Our security is not in having laws and traditions to protect us, but in knowing Him who is absolute wisdom.  Principles hold true, but they get put in priority order by the wisdom of God in every situation.  Traditions can have us believing in our beliefs more than we believe in Him, and at that point His word and counsel have no power or effect in us or for us.  Our beliefs are not holy, He is.  Therefore, let us give respect and follow through to the gates our holy and wise God builds specifically to get us to the fullest future He desires.

(This is the last excerpt from Kathy’s article “Gates In Our Fences” in Volume 16 Issue 4 of Marty & Kathy’s ministry magazine, SEEC Magazine.)

Probably the hardest place to build a gate is in our traditional, established views of scripture, and unfortunately we could die on our own sword trying to defend our traditional beliefs simply because the letter of the law kills.  It is rather ironic that the letter of the law is so strong yet vulnerable to something as simple as a typo or language or culture or new revelation.   However, the spirit of the law, or the truth that is right and unchangeable in it, is not threatened by new gates to fuller understanding.  For instance, the scripture says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”   The spirit of that law boils down to not deliberately deceiving and manipulating information against someone. However, our traditions add to the letter of that law and imply that we are being dishonest if we do not say everything we are thinking. When did getting everything off your chest become the definition of honesty? That more likely defines selfishness or stupidity. Also, the letter-of-the-law tradition can obligate us to answer anybody’s direct question, spilling out all we know and quoting “honesty is the best policy,” when silence would have been the wisest response. 

(This is the eighth excerpt from Kathy’s article “Gates In Our Fences” in Volume 16 Issue 4 of Marty & Kathy’s ministry magazine, SEEC Magazine.)

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In this 2 min. audio encouragement Kathy
declares: “Your Redeemer lives and He is
able to buy back time that the locusts have eaten.”

CLICK ON THIS LINK to listen: http://martygabler.podomatic.com/entry/2013-10-14T04_56_06-07_00

Sometimes a gate God builds is not a welcomed sight.  It looks like a risk to us or a scary unknown.  We feel like we have the option to decide to just stay safely within our fence and familiar boundaries.   The problem is that if we ignore the gates, we are locking ourselves into tradition just like the Pharisees.  We rarely see ourselves as Pharisees, but we too build personal traditions of men through the way we personally process instruction or the way we establish our own priorities or the way we come to our personal conclusions.  Our thought processes and priorities and conclusions are filters that can literally keep us from hearing what God is saying and thereby keep us refusing to acknowledge the Holy Spirit’s direction in our daily life.  So, “you make the word of God of none effect through your tradition, (KJV).  And you ignore God’s commands in order to follow your own teaching. “(CEV) Mark 7:13 

(This is the sixth excerpt from Kathy’s article “Gates In Our Fences” in Volume 16 Issue 4 of Marty & Kathy’s ministry magazine, SEEC Magazine.)
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In this 2 min. audio encouragement Kathy
declares: “Your Redeemer lives and He is
able to buy back time that the locusts have eaten.”

CLICK ON THIS LINK to listen: http://martygabler.podomatic.com/entry/2013-10-14T04_56_06-07_00