If a child says to their father “I appreciate what you’ve done for me”, and then chooses to truant from school, speaks rudely to their mother, or practices sexual promiscuity behind the parent’s back, that’s a contradiction. How can you say you appreciate the parent and at the same time disrespect and defame the parent’s principles or your father’s wife?

If a friend says to you “I appreciate what you’ve done for me”, and then mocks you behind your back, that’s a contradiction.

If an employee says “I appreciate what you’ve done for me”, and then starts their own business and steals your clients, that’s a contradiction. They didn’t really mean what they said.

If what you say is not what you do, then it’s a contradiction.

When your actions contradict what you say, that’s hypocrisy, and hypocrisy invalidates your authority.

Unfortunately, hypocrisy is inherent in the soul of man, and expressing appreciation is more often than not a hidden agenda to gain more personal self-value and a better position with the person you’re complimenting. No one is exempt from this behaviour pattern, but pride can’t see it’s doing it. The truth is, you can’t do good with a grievance in your heart; you can’t ‘appreciate’ & hold a grievance at the same time; you can’t hold a grievance & then tell your wife what’s right and wrong; it’s a contradiction.

Relationships between humans are spiritual.

You can tangibly feel unity of spirit, and you can tangibly feel disunity. You can’t hold a grievance in your heart and expect to knit your heart with someone else’s. If you do not have a heart-to-heart relationship with your spouse, there’s a grievance in your heart.

If a husband uses the fear of intimidation to correct his family, he proves he has a grievance in his heart, and his wife will feel the fear of this intimidation and inadvertently wish her heart was re-knitted to her own father’s; she’ll want to escape the fear.

You can’t hold a grievance without making a judgement against someone and thus positioning yourself above or below that person; and you can’t have a mood and say you have no grievance; it’s a contradiction. You can’t correct in love and hold a grievance; it’s a contradiction.

Separation = walking away from someone who locks into grievances, so you don’t contaminate your heart from being knitted to Christ’s heart.

A grievance is the soil for a demonic spirit to take root in your heart (Hebrews 12:15). When I correct my family it isn’t so I can have no hassles; I’m actually challenging them to stop their grievance, to oppose a demonic spirit from taking root, so our hearts won’t drift apart, and I’m challenging them so God’s heart won’t unknit with them. The purpose of correction is to restore the spirit-to-spirit relationship. My wife and children receive my correction because they know I have their best interests at heart, and they respect my authority because, despite my mistakes, my heart owns its own pride.

Holding onto a grievance is simply pride expressed as a mood, but it also blocks correct evaluation resulting in bad deduction reasoning.

You can trust somebody when you know they hold no grievance against you even though they may be disciplining you. You can’t trust a person who holds a grievance against you. You can’t have a heart-to-heart relationship when one party holds a grievance, and you can’t say you are trusting God and having a mood; it’s a contradiction. If you want to really trust God, dump the mood with “ok, God, whatever You want”.

The secret is … Hold no grievances in your heart, just like David’s attitude to his father-in-law, King Saul.

Fathers should be motivated to never hold a grievance in their heart because they will be held accountable for their family’s reaction to the message of God’s salvation. You won’t save your family by giving them things, by business prowess, or spending time with them, but you can save them by them knitting their heart to yours. True fathers will only display true love to their family when they face their own sin expressed as a mood. Addressing your attitudes will show them by example the spiritual process of how to knit hearts.

This is confirmed in Matthew 18:25 & 34. A grievance held against someone will not only infect you it will also affect your family, and a grievance maintained, especially when you have been made aware of it, will lock you in torment to demonic spirits.

The reverse is also true; you can save your family by them knitting their heart to yours once you’ve knitted your heart to Christ’s through repentance of your grievances. When you inadvertently inhibit the knitting of spirits, you inadvertently promote the envy of spirits.

Q. Why are male sports being copied by females?

Our behaviour is inherently motivated by seeking the favour of our own father. The inherent root of envy in the human spirit (James 4:5) is fed by this motivation. Thus siblings fight with each other for the status position of the father’s favour and grow up without ever realising it’s the root of their adult behaviour. While ever you seek the favour of the father you’re blinded to your true behaviour of pride. If you hold dislike towards a sibling you inadvertently hold a grievance against your father for not liking you as much, and thus you contradict any respect for your father you think you have, you’re not under male authority, and from this position you threaten your salvation from hell.

Lesbianism is the consequence of bitterness against the father for favouring the other sibling, resulting in envy of the male position. In a lesbian relationship, one lesbian takes on the male role and the other takes on the female role. It’s a sign of a deep hatred from their point of view against the unjustness of a male having more power, authority and strength, and even more income than a female, and it’s often a bitter reaction against the unjust abuse and misuse of their father’s authority against the family.

Most male sports are now being copied by females. Females are starting to become males. Many male positions of authority, including prime ministers and religious ministers are now being run by females. This is totally the opposite of God’s design (1 Timothy 2:12), and another confirmation that the church has failed our society.

The truth is, everyone lives for themselves (knowingly or unknowingly) until they meet Christ.

Everyone lives for good FEELINGS, and everyone tries to achieve this by a combination of …

• Looking good
  
• Being valued
  
• Being cool
  
• Peer status
  
• Education status
  
• Being helpful
  
• Being generous
  
• Being good … obedient, non-offensive
  
• Being happy
  
• Being favoured
  
• Avoid being bad
  
• Sport status
  
• Business status
  
• Success
  
• No waste
  
• Money status
  
• Good health
  
• No hassles
  
• Fun
  
• Challenges
  
• Position
  
• Girlfriend / boyfriend
  

The god of good feelings is what the majority worship, both in churches and in the world.

Q. why do you choose to do what you do? What’s the real reason?

A. The underlying reason is to get back the favour and value of the father that was lost to a sister or brother.

The kingdom of Heaven works the same

If I say to God, “I appreciate what you’ve done for me”, and then mock my neighbour, look down on my wife, stick my nose up at a sister-in-Christ, I’m a contradiction. You can’t keep Sabbath & hold envy in your heart; it’s a contradiction. How can you say you appreciate God and practice the opposite to what He preaches? You can’t say you appreciate Him and then disrespect His principles; that’s hypocrisy. If I truly appreciated what Christ had done for me I would respect His principles which include loving my neighbour as myself. But, if in your heart, you position yourself above or below your neighbour, how can you claim to love God? It’s a contradiction.

God’s measuring system of ‘good’

• God first
  
• Others before yourself
  
• Give up what you want
  
• Rejection by the world
  
• Put yourself last
  
• Being put down
  
• Persecution
  
• The Ten Commandments
  

Ultimately, God’s measuring system for ‘good’ is NO SIN, and that’s why only God is good (Matthew 19:17). No one is good and every good I do is contaminated by my motive unless it comes from God in me.

Sin = when you don’t practice what you preach

The world knows the measuring stick for ‘good’ is the Ten Commandments and it watches the church to see if it measures up to its own standards and sits back and mocks its hypocrisy, and uses this hypocrisy as an excuse to justify their sin. Children, even in a Christian family will do the same thing as they examine the validity of their parents’ contradictions. How can you tell your wife or children to stop their moodiness from a base of hypocrisy? Hypocrisy gives your family the right to disrespect you.

If the church says it believes in the Ten Commandments but then goes and practices misuse of the Sabbath, turns a blind eye to sexual deviation, supports feminism by elevating women to positions of authority over men, goes silent on government financed abortions, copies the world’s music and fashion, runs its institution as a business, holds grievances against its own brethren (James 4:11), and covets its neighbours’ goods, it obviously loses credibility and authority through its contradiction.

Sadly, the church has discredited God’s standard as Old Testament; it doesn’t recognise the Ten Commandments as the standard any longer, but rather believes in the feelings of your own heart to guide one’s own truth. The church teaches we don’t need to worry about sin any longer, we’re saved by grace. (That’s not true, we’re saved by faith through grace, and if you discredit the standard, you’re not saved 1 Peter 5:5b). Once you discredit the standard, you open a Pandora’s Box of repercussions and Australia is bit-by-bit paying the price for the church’s indiscretion. What the church doesn’t realise is that the Ten Commandments are God’s antibiotic for society, and therefore it carries the responsibility for society’s decay (just have a look at the rise of family breakdown, paedophilia, murder, adultery, and homosexuality).

The truth is, if you annul the validity of the old measuring stick, how do you now measure sin, and if you can’t measure sin, how do you initiate salvation, because Jesus came to save us from nothing else but our sin, because the wages of sin is hell and He doesn’t want us to go there. Disrespect of His laws blinds you to your sin; thus you are subject to eternal death and the earth too, suffers more decay.

A true Christian doesn’t strive to be good or feel good; he lives for the will of the Father. In the scheme of eternity, it’s irrelevant whether his feelings are good or bad. He appreciates the good feelings, struggles through the bad feelings, and even sacrifices good feelings for the preference of doing God’s will.

Some people think that when they repent they should never do the same sin again, but that’s their pride speaking. Abraham re-committed the same sin of lying about his wife being his sister, and Peter sinned in fear before the crucifixion, and committed the same sin after it. A true Christian doesn’t live in the fear of sinning, rather he’s disturbed about it and repents. He knows he fails but he’s set the course of his heart in Christ. A true Christian knows he can’t keep the standard, but he also knows he’s not under the bondage of failing them, and he holds them in a place of honour and respect in his heart, and he repents when he fails them.

A false Christian (a tare) lives for God so they can have good feelings, believes he’s under grace, and says the commandments are in his heart but contradicts himself by his actions.

If you don’t want to be a hypocrite, then the only solution available to humanity is Jesus Christ, and the only formula is death–to-self so you can live for Him, and you can’t achieve that until you surrender to Christ and own your sin, instead of blaming everyone else for theirs.

When you choose to be a true Christian, everything changes; priorities change, hearts change, emotions change, opposition increases. A Christian doesn’t need or demand appreciation. They know that is selfish; all they’re interested in is honouring God’s principles as an expression of appreciation for His sacrifice, forgiveness and salvation from my sin.

You can’t love (agape) until you see your own sin because God’s agape love flows in when you repent of your sin.

The prayer of every Christian shouldn’t be to gain personal value and benefit from God, it should be to open people’s eyes to their sin; for without that, nothing changes and no one gets saved.

The prodigal son

In Luke 15:11-32 the older brother of the prodigal was a contradiction. He acted like he respected the authority of his father, but when the prodigal returned he showed his true colours of disrespect. He was doing all the right things, but his heart held a grievance against his younger brother for upsetting his father and misusing the inheritance. He lost.

The prodigal held a grievance against his father for, no doubt, favouring his brother. In his envy he lost his mind. He came back to his right mind when he owned his sin (v.18). It didn’t require his brother to change; it required him to face up to his own sin. He learnt from his waywardness and changed his heart through death-to-self to knit his heart to the father’s. No longer was he a contradiction.

Everything we do is a contradiction unless we knit our heart to the Father’s heart, and you can’t achieve that with a grievance, and you can’t achieve it without seeing, owning and repenting of your own sin.

May God open your spiritual eyes to your sin for your family’s sake as well as your own.

Pastor Paul Smith