"Roots" -2

"The God of my mercy shall prevent me: God shall let me see my desire upon mine enemies." (Psalms 59:10) Now that you have seen where I stand, let me tell you that we all must take a stand, and why; because our God is holy, we must take the side of holiness! More than that, we must proactively walk out the love that we have been given; which means that we are to love!!! There is absolutely no way we are ever going to be delivered if we do not love! And I know this is not popular, but love requires sacrifice of yourself; your needs, your wants, your feelings, none of that matters when it comes to love, because love is not about you getting what you need and what, or even how you feel; it's about obedience to God's commands, and His commands are not suggestions! I'm sorry, I guess I woke up on the wrong side of the bed; actually, I really did not have a choice which side to wake up on, because my wife's bed was on one side. But I think you get my point, because sometimes we really can destroy hope for the hopeless, without giving the law without the gospel; the law on it's own will never save anyone, and it was never intended to do that. God gave us His law to show us how much we need His mercy and grace; and just because we can't keep them, that does not mean we don't try; and just because others don't keep them, does not mean we become the judge of their lives; we have enough to be concerned with by just working on ourselves. Judging others will never win them to Christ; the love of God is what wins the lost to Christ!!! Okay, maybe I have got off track this morning; and then again, maybe the Lord is trying to show me something about what it requires to really be delivered; because real deliverance requires that we totally die to ourselves, which is something that takes all those things we care about and leave them at the cross. That is hard to do! Those things have roots, and it is really hard to get those roots out! But God, "the God of my mercy", He can take them out!!! He is more than able to replace those bad roots with roots that lead straight to His heart; but it requires my heart to surrender... "You have not come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking. They staggered back under God's command: If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death. Moses himself was so frightened at the sight that he said, I am terrified and trembling. No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. You have come to the assembly of God's firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God Himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who now have been made perfect. You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel." (Hebrews 12:18-24) NLT