Funny, I forgot this thread was on here and He had me thinking about accountability this morning.
He brought back a time to me when my now 19 year old daughter was then about 2. She had never been spanked before. She was the one child I only half jokingly referred to as "the one born after the flood," because she was the only one born after I came to the Lord.
One day, I was struggling with the fact I had now told her 3 times, NOT to do something, and she kept on doing it. In my mind I was wrestling with, now how old were the boys when I first spanked them? And is she too young? And how would God want this handled?, on the first 2 incidences. By the 3rd, I thought, that's it, she knows what no means, so that means she's accountable, and I got her and just as I was drawing my hand back to make contact with her shorts, the Lord spoke to me as plain as I have ever heard Him, and said, "TENDING YOUR LITTLE GARDEN?" And He said it with an air of amused pride in His creation, is the only way I can describe it.
I cracked up, then cried with my little girl. My daughter was mortified as she had never known even the possibility of spanking her existed before that moment, because I had never done anything at that point but pour into her what He had been making life in me of His unconditional love. Well, His unconditional love also has judgment in it, the judgment of the tares. But she rarely needed correction again, as I witnessed firsthand the combination of the love and the judgment unto victory working in tandem.
Along about that time He also began to teach ME the kind of accountability He desires, for our good, as His judgments are unto victory. He did it by making it life in me about the wheat and the tares, and taught me that when a tare was rising up in me, it was because HE was giving it life, ie. the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, because if He didn't allow it to manifest we would not even know it was in our soul.
Now there is no shame in it for that reason, much as the spirit of condemnation also in our midst, would have us believe there is, because He made our soul and the enemy that sowed the tares into them in the night when we were asleep in Adam. Denial only delays the process, since He will make sure it manifests again until it is dealt with finally. We are the garden of Lord and the Master gardener is the one with a plan for a bountiful harvest of the nature of Christ.
He's been a very "hands on" kinda God with me, literally, LOL, so it is nothing to see me driving down the road, hand on my heart, praying in the Spirit because He has just revealed a tare that came in as a thought (unclean bird) to me that is desiring to find a place of earth/my flesh left that it can land on and make a nest/basket and invite over a few friends, just like the one that was on the baker's head in his dream he related to Joseph, thereby being hung (life of the Spirit choked out of him) by Pharoah. Babylon (confusion of the carnal mind) if allowed to stand in us, by this becomes a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. Fortunately for us, by the grace of God, He gave us the fire of the Holy Ghost to burn up that kingdom, before it spills out of our mouth and defiles us.
This is why it's not what goes in a man's mouth that defiles him, but what comes out of it. Because we have a chance to burn it with fire, before it gets out of the mouth "gate" of the "city". I'll bet if we could literally see what goes on in the Spirit at will, it would look a lot like all the wars played out over the cities in the Word. Probably a lot like what John saw; one kingdom being destroyed and another being built, actually going on all at the same time, side by side. Thank God we know the ending. My
. Blessings to all......
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