A weight has been on me today and the condemnation has been heavy, but I've been resisting! haha! To be honest, my dear brothers and sisters in our online grace community have helped me so much just by saying they have enjoyed reading about me and knowing they're sharing the same struggles I am. I am truly blessed by each and every one of you. I wish we could see in person! And in seeing each other in person I wish we could be as open with each other as we are on here!

Another heavy weight I have been carrying around is this wall I tend to build against brothers and sisters whenever I'm not sure where they stand concerning the Grace of our God and Father. I can become so critical and defensive! I forget that I am called to love people, not to seek and destroy! Too often I get a warrior mentality against all believers, making sure what they think, believe and say is grace. Believe me, I do think we need to speak the truth of God's Grace. But we're to speak the truth in love. This is so difficult! It is so easy for us to grow bitter towards people who don't see eye to eye with us. And it makes it so hard to open up to other brothers and sisters, for fear. My defensive attitude can easily make me forget about love.

I guess the key to this is to get absolutely grounded in the understanding of our Father's absolute unconditional love for us in His Son, Jesus. He loves us freely. But I know it's easy for me to get so caught up into the mentality that I don't have to do anything to earn God's love, I easily interpret all talk of obedience, loving others and good works as performance based acceptance. I forget we are to allow God to love people through us. My interpretation of words like obedience immediately causes me to put up a defensive wall saying "I don't have to do anything!"

I guess it's something I'll have to grow into! lol