Mishpat
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.” Eccl. 12:13,14
As I finished my study on Ecclesiastes this morning, I was left with this resounding in my brain and my heart. Of the 3 books I have exhaustively studied this year, one word remains a constant fear to me; judgment. Over and over I have read the truths of being careful in my own judging of others as well as the final judgment that will come to me from Him, in all of the things I have done and not done for Christ on the days I spent chasing the winds of the Earth.
I have always loved the first day of September. Summer has a careless abandon that often leaves us tired and for lack of a better word, crispy. Dried up; literally by the overexposure to sun, late nights and treats that did no useful good and spiritually because of the vacation inevitably taken hunting the joys of the day. But in September comes the break of Autumn, when the wind shifts to a gentle cool and new years are started in the young. The plants begin to die off and shed the toxins of summer, resting to be woken with a fresh start in the Spring. I am excited today for the dead leaves that He is killing and shedding from me, for the peaceful rest under winter’s frostbite that is coming and most of all for the fresh start I am given through Jesus.
We so often get trapped in the ways of ourselves and it is a wonderful reminder that through Christ, we can change. Its easy to remember that God forgives us but we often get caught up in not allowing others to be forgiven or even more dangerously we forget to forgive ourselves and in doing so we halt the change that God wants to make in us. An example, I go on many “I’m gonna have a perfect week” kicks just to find out Monday afternoon that I am a failure (even my best= filthy rags) and so by Monday evening I have given up on myself and the rest of the week. I do not forgive myself for making faults and then simply move on to try and have a better day than the previous one through what I have learned by the trials He gave me today. I realized this some months back, I recall it dawning on me that I wasn’t forgiving myself, I held myself up to my own judgment and so I stopped, gazed in the mirror and said “Who do you think you are?”…. and I wept…… Who did I think I was to believe that my forgiveness and my judgment was higher than His? Slowly, I am breaking down the walls that are keeping me from being what He see’s in me by learning to forgive myself. After all, forgiveness is the enemy of judgment.
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” Matt. 7:1-3
” Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. he who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?” James 4:11,12