Welcome once again to the NTOO. I want to talk about freedom and what it means to me and possibly what your take may be on it as well . Like most things in life, this has a wide birth of interpretation and perspectives. I have been on the globe for a while now and seen a lot of things, some incredible and others unbelievable. Some of it dealing with technology, but much more so the derivative of man kind. I spoke a few post back about how we have become so desensitized to things going on around us each and every day, and that is true. If you believe not, just turn on the local news, and then see if it keeps you from a good night’s sleep. I have always loved history and consider my self a student of history. Rush Limbaugh once said that for most people, history begins on the day that they were born, and there is some truth to that as well. As we move forward, we rely on some news agency, or one of those calendar things to tell us, what happened on this day in history. I didn’t live through it, but I’m amazed by how few people know about, what President Roosevelt called the day of infamy. And yes, even though it has only been a little over twenty years, people are slowly allowing the attacks of 9-11, to slip from their grasp as well. We once had something known as encyclopedias, and other fairly reliable sources to dig into for historical facts. We have evolved, so now we have the internet and Google, where anyone can post anything ,and people think it reliable. Even now , many times when you do run across a history book, it is full of revisionist history. If you are unfamiliar with that, it’s where someone takes the liberty to twist or distort the facts because it doesn’t meet our present standards of political correctness. See, sometimes crummy things happen in our past and we want to dress it up a bit. There are people who think it unfathomable that black people fought on the side of the south during the Civil War, but it did happen. If someone had promised you your freedom, you may be surprised at what you would do to escape horrid conditions. Oh, and yes, we had interment camps for Asian Americans during the second World War, not pretty or glamorous, but it took place, just like a lot of other bad stuff that is not pallidable to us in our modern forward thinking society. So, what do you do, when you don’t want to look in the mirror, or smell the stinch of the past, of course you have to rewrite it. And I’m not even going to try and tackle all of the crap that comes out of Hollywood, which people think is accurate , simply because it’s about a historical event, they are to lazy to read, so they just say that I saw the movie…..wrong on so many levels. Whatever happened to if you don’t remember your past, then you are doomed to repeat it. Recently, the last few years or so, there has been an ongoing campaign to erase anything of our past having to do with the confederacy. Statues, monuments, reenactments, flags, you name it and it has to go. I believe that is ridiculous, you need them there as a reminder of where you have come from, the oppression associated with that, and remember to never to return there again. Ok, there are ancestry sites all over the internet, but it is my belief that very few black people can tell you about anyone in their family who was an actual slave, but somehow looking at a confederate flag, represents racism. The other side sees heritage. I really don’t want to run down this rabbit hole, because that is not what we are here for. The Bible is loaded with history and it is checked, recheck , and cross referenced more than any other literary work, besides just being the word of God. This is one from there, and for me it’s a head scratcher, as well as a little humorous. Ok, so Jesus is talking to some religious leaders of the day, and the conversation comes around to freedom. And I vaguely quote, they claim to be the children of Abraham and have never been slaves. I’m thinking aren’t these the same cats that spent four hundred years as slaves down in Egypt, ? and weren’t they currently under Roman occupation? There are two points to take from this, one, they didn’t remember their history very well and they were repeatedly under different empires thumb, and two, they missed completely the point that Jesus was attempting to share with them, and that is about being slaves to things, such as sin and pride . I want to break here for a minute and tell you about the history to freedom, that I remember from the day I was born and how I got here. No, we aren’t going to start with the conception, but one of my earliest memories, I went to a church kindergarten, and that was a fun story, but hopefully we can do that sometime down the road. I was also taken to church, by parents, aunts , uncles and the like. I remember singing songs about how Jesus loves all of the children of the world. I remember people getting dunked in water and they calling it baptism. I remember taking communion, vacation Bible school and countless boring sermons that just made absolutely no sense at the time. And of course the” Biggies”, and that would be Christmas, which we have turned completely in to a sham. And the other Easter which we just celebrated last week, hopefully by the time I get this posted, it will only be last week . Ok, I think that I’ve hit most of the highlight reel for my church upbringing. Ok, so a hiccup of sorts when I turned seventeen. I had a deep personal crisis in my life, which you just wouldn’t think of for a teenager, but we are known for getting into things. So I decided to give this Jesus thing a try. I walked the isle, there may have been tears, honestly don’t remember, and I got dunked as well. Reader, please pay attention because the good part is about to take place. I had heard about Jesus’s amazing working power and that is exactly what I needed to get me out of my predicament. Well a little time went by, and then a lot more time went by and I was wondering when Jesus was going to show up and fix my mess. Guess what? It never happened and I think that I became a little embittered towards God and the whole church experience. So life moved on, because that is what it does. I will save you from all of the crazy stuff that took place in my life for the next almost thirteen years. Trust me, it was a train wreck. Some how, I made it to thirty, so much collateral damage in the rear view mirror that you would have thought you were at some nuclear waste site. What I didn’t realize that God had been busy at work behind the scenes. He had placed this couple in my life that I thought were absolutely crazy at the time. God used Ed and Darlene to lead me back in to the fold. So while I had spent over a decade running from God, He never abandon me, or stop pursuing me, and most importantly He continued to love me and protect me, because I did a tremendous amount of dumb stuff back in the day. So this young married couple had many of the same challenges and struggles that I had experienced, but something was different, vastly different from there approach to life’s obstacles. I watched as they juggled baby, bills, job, family and school, amongst financial difficulties as a young married couple. On the surface, it looked much like so many other people. It was the same, yet something was different and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Ed, the guy, actually was working for me at the time, so I got to know him pretty well in all of his dysfunction, constantly late for work and his wife waiting on him because they only had one car. We became friends after having to help them out from time to time with this and that. I had been to there home, and somehow things turned to a conversation on the spiritual level, which I seriously had no interest in hearing what so ever. I remember those failings of a decade ago and wasn’t about to go down that road again. I don’t remember all of the details leading up to it, but somehow they got me to visit their church, it may have been a child dedication for their son, something innocent enough to do. What I wasn’t prepared for was an encounter with this Jesus person, whom I had felt had let me down so many years ago in the past. The pastor was named Michael Stevenson, and I will never forget him and leading me back to God. This time, unlike before there were tears, a flood gate of tears, and I remember it as if it was yesterday. He walked me through what I have come to know as the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was profound and has for ever since changed my life. All of the absolutely unfounded things that I had grown up with, started to make sense. The stuff that I had been expose to since that church kindergarten, right up to every Christmas and Easter celebration took on new meaning and significance. Here is the revelation or a epiphany if you prefer. How could I go all of those years, sitting under countless sermons, and just completely missing the point, the whole reason for all of it to exist in the first place? A post or so ago,, I shared about an experience that I had, where I woke up naked and exposed, and this carried a gravity much heavier than that experience. See, you may not get the connection here ,but let’s see if my weird brain can draw a connection for you. I woke up scurrying around looking for my clothes and my first thought was, how many other people woke up before me and went through that same process. So….the connection is, if I can sit in church so much of my life and never connect the dots as to what God had done for me on the cross, completely obvious, how many other people were the in same way with blinders on. What I have come to discover is that it is a pretty popular position, shared by a lot of folks, even good church people. I’m not anything special or above the fray, in many respects, I’m very average to height, education, and even the number of off spring that I have. If it can be my story, then it is a lot of other people story as well. I remember doing some evangelism training back in the day, on the other side of that encounter with Christ. It was a canned presentation that you were hoping to make your own. Part of the church testimony was that traditionally and historically the church has done a very poor job of explaining how to get to heaven and to have a personal relationship with God. See looking back, if someone had taken the time to explain things to me when I was seventeen, my understanding of who God is and what He wants from me could have been vastly different. I’m not sure that I would have escaped the time in the wilderness, covered by those thirteen years or so, because looking back, God was even in the midst of that as well. I sometimes wonder if people can’t explain to you things that they don’t understand or know themselves , or if they just think it’s something that magically happens like lucky charms. There is more , a lot more to the story about that young couple and as to how God used them in my life and perhaps at some point I will get to go more into detail about that, but since we have been around the world and back, I don’t want to completely miss the point of this post. The post is about freedom, and as I said at the beginning, many perspectives for many different people, and this is only my take on things, but it should be for every Christ follower as well. All of the following is accredited to God. I have learned about faith and love, and know that they are not transactional. A lot of people miss this, thinking that they can some how win God’s favor or approval . They think if they can just show God how good they are in whatever, be it serving, giving money, faithful church attendance, or you feel in the blank with whatever your particular thing may be. And I get how disturbing it can be to think that God loves you just as much as He does a serial rapist, or murderer, wife beater, or any other degenerate that you can imagine. See, when Christ sad it was finished, it meant exactly that!! There is no more striving to measure up. Freedom in Christ allows you to step down from the hamster wheel, take a deep breath and say , you know what, its ok, and if it’s not ok, then you know the person who can make it ok, and that He will never forsake or abandon you. See, when you have peace with God, you can be at peace with the world. On the surface that may seem like an over simplification, but at the core of things that is the purest most true statement that there is. I know whom ‘s I am and I know where I will spend my eternity, and that perspective is just freeing. I have to be kind and loving, but I’m not called to compare myself to others. I don’t have to worry about if I drive the right kind of car. I don’t worry about if I make six figures so I can fit in with my contemporaries on LinkedIn. I don’t view myself as a failure because I don’t have the strive and desire to climb the corporate ladder, crushing whoever I have to, to get to the top, only to discover that it is lonely there, and the ladder is leaning up against the wrong wall or building, and wondering about who is waiting in the shadows to take my place. Wow!!, that sounds like a really peaceful existence. I’m not going to value things and achievements over people and relationships. We just get it twisted so badly, when it’s all about look at me, and what I’ve accomplished. We sit alone with a cup of coffee with our favorite social media and compare ourselves to see how we measure up to others, completely missing the point. The old adage is you never see a uhaul following a Hurst, you can’t take it with you and we see people playing like it’s for keeps. We are only here for, what seems to be a blink of the eye the older you get. See, here is some craziness, and I’d like someone to explain to me, but when you see it first hand , no explanation is needed. What people decide to give or not to give is completely their call. However, I see people who would never give a single dime to a charity, go out of their way to fight over paying a dinner check. The difference is, I need that recognition of being a good and generous person, and you just don’t get that with anonymous giving. These are but a few, and yes, I mean a few perks of being free. There is this “BIGGIE”, and that is being free from the fear of death. I don’t have a death wish ,even if you can’t tell that by the way I lived the first half of my life. The date with death is one that we all have to keep, unless Jesus returns soon, and for many that will be a terrifying experience. I don’t welcome death, but I don’t fear it either because of the Resurrection. I don’t want it to be painful or a long drawn out ordeal, but that is not my call. The one thing that I can tell you is that I won’t be hanging on for dear life, because this life is all that I know. Of course we are all familiar with everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. There are things that I know and some that I would probably completely destroy trying to explain it to you. There is destiny and there is predestination, and they work together and separate at the same time. I can’t tell you why after years of sitting in church, I finally understood the message of the gospel, while others never have the light turned on for them. I have seen people be hostile towards the gospel and once upon a time I was one of those people. I have also seen the most tender of hearted people who you would think would just get it, just say ,I don’t know if that is for me, and I will just rely on being good and my good deeds to get me into heaven, good luck with that, but I’m going to wait for the next elevator. When you get to the root of it, it is all about a heart condition. I will give you one further illustration to wrap this up. In the old testament in the Bible, all the way back in Genesis. I use to always have a hard time with the part where it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. I use to think, that’s not fair and why would God do such a thing? If you can follow this, in the presence of God we have a choice, and again an over simplification, but in His presence some of our hearts will melt like wax, and others will become hard like stone, much like clay, when you put it in the oven. In our undoing and our unraveling we can experience a relationship with God, when we are stubborn and like clay, we become hard and unresponsive to God. It’s not that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that is who he was and chose to be in God’s presence. Sometimes I feel like someone who saw a great comedy show, and when I attempted to regurgitate the comics material it is less than funny. This is God’s story and I can’t tell it better He can. He offers us freedom if we choose to except it. It is a free gift and there is nothing that you can do to earn it or deserve it, it’s a free gift, that lends itself to all kinds of freedom in life. If you don’t get it people that you see doing genuine serving and giving, do it out of the gratitude for what God has done for them, they are not trying to earn something that they never could afford in the first place. I know that this post will probably create more questions than answers and I would be happy to tell you what I know, but I will be just as equally as happy to tell you that I don’t know as well. Sometimes and somethings we just don’t know and possibly isn’t meant for us to know on this side of eternity. I, for the most part have always tried to be as transparent as possible with you guys without all of the ugly details. My walk with God is deeply personal ,,but its not private. People should be able to look at my life and notice something different about me, much like I did with Ed and Darlene all those many years ago. My life should draw others towards a relationship with God, and I get on my not so good days, not so much! For me it’s about how I start my day and what my focus will be . Is the day going to be about me, me, me, or will I be an ambassador. I know that I jumped around a lot and we had earlier made concessions for my potential ADD. I can’t even begin to tell you how light hearted my spirit is when, I realized that it’s not performance based, and I don’t have to always be looking over my shoulder to see if I measure up and being worried about what others think of me. Again it is a huge illusion to think that we have any real control over some of life’s bends and twist in the road. The best you can do is to make wise choices and stay close to God.
