[SIZE=12pt]To fully understand our relationship with God we must realize that He is the author and creator of our emotions and He has emotions towards us. What are His emotions? Let’s try an experiment! Take out a pen and a piece of paper. Now I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to write down your first response without thinking about it… If you were to meet God in the next ten seconds; how do you think He would feel about your life? If you wrote down sad, mad, disappointed, or any other negative feeling you are not alone. Most of us have a negative opinion about our relationship with God. The reason for this is that many of us see God as emotionally sterile. Oh sure, we intellectually acknowledge His love for us and we easily admit that He can feel negatively about us because of our own feelings of inadequacy and low self worth. We fail to understand that as His children, He loves us better than we love our children, as our heavenly Father, we fail to realize that He loves us better than our parents do. As our eternal friend and companion who sticks closer than a brother, we fail to acknowledge that He can love us better than anyone else we have ever known or will know. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We either picture God as a Zeus-like figure waiting to cast lightning bolts towards us for any infraction or a God who is eternally frustrated with the poor performance of His children, but God is neither. The bible tells us that “He delights in those whose way is blameless”, He “delights in men who are truthful”, “the prayer of the upright pleases Him”, “The Lord rescues us because He delights in us”, “He delights in those who fear Him” and “He delights in those who put their hope in His unfailing love” and finally that He rejoices in His works and we are part of His works. As we are able to show caring, kindness, compassion and patience towards those we love, He also extends those same emotions towards us, but in a more infinite capacity. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]As you read the verses above you may have been saying to yourself, “but I’m not blameless, I’m not always upright or truthful so I am deserving of His wrath, aren’t I?” By asking those questions you are already falling into Satan’s trap. You are looking at yourself through your eyes instead of God’s. When God looks at the born again believer, He is seeing you washed white through the blood of the Lamb. Yes, you are guilty but the penalty for your guilt has been “paid in full” through the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. Don’t forget that in God’s timing, while we may have been Christians for many years we are still growing and maturing and He also knows that while we are new creatures, we still have our sin nature and will always fall short of His glory. If we could attain perfection on our own He never would have had to sacrifice His Son on our behalf. So give yourselves the same kind of break that God is willing to give you and come to the absolute understanding that any negative feelings that you suspect God of having towards you is a lie from the devil. One of Satan’s tactics to bring defeat into our lives is through our relationships, not only our personal ones but the relationship we have with God most of all. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We need to understand how the devil works in our lives to bring us to the point of stagnation. If we are stagnate then we are not going forward and are of no effect. We become incapacitated by focusing on our own problems of feeling lost, helpless and alone or other spiritual hurts which results in being ineffectual in helping others. Our relationship to each other as the Body of Christ is vital towards our ultimate success in defeating Satan in our lives and the effect he has on our loved ones. There is a book out there that can really bring this point home and that is “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis. In this book, Lewis shows how demons can work in our lives to make us ineffectual as believers.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The conclusions we come to by understanding all this is that we are at war! There are demons and spirits out there whose job it is to prevent us from being all that we can be as spiritual warriors for God. Every one of us is better then an “army of one” because each of us is an “army of four” ourselves and the Holy Trinity. When each one of us combines in unity as members of His Body with one another then our army grows exponentially. Realizing that we are part of an army with a spiritual battle before us; it behooves us to become familiar with our armor and weapons of warfare. As recent history has proven it doesn’t matter how spiritual you are or whether you’re a famous Christian personality or just a common man, Satan will seek to destroy your efforts to become an effective believer. One of the ways to understand our relationship to God is to understand who our “old man” was in regards to the “new man” we’ve become. Eph 4:22-24 - “That ye put off concerning the former conversation (life) the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” (KJV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The word conversation here is not speaking of the way we communicate but is talking about our general behavior, how we conduct our life. In close association with this verse is Rom. 12:2 - Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV) The word “conform” in this verse, means to “shape or fashion one like another”, in other words, we are not to base our patterns of thought around what the world thinks or believes but on what God’s Word has to say about any particular issue.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] Many of us read further on in Eph 4, vs. 25-32...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] for we are all members of one body. 26 "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] God forgave you. [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt](NIV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]…and believe that by obeying these actions; our old man will be “put off”, but that is not the case. These are things that our old man did, not how he thought or believed. While we must obey the above verses, they are only the beginning, the cleaning up of our outer laundry, so to speak. The real chore and the problem that most Christians have is in changing and cleansing our inner laundry, the way we think and believe; in fact our whole thought process has to be conformed to the word of God and our previous philosophies and lofty ideas about our earthly lives must be redrafted into the patterns that God desires.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]You may be asking yourself what sort of things am I talking about and I will share my thoughts on this but some of them may be bitter pills to swallow. Our old man believes these things are our earthly rights as citizens and may infringe upon our rights as free men. We must come to realize, however, that we are no longer free men and women. We have been bought with a price, we have surrendered our will and self-determination to Christ and we now trust Him with our lives and have become His bond servants.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The first issue to deal with is our sense of self. The world has it’s mottos like, “if it feels good do it”, “you only live life once so live it to its fullest”, we are taught to please ourselves first and that “looking out for number one” is the only way to go. If you go to any book store or library and look in the “self help” aisles you will find hundreds of books dedicated to the topic of self but in Christianity we put ourselves last. Jesus said in Mark 9:35 - …"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (NIV). There is an old Sunday school song which says it best, “Jesus, then Others, then You, what a wonderful way to spell Joy...”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We start by putting away all our selfish desires and seek ways in how we can bless and help our brothers and sisters in Christ. This isn’t easy but it gets easier as we put it into practice. This way of thinking is extremely contrary to our human nature. Generally speaking, the process from being an unsaved person to a follower of Christ affects all our relationships: family, personal, business, how we act at our place of occupation, the way we treat and interact with the general public and even the educational and political aspects of our lives must change. Let me offer a couple of specific examples.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]One area we should consider is education. It’s easy not to make waves and continue to let our schools teach our children lies and philosophies that are different from our Christian beliefs. We must, at some point, make a stand and fight for our rights as citizens not to have our children force fed things we disagree with like evolution, abortion is OK and tolerance towards sinful behavior and that certain sexual behaviors are as normal as God’s design of marriage being between a man and a woman. They are not; but let me clarify here that while the bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, it is not a “worse” sin, then adultery or sex outside of marriage or pornography, etc. They are all sin and man is the one that categorizes one sin as being worse then another. In God’s eyes “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and that “there is none righteous, no not one“. In fact He goes on to say that “our righteousness is as filthy rags to him.” It is only through the shed blood of Jesus and His righteousness that covers us that we have any hope at all of eternal life.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The hardest area to come to terms with is our political views. In my opinion, Christians should be neither Democrats or Republicans. We should be independent, conservative voters who vote for the party or person who will most likely keep this nation as attuned to God’s ideals as they can. Sometimes it’s a matter of the lesser of two evils, but we must make our political decisions not on the worldly aspects of government such as social security, government programs, war, taxes, medical benefits, etc. but on whether or not this person or party will make attempts to stop the murder of the unborn, protect our right to self-defense, not allow liberals to legislate sin as being ok and acceptable, allow Christians to home school their children if they desire to, allow creationism be taught alongside evolution, not make agreements with evil nations who seek our destruction, continue our national support of Israel and not try to re-write the constitution to eliminate our Christian outlook on society, to name a few. War, while undesirable is not sinful if undertaken to bring freedom to oppressed peoples or as a matter of self-defense.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]All these thoughts and ideas that I laid out for a Christian’s political viewpoints are unpopular but that is how it must be. Jesus tells us that we will be hated and persecuted for His name’s sake. Christians are unpopular politically because we call sin, sin and that angers people. They don’t like to be told that they will have to justify their accepted behavior before a holy and righteous God, especially if they don’t believe in Him. But the fact is that their belief or unbelief is irrelevant because as we all know, they will have to stand before God and give an account of their lives and we as Christians will too. We will have to stand before Him and explain why we, for example, thought our social security checks were more important then the life of the unborn or why we supported a party who lowered our taxes but outlawed discrimination in churches against homosexuality.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Consider these two verses…[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Col 3:10 - “…and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (NIV) and Gal 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (NIV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Living the Christian life is one of the hardest things to do in this world of self-indulgence and those who think Christianity is a crutch for the weak, children and the old obviously have no idea of what they’re talking about. The bible calls us a “peculiar people” and since we believe far differently from what the world thinks, it is understandably so. We are peculiar because of our faith in Christ and the aspects of life that go along with that faith and the bible tells us that in the last days we will be persecuted tremendously for our beliefs but we must endure that persecution until the end. Christ taught that “if they hate me they will hate you also” and that even our families will turn against us, so it is important to take these warnings seriously and determine if we are willing to stick our necks out to that degree. Hard times are coming and if we can’t stand with Christ in the simple things of life like our children’s education and our political views then how can we stand with Him when our lives and the lives of our children depend on our willingness to pay the ultimate price? Think about it![/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Another term to describe us is found in Rev 1:6 “and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father — to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” (NIV) We are called priests and as such we have a priestly duty to serve God. We do this by doing what the OT priests did but in a new way. They interceded on behalf of their people by accepting and offering sacrifices. Since Christ became the ultimate sacrifice, we no longer have to perform that function but we still have a responsibility to intercede on the behalf of others. We can offer intercessory repentance which is praying for the forgiveness of sins for those who are on their death beds or are otherwise unable to ask for repentance on their own. We can intercede on behalf of those who are plagued by demons or have a serious addiction they need to overcome. We can intercede for other believers to help them attain the position that Gods desires for them and for physical or emotional healing.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We also must realize that we are heirs according to Rom 8:16-17 - “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory“ (NIV). As joint-heirs with Christ we must take on that attitude in our faith. We, as children of a holy and righteous King, are Princes and Princesses of the Kingdom of Heaven and we should begin acting like it. No longer should we put up with the actions of our enemy, Satan. He has been defeated and we need to claim the authority that we have in the name of Jesus Christ over the Devil and his minion’s influence in our lives as God’s word shows us in Luke 9:1. Getting the backbone we need to wage spiritual warfare successfully is hard work but being able to live a victorious life and to receive the overcomer’s crown is well worth all the time and effort the Lord requires of us.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We either picture God as a Zeus-like figure waiting to cast lightning bolts towards us for any infraction or a God who is eternally frustrated with the poor performance of His children, but God is neither. The bible tells us that “He delights in those whose way is blameless”, He “delights in men who are truthful”, “the prayer of the upright pleases Him”, “The Lord rescues us because He delights in us”, “He delights in those who fear Him” and “He delights in those who put their hope in His unfailing love” and finally that He rejoices in His works and we are part of His works. As we are able to show caring, kindness, compassion and patience towards those we love, He also extends those same emotions towards us, but in a more infinite capacity. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]As you read the verses above you may have been saying to yourself, “but I’m not blameless, I’m not always upright or truthful so I am deserving of His wrath, aren’t I?” By asking those questions you are already falling into Satan’s trap. You are looking at yourself through your eyes instead of God’s. When God looks at the born again believer, He is seeing you washed white through the blood of the Lamb. Yes, you are guilty but the penalty for your guilt has been “paid in full” through the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. Don’t forget that in God’s timing, while we may have been Christians for many years we are still growing and maturing and He also knows that while we are new creatures, we still have our sin nature and will always fall short of His glory. If we could attain perfection on our own He never would have had to sacrifice His Son on our behalf. So give yourselves the same kind of break that God is willing to give you and come to the absolute understanding that any negative feelings that you suspect God of having towards you is a lie from the devil. One of Satan’s tactics to bring defeat into our lives is through our relationships, not only our personal ones but the relationship we have with God most of all. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We need to understand how the devil works in our lives to bring us to the point of stagnation. If we are stagnate then we are not going forward and are of no effect. We become incapacitated by focusing on our own problems of feeling lost, helpless and alone or other spiritual hurts which results in being ineffectual in helping others. Our relationship to each other as the Body of Christ is vital towards our ultimate success in defeating Satan in our lives and the effect he has on our loved ones. There is a book out there that can really bring this point home and that is “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis. In this book, Lewis shows how demons can work in our lives to make us ineffectual as believers.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The conclusions we come to by understanding all this is that we are at war! There are demons and spirits out there whose job it is to prevent us from being all that we can be as spiritual warriors for God. Every one of us is better then an “army of one” because each of us is an “army of four” ourselves and the Holy Trinity. When each one of us combines in unity as members of His Body with one another then our army grows exponentially. Realizing that we are part of an army with a spiritual battle before us; it behooves us to become familiar with our armor and weapons of warfare. As recent history has proven it doesn’t matter how spiritual you are or whether you’re a famous Christian personality or just a common man, Satan will seek to destroy your efforts to become an effective believer. One of the ways to understand our relationship to God is to understand who our “old man” was in regards to the “new man” we’ve become. Eph 4:22-24 - “That ye put off concerning the former conversation (life) the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; 24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” (KJV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The word conversation here is not speaking of the way we communicate but is talking about our general behavior, how we conduct our life. In close association with this verse is Rom. 12:2 - Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV) The word “conform” in this verse, means to “shape or fashion one like another”, in other words, we are not to base our patterns of thought around what the world thinks or believes but on what God’s Word has to say about any particular issue.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] Many of us read further on in Eph 4, vs. 25-32...[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] for we are all members of one body. 26 "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 28 He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] who listen. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] for the day of redemption. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] God forgave you. [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt](NIV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]…and believe that by obeying these actions; our old man will be “put off”, but that is not the case. These are things that our old man did, not how he thought or believed. While we must obey the above verses, they are only the beginning, the cleaning up of our outer laundry, so to speak. The real chore and the problem that most Christians have is in changing and cleansing our inner laundry, the way we think and believe; in fact our whole thought process has to be conformed to the word of God and our previous philosophies and lofty ideas about our earthly lives must be redrafted into the patterns that God desires.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]You may be asking yourself what sort of things am I talking about and I will share my thoughts on this but some of them may be bitter pills to swallow. Our old man believes these things are our earthly rights as citizens and may infringe upon our rights as free men. We must come to realize, however, that we are no longer free men and women. We have been bought with a price, we have surrendered our will and self-determination to Christ and we now trust Him with our lives and have become His bond servants.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The first issue to deal with is our sense of self. The world has it’s mottos like, “if it feels good do it”, “you only live life once so live it to its fullest”, we are taught to please ourselves first and that “looking out for number one” is the only way to go. If you go to any book store or library and look in the “self help” aisles you will find hundreds of books dedicated to the topic of self but in Christianity we put ourselves last. Jesus said in Mark 9:35 - …"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (NIV). There is an old Sunday school song which says it best, “Jesus, then Others, then You, what a wonderful way to spell Joy...”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We start by putting away all our selfish desires and seek ways in how we can bless and help our brothers and sisters in Christ. This isn’t easy but it gets easier as we put it into practice. This way of thinking is extremely contrary to our human nature. Generally speaking, the process from being an unsaved person to a follower of Christ affects all our relationships: family, personal, business, how we act at our place of occupation, the way we treat and interact with the general public and even the educational and political aspects of our lives must change. Let me offer a couple of specific examples.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]One area we should consider is education. It’s easy not to make waves and continue to let our schools teach our children lies and philosophies that are different from our Christian beliefs. We must, at some point, make a stand and fight for our rights as citizens not to have our children force fed things we disagree with like evolution, abortion is OK and tolerance towards sinful behavior and that certain sexual behaviors are as normal as God’s design of marriage being between a man and a woman. They are not; but let me clarify here that while the bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, it is not a “worse” sin, then adultery or sex outside of marriage or pornography, etc. They are all sin and man is the one that categorizes one sin as being worse then another. In God’s eyes “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” and that “there is none righteous, no not one“. In fact He goes on to say that “our righteousness is as filthy rags to him.” It is only through the shed blood of Jesus and His righteousness that covers us that we have any hope at all of eternal life.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The hardest area to come to terms with is our political views. In my opinion, Christians should be neither Democrats or Republicans. We should be independent, conservative voters who vote for the party or person who will most likely keep this nation as attuned to God’s ideals as they can. Sometimes it’s a matter of the lesser of two evils, but we must make our political decisions not on the worldly aspects of government such as social security, government programs, war, taxes, medical benefits, etc. but on whether or not this person or party will make attempts to stop the murder of the unborn, protect our right to self-defense, not allow liberals to legislate sin as being ok and acceptable, allow Christians to home school their children if they desire to, allow creationism be taught alongside evolution, not make agreements with evil nations who seek our destruction, continue our national support of Israel and not try to re-write the constitution to eliminate our Christian outlook on society, to name a few. War, while undesirable is not sinful if undertaken to bring freedom to oppressed peoples or as a matter of self-defense.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]All these thoughts and ideas that I laid out for a Christian’s political viewpoints are unpopular but that is how it must be. Jesus tells us that we will be hated and persecuted for His name’s sake. Christians are unpopular politically because we call sin, sin and that angers people. They don’t like to be told that they will have to justify their accepted behavior before a holy and righteous God, especially if they don’t believe in Him. But the fact is that their belief or unbelief is irrelevant because as we all know, they will have to stand before God and give an account of their lives and we as Christians will too. We will have to stand before Him and explain why we, for example, thought our social security checks were more important then the life of the unborn or why we supported a party who lowered our taxes but outlawed discrimination in churches against homosexuality.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Consider these two verses…[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Col 3:10 - “…and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (NIV) and Gal 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (NIV)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Living the Christian life is one of the hardest things to do in this world of self-indulgence and those who think Christianity is a crutch for the weak, children and the old obviously have no idea of what they’re talking about. The bible calls us a “peculiar people” and since we believe far differently from what the world thinks, it is understandably so. We are peculiar because of our faith in Christ and the aspects of life that go along with that faith and the bible tells us that in the last days we will be persecuted tremendously for our beliefs but we must endure that persecution until the end. Christ taught that “if they hate me they will hate you also” and that even our families will turn against us, so it is important to take these warnings seriously and determine if we are willing to stick our necks out to that degree. Hard times are coming and if we can’t stand with Christ in the simple things of life like our children’s education and our political views then how can we stand with Him when our lives and the lives of our children depend on our willingness to pay the ultimate price? Think about it![/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Another term to describe us is found in Rev 1:6 “and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father — to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” (NIV) We are called priests and as such we have a priestly duty to serve God. We do this by doing what the OT priests did but in a new way. They interceded on behalf of their people by accepting and offering sacrifices. Since Christ became the ultimate sacrifice, we no longer have to perform that function but we still have a responsibility to intercede on the behalf of others. We can offer intercessory repentance which is praying for the forgiveness of sins for those who are on their death beds or are otherwise unable to ask for repentance on their own. We can intercede on behalf of those who are plagued by demons or have a serious addiction they need to overcome. We can intercede for other believers to help them attain the position that Gods desires for them and for physical or emotional healing.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]We also must realize that we are heirs according to Rom 8:16-17 - “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory“ (NIV). As joint-heirs with Christ we must take on that attitude in our faith. We, as children of a holy and righteous King, are Princes and Princesses of the Kingdom of Heaven and we should begin acting like it. No longer should we put up with the actions of our enemy, Satan. He has been defeated and we need to claim the authority that we have in the name of Jesus Christ over the Devil and his minion’s influence in our lives as God’s word shows us in Luke 9:1. Getting the backbone we need to wage spiritual warfare successfully is hard work but being able to live a victorious life and to receive the overcomer’s crown is well worth all the time and effort the Lord requires of us.[/SIZE]
