Justice or Condemnation - Matthew 12:20

Justice or Condemnation
Jan Fluit
 

I would like us to look at Matthew chapter 12 verse 20 today and in particular the second half of that verse. It says:
“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.”
 
A very well known verse I think. And this morning I would like to talk about a very beautiful principle. Right from the start I want to say: I f this was the way Jesus lived His life, then it is also the way for us to live our lives. Isn’t it true that we love to be busy with the gospel of Jesus, even more than with the gospel about Jesus? I hope that by now we have made that choice. And if you haven’t, it would be good to make that choice now. There is nothing wrong with the gospel about Jesus, but if we always talk about Jesus, we are only dealing with what He has done. But if you are working with the gospel of Jesus, you are working out His way of life. And that is more meaningful and very useful to me.
So in this case as well, the principle of ‘bringing justice to victory’ is actually a fundamental way of living. And if you use that principle in your life, a lot will be happening.
 
This principle speaks of justice. There is ‘justice’ and ‘judgement’. All of us encounter judgement. In itself there is nothing wrong with ‘judging’ a case or a person, as long as it is “just”. But if it turns into condemnation, then everything is going to be wrong.
So, in a very practical way, how can I lead justice to victory? How can I do this in every day life? How can my justice lead to victory? What kind of tools do I use to accomplish this?
But may be I should ask another question first: “Do I use my judgment and do I use it in the right way? Or is it so that judgment is causing me to lose; that the way in which I judge cases is causing me to lose all the time?”
And when it comes to judging, am I the person who is in control? If I am not, it means that somebody else is in control, because there will be judgment. Where is that going to lead to? That totally depends on who the other person is and how he is handling this.
 
Let us look at the context in which this is being said. In verse 15 we read: “Jesus was aware of this”. And he withdrew from that place. Many people followed Him and He healed all their sick, and he warns them not to tell who he was. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah.
The phrase: “this was to fulfill” does not mean to say that He decided to do this, in the sense of “because it is written in the bible, so I better do it”.
No, He did this with the thought: “the prophetic word, the Word of God is true and if I follow this Word, the things God has promised will happen.” And then Matthew continues to quote: The prophet Isaiah said: “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight;”  The one I love, the one I delight in, the one who gives me pleasure.
God says: “Look at Him, whát a man, oh, how I delight in him; how I love him.”
Yes, I can imagine that very well.
It is true that God loves man, but more than anything, He loves the man who shows his full potential, when a man really is a “man as God meant him to be”.
The Father has said several times: “Look at Him, He really is a Son in whom I find pleasure. This is how I meant ‘man’ to be, -free like that-, so alive and so real; and not someone creating a lot of meaningless noise.”
Jesus does not come with a lot of noise, and that will be our mark of recognition as well, we too will not come with a lot of shouting. Of Him it says:
 “He will not quarrel or cry out; no one will hear his voice in the streets.”
Jesus was not looking for outward appearances. His life led to quarrels, that is true, but He Himself did have no part in these. What an achievement!
Just imagine: if your way of live leads to discord, leads people to quarrel, would you join in or not? That too is judgment. I can choose to join in the quarrel. - And here I don’t mean a small quarrel like a difference of opinion now and then! –
You can even have a quarrel raging inside you, can’t you!? If you have to proof all the time that you are right, well, then you are quarrelling all right! It shows that the denial of the issue in which you want to be right, has hit its mark. It has hit you, it has touched you. So you want to put it right, you want to get it straight. But if something is already straight, it doesn’t need straightening, does it? You may want to try to straighten out everything, but be aware, that somewhere along the line, you may have allowed someone else to push the straight things out of balance.
If it stands straight, if - for example - your righteousness stands upright, then hold to that position. Don’t make it worse. It is good to hold on to what is right for yourself, otherwise you may even start questioning the Lord about things of which He says: “As far as I am concerned, nothing has changed, my thinking on this is still the same. The problem is that, because something was said about you, you felt that it meant condemnation for you. That caused a fog to rise up between you yourself and my Truth. But that doesn’t mean that my Truth doesn’t stand! The only thing I do is: lifting the fog. I make things clear again, things which were true and which now become true for you.”
For the Truth we discover from God, is a truth which has existed in all eternity. The fact is that this truth was kept away from you through the lie - that is the fog-.
 
But here it says that the beloved, that man whom God loves so much, is a man on whom God puts His spirit. God does not infiltrate with a spirit, neither is it a spirit which comes to you every now and then with some truth. But the spirit is put on you as the Spirit of Truth. And when that Spirit has been put on a man,  just as the Spirit was put first on the man Jesus, that man will declare judgement to the gentiles,  leaded by the Holy Spirit.
 
That is a wonderful ministry: to declare judgement to the gentiles. You know, that is the great task of the church. We believers, will declare judgement to the gentiles.
What does that mean? That the gentiles will be written off, that they will be condemned?
No, but that I by declaring judgement to them, I offer them a separation, a possibility to move over from one side to the other and be set free from the fear of paganism; to be set free from being a pagan. A pagan is none else but a person without God. Such a person is in need of a declaration of judgement, a separation; a declaration that it is possible to be set free from the thought that you have to live your life without God, that you have to do everything by yourself. As a result of your declaration, the other person will get connected to God and thus will start to really live!
What is it you are judging then? Are you judging the gentile?
No, not the person, no, it is the wrong thought you are up against, and you want to rid of it. And you are the one who can do this. Stop this judgement of a person.
It is wonderful that it is written here: “Not with quarrelling or shouting or a lot of noise.” And I really like that. I would find it really hard to digest if we as a church had to become a noisy club, having to do strange, unusual things everywhere in the name of Jesus.
I ask myself: “How can you help a person to become a ‘real’ man of God, if you use the very things in which he lost himself in the first place?”
Recently I had a talk with a lady. She is always very cheerful and seems easy-going. And through circumstances she had got into problems. So we got into a deep conversation and she told me: “Actually, as far as my life is concerned, everything has to do with ‘I have to proof myself’. I want to let people see that I look well and that I am cheerful and easy-going, may be they will accept me then.” And she continued: “I know it is wrong to live like that.”
Yes, true, but how many people are not in the same situation?
Let me tell you, that kind of world is a world with a layer of veneer over it, is’nt it?
As long as you are only  good looking!...... You have to give a lot of attention to your appearance in order to be attractive.  You hope that someone  will be ready then to love you. That is weird, to be judged by how you look. And yet, how often doesn’t that happen?! Even in your own case. People are condemned because of their outer appearance, because of the way they look or behave. Let me tell you, some people look pretty and nice on the outside, but not on the inside. Because inside there can be nothing but confusion and denial.
Why? Because they have never been accepted, or – which is more often the case- because they think that they have not been accepted. So, they adjust their behaviour and as a result more people will be condemned. I know what I am talking about, I have experienced it. All; the time you keep on adjusting yourself, you keep conforming. And this adjustment is an imitation of the behaviour of other people and is not of yourself. It is all outer appearances based on judgement, based on what people say about you and in actual fact, what the evil spiritual forces say about you.
When you and I today can agree on the fact that it is important to lead justice to victory – and we all do indeed agree wholeheartedly and are moving in the right direction – how is that worked out?
For instance, when then this afternoon or evening your child or a colleague or a neighbour says something that is very condemning, what happens then? Is that condemnation accepted; has judgement all of a sudden become “legal” again? Is this leading to my loss? Are things going wrong again, because you have had to admit to yourself that really all is not OK with you?
 
In our family we sometimes watch a TV programme in which people offer help with bringing up small children, especially where the way the parents try to do this, doesn’t work. Sometimes they also deal with teenagers and it is incredible what happens there. You wouldn’t believe it. You can see teenagers using a curse in every sentence they speak. When that has become his or her manner of speech it is terrible and you know that something is really amiss.   (wrong)
How can you deal with this as a parent?
You have to learn to differentiate between the unacceptable and wrong behaviour and the person himself. Don’t write that person off, don’t write for instance your child off.
As a matter of fact, that programme is not trying to “write people off”.
What strikes me again and again, is that they return to the basics of being a person, to YOU as a person. They question is: Who are YOU actually?
In the programme this is mainly made clear by rules. Every time I watch, it strikes me, how much you can help a person to move in the right direction just by being very clear about rules. You can see that, when a child has become chaotic, it is often the result of a parent having become chaotic in the first place.
Yes, the parent does mention the rules, but in reality there are no consequences. What he or she says, goes past the child. There are certain standard expressions being used, but they have no meaning at all. The parent says them and the child says something back or does not react at all. After some time, that child has come to know all the standard expressions the parent is using, like for instance: “This is really the last time.” And then he or she repeats the same thing another ten times! So it was in fact not the last time. And the child knows very well that it will take another half hour before the last time really comes! Then they know that, because they sense that you start to get annoyed.
Then you say in an angry voice: “And NOW it is finished!”
And they think: “I better watch it, now it is really finished”.
But half an hour earlier, it wasn’t finished yet, you let it pass. The language you used was clear, but you were not clear in what you did, there were no consequences. In connection with this you could say that you didn’t bring justice to victory. You were calling out something, but you left it like that. So the child did not experience that as a boundary, therefore it crossed that boundary. And then it made you mad that it crossed the boundary, but you had not kept the gate of that boundary closed!
 
That is also a spiritual law.
You declare: “I am saying what Jesus said. In everything I am more than a conqueror and Satan, you have no right over me and will find nothing in me.” And then when something very condemning is said to you, you may think: “He will find nothing in me, but what is coming my way now is really very venomous. It really troubles me.”
Then his condemnation leads to victory and not my justice, because I do not keep the barrier down.
Why don’t I? Well, I actually want to, but the situation is probably more complicated than         I had thought, and all of a sudden the wrong subject becomes in my focus of attention, because I start seeing things that are not good. I may look at myself and think:
“Yes, I am bruised or I am really like a smoking lamp. I should be functioning in a different way and I don’t. I don’t as far as my child is concerned or in respect to my colleagues or in respect to myself. I am not succeeding in many things and actually – as we say nowadays: – I am fairly knocked up”.
And when that is the case, I have nothing much to say anymore, have I? What can I say about somebody else, how can I help the other person when there is still so much broken in me? And I tell myself: “That is only possible when everything is whole and healed in me.”
But the question is: “How do you want to get whole and healed?”
Because you only have a right to speak when everything is going well.
I tell you if it is like that, you are really condemned, because nothing can move in the right direction anymore. As soon as you want to make a right move, you are condemned by what is not yet there.
But here in this verse we see a principle that Jesus is using: He does not break what is bruised (crushed or broken in other translations). What does it actually mean to be bruised? It means that something is knocked over so hard that it cannot straighten itself up anymore. That is ‘being bruised‘, when you have received so many knocks and blows in your life that you say: “I can’t take this anymore, I am crushed. What has happened to me has really broken me.”
And then Jesus -  the real man - comes to you and says: “I am not going to break it off completely, I am going to lift it up and make it straight again.”
He does not say: “Well, I too am going to write that off, after all, it is bruised.”
You will not hear Jesus say that. So don’t say it yourself either!
It is important that you recognise that it is bruised, that it has been knocked on the head too much, that too much violence has been used!
In our Bible verse it says that the reed has been bruised, has been broken. But reed does not break just through a strong wind. Have you ever seen a bush of reeds in a heavy storm? They bend over and straighten themselves up again like a wave of the sea. It does not break by itself! No, something else must have happened if it is broken. It must have been beaten down.
If you are able to see that, and you are not the person who has broken it, but rather the one who chooses to make it straight again, you are a great man. You don’t stand on the side of condemnation anymore. You have found out that there is something very much amiss and you decide that you want to help restore this, together with God. 
But God starts with you in this way. When He sees you, completely crushed by what has happened, He thinks in the opposite direction.
So often I hear people who are crushed refer to the past to explain the present: “The reason why things are like this, or why I am like this is,  because …..”  and then they give you a long story of their past or circumstances.
Well it is true, often the reason that we are crushed can lie in this. But the danger is, that I draw the wrong conclusion that my past is determining my future.
But I have not chosen for my past! Take for instance my childhood, I have not chosen to become a child. However, I was born as a child and grew up in a certain environment and that gives direction to the rest of my life.
And then I meet a God who says: “I am not looking at you from the viewpoint of your past. I am looking at you from the point of view of My own principles, from what is fundamental to Me. And that is going to be the foundation for your future.”  God thinks differently!
 
In the TV programme I was talking about earlier on, you see that at a certain point the teenagers are being told: “You can use the causes of your negative behaviour as an excuse all the time, but YOU are making the choice! You are responsible. Make your own choices, don’t allow yourself to become a victim of things that went wrong.
You know what, some of all the things that went wrong, were not all that wrong at all. But a wrong thought has taken hold of you. Snap out of it and see, what your possibilities are!
And if your parents have made a mess of things, it is not a rule of law that you have to mess up in the same way, or is it? If you find their life a mess, then you certainly should not continue in that same way.
Be an original and make a different judgement. Bring judgement to victory in the sense of “what are my possibilities?”
My starting point is not: “how many possibilities are people offering me?”
But it is: “what does my God believe about me, about my life, what does He believe about my future?”
What a difference and what a great new approach!
And then you come to the question: “What is my role in all this?”  You see that this principle of victory has been there all along, because what is born from God overcomes the world. So the principle of victory is there.
It is important where my thoughts come from, either my thoughts spring from God, are born from God, or they are born out of the situation, or the things of the past or out of what people have said about me.
How do things come into being?
Clearly things are born, where they have been fertilised.
Therefore the question for me is: Whom do I allow entrance to my spirit? Who determines my being? With whom do I move about? With whom do I have a relation, who is my beloved one? To whom do I entrust myself? That is of vital importance.
Otherwise, people may only establish the fact that the world is full of broken reeds and smoking wicks, a kind of final conclusion. And it is getting worse, a very dark outlook indeed. And I am sorry to say that Christians unfortunately often share that outlook. They can warn and point out very markedly. “It is going to be difficult in this world, difficult and hard.”
 
I ask you: Should that should be our message, the message called ‘gospel’, which is Good News?
Oh yes, it is going to be very difficult and there will be suffering, but the message is full of joy, because in the end……In the end it is going to be pleasant, if only we wait long enough.
It could be that you have the idea or believe that when the time comes, that it is really going to be very hard. You think: “God will take care that we, the chosen ones will be taken away and the rest, well they have to take care of themselves, and without us of course.”
Do you realize what this would mean? They would be without people with a good judgement. Don’t you believe it. If the sun has to start shining in this World, it will only shine through people who have the SUN (with a capital) in their hearts. Warmth can only come to this world through people with an intensive, warm relationship with the Father.
Healing can only come to this world through people who have been healed, - and have received inner healing as well -, through the thoughts of the Father.
God Himself truly believes that it will happen in that way.
 
In Isaiah 42: 1-4, you find the parallel verses and God says the same thing: “Here is my servant.” You can almost hear the Father say it: “Look at Him, My servant. He is the servant I uphold (am supporting).”
You can write that verse upon your heart.
How do you recognise a Christian? He is a person who is supported by the Father, who receives the Spirit of the Father. “He is my chosen one, in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. Inhislaw the islands will put their hope.”
“He will not falter or be discouraged. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.”
Isn’t that wonderful! You know, that prophecy has been in the Bible for centuries, but it did not get fulfilled, it didn’t come true, until Jesus came and uncovered its truth. That truth was true, but it actually only became visible, when a man came who said: “I am going to make it come true, I am going to make this happen”,
It is so important that you let things happen or not happen.
You see, sometimes you experience all sorts of things, which you cannot prevent.
But the question is: “Do I allow them to happen inside me?“
If I am being judged on the outside, do I allow my inner being to be judged?
I say: “No, I have no part in that.”
I don’t think in that way; that is not my world of thought, neither is it my Father’s.
I am getting myself free from that way of thinking and in my own life I am leading the Father’s  justice to victory.  
To me that is a principle, if you do this in your own life, you will also do that with respect to the other person. When God’s mercy came close to me, I have become more merciful for other people.
When I was met by God’s mercy and I discovered that God did not condemn me, I have left off condemning others. It is so good to do that.
Yes, the devil wants you to give the final blow to that bruised reed, to that person who is so broken already! He wants you to say: “I would have thought you to know better. How long have you known the gospel? And you are still not standing firmly?!”
Well, that is a real blow!.. That person is already down and you are stepping right on top of him, instead of lifting him up, of reviving him, of loving him, of bringing him  health and a new life.
 
But then we come to a very important verse: “He will not falter or be discouraged.”
That is it: “He will not falter”.
How is that possible? If there is any person who had to go through difficulties, it was Jesus.
It is sad to hear people say: “Yes we have Jesus, but we are having a hard time and we are not getting through.”
Then I think by myself: “If there was one person who had hard times and who knew how to endure resistance, it is Jesus Himself.”
But He will not falter, you can also say: He will not languish.
It makes me think of little plants that you find sometimes, they are just there, but they never change, they don’t grow and yet they don’t die. But they are of no use. If I have plants like that in my garden, I will try to find out what is wrong.
Is it caused by the soil or by the spot where they are planted?
I want them to grow and start to blossom. I know that by nature that plant has something better to give and I will try to bring that out by giving it a better treatment, a better spot in the garden, more light, more water, more nourishment.
That is a wonderful principle. You can make it your decision: “I want to be just like Jesus. I do not want to falter, and do not want to be bruised. I won’t allow myself to become bruised. And when I am bruised, I will find help so that I can straighten up again.”
For that is a choice you have to make.
“He will not falter”.
For Jesus that was not based on the number of attacks, but with His relationship with the Father. He was always seeking His Father who spoke well about Him.
The verse concludes with the words: “until he establishes justice on earth. In his laws the islands will put their hope.” 
Jesus continues to the very end, he continues so far that in the end he had to be without the Father. But he could stand firm because of what he had built up, even though everybody, including his disciples, thought at that moment that he was definitely crushed.
We hear them say: “Yes, he has kept it up for a long time, but finally he died. But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:21)
They were disappointed. They thought that when it really mattered, not even Jesus was able to hold on. But the reality was that he held on completely, that he continued to the very end.
“In his laws the islands will put their hope.
When it talks about islands, we know that these are area’s bordering the sea. They have to deal with the sea which is trying to capture (take) their land. That is so with us too, but you can declare: “These are my boundaries, you can’t come further that this border, this line, my seawall. You can’t come further than God’s truth, which He is speaking out over me and others.”
Then it says in Isaiah 42:5and 6 “This is what God, the Lord says – he who created the heaven and stretched them, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it., who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: ‘I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon all those who sit in darkness.”
I discover every time anew, that when God speaks His words and when people pass them on, it refers right back to creation, to the thinking from the beginning, the original way of learning to think. Literally everything that comes into being, originates from His world of thought. He creates it, He shapes it.
And the most wonderful thing in all is: He puts man, who is completely identical to His own nature (being) right in the centre of all  that He has created.
That is from the beginning. God puts you in the centre of the things He creates. He puts you in the middle of the garden, in the centre of His thinking, in the centre of all that is life.
He said: “Man, thát is a place!, you really can develop there, surrounded on all sides by fruit that makes you good. Eat your fill and walk with Me. Walk with me so that we can discuss things together, so that we can talk about the things you come across on your journey of discovery. Give it a name. How God rejoices when you start doing that, when the contact is not longer a one-way contact, in which God tells you all the time what you should be doing. Now you are becoming of age and able to handle things.
God has made the choice to bring justice to victory long ago, but He is waiting for people who are going to do this. Do the same, see things from a different perspective. If you see something that is not right, speak words that are right!
This week, when I had that conversation with my colleague who didn’t like the way she looked and was so insecure, I told her about my own life. I said to her: “I can understand you somehow. I think I know what you are talking about. I have experienced a lot of rejection, but I have come through it completely and let me be clear about it: I have found God Himself and He has pulled me up out of the pit of rejection.”
God doesn’t say: “I will be prepared to accept you, if only you change and do your best to look good.” He was willing to accept me, because He loves me as I am. That is what He offered me and that has changed my life completely.
Therefore I am able to give less and less attention to the other things: no outer appearances. And I do not need to do things in a perfect way either. And even if I do things completely wrong, God is not going to drop me! No way! He will always help me in the right direction.”
If you find God from that beginning, from what He spoke originally, you just wait and see what is going to happen, with yourself and in respect to other people.
God calls us.
How? In righteousness, always in righteousness. He is at work with your righteousness all the time, with the truth, with a man who is blossoming out to become what he is supposed to be. He takes you by the hand and together you walk through His garden, through His paradise, through His truth. He draws you into it and says: “I have made you, - made you -   to be a covenant for the people. So the covenant I made with you will lead the people to come to me and become connected to Me, to My life. It will lead them to start seeing things in a different way.
It will no longer be a matter of how they see themselves, like: “I am bruised, therefore I can’t go on.”
But they will start asking: “Do you mean to say that I, even though I am bruised, can be made right again? Are you saying that, after all that went wrong in my life, in whichever way, things can change and become right again? Do you believe in that?”
The answer is “Yes, I do.”
“But how is that possible? You know that everything went wrong?”
“Yes, but from the moment you find God, everything will start to go well. You will start to see things in a different way, you will judge them differently. You will judge, but not from the view of ”that bruised reed, that broken person, the youth which is not functioning well, it is not going to work out at all.“
But your conclusion will be: “This is a person who is meant to be healed.” It is the same as what Jesus says when He meets the man who was born blind. (John 9: 2)
A question is put to Jesus: “He is blind. Who has sinned? Is it his own fault, or is he blind because of the sin of his parents?”
Jesus answers: “Neither the parents nor the son have sinned.“
He says: :”Do you know what is the problem? God’s righteousness has not been revealed here. That is an injustice. You shouldn’t ask: ‘Who is guilty?’”
We can easily call that question the most frequently asked one in the world: “Who is guilty?”
And as a result, it develops into a quarrel in no time, discord arises, even war. These things originate from thinking in the line of guilt. Who is guilty?”
Jesus paid for the guilt and He has taught us to learn to think from the perspective of His forgiveness and healing. The way He thinks about the bruised person springs from His love and tenderness; it also springs from that truth and from a clear mind.
What I said about the youth (young people), I can tell you, I need to be clear about them as well.
It doesn’t help me when somebody says: “I can see that you are walking in the wrong direction, but I will let you continue, I like you very much.”
When I walk in the wrong direction, I do not reach the place where I am supposed to be!  So we have to be clear about what is right and what is wrong.
I need the rules of My Father, the order and values of that life. That is what we want to know and as a result we live life in a different way. We want to be at work pulling people out of the darkness into the light. The problem with darkness is that the things are there, but you don’t see them. When I was in darkness, I didn’t see that there was somebody who loved me. I didn’t see those kind eyes of God. I didn’t see them, but when He pulled me out, I see them, His kind eyes and the eyes of people. Not of all the people. But it is so wonderful to get a close-up of that.
It is good for us, - you and me -, to make a choice and to say: “We will bring justice to victory.” That is our future, that is our life, to follow Jesus, taking the same steps as He did, in the same Spirit He received.
If you do that, you won’t easily stand next to a broken person and say: “Don’t worry, it is not so bad, there are worse things in the world.”
You wouldn’t talk like that. Because you are a person who fully understands what it means to be bruised, but the way you look at it is so different, so warm.
I believe in what my God has said and I think that it is important that when you start to discover that, you choose not to falter. I don’t have any use for a faltering existence. When I falter, there will be wrong thoughts which keep me small, then I am not standing in the good soil.
Do I want to be transplanted? Do I want to go over and stand at the river which waters comes flowing from the temple, from the throne of God and then try again to draw my conclusions?
When we have done that, we have discovered wonderful things. We have discovered that they are so different from what we thought. Our view of people has changed so much. And people deserve it that I look at them differently, that I look at them from the perspective of eternity, from the perspective of a God who has faith.
It is the most wonderful way to walk in that path and to live from that perspective continuously. Make it to your way of living, be open for it. It is true that God doesn’t condemn you, therefore don’t ever go that way of any condemnation again yourself.
Does it bother you in respect to yourself or to somebody else?
Allow God to help you through people who know more about this. You are too precious to go on with wrong things.
What does it say in the Bible: “You have spent enough time doing the things the gentiles do.“  Therefore now is the moment to start living your time doing the will of God. That will benefit the gentiles and those who are not gentiles alike.
So enjoy yourself, living in this manner.
 
Amen
 
 
PRAYER
Yes Lord, You have a warm heart. And You take care of our hearts too. You come close to us with Your faith and especially with Your deep love, so that You can call forth life which we need so much. I thank you Lord, that You have opened the curtains of the impossibilities and that You give us as view of what is truly real and what is real life. That means a right to happiness, and being put back on our feet again so that we can be loved. I thank You Lord, for Your faithfulness, for Your power to make the most impossible things possible. Thank You for that life, for Your view, Your perspective, which we have made our choice. I have done that too Lord, so that I have that vision, that mission, that same goal and life as You. Thank You that You have shared this with us and have made it possible. Thank You for today and thank You that we have a long and bright future!
 
Amen.