What holds back your freedom?

Ours is a great nation because it has been built upon the principles of Scripture. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence declare that they held “these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” Our nation’s forefather’s found that Scripture spoke about freedom and they foresaw America to be a place where freedom would be the foundation of everything they sought to do.

Even with this as a foundation for our country, there is one freedom that America cannot give its citizens. In fact, no government on the face of the earth can supply the freedom that Jesus talked about in John 8.

Verses: 31 – 36: To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

One of the most difficult things we struggle with is guilt and shame. No matter how many freedoms our nation gives us, it cannot give us the freedom from the shame and guilt imposed upon us by our sins. Sin has a terrible ability to dominate our lives. Drag us down and to destroy us.

Romans 6:17 puts it: “…you used to be slaves to sin…. Keyword: “Used to”.

For me, there USED TO be a nagging question…”How could God ever forgive me?”

There is a word that has become quite popular in our culture that describes it. That word is “Karma.” Every world religion is based upon that fundamental idea. Galatians 6:7 says “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” You get what you deserve. Other world religions teach that you can work off your “bad Karma”. They teach that you really can do enough good to outweigh the bad.

There are a couple of issues with this mindset:

1.       If you end up doing too many “bad” things in your life… you may never be able to balance out.

2.       Karma never really “removes” any of the sin from a person’s life. Karma teaches that when you’ve put bad deeds on one side of the scale you have to put good ones on the other side.

Things will get so heavy they will break. That is what can happen to people who rely too heavily on balancing the spiritual scales of their lives. There becomes too much weight for the scales of their conscience to handle, and this can literally cripple them mentally.

God will forgive us our sins – not because we deserve it, or have done enough good to outweigh our sins. God will forgive us for only one reason: He loves us.

Here’s another nagging question I USED TO have: “How many times will God forgive me when I sin?”

Peter once asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive someone else. And do you remember what Jesus answered? 70 times 7 … 490 times. Do you realize that by the time we forgave somebody that many times, we’d probably forget what they’d done to offend us the first time? If God holds us to that standard in our lives, don’t you think God Himself would hold Himself to a much higher standard when it came to our sins?

One the reasons people don’t confess their sins to God is that they believe that once God “finds out” what they’d done, God wouldn’t forgive them. That’s just foolish – there isn’t anything God doesn’t see or hear. You can’t HIDE your sin from God. All we lose, by not confessing our sins to Him, is the freedom He can give us from the shackles of shame and guilt that come from those sins.

When I was younger, a friend and I were throwing rocks outside of school. I threw a rock at a cat and killed it. I felt bad I had no idea whose cat it was and my friend knew about how I felt. For the next few weeks whenever he wanted something from me, he would threaten me with telling others about the cat. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and confessed all to the Principal at my school. Funny, he said he saw the whole thing but had forgiven me already. He hadn’t said anything because he wanted to see how long I’d allow my friend to make a slave of me…

I thought my confession would destroy me, but it was the confession that actually set me free.

Laziness: Well, Excuuuuuuuse Me!

The last few months, I have wanted to write about this subject but just kept putting it to the side. Of course, the subject is procrastination. Wait a minute; don’t good things come to those who wait? You can’t serve wine until it’s time. Cheese isn’t any good unless it’s aged.  It can always wait till tomorrow, right?

A few weeks ago I learned a lesson…probably the most costly procrastination lesson. Even though I have a Sun Pass, there is one particular toll booth that doesn’t seem to like my pass. It didn’t like my pass 4 times as a matter of fact.  I knew about these 6 months ago when I got the ‘pay up now notice’ but put these warning in the inbox on my desk.

Let me tell you something about my inbox it would be more aptly named, “My Organized Trash Box”. 

When the State of Florida gives you a 3^rd warning…..it’s actually your last warning. Then they send it to the Courts. Once it goes to Court, they have a tendency to add things, like more fines. Basically, the $3.00 in tolls that I could have paid, on the phone right away, grew up. I’m not going to tell you how much but let’s say they reached a total that could have only been reached using complicated algebraic and calculus equations.

My procrastination cost me dearly. In this imperfect world we live in, it is highly more likely that the longer we wait to do things, the harder and more unpleasant they will seem to be. Right!

Have you ever really asked yourself why you are not taking care of the things you know need to be done in your life? Is it something deeper that keeps you from doing what needs to be done, or is it the anxiety of giving something more pleasurable up in order to get the right thing done. Perhaps it is the thought of pain that keeps us from doing the right thing.

How many of us have missed out on an opportunity because we put it off? I know you can’t see but both my arms are raised! Sometimes, God presents us an opportunity and we say, “When I get to it”. When I was in the US Navy we used to have a saying, “If the chief says ‘JUMP’, you say ‘How high’.  Spiritually, when God says, ‘GO’…you need to start packing your bags and booking the flight!

Proverbs 26:13-16 “The sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!" As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.  The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly.”

I have heard many excuses for not working, but the Bible uses the old,” there might be a lion outside I should stay inside and watch television excuse.” Think of this excuse in a spiritual sense; are we so lazy that we cannot lift the Word of God that would feed our spirit? Procrastination is simply laziness and it leads to a life that will never experience fulfillment.

So many people accept the Lord yet are waiting to become something they may never be, before they allow themselves to be used by God. There procrastinating because of their own fear or feelings of inadequacies. If this is how you feel just remembering the people God used:

Noah was a drunk, Abraham was an old man, Isaac was a dreamer, Jacob was a liar, Joseph was abused, Moses had a speech impediment, Gideon was afraid, Samson was a womanizer, Rahab was a prostitute, Jeremiah was too young, David cheated on his wife, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached in his birthday suit, Jonah ran from God, Naomi was a widow, Job went bankrupt, Peter denied Christ, Martha was a worrier, the Samaritan woman was divorced a few times, Zaccheus was a little guy, Paul was overly religious, Timothy had stomach issues and Lazarus was dead!

What do you have that’s worse than that? Stop waiting for things to get better… they won’t. At least not until you get off that couch and acting on God’s Word.

No more excuses. Stop procrastinating. God can use you to your full potential.

You have no idea what tomorrow will bring if in fact there is a tomorrow. Why don’t you act today? God is calling for each of us to do today what needs to be done. If God is calling… you MUST a

Practicing Piano

One of my good memories of my father is he was a Jazz Pianist, and a very talented one. I took piano lessons for 3 years but never got beyond scales and a few small pieces.  That’s because I didn’t practice. My father practiced every day for 2 or 3 hours and was perfectionist when it came to playing any music.  I am fully aware the price my father paid to be that good.

Now….on that note! It’s a good thing that God doesn’t give up on us because of any of our…dis-chords.  We have a tendency, as humans, of failing to follow through.  God repeats things over and over until we get it right.

God can and sometimes does perform instant miracles but where is the benefit if every time we are in trouble God waves a magic wand and poof!  We have to travel the road he has laid out for us ourselves. We can't delegate it, and we can't just read guidebooks. We have to do it. Now, mind, God provides everything we could possibly need for the journey: food, clothing, maps, shelter. We are guided, accompanied, empowered and rewarded by His love. But walk it we must.

There were times for months on end that my father for one reason or another never touched the piano.  When he returned to it, it was difficult for him to get back into playing well. See, what’s inside your head isn’t enough.

You have to practice. Your body - your reflexes - your habits of behavior and response - have to be trained. And love is like that, too. Being told about the love of God doesn't make you able to experience it. You have to practice love in order to have it. How do you practice the love of God?

Read Ephesians 3:14-21 – Paul lays it all out.

You have to claim the grace, goodness and power of God! We are members of God's family. We are his adopted children, co-heirs with Christ. Because we are His children, it is proper for us to look to God to supply our needs. It is the delight of a father to supply his family with evidence of His wealth. God has plans for us, for our good and his glory, we may confidently ask for what we need to fulfill those plans.

All too often, the work we do in ministry we think as gifts we make to God, whereas in reality it's the other way around. The work we do in ministry is God's gift to us. The right approach isn't to say, "Look what I've done for you, now can I have a blessing?" It's "Please give me the blessing of having something worthwhile to do with my life. Give me something important to do!

The most important thing we can do is to serve Jesus Christ. So let's not be timid about asking to be empowered to do just that. There's nothing in the fine print on God’s offer that says “offer good while supplies last."

You also need to invite Jesus into your life. Through faith, it is because we trust Jesus that we invite him in. Through heart, we are to invite Jesus into the very center of our lives, the control room. Through dwelling, Jesus is to live in us, not just get parked in the living room to be entertained, or to be taken out for show when we have company over.

Jesus doesn’t go where he isn’t invited, which may seem odd to us. Sometimes we act as if we think Jesus doesn't know what we have so carefully hidden from the world - sometimes even from ourselves.

Like Interning doctors, our job is to make the rounds with Jesus. He does all the dirty work. He does the heavy lifting. But we have to go with him. Jesus said, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person..." Matthew 15:18- 19

Jesus also said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Matthew 12:34

Only Jesus, through his Spirit, can clean out our hearts so that what flows naturally from our hearts and out of our mouths can be a credit to him. And it doesn't work just to ask him in at our conversion and then forget about it. The same process goes on throughout all of our lives.

I know I haven’t even mentioned practicing love as of yet.  One thing I learned from playing the piano is you can’t practice playing until the piano is tuned and the music sheets are ready.  So, now that we have accomplished this with the previous words…let’s start practicing. Let’s display the Love of Christ.

Christ's love is spiritual, but it's not just in our heads. It is far beyond words. It isn't a concept or a metaphor, it's an active verb, and it takes two people to make it come to life. Jesus loves us. We know that by what he has given us, what he has done for us. But how do we do our part? How on earth can we love Jesus back?

Jesus tells us that it is in loving others that we act on our love for Jesus; this love is specific; not abstract; not vague or even general. It is personal and intimate. The journey of faith is like a spiral stair, the whole held up by the love of God, but the sequence of steps always the same. Commit yourself to the grace of God. Surrender more of yourself to Christ. And love the people he puts in your path as if he himself were before you - he is.

We can't even guess much less see where that staircase will lead, for as Paul says, "by the power that is at work within us, he is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we ask or imagine." As we commit ourselves to following the path God opens up before us, we will begin to catch glimpses. It is in loving one another that we who are the followers of Jesus Christ will bring him the glory that will demonstrate God's wisdom in "the heavenly places."

As we practice his love, like the piano, we will be in tune; our worship sounds become more harmonic and we become true musicians of God’s love towards all.