Barriers

I claim no advantage over any other in Christ. My purpose is only to provoke gainful thought and hopeful promotion of my brothers and sisters in Christ toward Him as we journey together...


I'm well convicted that we can create barriers between ourselves and the object of our holiest desire as we claim to seek to follow Christ, by ignoring, discounting or flat out deliberately disobeying the rules and instructions that our God has sovereignly laid before us. However we may do it - even if it's in undisciplined ignorance, I believe that we take a step backward away from the source of our blessing and grace, while claiming to move ahead in other areas, when we trod over what God has declared to us. What He's declared, He's made available to us in His kindness, so that we can know.

Let's consider the subject of forgiveness...

Unforgiveness is a prison. It can be a dark and desolate compound repellent to outside intervention, whose walls are often hardened to varying degrees depending on the level of  the offense that the convicted has committed. They rise up to heights beyond their ability to be scaled based on that same degree of patent offense and form a seemingly impenetrable boundary against the convicted's escape. It's a prison built by the determined labor of the convict personally and becomes a hopeless habitation... of the unforgiving themselves - while waiting for the ultimate punishment to deservedly be carried out.

Matthew 6:14-15 (NLT) “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins."

I've admittedly carried the weight of unforgiveness myself in the past. I've felt it's unrelenting heaviness while bearing it and at the same time that I sought forgiveness for my own transgressions. It was a foolish and useless endeavour that I sought to carry out. And one that I finally and thankfully discovered was punishing me far more than the seemingly well deserved target of my own previously well defended unforgiveness...

As another example in regard to the same subject of forgiveness:

Matthew 18:32-35 (NLT)
 32 "Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. 33Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ 34Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt."

35“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

But those potential barriers aren't limited to the subject of forgiveness. For example, husbands can  create barriers to their most important and critical communication with our Lord by the way they treat their wives...

1 Peter 3:7 (NLT) 7 "In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered."

Sometimes I hear some discouragement and disillusionment expressed by others seeking to follow the narrow path as I do as well and I can't help but wonder what barriers they might unknowingly or even knowing and disobediently be putting in their own way. I know that I've wounded my own self in the past many times by way of the barriers and stumbling blocks that I've ignorantly put in my own way. So I've become sensitive to the subject and I live in some measure of concern over those that I haven't yet discovered and search them out intentionally because my deepest desire is that there remain no separation - no distance left between me and my Christ.

Study well to know the rules and laws that were sovereignly declared before us by the God who reigns over us and make certain where you walk in regard to them. Live well without barriers and closest to Christ's heart. It's what He desires also.