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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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