Archive for Freedom
Wake Up!
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A busy ministry schedule has limited my time to blog, but I want to give a quick update.
This is a land of great darkness, but more than that, it is a land of great need of the light of God’s love. Our ministry here has focused on sharing the love of God to the people of Thailand and also to Jason and Sarah Ricketts, who are missionaries here.
I have walked the streets of Pattaya where there are thousands of prostitutes and hundreds of bars. Men come here from around the world for sex. Young girls and boys sell their bodies in order to make money. They are often illiterate and have no marketable skills other than their very body. The damage to their souls is beyond measure. Yet there are some here who are endeavoring to share God’s love. They teach free English classes. They teach marketable skills. They provide counseling for the trauma; most of the young girls have been raped more than once. So many have come here in order to honor their families by providing financially for them. That is important in this culture. Most families know their girls come here to work in the bars. They know their girls will become prostitutes. It is an acceptable means of employment. However, most know nothing of the horrors these young girls will experience. And once the girls experience the horrors of prostitution, instead of honor, they find intense shame and feel unable to go back to their families. Isnt’ that the enemy’s classic strategy? Empty promises and bondage in the very place you thought would bring freedom.
Embracing Truth; Experiencing Freedom
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A few days ago, I wrote about truth.
- Truth is still truth whether you acknowledge it or not.
- Jesus is truth.
- Jesus said that known truth would make us free.
David, in a conversation with God, said
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts ;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place (Psalm 51:6).
Other translations render inner parts as "innermost being". God desires us to know truth from the inside out.
Our message at church on Sunday was about denial. We talked about how we all revert to using denial at times. For example, we refuse to step onto the scales so we don’t have to face the number which represents our weight. Or we don’t balance our checkbook because we are afraid of or dread to see the balance. And we could go on and on.
David, a man after God’s own heart, spent a year in sin and disobedience after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband murdered before he finally came to truth inside himself and cried out to God for forgiveness. It was on this occasion that he acknowledged, "Surely, God, you desire truth in my innermost being."
There were still difficult days ahead for David but that moment was his turning point. God met him at his point of inner truth and began to restore his soul.
Truth Brings Freedom
Posted by: | CommentsTomorrow I will continue on the temptations of Jesus. Today I want to talk about how the truth brings freedom.
Jesus said, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free."
There is such warfare over knowing truth. We are often not willing to know truth. We sense that we are wrong about a matter or we have an inner knowing that we are denying truth by not acknowledging it, but we are not willing to experience the discomfort and/or pain that comes by stepping fully into the realm of truth.
Truth is costly. Knowing truth and then acting on truth will cost us. It will cost us convenience and our comfortable paradigms. It will cost us because it requires change.
We all have areas where we need more freedom. Truth is the catalyst which births the freedom. Freedom comes in many ways. Sometimes it is instantaneous. Sometimes it comes like peeling the layers of an onion. Usually both processes are working at the same time.
Even though truth is costly, it carries the fragrance of Christ because Christ is the truth.
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The Inner Journey
Posted by: | CommentsIn his journey to list the seasons of life, the writer of Ecclesiastes throws this one in…
There is a time to kill and a time to heal. Ecclesiastes 3:3
In Search of Christian Freedom
Posted by: | CommentsThe words stopped me in my tracks. “…our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share.” The article in the November 23 edition of Time Magazine was about terrorism, but I instantly reflected on the truth of the statement for those who are Christians.
As a follower of Christ, I value freedom. Christ came to make us free in every sense of the word, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and more. But if we really embrace that freedom, it opens us up in a most vulnerable way. If I am truly free, I release others to be free and I resist the temptation to be afraid of their freedom. I release them to choose. I can let go of any need to control other people whether it be my desire to control their emotions, their responses, or their actions. And does that ever make me vulnerable! Yet at the same time, that vulnerability is inherit in the essence of my freedom.
I remember an old saying that was quite popular when I was a teenager. It said, “If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.” I always hated that saying. It just didn’t set right with me if someone was asking for love without commitment. However, love does involve freedom of choice.
