Author’s note: Dear One, it was Presidents Day on Monday and we have been talking about freedom all week long on Lightbearers Live! at 10am PST on Lightbearers Facebook page. Why don’t you join us for Live! Monday through Friday. Its only about ten minutes long, but it will brighten your day! Hey, if you enjoy these articles, please forward them to your friends. They can subscribe by sending a blank email to lightbearers-subscribe@
FREEDOM!
THE NATURE OF FREEDOM
Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8:36 NKJV
Freedom, in very simple terms, is the right and opportunity to make choices and, if wrong or mistaken, to choose again. If I go to a restaurant, and see a menu with one hundred choices on it, I will have the freedom to choose many things (now, whether there may one hundred wise choices on that menu, because what restaurant can make one hundred things well, is another subject entirely). If there were but one thing on the menu, my freedom would be limited as my only choice would be to order that item or walk out. Where I live coffeeshops are popular, so we have much freedom when it comes to coffee. It used to be that you could have McDonalds 99cent cup of coffee, or the 59cent, milk and/or sugar. Period. Today…we have many choices, meaning much more coffee freedom. Freedom is the opportunity to choose, and choose again. Choose a cup to go!
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free… Gal 5:1 NKJV
What you are on the inside is what you will live on the outside. Fallen man by nature is a rebel to God and a slave to sin. Fallen man will never be free to make righteous choices because he will always live out what is within him. He will build structures and organizations that reflect his fallen nature. This is why shortly after the Fall Nimrod became the first king. A slave system, which is the only kind of system fallen ones can produce, has to have a master as an integral part of the structure. Every tribal society, religion and political structure since Adam, and until Christ, has been a slave system, with no real choices, no real freedom. Even Israel insisted on a king! Freedom doesn’t work with fallen man.
This is why the attempt to produce democratic, ‘free’ political systems in Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia in recent history has failed. Fallen man is most comfortable in slave, rebel political and religious systems because that is who they are, that is what is within them. When Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” that was because he was no longer a slave in his heart – and what you are in your heart has to come out. He had new life, freedom within him. He had the spirit of liberty within him, and it had to be manifested. He had to have on the outside what he was on the inside.
The nature of freedom is such that you will never be free on the outside until you are free on the inside.
This is why the seeds of American liberty were planted thirty to forty years before the American Revolution, with the great moves of God called the First and Second Great Awakening. The political liberty that began to come to East Africa in the 1960’s was precipitated by the great East African revival of the 1930’s. Spiritual liberty brings political, economic and social liberty because what you are on the inside will be manifested on the outside. Does it surprise anyone with this understanding that perhaps the greatest civil rights leader America has ever known, certainly since Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionists, was a born-again Baptist minister? Do you see it?
AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF FREEDOM
And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” Gen 3:11-12 NKJV
The opportunity to make choices, and if wrong to choose again, is lost if you transfer your authority and responsibility to someone or something else. The first thing the newly fallen Adam did was blame his wife for his predicament. Adam should have said, “Father, this was my fault. Forgive me! What should I do now?” You cannot be a victim and be a victor. When you are a victim you have ceded your authority to someone or something else. They become your master, and you are their slave.
Freedom is about the opportunity to make wise choices, first of all, because you have the spirit of liberty within you, which must be manifested, and then that you have access to the fountain of all true wisdom, the Word of God, to make right choices. Right choices, right results, the fruit of true liberty manifested.
Responsibility is the ability, authority and obligation to respond in a righteous manner for the born again one, which releases the greatest measure of liberty, the best possible outcome in any situation. We don’t like to speak of obligation in the modern church but the reality of it is there – the obligation to bring righteousness and justice into every situation, creating the truest platform for freedom and liberty.
Do you get this? Men have died for these ideals, most notably the One who died and rose again so that true liberty could be restored to men. Personal responsibility and the authority to affirm righteousness are two of the great fundamental principles of freedom.
GROWING TRUE FREEDOM
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. Isa 55:9 NKJV
What fallen man calls freedom is just another subtle form of enslavement. True freedom is the opportunity to make righteous choices producing righteous results. An important reality to consider here is that man is not God. The way of man is not in himself. As much as man wants to think he is ‘bright’ and enlightened, he is only benighted in his foolishness and deception. He would be laughably pitiful were it not for the seriousness of his eternal situation, and his impact on others. Marx and Engels were fallen ones whose corrupt ideas have tragically impacted tens of millions of others.
But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 3:18 KJV
If you want freedom to grow around you, first make sure that freedom is growing within you. The spirit is filled with the presence of Christ, but the soul must be won over through continual immersion in the Word. Nothing drives the development of the soul more than the internal flame of a vision of what is possible. Where there is no vision, the people wander aimlessly. One is never old until they lose their vision, and then the end is coming quickly. It takes seeing the invisible to do the impossible!
If you want freedom to grow, lead others to Christ. If you want freedom to grow QUICKLY, lead leaders, men and women of influence, to Christ. If someone got Ocasio-Cortez saved, can you guess how many of her two million Twitter followers would come to the Lord? Winning leaders is easy. Just reach out to them and be led by the Spirit of God. A man or woman’s gift makes room for them and brings him before great men and women. We make true, biblical Christianity too complicated. Stay simple, stay aggressive, stay convinced of the vision in your soul, and let the fire in you light up others. Act like you have already won the game (because you have)! That’s freedom, dear one. Love you!
Remember dear ones, we must be about our Father’s business…