The Blood of Jesus brings the believer into fellowship with God at the

New Birth, but later he may feel that the Presence of God is far from

him.  Why?  Perhaps it's because of our sin: pride, bitterness, jealousy, 

unforgiveness, and a critical and judgmental attitude, to name a few.

We all know people who've displayed at least one of these in their lives.

The sin of bitterness hurts only the person who is

bitter ... his bitterness does not affect the person he's bitter

toward at all.

The devil would really like to inject division and disturbances to get us

off track, deceiving us if he can ... and he can if we let him.  He uses

other people and our feelings to accomplish this.  Don't use gossip as a

basis for praying for people.  This is one of the worst tools that the devil

uses.

We can also be separated from God's Presence by outward sins, willful

sins ... we know that we're screwing up when we do it, but we do

it anyway. These sins are: lying, stealing, adultery, to name a few.

Christians should never lie to one another.  The devil is the liar ...

there's no lying by God.  He cannot lie, He will not lie.

Adultery is another big one because there are as many divorces in the 

Christian community now as there are in the world.  If you are married, 

your wife is your other half.  There are blessings and intimacy between

you two ... not between you and your neighbor's wife.  She is not

intimate with you and she certainly is not part of your covenant.  Her 

covenant is with her own husband.

These things are carryovers from some lifestyles of the world, or maybe 

some of us were into them before becoming Christians, but we haven't 

dealt with them.  This is dangerous ... especially if we try to justify our

actions here.  The justification of these actions is from our soulish realm

that isn't yet regenerated in those areas.

The Fruit of the Spirit ties into this.  When you "agape love" another 

Christian, you won't want to steal his wife.  This is part of the Presence 

of the Lord and the revelation knowledge of that Truth in which we are

to walk. 

Reverend Robert W. & Mary C. Butler