From
the Genesis of creation, GOD has set in place laws with their
commensurate parameters. Eat of every tree but that one,
and you'll be fine; eat of the forbidden one, and you will die.
By virtue of instruction and its bounds, comes an inherent and
personal responsibility. Though the LORD has ordained
layers of ecclesiastical, civil, and parental charge over us; it
is still the individual who must ultimately maintain the walls.
This is very distasteful to a generation which has excused away
all personal behavior as neurotic, and thus the notion of
personal accountability as absurd and unjust. The
self-esteem cult has left men to practice self-will, not
self-rule; and the landscape of humanity is littered with
wall-less lives, overrun and broken down as proof of this fact.
"But the fruit of the SPIRIT is ... temperance: against such
there is no law." The caveat is not directed
toward a lack of self-control, but a lack of SPIRIT-control.
CHRIST comes to the broken down life and restores the walls in
grace, which the curse of sin has destroyed. Each personal city of
man HE redeems then becomes HIS outpost of power, inhabited of
HIS SPIRIT. Fort spirit is defenseless apart from the fruit
of the
SPIRIT. "When the enemy shall come in like a
flood, the SPIRIT of the LORD shall lift up a standard against
him." It is to us then HE charges:
"... Occupy till I come."
Fear not little fort of
grace ... all is well within these walls which HE builds.
"I
will love thee, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock,
and my fortress, and my deliverer; my GOD, my strength, in WHOM
I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my
high tower. I will call upon the LORD, WHO is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine
enemies."