Give Me Liberty
Give Me Liberty...
I have this struggle...it is that I hate to be restricted...tied down...defined. I want people to just let me be who I want to be without fear of what they think or how I might make them feel. I feel like I should just be accepted the way that I am. I can’t stand the thought of doing something just so that people won’t judge me.
In the church world this is crazy hard...I mean if you don’t dress like this, or don’t listen to this preacher or enjoy this music. If you don’t share my exact point of view...if you don’t validate my christianity...I mean this stuff is almost like a prison sometimes! Why do we act this way. Why do I want people to accept me how I am yet I will look at someone who isn’t living life the way I am and hold them in some form of judgment. How warped is that?!
I am commanded by God to love anyone who is not me, like they were me. So, how can I expect them to do something I am unwilling to do? How can I want to be free from the prison I feel that I am put in sometimes, when I put them in a prison in my mind? It is just crazy! I have, well, God has a solution! Galatians 5:1 says, ”Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.“ We have been given liberty...now sadly many of us think that means I am free to be whoever I want to be whenever I want to be...which is just going to lead us right back into craziness...it leads us to bondage...to a mental prison. Jesus said that if we know Him, the Truth, that it what makes us free! The truth is that we don’t know how to love until we learn it from Him. We don’t know how to let someone be just who they are and love them anyway until we understand that Christ lets us be just who we are and loves us anyway!
Now, just know this, if we are getting to know Christ and His kind of love and letting Him teach us how to love...it is going to change who we are to look more like Him! He may love me just as I am but His love is so powerful it frees me from who I am so I can love how He does. Galatians 5:13 shows us, “”For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.“
Patrick Henry’s famous last words were in the face of death, “give me liberty or give me death”. He would have rather died than to lose the liberty he had found. We have to have a similar faith in the Word of God...We must choose to die to all that makes sense to us so that we can have liberty to be more like Jesus. Let your famous last words in your flesh be today, “Jesus, give me liberty in my death!” If we can’t quit the cycle of madness in our churches, how can we be used by God to show others what real love looks like? Let that simmer for a bit.
Pastor Larry Hof
I have this struggle...it is that I hate to be restricted...tied down...defined. I want people to just let me be who I want to be without fear of what they think or how I might make them feel. I feel like I should just be accepted the way that I am. I can’t stand the thought of doing something just so that people won’t judge me.
In the church world this is crazy hard...I mean if you don’t dress like this, or don’t listen to this preacher or enjoy this music. If you don’t share my exact point of view...if you don’t validate my christianity...I mean this stuff is almost like a prison sometimes! Why do we act this way. Why do I want people to accept me how I am yet I will look at someone who isn’t living life the way I am and hold them in some form of judgment. How warped is that?!
I am commanded by God to love anyone who is not me, like they were me. So, how can I expect them to do something I am unwilling to do? How can I want to be free from the prison I feel that I am put in sometimes, when I put them in a prison in my mind? It is just crazy! I have, well, God has a solution! Galatians 5:1 says, ”Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.“ We have been given liberty...now sadly many of us think that means I am free to be whoever I want to be whenever I want to be...which is just going to lead us right back into craziness...it leads us to bondage...to a mental prison. Jesus said that if we know Him, the Truth, that it what makes us free! The truth is that we don’t know how to love until we learn it from Him. We don’t know how to let someone be just who they are and love them anyway until we understand that Christ lets us be just who we are and loves us anyway!
Now, just know this, if we are getting to know Christ and His kind of love and letting Him teach us how to love...it is going to change who we are to look more like Him! He may love me just as I am but His love is so powerful it frees me from who I am so I can love how He does. Galatians 5:13 shows us, “”For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.“
Patrick Henry’s famous last words were in the face of death, “give me liberty or give me death”. He would have rather died than to lose the liberty he had found. We have to have a similar faith in the Word of God...We must choose to die to all that makes sense to us so that we can have liberty to be more like Jesus. Let your famous last words in your flesh be today, “Jesus, give me liberty in my death!” If we can’t quit the cycle of madness in our churches, how can we be used by God to show others what real love looks like? Let that simmer for a bit.
Pastor Larry Hof
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