Tag Archives: Walking with God

Four Years of Continued Growth

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Four years ago today, I made a decision, that while it may seem trivial to some, began to change the course of my life.  I began to make it daily mission to read through the entire Bible.  I started with one of those One Year Bible plans, where you read through a few chapters, OT and NT, each day.  I was 33 years old and felt I needed to finally learn something beyond the standard stories I learned in Sunday School growing up.  It was time to truly get a real sense of God’s Word and learn all that He reveals to us there.

So the mission began.  Morning after morning, I logged into my Samsung phone or tablet, and would read.  Some mornings, I plugged it up in my truck and listened on the ride to the office.  I learned a lot that first time through.  I was able to finally know more of the stories and more of the details, that I did not have a clue about, or heard others talk about without any idea of what they were referring too.

One year later, after that first time through, I decided to do it again.  Like reading any other book, often times, you miss a great deal the first time through.  This time, I learned more and absorbed more.  It seemed like with each day, God had something new to reveal, so I stayed intentional in it.  After that 2nd year, there was a new tug on my heart.  I began to read in a way the 3rd year that allowed me to begin linking OT with NT.  Prophesy to fulfillment, etc.  My eyes began to open more and my heart continued to change as I was seeing the world differently.

I look back on where it all began and it is absolutely amazing to me, to see the continued work that God has done on my heart.  I wasn’t going to listen to the ear ticklers, I was not going to let the wind sway me in one direction or another any longer.  Everything I learned, I wanted to be God revealed whether in His Word or through my heart from the Holy Spirit.  This growth continues too.  I am made new in Christ and the rest of my life will be spent learning more and getting to know God on a deeper and more intimate level.  He desires that intimacy with all of us.

Paul said in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by renewing your mind, so that you may prove that the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  My life has truly been transformed and I strive to live like this each day so that the light of the Lord is shining through me.  This is where continued growth comes in.  I’m not going to get this right everyday.  I know that.  I am at war with my old self and the enemy each day, but I am strengthened with the armor of God each day now.  With each day, we spend in His word, the stronger we become.

Ephesians 4:23-24 says “…Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”  Learning this has been a huge part of my life.  I have a new and authentic self in Christ, now.  Knowing Him, I no longer needed to be ruled by my false self and my old nature.

I share all of this to share this.  Each of us grow, spiritually in different ways.  Even in my own home, my wife and kids grow uniquely in their way.  I try to guide them, but it is up to them in the end.  I challenge you, if you struggle with growth, start somewhere.  Start with just reading the Word.  Learn to be intentional about that.  It may take a while to go through, but do it.  After you read it, read it again.  Then you can began to put the pieces together and start diving deeper and deeper.  My pastor, Tim, challenged me this week on how to now dive even deeper though expository study, and that is where I head next.

It all starts somewhere folks.  Trust me, just starting with taking the time to read, will move you in the right direction.  You have to want to though.  I promise you the work God will begin to do on you will be immense.  It may take time, but the more intentional you get about it, the more He draws you in and the more you will get to know Him and build real intimacy with HIm.  It allowed me with real authenticity to just say to God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), “I Love You!”  This is my challenge to you.  Dive in.

In his album ’13 Letters,’ Rapper, Trip Lee has a song called Dig In and the hook says..

Bible, check; spiral, check, highlighter check
Now dig, dig
You want to know Him? Got to dig, dig. You want to know Him? Got to dig, dig

That’s where it begin.  Just start digging.  You will get to know Him more than you could have hoped for and the learning and growth never ends.

A Lifetime of Growth

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There is a common misconception of Christians that even used to dwell in my mind at one time.  This is the thought that once one comes to faith in Christ then they have figured things out.  They are good to go now and should not have a life of struggles and pains any longer.  I guess it’s not that I thought of them this way, but more they saw themselves in this light.  Over the past 4 years, as I began to slowly walk closer with God, He has began to show me knew things and give me new perspectives and an understanding that this is not even close to being the case.

In my reading this week, I ran across a great statement from Larry Crabb which states, “Just a quick glance beneath the surface of our life makes it clear that more is going on than loving God and loving others. It requires only a moment of honest self-reflection to realize that no matter how much we may have already changed, we still have a long way to go.”  This statement helped to cement a new belief and perspective that I had come to learn over the last few years.  This that we life and growth does not end with accepting Christ or Baptism.

Coming to Christ does not mean that we are now perfect people do no wrong or look at ourselves in this light.  Granted there may be some who do feel this way, but this is not the case.  We instead have come to grips with the reality that we do not have all of the answers and that this life is not about us and our own story, but it is about God and his epic story and what He desires for each of us, which is holiness.

In our lives and because of our inherent fallen nature, holiness is something that we will never be able to achieve in this world.  We can start leaning that way, but our fallen nature will always right back down at one point or another.  It’s a part of who we and the nature that we have.

God gave us something awesome though.  Through Christ, we are justified to seek Him and be sanctified throughout our lives to reach holiness and glorification.  So how does this happen?  Through study, prayer, fellowship, and discipleship.  All of these pieces fit together to allow us to grow throughout the course of our lives and to be sanctified in Christ over the course of our lives.

Just as Larry Crabb’s stated, while we walk in this life, no matter how much movement and change we’ve undertaken, we still have a long way to go.  None of us will ever have all of the answers.  None of us will ever make all of the right decisions all of the time in life.  However, we can all choose the direction of our lives.  Humble ourselves in understanding that we are still fallen and that we can never grow enough through this life.  As John Eldredge  has stated, “We get to live the life of Christ through a thousand small choices” and those choices run the full course of our lives to define who we are in Him.

Piercing the Heart with a Double-Edged Sword

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While reading last night for my counseling studies, I came across some great writing about how our relationships with God or rather understanding the distortions one may have in a relationship with God, can help to guide someone to building a deeper and more intimate two-way relationship with Him in Christ.  When we stay living in our brokenness and can’t build on that relationship of truly getting to know God and living in His presence, it makes it difficult to find any of the healing that Christ has offered or the life He offered.  We stay broken.

Hebrews 4:12 says “For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  When I was reminded of and read this verse, it reminded me of the power that being in the Word of God, both his written Word and His Word in our hearts, can have over our lives.  There is so much Truth and so much power in getting to know God in His Word and then allowing Him to come into our hearts and speak to us in our hearts.  When this begins to take place, the transformation of the heart and of your life is huge.  What I am learning is that for counseling individuals helping to guide someone to this understanding can be huge in their own healing and restoration.

I see this transformation in people in my life just as I have seen it in my own life.  I have been reading and studying God’s Word for about 4 years now.  Through that time I was sharpening one side of the sword.  I was building knowledge and understanding of God and who He truly is.  In the past year, I began to sharpen the other side of the sword as I began to really let Christ into my heart and opening the door of my heart to be able to hear the Lord and understand on a deeper level who I was as a son of God and understand the places in my heart that I needed to confront and seek the Lord’s healing.

Discovering this, my life was transformed.  I know that this is possible for others as well.  When you allow that double edged sword to sharpen completely and enter your heart, WOW!  It transforms your life.  It’s a transformation that can never be ignored again and can only get sharper and sharper the more you walk with God in His Word and in the heart.

WAH_Sword

Be Still…Clear The Mind

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Writing on this blog is something I thoroughly enjoy doing, it feels like a gift that God has blessed me with as He blessed each of us in our own unique way.  I began this blog nearly 3 years ago.  In the first 2 years, I had about 90 posts over that time.  This year alone, God’s Holy Spirit has filled me tremendously and this will be my 81st post since January.  It’s amazing how much God has worked in my life this year alone, especially in my writing.

I sometimes, however will find myself getting so frustrated with myself when I hit the dreaded writers block.  When it seems the ideas just stop and it’s hard where to continue.  If feel like I need to write something, I need to put something out there and yet, I can’t figure out where to go.  I get that sometimes in school papers, which is frustrating, but sometimes it carries to this site and what I am able to write about.  I get those days where things just seem to be flowing and inspired, yet others where nothing seems to flow.

I was sitting with a brother the other day just talking about life, faith, and discipleship.  We both had similar experiences in being able to get away from the norms of life and escape to the wilderness to unplug and spend time with God and with God alone.  I’ve shared my Wild at Heart experiences on numerous occasions since January, but I was reminded of something very important in that conversation.  Sometimes we just need to be still and let our mind clear.  First, the power of this is huge in the rest it can provide, true Sabbath, but also, when we can get to a place in our minds and hearts where we are still, we can begin to hear God through the Holy Spirit and in these moments we can often receive our greatest inspirations.

The trouble today is that we are so busy, every single day, that doing this is hard to do.  We are filled and bombarded with clutter everyday as we live in a world that no longer even honors the Sabbath in anyway truly, and is constantly trying to fill our time up with more tasks, more to dos.  We get too busy.  We try to multi-task, we try to fill our days, thinking if I am busier and busier I am doing the right thing.  But doing so and never taking a time to rest and clear your mind and reset, can kill your soul.

This goes back to my writing.  I found when we hit the summer months, the inspiration was hard to come by.  This is usually are busiest time of year as a family, and constantly being on the go filled my mind with more clutter and it was often difficult to just stop and rest.  This made writing often times challenging, when the inspiration was hard to come by.

This is important for all of us. Rest, renewal, and restoration.  Look at the life of Jesus.  How often did He retreat away from the crowds and His disciples into the wilderness to sit in prayer.  It was necessary for Him and you can bet it is necessary for us.  It’s a vital part of our existence.  God created the Sabbath for us for a reason.  We need that rest.

I challenge you to look at your life and find where you are just cluttered with life.  If you feel bogged down with busyness and the troubles of life, find time to stop.  Even if you get up early in the morning before the day begins.  Before getting on email or social media.  Before turning on the TV.  Before waking up the family.  Take that time to sit in prayer and even in Scripture and writing in a journal.  The power in starting this way is so huge.  Before the chaos of the day begins, set our heart and mind on God alone.  Let your mind clear.  There’s great power in this…trust me.

Assignments – Glorify God Where You Are Now

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We all have different assignments in our lives.  We find our selves in different types of work, sometimes we love and enjoy our work and other times we would just assume get up and walk away.  I’ve been in both places.  I’ve been in work that I absolutely detested and was burned out from and then jobs that I have thoroughly enjoyed.  Not going to call out any specific job.  Just the way life goes.  As I have shared on several occasions, I have started school with the goal of becoming a licensed professional counselor and move into ministry and christian counseling.  I am excited about this journey.  I have an awesome family that supports me in this journey and great group of men and a church family that is very encouraging and supportive through it and even provides a sense of guidance.

With that said, while this journey continues, I still have my current job that I work at and have been for the last 10 years.  Now, it could be so easy to just through my hands up and say I am done and focus on my attention to my schooling and development.  I realized something though.  God has us in our assignments for reason and a purpose.  When He is ready for me to finally move, I will move.  Until that time, I have an obligation to Him, to glorify Him and finish up where I am and not just simply give-up and walk away, not caring, or just not doing the work that I need to do.  Until He is ready for me to move, I need to finish my assignment.  As a man I have a responsibility to my family and as an image bearer of God, I have a responsibility to HIm to finish strong where I am.  As my pastor said in our men’s study, that’s the best way to glorify Him.

I’ve been studying Genesis 1 and 2 lately.  This came after our men’s study on authentic manhood and dives into the original design of creation.  There’s so much to gain from studying our original creation and how God laid the world out and gave man dominion over the earth before the fall, which came so quickly in creation.  One of the major points that stuck out to me was from Genesis 2:15 where it says, “The the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.”  Right off the bat, God gave Adam a J-O-B, as my pastor, Tim, put it.  Adam was given responsibilities and this was even before Eve was created.

This was part of the way Adam was able to glorify God before the fall.  By doing the work that God had entrusted Him to do.  Jesus was the same way throughout His time here on earth.  He glorified the Father because He knew his mission and purpose and was going to carry that out, all the way to His death.

We all have responsibilities here in this life.  God has each of us exactly where we need to be in this life and He is calling many of us to knew assignments as well.  Faith in Him needs to be motivator of all we do.  Glorifying Him in all that we do in this life.  If we just simply give-up and walk away or fail to adhere to our responsibilities then there is no way we can glorify Him.  Finish up where you are an finish strong.  That’s such an awesome testament to the faith of God leading you and making the best of where you are before He is ready for you to finally move.

Understand this, and this right here is mainly for you men out there.  Part of your responsibility as well is to lead your family, raising up your kids in a way that they grow to have a heart for God in their own life and want to draw nearer to Him.  If you walk away from this responsibility and then your motives are simply self-driven for your own successes, how in the world can you glorify the Father and quite honestly, how can you call yourself a man.   We only get one shot at this life and we can’t live it spent with a self-reliant focus that does not draw to faith.  Remember, check your motives because anything not done out of faith is sin.  I’ve sinned in this manner as we all have, but we have to learn to recognize it repent from it and own to it in order to heal and start living a life of faith.

“The root of our sinfulness is the desire for our own happiness apart from God and apart from the happiness of others in God. All sin comes from a desire to be happy cut off from the glory of God and cut off from the good of others.”

“Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.”

– John Piper

Self-Reliance Does NOT Lead to Life

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One of the biggest issues we have as a humans and in our fallen state is the overwhelming desire to be self-reliant.  Self-reliance is pretty self explanatory. So many of us in this world look purely to ourselves and our abilities to make it through life.  We know we are gifted with abilities, and we face struggles in life we look to those abilities and our own wisdom and understanding of life to try make it through.  Often times this comes to the detriment of ourselves and those around us.  What is forgotten through it all is the source of everything.  Where do our abilities come from, what is it we are truly living and walking through life for, what is our true and real purpose?

Jesus came to offer something substantial that we had lost, life.  Where as “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  Life was lost prior to this.  At the fall, Adam became complacent and passive.  He did not act in his role to stop sin from entering and thus the fall.  Life was lost.  Jesus came to restore that.  Something is needed from us though in order to have real life.  A desire to live in order to glorify God, turned away from our self, and seeking Him to restore and guide our hearts.

So many out there are busting their butts trying to make something of themselves.  The problem is that the motivation is jacked up.  In the end, what does any of that matter if their motivation is not lead by faith and a desire to draw near to God.  I’ve written about this before.  Our motives need to be tested.  If our motives do not come out of faith and a desire to glorify God, then what does it matter.  It will not bring you anything in the end.  Our motives are the key.  We are called to shed our selfish and self-reliant ways and rely solely on Him.  This is a very difficult thing to do for many of us.  I know it was difficult for me.  To put off the old man and and bring Christ to the forefront of my life.

This is all very simple here, though very hard for so many to do.  Shed your self-reliant ways.  Understand that Christ came to offer us life, but we cannot have a life, real life, unless we stop looking to ourselves and start turning to the real source of life.  God is the source of life.  Don’t look to the idols of this world and to your own wisdom of this world.  Seek the Father and seek to walk with Him in all things in life.  This is how you find your way to real life.  As Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.”

Look at Jesus.  How did He live His life here on earth?  With total and complete reliance on the Father to guide Him.  He knew His purpose was to glorify Him in this life and He was going to follow the Father’s will all the way up to and including His own death.  Jesus is the model of what it is live and to live a life for God.  Like I said, He is the source of life, so let Him become your life.  Open your heart to Him and let Him guide your actions.  Let the motives for everything you do come from Him and Him alone.  In this way you can truly have life to the full.

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul? Matthew 16:26

Never Satisfied Standing Still

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Spiritual growth is something so substantial to everyone of us.  We are all on different journeys.  Some seeking a closer faith with God, so stay complacent, and some just fall back or go with the flow.  In my men’s ministry study last night, the thought of satisfaction with where I am spiritually came about.  I wish I could remember the exact things said, but it got me really pondering my own spiritual growth.  I have been on quite a ride these past many months, spiritually, and the thought of where God will continue to lead me is so exciting.

I want you to think of your spiritual growth.  Are you satisfied with where you are?  Are you complacent, thinking you drawn closely to the Father or your a good servant or tither.  You read the Bible daily and so many other things.  All great things.  But if you really stop to think about it, do we ever reach full happiness and completeness spiritually in this world.  The answer to this, from what I can tell is, no.

Think about it.  Because of the works of Christ, His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, we are given a freedom that had been lost to a world of religion, performance, and evil.  We were justified by the works of Christ to now walk in freedom and to seek and be restored to the Father through Jesus.

Nowadays, so many are completely complacent with where they are spiritually.  They see themselves and regular church attenders, they take part in activities, serve in various roles, but on the inside, they still fall short of the Father on many levels.  Sound familiar?  That’s because this is every single one of us.  In this world, because of our fallen nature we are still well short of the glory we were created in by God.  We are restored and made new in Christ, but we are still fallen, while we still walk here and until Christ’s return or we step in eternity ourselves.

So again, are you fully satisfied with your spiritual growth? Are you satisfied with where you are now and standing still?  I know I’m not.  My ultimate goal is complete restoration to the Father through Christ.  I will not see that in this world, but I can continue growing each day to draw nearer and nearer until I reach glorification in Heaven.

I here people all the time talk about just being happy.  Happy with life, content with their circumstances, and just get along.  They want to be happy.  The problem is that ultimate happiness will not come in this life.  There will always be something else to bring you down or spiritual forces pulling you back.  You have to check where you are and your motives in life to see where you stand spiritually.

I am loving this book I am reading through, “Effective Biblical Counseling,” by Larry Crabb.  I believe I mentioned it in a previous post, but I am learning a great deal about what it will mean to be a Biblical Counselor in my future.  But Larry shares, in chapter 1, and important point about spiritual maturity.  He says it involves 2 elements; 1) immediate obedience in specific situations and 2) long-range character growth.  This is essential  We cannot be satisfied with simple obedience and performance now.  We have to grow continuously.  Larry later shares that, until the time of glorification, in Heaven, “God is in the process of sanctifying me, of purifying me, of slowing helping me to become more of what He already declared me to be. He has granted me the position of acceptability. No He instructs me to grow up in my position, to behave more and more acceptably.”

We can’t be satisfied where we stand.  God desires each of us to continue to grow in Him and to Him until the time we are finally fully restored and glorified in Him.  Don’t be complacent.  Don’t compromise your faith and your spiritual growth thinking you good to go.  We must always work on growing.  I will continue to grow and I take delight in everything new I learn. It’s a process that will last a lifetime, but I know God is using that to continue working on my heart and sanctifying me through Christ.

Putting Christ Above All Else

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The Great Commission calls on us to go and make disciples.  What do you think about when you think discipleship?  For many it can be about going about and witnessing to others, sharing the Gospel, walking in fellowship with others, sharing ones testimony to the faith.  These are all critical aspects of discipleship.  It is partnering with others in a way that allows them to learn to grow in their own faith and walk in close relationship with Jesus.

In Luke 14:26-27, Jesus tells us something very profound about discipleship.  He says, 26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers’ and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”  This gave me something really profound to meditate on and think about when reading these versus.  What is real discipleship and what is is that Christ desires in us in becoming His disciples?

A definition of discipleship is “a person who is a pupil or an adherent of the doctrines of another.”  So discipleship is following another to learn from them and grow through the process.  This is what Jesus is talking about about and this is the most critical aspect of discipleship.  Learning to walk with God in closeness.  Putting Him above all else and desiring an intimacy with Him that will allow you to grow even more on a spiritual level.  This is so critical to all of us.  Learning to walk with God, desiring that closeness with Jesus that allows us to grow from His life and allow His life to shine through our own.

I know I’m repeating myself, but of the 4 Streams, this is the foundation of it all.  Discipleship.  Walking in close intimacy with Jesus.  This is what He had with his boys.  He chose guys that were a wreck, but through their choosing to put Christ first and to follow Him, they learned from Him.  They learned to walk in closer fellowship and to draw nearer to God, eventually at Pentecost, being filled with the Holy Spirit to take the Good News across the world so others could also learn about Jesus and desire that same intimacy and discipleship in Walking with God.  This is critical.

As I mentioned from Luke 14, Jesus desires that we love Him first, above all else.  We cannot love things of this world more and still be His disciple and walking with Him.  It doesn’t work that way.  He came to free us from the bondage of this world, so that we may be able to see the Father and be given free access to the Father through Him.  The Father’s desire is to walk with all of us, but we must choose Him first.  We must choose God first.

Mark 1:17, Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”  That’s the key to it all.  If we choose to follow Jesus, if we choose Him first and to walk with Him, He will use us for the Glory of the Father.  Walked with these guys for about 3 years.  Now, we have accounts of many things Jesus did during this time with them, but just think of the level of wisdom and teaching He bestowed about on the disciples.  In other words, choosing to follow God and walk with Him, does not make you the ultimate in wisdom in witnessing and teaching right off the bat.  It starts small.  How many times during those 3 years, did Jesus have to correct these guys.  Like I said, they were a wreck.

The choice, however, must be to be willing to put Him first.  To want a level of discipleship with God that allows you to learn through Him.  He will teach you and will use others to teach you along the way.  That’s the world He began in me this year.  It’s not an overnight thing, but choosing to put Him above all else has now put me in a position to where I can learn through discipleship with Him and those that He places in my life to help guide me in His name and glory.  God has placed to some awesome men in my life and the walk that is going to take place for His sake and His alone is going to be tremendous.  He is equipping me according to His purpose and He wants to do the same for everyone of you, if you are willing to turn to Him and place Him above all else in your life.

“Let this be thy whole endeavor, this thy prayer, this thy desire,–that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness, and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.” –Thomas à Kempis

Where Does Your Story Fit?

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Our life is one big story.  There are so many things in our lives that make up the person we choose to become and the decisions and directions we choose to go.  In my counseling studies the past couple of weeks, I’ve written a series of essays around human development and the impact of things such as trauma, abuse, and addiction to development.  These things that cause deep seeded wounds in each of and if not addressed can drastically impact where our story leads.  Larry Crabb provided that in the pursuit of satisfaction, people will often exchange one error for another in trying to find what feels good.  It’s often an issue of trying to cope with the problems and not knowing where it is they fit in the world due to the pains they have suffered.  This suffering is not new to any of us. We all have fallen and have been faced with tough choices and decisions that have drawn from wounds we have suffered.

All of this is very interesting to think about because I know people, myself included, that have gone through sufferings and struggles in life and unsure of where they fit and what purpose their story has in it all.  What do you make of everything that happens and how are our choices influenced by what we know in life.  Then one day, I realized something.  I realized that my life and story is simply a small section or even paragraph in the grand epic story of God.  He is the real hero of the story that we all belong to.  Then I realized that it was not even my story, but His.  I belong to the Father now and ransomed by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, I now get to live my life through the life of Christ.  I found out that all the things I purposed of this world were meaningless and futile if the motives did not come out of faith.  Ecclesiastes 2:11 says, “But as I looked at everything that I had world so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless–like chasing the wind.”  A new purpose and direction was shown to me.

This may seem a bit deep for some, but I often think about life in this way now.  For years, probably the first 33 years of my life, I didn’t realize where my story fit.  Yes, I knew the faith on a surface level, but I never sought to know Christ deeply and pursued things that I thought were going to bring me satisfaction in this life.  I had a false sense of life and the story I lived and direction I was headed.  I stayed lost in myself and my sin.  God began to wake me up nearly 4 years ago around my 33rd birthday.  He struck my curiosity to really try to know Him better and develop and deeper faith.

Fast forward 3 years, just turning 36 and I could feel the Spirit stirring in me again, and this time on a deeper level.  Deeper than anything I had ever noticed before.  I began to really see my life and who I was to the Father.  I was not going to let myself get caught up in a religious fog, but rather get to know Him and finally realized who I was as His son, bought through the redemptive blood of Christ.  I learned a critical thing that I had never been open to.  I found out why I was created.  Having fully surrendered my life, God revealed to me why.  He showed me that I am His beloved son, that I had what it takes to live out my life as a reborn warrior, and was now calling me to be a warrior for the Kingdom.

It was awesome having my thoughts around all of this, and then at worship yesterday, my pastor, Tim Cash, shared a great Mark Twain quote.  “The two most important days in your live are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”  I heard that, I was like, YES!  It’s like an awakening when I was able to truly see who I was in Christ and what it was I created for.

But, now that I realize this.  Now that I know who I am in Christ.  Now that I know that I am bought and justified through God’s grace with the goal of reaching glorification when I enter the Kingdom, there was no way in the world that I could sit by and not do something about it.  How can you?  When you know your purpose and where you fit in God’s story, how can you simply ignore Him when He calls?  I was no longer going to do that.  I belong to the Father now, and through the full works of Christ, I get to live my life in this light. While I know I won’t get it all right, I pray that my life stands as a reflection of Christ to others.  We should all pursue this. God is calling on everyone of us.  It just took me 36 years to FINALLY act on it.

Unearned Freedom Given Out of Love

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Paul tells us something very substantial in Galatians 5:1; “So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free and don’t get tied up in slavery to the law.”  This freedom that was given to us, unearned and unmerited is something so huge and substantial to our lives, but for us and our fallen nature we still can’t fully fathom and understand the depths of this freedom.  We still live lives that try to jump through religious hoops and trying to keep up with the world and a false sense of who we are.  We continue hiding, feeling ashamed if we stand out in the world on our faith and in the freedom given in Christ.

In his book, Beautiful Outlaw, a book that I highly, highly recommend, John Eldredge shares something substantial about the extraordinary freedom in Christ.  He says, “How much of what we do is motivated by fear of man?  Think of it – to be entirely free of false guilt, free from pressure, from false allegiances.  It would be absolutely extraordinary.  This is what gives Jesus the ability to say such startling honest things to people.”  Think about this.  Jesus is able to, without any fear, stare right back at the religious leaders and call them out for their hypocrisy.  Jesus is able to rebuke Peter saying, “get away from me Satan” when Peter talks of not allowing Jesus to die.  He clears the temple with a whip in hand causing utter chaos when he sees they turned the temple into a market place.  Those are just a few examples.  Jesus is direct and free from the feeling of guilt for being straight-up and honest with everyone.  He does not worry about this world.  Does not worry about what people think.  He is free from that.  He knows who He is.  He knows His purpose from the Father and set out to fulfill that purpose.

Eldredge adds something else to this.  “Neither success nor opposition have power over him.  One day the crowds love Him, the next they are shouting for his crucifixion.  Jesus in the same man – the same personality – through the whole swirling tempest. Jesus is free from the fear of man.  It is something more than integrity, though it certainly encompasses that.  He is true to himself, true to His Father, true to what the moment most requires, true to love.  In this forest of fig leaves, where you are never sure you are getting the true person, there is nothing false about Jesus.”

This is so substantial for all of us.  Jesus is the second Adam.  He is the example of what man was meant to be and how we were meant to live, with a life fully surrendered and fixed on the will of the Father.  Our world has fallen so much and this is what Jesus came for.  To set us free from our fallen self.  To set us free from sin, this world, death, judgement, and the evil one.

How much greater our lives would be if we could just put aside our worry about what the world thinks.  Free from the pressures of what going with the crowd.  Free from the religious non-sense that Jesus also confronted and tore the veil to free us from, but man through the enemies influence has tried to keep strong and keep a veil between us and the Father.  How much greater this life would be.

The beauty of it all is that we can choose to live this way.  The choice is ours to make. We can choose Jesus and choose to follow His lead seeking the Father’s will.  We are free and alive in Christ and we don’t have to be slaves to this world and to our sin.  My challenge to everyone is to choose to come alive.  Choose to live in the freedom and holiness that Jesus brought us and has given us.  We no longer have to bow to this world.  He don’t have to feel pressured by false guilt given by others to live how others think we should.  Seek God the Father’s will in all that you do and He will show you the freedom that is yours in Christ.

It’s an amazing feeling to know the freedom I have in Christ.  I know the freedom I can now live in and not subject myself to the will of others.  I live for my God alone through the freedom that was undeserved but is freely mind in Christ.  It is available to all of us who choose to accept it.  I will fight for this freedom everyday day as we all should.  Live in freedom!