Welcome once again to Prayer Closet Images the place to view the paintings of the artist Joan Dance while perusing the Word of God as it combines to create the “House of God” by the explanation of each image.” On today, we have for your viewing pleasure the image entitled “Seasons”. Today’s Image illustrates, “How it works in real life.

In the image we see two women back-to-back. The woman to the left is young and vibrant while the woman to the right is aged yet full of wisdom. The background of both women appears to be the same except the position of the sun. The sun on the left is directly overhead and hot, while the position of the second sun is approaching setting and is somewhat cooler. The woman on the right speaks.
She lets us know by experience that anger works into murder, lust works into adultery, adultery works into divorce, we do not use oaths to support our message but our yes is yes, and our no is no, we turn the other cheek, and we love our enemies.

Anger Works into Murder

Be angry but don’t sin, let not the sun go down on your wrath. When anger is displayed it must be briefly held righteous indignation. The spirit would have us to be better that what the law requires of us. The law tells us that we must not murder or we will be punished. On the other hand the spirit warns us that we are to be angry for but a short period. The act of being angry is a preview of murder. Murder comes about from anger. Yet not all that are angry will commit murder.

Lust Works into Adultery

The Law warns us of Adultery, but the spirit warns us of the basis of adultery and that is lust. The spirit says that we are not to lust and in that way the workings of lust are not manifested. Lust works itself into adultery. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, is what it leads to. Deeper and deeper the works of the flesh leads away from the correct way to go and more and more into the path leading to death. Jesus said that it was better to pluck out our eye than to succumb to lust. We should place our attention on the word of God to take it off of lust.

Adultery Works into Divorce

The Law tells us not to divorce, but if we would not commit adultery, then we should remain faithful to our mates, and in that way not suffer divorce. We are to remain faithful to our marriage partners and in that way we are to not put ourselves in the way of divorce. It has been said that in the United States divorce happens to about half of the marriages. The best way to drop the incidence of divorce is to cut down on the incidence of lust. Lust is an inner condition that can only be conquered by the practice of not lusting. Lust is seeing a person and wanting to be involved sexually with that person while that person is not our marriage partner and sex with that person is not permitted. No adultery no divorce.

Our Yes is Yes and our No is No

No Oath taking, speak the truth. The law reminds us that we are not to take any oath on anything because we are not in control of the thing that we are taking an oath on. We are to instead let our yes be yes and we are to let our no be no. Simply put we can be assured that we are in control of our speaking when the word controls our way of thinking. Our yes is yes and our no is no suggests that we are clear in our thinking. When we are presented with a problem we take it through the Word of God instead of taking it through the word of the world.

We Turn the Other Cheek

No retaliation, forgiveness. This is a hard one to actually do while we are in the world to turn the other cheek. To allow the striker to strike us on one cheek and the other is the most non-worldly thing that can be done. When I operated in the world I had a saying that if someone struck me, the only thing that would make the pain cease would be for me to give out double punishment. That is a course that is futile and would indeed cause endless damage. It has been said that an eye for an eye leaves the world blind. The correct way is the way that Jesus commanded and that way was to let the striker know that I was a child of God and that Jesus commands us to turn the other cheek and not to seek retaliation. The effect would be to cause the opponent to ask themselves what would cause anyone to do the cheek turn and think, what kind of man would do this thing? We are to overcome evil with good. The end result would be of the enemy turning himself over to Jesus and eternal life. The path to life goes through hard places.

We Love our Enemies

We are commanded by Jesus to love our enemies. We save the best for last and that is to love even our enemies. This as well seems counterproductive on the surface yet when examined is the correct way to go about kingdom building. When we love everyone, even our enemies, then we no longer have any enemies, and those that would be our enemies find that they are acting with futility. We love and do those things for them that we do for our closest friends. How can we do good toward those that love us and not those that hate us and be children of God? If we are children of God then we treat all in the same Godly way. That way there is a good chance that our enemies become children of God.

Conclusion

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
The word “perfect” here should be understood as complete. Jesus is commanding us to be complete just as God is complete. The lessons given here are to be used for a complete understanding of the Word of God. When we are complete we have an understanding of the whole word and we use the understood word as our guide in this life. The guide of the Word will take us to the next life which will be a life that never leaves us, a life everlasting.