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Freedom

Psalm 119:32 - I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.

Freedom to:

love
live
laugh
cry
obey
serve
worship
be forgiven
forgive
heaven
courage

Happy New Year!

Well, ok, so today is Jan 4, not New Year's Day. But it is the first opportunity I have had to sit and write. My mind has been a blank for weeks, and now that work and class start back up I suddenly have bits of ideas floating around all over the place... pray that I have time and inspiration to pull together some of those ideas!

I am NOT a big believer in New Year's Resolutions, but I am a huge fan of new beginnings. I love a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day. I like change. I like the thought of another chance to get something right. I like to plan. So for the past month I have evaluated 2009, and thought a lot about 2010.

As I start out this new year, I do have some plans and some goals. I got a Go Bible for Christmas from my kids (very cool that they know me that well!) and I plan to listen all the way through the Bible at least once this year. At the rate I am going it will not be difficult. And I will continue to work my way through Covenant Seminary's podcast courses. As always, I plan to train more. The last 6 months I have been sitting and I am anxious to work out again. These plans are not a surprise or a drastic change for me; they are very much just living out who I am already.

As far as writing or character traits (be a better wife, mother, friend) or losing weight or getting in shape... well, yeah, I think about those things. But for me, those things arise out of who I am inside. Rather than try to make some objective goal out of them, I think I will just work on who God is and who I am, and trust that God will bring about some results.

Random Thoughts on Phillipians

Phillipians appears to have been written to me... these are some random thoughts I have had while going through Hans Beyers course:

Partnership
We have a common enemy
Don't run, hold still
If we fight each other, we will both sink
Natural tendency is to take sides
Do not pursue my own desires
Realize my need
I am not strong in my own virtue
I don't have it together
Work together against each partners' weaknesses
Pray together
Associate together
Focus on those things that tear us down
Don't wait for the other to move 1st
Take the 1st step
It's not 50/50

“Truly emancipated souls are not in bondage to their emancipation.”

FF Bruce, Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free

Freedom in Christ

This morning I read Psalm 119:32:

I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.

I was reminded of a concept I got from Dr. Hans Bayer in the Life and Letters of Paul class I am taking via podcast.

God's will for me is what He intends to do in me, not what He expects me to do by myself.

I struggle with a stubborn rebellious spirit that does not like to submit. Quite often I know exactly the right thing to do, and I even want it, but something inside still fights against God. As I read in this Psalm this morning, I felt a great sense of comfort. I am free to obey God. I do not have to obey that old sin nature, because God, in all His Power and Strength, is working in my heart. He has set my heart free to run in the path of His commands.

More Thoughts from Ephesians

The unity of the church

Not uniformity
Not organizational

But maturity under the headship of Christ

We cannot have unity if we do not all recogize Christ as head... that must be the starting point

Unity under the headship of Christ

NaBloPoMo survived!

Today is the last day of November, the end of NaBloPoMo. Thank God. I did manage to post something every day, but it felt forced and I didn't like it. I have to wonder if it was worth it. What was the point? I guess the point was to force yourself to write something; I suppose that was a good thing. We'll see. At the moment it is just a relief to not have to think of something to post tomorrow!

Thoughts on Ephesians

Paul is in prison, yet he preaches spiritual freedom.... very cool.

Indicative/ Imperative

Somehow we are conditioned to say, "Tell me what to do'". We want the list of do and do not. This is the imperative. But Paul doesn't start there, he starts with who we are in Christ. That is the indicative. What we do must flow out of who we are. Starting with what to do results in a works based salvation, a works based religion. What God and Christ and the Holy Spirit have done and continue to do for us has nothing to do with what we do, but with who we are.

I am a child of God, bought with the price of Christ's death, living in the power of the Holy Spirit, looking forward to an eternity in Heaven. Because of what He has already done and who I am, I serve Him with my actions, I seek to please Him, I do good things.

That is the freedom of Christ. Not freedom to do whatever I want, but freedom to be able to to love Him, to please Him, to obey Him. He saved me. I had nothing to do with it.

Amen!

Missed Glory

Today I went to a live performance of Handel’s Messiah. I was disappointed. Not in the piece of music or the performance of it; it is a fabulous story straight out of scripture, set to fabulous music. The performance was good as well; while not professionals, they were talented musicians with beautiful voices. No, what was disappointing was something else. I walked in with a desire to worship God, to be carried away by the music, but I found myself distracted.

I got there late and didn’t get to sit in the sanctuary. I was sitting in a chair on the back row of the foyer. The place was packed. The outside doors were right behind me, and I was cold. The overhead lights were bright, making it harder to focus on the performance itself. I was looking through a small window able to see only a few of the performers, listening through the open sanctuary doors. People were moving around me, in and out. A child knocked a large, obviously unbreakable ornament off a Christmas tree, and the ball went bouncing across the tile floor with metallic dings while the embarrassed parent tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. We in the foyer laughed a bit; it was funny after all. An ancient old man in front of me informed his daughter that when he was a young man he sang this. The disappointment set in as I sat with all these distractions going on around me. My thoughts began to wander… I wondered when I could find a couple of hours to listen to it by myself, to sit and meditate and worship without distraction. I almost left.

Suddenly the place was filled with music! Somehow we had reached the climax without my awareness. How did it sneak up on me like that? And then I was swept up in the glory of the resurrection; it was fabulous. It was everything I hoped it would be. If I had given up and left during the wait and the disappointment and the frustration, I would have missed the glory of that moment; in fact the glory may have even been greater because of the contrast.

How many glorious things have I missed in moments of impatience and rush?

Band, Karate, and Sanctification

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Philippians 2:12

Have you ever worked on anything with fear and trembling? What does it mean?

First, we must take this verse in context. It isn’t talking about working for our salvation, but what happens after salvation. We do not work for our salvation at all, that is a gift from God. This is the work after salvation, the work of sanctification, of becoming like Christ. This works out from the point of my salvation. Even then it is something I rely on God to do in me. Anyway… fear and trembling.

When I was in High school I was part of a really good award winning band. We practiced every day from 2:30 (last period in school) until about 5:00. We worked hard in those hours, and that doesn’t include time spent practicing on our own. Yes, we were scared of our band director, but nobody forced us to enroll or stay in band; we were proud to be part of something so good. Our goal for each football game and each competition was simple – perfection. If you messed up your part you felt absolutely horrible, because you had made the whole band and the director look bad. We worked with fear and trembling.

In more recent history I approached my black belt tests with this same attitude. I trained many, many hours in preparation for the test; the pressure was immense. It was very important to me to do well for a number of reasons. I wanted to reflect well on my teacher, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I definitely trained with fear and trembling for both of those tests.

What if I approached my sanctification with that kind of dedication and drive? What if pleasing God with my life was so important to me that I was willing to sacrifice that same kind of time and effort and work to it? What would that look like?

May you work out your sanctification with fear and trembling.

Rebecca A Givens, 11/24/09

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wow, it's almost 10am and I haven't seen any of my family yet. I had a wonderful extended time alone with God this morning. What a perfect way to start a day set aside to Thank Him for all He has given us.

Which brings me to this post. Thanksgiving is not a time to thank people for stuff, and not a time to just be generally thankful. It is a time to thank God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, for what He has done for me in a personal way. He has provided

food (literally, the turkey that we are having today, someone anonomously put our name in to win a cajun fried turkey, or maybe they just paid for it and the store came up with a good story for them),
a roof over our heads (again, the back half of the house doesn't leak because God sent us shingles, one pack at a time from various sources),
cars to drive (gift from parents),
health (even though getting old is not fun),
our family is all here together,
we have great kids (I love spending time with all my kids),
my husband loves God, me, and our kids (what a gift in today's society),
we have a great church family that loves and accepts us,
and most significantly, Before the foundation of the world, God so loved me that He gave His one and only Son to pay the penalty for my sin, so that I could spend eternity with Him. He rescued me because He delighted in me, before I ever even dreamed of doing anything for Him. And He still enjoys my presence. That's just cool.

Happy Thanksgiving!