Imagine This …

ESCAPING THE ESCAPE

Levi brings with him order and discipline, correction and holiness. This is why God chose the Levites as His priest. God wants this type of people to come behind the veil, in His presence to worship and offer sacrifices. How private offerings of sacrifices to God use to be. Now, some pastors call for $20, $50, $100, $1,000 or more lines of sacrifice in church. And, have the nerve to turn right around and say, “what you do towards God in private he will reward you openly.” WHAT? (I mean not to get off course.) Think about every person that has been in your life since high school. The mass majority of these individuals have disappeared one way or another. Remember that relationship that you thought could survive the trials of life, but it didn’t? Some people try to move God out of your life and replace themselves as God so that you can spend your time sacrificing to them. How does it look sacrificing your life away to a lil ‘g’ god? It looks really bad. They want to be your idol while you remain idle. People have promised you that they will be your friend until the end but, then misunderstanding or an argument stepped into the picture. Those friends became not so friendly, right? God moves people out of our life and it is always for our good. God is our protector. We are bombarded with what this world considers right. Television, billboard ads, radio and the internet have made a huge impact in our lives. We are influenced even when we don’t know that we are being influenced. Every mode of communication has filtered in sin and evil into our minds. What can we do to combat this sin? Well, again this is the time that Levi rears up and is most effective. Levi gives us strength to turn off the TV and the radio and helps us to click the ‘x’ in the top right corner of that internet pop-up that potentially will fuel our lustful nature. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Rome and asked the question, “who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” What Levi does is identifies those hindrances (flesh stuff) and removes them from our life. This process is very painful for us as well. Imagine This: if you have a six-inch piece of duct tape over your mouth and someone snatches it off. How do you think that feels? You know you cannot live a productive life with tape over your mouth so you dig deep within and begin to slowly peel away the tape. That’s the natural way to deal with duct tape over your mouth. However, in the spirit realm, this duct tape is symbolic to sin. It will damage our relationship with God if we take the careful and slow route to remove sin out of our life. However, Mr. Levi is here to snatch sin off our mouths so that we can worship God in spirit and truthfully. Most of us have been in the world longer than we have been in Christ. Let’s be real! We must understand why this process is so painful. Levi cuts into our life to separate us until we are worthy enough to be presented before God behind the veil, in front of the veil, east or west of the veil and north and south of the veil. Levi sanctifies the children of God. What is important is that during temple sacrifice in the Old Testament, the Levites had to make a sacrifice for themselves before they could make an offering for the people.

God the father made a sacrifice for us through Christ. Pull the tape off your own lips before you get to pointing fingers at the tape other people have over their mouths. The same principal stands today. A Levites’ job is brutal and merciless. Have you ever wondered why it is so difficult for some Christians to end a sinful relationship or quit smoking cigarettes, etc…? It’s because of one of three things: 1. they have not fully committed to serve the Lord. 2. They have not yet come to understand their season of Levi. 3. They do not want to accept the transition Levi brings or takes out of their life so they fight Levi, but he has a knife. Levi comes to kill point blank! If you get in his way, you are liable to get cut.