v6 No, this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and no not hide from relatives who need your help.
And the Holy Spirit set to work on my heart, removing the scales from my eyes to see more.....if I had to describe it in words, it would be like magic in movies....how the words "imprisoned" "burden" "remove the chains" "hungry" "food" "homeless" "shelter" "hide" "need help" leapt off the page in brilliance and became more than the simple eye sees. I began to think of those around me that are imprisoned and burdened by chains not visibly, but spiritually. I thought of those around me who are soo hungry, not for tangible food necessarily but the food I was feasting on - God's Word. I thought of those around me who are homeless, who don't seem to fit in at church like me and who need God's shelter so desperately. I thought of how I "hide" from people who need my help - need me to be His LOVE. I began to jot down those things next to those verses, so as to not let the Holy Spirit's teaching be lost in my daily life.....
"It's your sins that have cut you off from God",
and where my eyes had been blind before, the scales fell off and I just sat there while Vonnie lectured and pondered the truth of those words in my life. Do I want to EVER be separated from God or cut off from Him? Where do I fool myself in not recognizing that every aspect of my life AFFECTS my relationship with God? Then I took a hard look at my life and all the "relationships" in my life that my sin (my hurt, my anger, my insecurity, my envy, my jealousy, my offense) slips into, which then cause me to react usually by withdrawing and then a rift starts to grow not only in those relationships but also in my relationship with God! I sat there and filled out a whole notebook page listing areas where my sin creates chasms and then just sat there and wanted to cry at all the distance I was blind to between me and God. It was a visual of vs 12
"For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us."
My head (this world...the deceiver) tells me that in those human relationships, I'm doing the best I can and more readily acquiese to the consequences - the distance from people, but when I see them in the light of what it causes between me and God I cannot continue on the same path - I cannot - will not let the Deceiver blind me to the whole truth.
I couldn't wait to get in the car, to hear how God spoke to my kids this night, to share with them how He spoke to me and to seek their forgiveness for spewing poison within their hearing so many times....in my critical comments of others. In the end I told them, "I love BSF and I think it's a great TOOL, but IT's not the GREAT thing....GOD is the GREAT thing....seeing how the HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES this stubborn heart takes my breath away....experiencing the WORD of GOD coming ALIVE and jumping off the page in brilliant light is the thing that makes me want to shout from the nearest hilltop and tell everyone I see how GREAT HE IS!!!!!"
