Yokes of slavery?

Pondering this morning how easily we put 'yokes' of slavery or burdens upon people in our thinking, in our demands, in our expectations and yet it is a two way giving and receiving that happens - we can place a yoke upon someone but they have to pick it up in order to receive it.
We put yokes of bondages on people when we expect them to do a certain thing, behave a certain way, when we judge them in our hearts, when we decide what is right or wrong and start walking out of 'law'. It is so easy to do with one another without even realising what we are doing.

Yet on the other side we as individuals have to learn to walk in a place of freedom and like the scripture says in Gal 5 "don't let yourselves be burdened again with a yoke of slavery". People can put things upon us, but in Christ we are set free, we are not subject any longer to yokes of slavery unless we allow it, unless we receive it.

So individually we all have a part to play - as a people to try to live in the grace that has been given to us, that we can give that grace to others and not place yokes of burdens on people and allow people to live their own lives in the Lord and in what the Holy Spirit will teach them and for ourselves not to pick up things that are not ours to pick up.

Because of this, I see many christians walking away from other christians because of the various yokes that 'seemingly' and 'mistakenly' get put on one another and yet I believe when we all take responsibility for our parts of giving and receiving yokes, we can all learn to live in freedom in the place the Lord has with those people and love one another as we should, giving and receiving grace and forgiveness, allowing the Lord to change us all on the journey together.

"A man's enemies will be the members of his own household" Matt 10:36

Recently we have been pondering how to deal with situations in our family that don't line up with the word. What action do we need to take? Are we being too harsh? Do we accept the behaviour or be considered by those around us as "too radical" or "too black and white"? "Where is grace in all of this? How do we love the sinner but hate the sin? What about forgiveness? What is the role of discipline? What makes that sin any worse than lying? What is true love? And there are a lot more questions going through the mind in how to work through this and know God's will and desire for the situation and the person. And firstly to say we have not come to any conclusions and are growing and learning day by day in this but I want to throw it out there. In Matt 10:34-39 says "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "a man against his father, ...

"I am ruined for the ordinary"

“I am ruined for the ordinary” A statement that can possibly be to some, come from a place of judgement, or it can be from a place of there is more in the Kingdom of God that I am yet to experience or understand, revelation that I have tasted of something that actually shows me that I have not tasted of anything yet. A place where there is such a contentment and joy in what I have seen and longed to see and yet a revelation that there is way more "beyond what I think, ask and imagine" (Eph 3:20) and one that spurs me on to seek and discover all the fullness that could be ours in the Kingdom of God. When we as Christians see other Christians going places or experiencing things that we don’t understand or perhaps we have not yet moved in, we can either become jealous of that person and judge and bring them down to our level, exclude them from our lives or we can choose to be excited by what is happening and be encouraged and spurred on in the Lord for the more than ca...

The biting off of the poisonous finger & and the underground spring being released

Recently I have had two pictures which now the Lord is bringing a fullness of understanding to. In the first vision I saw me biting off the tip of the pointing finger that was black and poisonous and I just knew it was demonic. And the second vision I had only a couple of days ago was of a garden that was unkempt, dry and derelict that suddenly we found an underground irrigations system to and we turned it on and it started to rain and everything came back to life again. And then this scripture was given to me over the weekend that I only saw this morning that has brought confirmation to what I believe the Lord is saying. When there is a poisonous part of the body unless we do something with it, it will infect the rest of the body, like gangrene sometimes we have to take serious measures in order for the rest of the body not to become ill. And although it seems extreme at the time, it is necessary to stop any further infection from spreading. And it was very much like ...

Obedience and Commitment are big things in Gods Kingdom

Reading in Acts 7 this morning the story through Stephen of Abraham being told by God to " Leave your country and your people and go the the land I will show you" So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child." As I reflected on this and the journey of Abraham stepping out in faith into a land that he received no inheritance in but a promise of what was to come for his descendants of which we live in the fruit of that, I thought of todays generations in which often is only doing things that we want to do or that will benefit us personally as we live for 'today' not worrying about tomorrow. A sense of if it feels good then do it, if it doesn't then we will move on - perhap...

Kiwi Culture verses Kingdom Culture

The above is the title of a book that I have on my heart. Whether or not it ever makes it there we will see but in the process I want to put some thoughts down and see what it opens up. I grew up with phrases like "God helps those who help themselves" or "Too spiritually minded to be any earthly good". There are many many more that I am sure you know of - I would love to hear them so please blog me about them or Facebook me so I can add them. But phrases like that that we grew up with that actually have become a part of world view and things we base our lives on. Things of our culture that are so much a part of culture that we think is actually a part of the bible or at the very least is no big deal in God's eyes; like sarcasm. I have had to question some of these phrases - "where does it say in the bible God helps those who help themselves?" "What actually is sarcasm and does it build up and encourage people?" etc. Jim and I lived ...

Our words create our worlds

Last week I had a vision and I saw fire coming up from the ground and water coming from the sky, it was chaos and people were running for their lives as disaster struck. I was asking the Lord about it as it felt like judgement coming and I was trying to reconcile judgement with my God that I know who loved the world so much that he sent his only son to die for us not to condemn the world but to save the world, and he said to me - Sarah "your words create your world." Everything God created was good and in Genesis we see God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the earth. And through Jesus, God has given us authority and dominion over the earth, the same authority he gave Jesus now lives in us to those who believe. And I realised that as a people we can reap what we sow in respect of our words. The power of the tongue is powerful, it either tears down or builds up, life and death is on the power of the tongue. In John 1:14 "The Word became flesh ...

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