeper way than before, or in a completely new way. We are transformed into His image as Helps us to practice kindness, gentleness, living in peace and maintaining our peace, being gracious, compassionate, silent, humble, to become as He is.

The grace the Lord extends to us is the permission to learn from our many mistakes. It is the ability to mess up and know that even in our biggest mess the Lord will never remove His love from us. It is the permission to practice our gifts on one another without Him judging us for messing up. This is exactly the kind of love the Lord wants us to show to others. We see faults, or even get hurt by others' mess, and it even stinks, but we do not remove our love.

We smell the stench, but move in the opposite spirit and extend the grace, love, understanding, patience, forgiveness we have experienced in our own walk with the Lord. We are then able to build them up, set them free from condemnation and guilt, fears and worries, and help them be built on the Lord's foundation of acceptance, grace and unconditional love.

The gospel we preach is one of grace. There is no other gospel or another Jesus. We are not here to point to the law, to sin, to mess, to failure, to weaknesses, to faults, or others' inadequacies.

I felt someone's mess a while ago and it did not feel pleasant at all. There was a comment about my foreign accent and people were laughing about it. I didn't know how to react to such a dart that hit my heart. It was not a pleasant experience to stand there and let others mock.

I told the Lord that the comment and the laughter really hurt me. I decided I am not going to respond or react to it and I told the Lord I forgive and prayed for them. But somehow I found myself still thinking about what had happened. The thoughts would not leave me and I told the Lord "I don't want to think about it and I am not going to judge the people or remove my love from them". I kept praying for them whenever thoughts about it would rise up and at the same time I was trying to focus my thoughts on the Lord, but I could not shake it off. I finally asked the Lord "Why does such a small and insignificant comment and reaction hurt me so much?"

The Lord reminded me my early childhood. I spke with a foreign accent because my mother was not a Hebrew speaker. My accent somehow bothered my relatives who kept trying to correct it. I was also a lefty and this was a problem in my culture. My family members and relatives kept trying to teach me how to use my right hand making it clear that it is wrong to be left handed. My skin color was an issue as well. I remember the questions about my color, like "Why is she so dark? Even in school the kids would mock me for the color of my skin.

It seemed as if no matter what I did or who I was, it was never good enough and needs to change. I grew up knowing that who I am and what I do are not accepted and I need to change. They wanted me to be someone I was not. I grew up thinking that something is wrong with me and who I am is not good and not accepted.

Well, guess what the Lord is doing in my life?

He is restoring to me what the enemy has stolen from me since early childhood - my true identity in Him. He reveals to me that I am loved and accepted and He adopted me because He chose me. The King of Kings and Lord of all loves me just as I am. The Creator of the world is my Daddy and He loves me with no limitations and even with all my failures.

I know today that my identity in the Lord has nothing to do with how I look, what I have, what I accomplished or can do, who I am not, or what I lack. I am perfect in His sight.

Nevertheless, that comment still hurt me because of childhood experiences that wounded my heart and remained open without healing.

I realized no matter how much the enemy was trying to hurt me through that old wound, the Lord was about to turn it aeound for a blessing and heal me of this wound. I knew He would reveal to me something new about Himself that will bring healing in my life.

This is why Paul said that our pain cannot be compared with what the Lord is about to reveal to us about Himself.

Romans 8:18 NASB For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

The Lord comforted me in His word as I was seeking Him with this wound and He reminded me His love for me in Romans 8

Romans 8:1 NASB Elana, there is no condemnation for those who are in My Son Jesus. 15 You did not receive a spirit of slavery that leads you to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as My child and it's ok to cry out to Me "Abba! Father!" 28 And remember that I cause all things to work together for good to those who love Me, to those who are called according to My purpose. 31 What then can you say to that? If I am for you, who is against you? 33-34 Who will bring a charge against My elect? I am the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns you? My Son Jesus is He who died, was raised, and is at My right hand and He also intercedes for you. 35 Elana, can anything ever separate you from My love? Does it mean I no longer love you if you have trouble or disaster, or are persecuted, hungry, needy, in danger, or threatened with death? 38-39 I want you to be convinced that nothing can ever separate you from My love. Death cannot, life cannot, angels or demons cannot, your present fears or your worries about the future cannot—not even the powers of hell can separate you from My love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate you from My love that is revealed in Christ Jesus your Lord.

Then the Lord said to me…

"Dead fish stink"

I was trying to think what this means. "What do You mean Lord, - Dead fish stink?"

The Lord gave me a visual aid to help me understand a spiritual truth about His Bride.

The Lord as a fisherman is the One who took us out of this world like fish out of the water, and brought us back to life with Him.

Those in Messiah have died with Him (Col 2:20), therefore we are dead to our fleshly desires and ways of the world. We were buried with Messiah and were raised up with Him ( Col 2:12).

Romans 6:3-4 NASB Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

If we died and were buried with Him, we need to stay dead to our flesh and be alive in Him. The thing is we resurrect our dead flesh whenever we live in the flesh. This dead flesh which was buried stinks when it comes out and wants to live, but not in Messiah.

Whenever our dead flesh comes out of its tomb, as we live and react in the flesh, people around us smell the stench. Dead flesh that is dug out stinks.

We live together as a Body but we're learning to love one another also when our flesh rises up and others smell the stink of our attitude. They smell our resurrected decaying flesh.

We are one body in this world and we are learning to live with our own stench and with others'. We often see amd smell others' stench thinking "Their flesh is really stinky", or "I don't stink", but every dead flesh stinks.

The Lord was speaking to me that everyone's attitude, mess, failure, fault, or weakness stinks. I smelled it and did not like what came at me. But here comes grace…

The Lord put the stench of our flesh under His blood. We need to do the same for others whenever we smell their stench. It is the voice of His blood that cries out for justice, not our own that responds to a dead flesh.

Smelling someone's stench is supposed to lead YOU to repentance. The Lord allows you to smell the stench of others' flesh to show you something about the attitude of your heart. Could it be that your response reveals an exposed heart that needs to be healed? This is why the Lord said…

Amos 4:10 NASB "… I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me," declares the LORD.

What happens when you smell the stench of someone's dead flesh and you get hurt? How do you respond in your thoughts, emotions, imagination, facial expressions?

What is our way of escape when we smell someone's stench?

• Do not respond unless the Holy Spirit instructs you to do so. Start responding to the Lord as He speaks to you.
• Do not try to remove, clean, fix or change this stinky flesh. As the Bible says "do not touch a carcas". Why? Because it's DEAD. Why do we want to mess up with the dead?
• Forgive and do not dwell, accuse, have an attitude, or point to the stink. Point to the Lord by sharing who He is and direct the person back to His love.
• Pray for those who persecute you and bless them.
• If negative thoughts keep coming to your mind and would not let go, it means you have an open wound. Ask the Lord to show you what it is, to remove the darts and heal your wounded heart.
• Keep praying for those who hurt you and ask the Lord to pour out His love for them into your heart, and let you see them in His eyes.

We do not want to respond to a dead flesh because this is what the Lord instructed us in Leviticus 11. He says not to touch the dead.

The Lord speaks about the carcass of dead animals. These animals represent the Gentiles (the Bible defines Gentiles as those who forgot God). We were all Gentiles once. Through Peter we get the revelation that there is a permission to bring us Gentiles to his Kingdom and what God calls holy let no one call unholy. Meaning, when we walk in the flesh we go back to our dead fleshy animal nature we had. If anyone touches a stinky decaying flesh, he defiles himself and needs to wash his garment (repent).

Leviticus 11:31 NASB 'These are to you the unclean among all the swarming things; whoever touches them when they are dead becomes unclean until evening.

Touching a stinky flesh means responding to it, reacting to it, trying to remove or change it, letting the stench of that fleshy attitude affect you.

Leviticus 11:33 NASB 'As for any earthenware vessel into which one of them may fall, whatever is in it becomes unclean and you shall break the vessel… 40 'He too, who eats some of its carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening, and the one who picks up its carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening.

A dead stinky flesh cannot be any more dead than it is. If the flesh rises up from the grave and you smell its stink, you need to learn not to respond to it and not try to remove it or kill it.

The Nazirites who were set apart for the Lord were instructed not to touch a dead flesh (not to respond to flesh or try to remove it). The Lord even gives instructions of what to do if all of a sudden someone around us "drops dead" (walks in the flesh).

Numbers 6:6-9 NASB 'All the days of his separation to the LORD he shall not go near (the Hebrew word also means not have intimacy, oneness, unity) to a dead person. 7 'He shall not make himself unclean for his father or for his mother, for his brother or for his sister, when they die,(when they walk In the flesh) because his separation to God is on his head. 8 'All the days of his separation he is holy to the LORD. 9 'But if a man dies very suddenly beside him and he defiles his dedicated head (Seeing a fleshly behavior he defiles his mind by having evil thoughts and responding to this stinky flesh), then he shall shave his head (renew his head, mind) on the day when he becomes clean; he shall shave it on the seventh day.

This is why the Lord said we are not to speak to the dead (have communication or respond to a dead flesh).

James was saying that a body without the spirit is dead. It is just stinky corrupt flesh.

James 2:26 NASB For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

In order to escape the corruption and stink of a dead flesh, and the animal nature we need to participate in the Lord's divine nature. In order to do that we need to follow the instructions the Lord gave us in 2 Peter 1:4-8. He showed us the process of growing in His divine nature - growing in love. This process leads to brotherly affection and eventually to agape (God's unconditional) love.

1. Make every effort to respond to the Lord and add to your faith righteousness (moral excellence). Meaning beside believing do the right thing. If the right way is to forgive, even if you don't feel like it, you need to forgive.
2. As you learn to do the right thing, add to your righteousness knowledge. Know the Lord more intimately and personally in your life. Experience Him in your life.
3. As you know the Lord, add to knowing Him intimately self control. Watch your mouth, eyes, ears, attitude, thoughts, emotions, feelings and learn to submit your soul to your spirit man. Let your emotions and bad thoughts follow truth, and do not follow your emotions or bad thoughts.
4. As you learn to exercise self control, add to that perseverance. Learn patience and endurance. Stay where you're at and do not run away from uncomfortable situations that nail your flesh to the cross.
5. As you persevere, fully add to your faith godliness. Holiness, setting yourself apart for the Lord and keeping your mind and heart pure before Him. This includes your thoughts, imagination, dreams, sight and vision, voices, feelings and emotions, attitude – need to be right and pure. You start meditating on the Lord and His goodness, not on how messed up you (they) are, what you (they) are lacking, missing, or who you (they) are not, or what you (they) cannot do. You see with God's eyes and not with fleshy eyes. Godliness is defined in 1Ti 3:16 as God being revealed in a flesh body, being justified in the Spirit, being seen by angels, proclaiming Messiah among the nations, believing Messiah, being taken up in glory.
6. As you practice godliness, you add to it brotherly kindness. Loving one another in the Body as we share our life as one family, in friendship, goodwill and peace. Accepting one another, extending grace and learning to live together with all our weaknesses.
7. To this brotherly love we add love. This is God's agape love. Loving unconditionally. Loving despite of mess, failure and weaknesses. Choosing to love even when the flesh refuses or accuses. Following truth, and no longer counting sins, keeping a list of failures, or removing love, but being quick to listen and slow to speak. Being quick to forgive and reconcile and very slow to get upset. Being quick to pray and bless and extremely slow to find faults and accuse.

2 Peter 1:4-8 NLT And because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share His divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. 5 In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, our obligation is not to the stinky corrupt flesh, but to live according to the Spirit. How do we do that? We put to death the deeds of the flesh. We bring our fleshly desires to submission under the Spirit.

Romans 8:12-14 NASB So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- 13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

When you smell the stench of a fleshly garment (of someone who walks in the flesh), do as Isaac in his blindness had done - bless the one wearing this flesh garment, and let the smell be like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed.

Genesis 27:27 NASB So he came close and kissed him; and when he smelled the smell of his garments, he blessed him and said, "See, the smell of my son Is like the smell of a field which the LORD has blessed;

Do not seek the flesh, if you look for what's wrong or what's missing you will find it. Seek God so you can find Him and learn to accepts the Bride whose stench is covered under the blood of the Lamb.

God bless you,

Elana