Before rising to meet the glory of my day, I heard the word “courageous” and then: “Beware of the Traducer- the Seducer.” I wondered what this was all about and shot up a prayer to the One Who reveals things as they are. He immediately brought to my attention a vision I was given of one dear to me who had a black bandana around his head and telling me: “I’ve come to steal from you.” At the time I had no understanding of how that could possibly be as this brother and I have had fellowship in the Lord with God’s tangible presence in it many times…. That he would steal from me was inconceivable in my mind. Later I heard the word “shortchanged”… I was being shown that he had short changed me in not giving me what God wanted me to have from him.

God is looking for those who worship Him in Spirit and in Truth…. He is not looking for those who can recite their bibles backwards and forwards… for those who fast until they are skin and bones… for those who pray hours and hours … for those who religiously exercise FORMS. Do we need to fast and pray, read our Bibles, give to the poor, cast out devils, heal the sick,etc.? Of course we do, but do you remember God said: “Depart from me! I never knew you!” to the five virgins who had been given all the gifts but were deplete of oil?: God forbid that we hear these words, too!

There are only two commandments that we must obey: “Love God and love one another!”…. We can not manifest the love our Father has ordained until we KNOW others and to know them and to know God requires transparency… How many are willing to be vulnerable…. and yay, to be courageous? Ah, we are much more comfortable in our religious robes then in being naked in innocence before each other. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed before they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do we fully understand that shame, lack of transparency, and death to our relationships come when we eat this forbidden fruit? How long will we keep eating it shortchanging our brothers and sisters of the life we could give them-… the life God has commanded us to give when He said: “Love one another”? How we tend to run away from others and ourselves because it’s too threatening to be real and because we are unwilling to lay down our lives (our thoughts, our judgments, our wounds, our offenses and more) for their sake. Will we let God use us in any situation or will we draw back afraid we’ll be hurt?

The brother who was in my vision stole from me and from himself by remaining in his old nature, a nature that seeks to protect itself instead of one that is courageous and self-less. He short changed me by not giving what God wanted me to have from him. The Word of God says: “Owe no man anything, but to love one another. When we don’t love, we are thieves!!

How many people have we short-changed? How many people have short-changed us? There are many reasons we choose to live in self, but if we don’t wake up and realize that being vulnerable is the only way we can know the truth, we will not be among the ones who worship God in spirit and in truth. If we don’t open up to each other in transparency, our souls will wither up and die, my brethren… God will tell us: “Depart from me” and cast us into outer darkness which is a state of having no understanding and departure from God is not having His active presence in us and flowing out of us.

He wants us to KNOW each other… Whoever he sends us to has love and keys of knowledge for us and vice versa. It’s the KNOWledge of the truth that sets us free. Will we withhold what we have from people stopping the flow of God coming through us because we see something in them we don’t like,… because they’ve offended or hurt us? There may be a pearl of great price that we may lose if we do. When we draw back from a member of the body of Christ, we are in effect saying to God: “I don’t want to know you God.”… What we do to others we do to our Lord. We block God from speaking and loving people when we turn away from them.

Can you hear the Spirit of God warning you as well as me: “Beware of the Traducer!”? The Traducer is the devil pointing out people’s sins and our sins, slandering us and them as well in our minds. Don’t you know sins have been forgiven even when you look them straight in the face. We are NOT our flesh! God doesn’t look at our flesh. Why are we allowing sins and weaknesses and faults to stop us from loving others… to stop us from being in their lives? What if God did that to us? There would be NO ONE who could know God!

Oh my brothers and sisters, let us stop being blind to the power of being real and being vulnerable! 

Let us have courage to love!!