bondage – Living 2 B Free

Discover Freedom

Storms are a part of life

We all experience storms at sometime in our lives. God want you to discover freedom. As Pastor Curtis mentioned, sometimes a storm that occurs in our life is caused from our sin, sometimes it is caused from the sins of others or maybe we have or will experience storms from both causes. The sins of others may have caused trauma in our life that we don’t feel we can get over. God wants to deliver you too. Whatever the cause, God is there with us whether we realize it or not. God also wants to bring us through the storm and help us overcome anything we struggle with or whatever is holding us in bondage because of the storm. He uses everything we go through if we give it to Him.

Desire to see others free

I long to see people be set free from whatever is keeping them from all that God has planned for them. This church service confirmed my desire to help others find that freedom. I have seen what God can do in the lives of those that will follow Him. God’s timing is so amazing. He sends the same message through different channels to those that are seeking. Our Sunday School lesson touched on the idea that sometimes we are our worst enemy. We say we want deliverance but we don’t do our part. Even as a follower we still hold onto things that hold us back.

Helping others find freedom

When we try to help others find deliverance, if they don’t want it, it isn’t going to work. God’s timing is what we need to wait for in this case. God knows how to reach them and what they need better than we do. We just need to watch for the opportunities that God puts before us to be able to help someone when they are seeking. He knows what some need to experience to really get it and what they need to experience to be the perfect witness to help someone else.

Finding deliverance for yourself

No matter what you need delivered from, God is bigger than that thing and He wants to help you. No one is exempt from God’s love. If you are sincerely seeking deliverance, God wants to hear from you. He will hear you. You can use your honest words and talk to Him just as if you are talking to a person. If you need help with some words you can read these to begin your journey. Sometimes you may want a person to contact, you can email me from this site. You may also want to reach out to a church, I am sure someone would love to talk with you and put you on a path to recovery. Look for those God puts in your path to help you. You can discover freedom.

Do yourself a favor and listen to this message. You can skip to minute 42:50 if you don’t want to listen through the worship. Just don’t stop listening early because you don’t want to fight through the storm on your own when God want to fight the storm for you.

God is good and He wants to set everyone free. Remember that nothing you have done or gone through is too big for Him. Reach out to God and if you need a person, reach out until you find the help you need. Keep calling to God, He will hear you and will help you walk through the storm.

Allow God out of the box

I love what Pastor Curtis said about how we put God in a box. God does not operate in a box. If you ever think you have figured God out, you are mistaken. He works in different ways all the time and will do more than you can imagine to help you. The only box God has to deal with is the one we put Him in. Let God break out of that box that you have Him in. You can discover freedom. Let Him bless you.

People Do Hurt People

What are you to do with that hurt?

We come to expect that we will be hurt by others at some point in our life. When the hurt comes from “God’s people”, the wounds seem to go deeper. Either way the wounds can cause eternal consequences if not handled properly. These consequences can be experienced by the ones getting hurt or those doing the hurting. We can find ourselves on both sides of the fence at different times of our life. People turn away from God when God’s people misrepresent the true character of God. Don’t allow others to have that power to turn you away and don’t be that person that causes another to turn away.

If your feel you have been hurt by another person, prayerfully answer these questions from Wounded by God’s People by Anne Graham Lotz:

• Where are you in your healing journey?
• Do you remember what your life was like before you were wounded?
• How did you get to this place?
• How is the way you are reacting today going to help you tomorrow?
• Do you want your life characterized by the result of remaining focused on “them” while being blind to your own pride, arrogance, anger, resentment, name-calling, vengeful digs, schemes for revenge, or vicious gossip disguised as prayer requests?
• Are these attitudes working for you and making you happy?
• Do they give you a temporary sense of satisfaction but then disintegrate into a desire for even more revenge? And more misery?
• What are you living for? Instead of living your life to the glory of God, are you driven by a desire to get even, vindicate your actions, prove someone else wrong, justify your opinion, expose the other person, get your own way?
• Consider carefully…do any of these desires truly honor God?
• When was the last time you put your head on the pillow conscious of God’s sweet peace and joy flooding your heart? If your can’t remember, could it be time for you to give your attention to considering your own part in the wounding?

“You might distinguish between forgiveness as letting go of my right to hurt you back and reconciliation as that which requires the sincere intentions of both parties” John Ortberg

Someone needs to make the first gesture to reconcile. You can and probably should make the first gesture but also be aware of any attempt that they may be making to reach out to you. It only needs to be a small gesture. In time, there may need to be an honest conversation in which both listen to each other’s story. Often times the problem was miscommunication or misinformation. No matter who is found to be wrong, the apology and forgiveness need to be spoken. Death to pride is the key to having broken relationships reconciled.

If a person has wounded you or has been wounded by you and you have offered forgiving words or gestures to reconcile the relationship and they reject your effort, take it to Jesus. He understands. He made the ultimate gesture and was rejected. Jesus can heal you even if reconciliation does not happen.

Death to pride and position is the key for reconciliation when a wounder seeks forgiveness. It is necessary to be Christ like.
• Be approachable as Jesus is for you.
• Love those that have rejected you as Jesus loves you.
• Initiate the contact as Jesus does for you.
• Extend forgiveness to them before they ask for it as Jesus does for you.

We can’t force reconciliation or change someone’s heart or mind. The Lord can, therefore we should pray and wait, looking for opportunities and open doors.

No person should have so much power to cause you unpleasant attitudes or to cause any separation between you and God. Take it all to God in prayer.

Jesus always makes the first gesture to reconcile. Are you responding to His gestures? Are you in a relationship with Him and responding to His leading?

Don’t let anyone have the power to keep you from all God has for you. When we don’t have the strength to let go on our own, God will give us the strength that is needed. Let Go!

• Let go of bitterness toward those that caused you to view God differently than His true character. Get to know Him yourself.
• Let go of confusion and fear. These are not of God.
• Let go of your desire to justify and explain yourself. God is your redeemer.
• Let go of your emptiness. He has a plan and a purpose for you. He will fill your cup to overflowing.
• Let go of your desire for revenge. Vengeance is the Lord’s.
• Let go of your hardened heart toward those that have rejected you. Jesus understands. He was rejected like no other.
• Let go of your loneliness. God is the God of the fatherless and of the widow. He is your God also when there is no one else.
• Let go of resentment over the way others have treated you. Consider how Jesus was treated.
• Let go of the injustice. God is Just.
• Let go of unforgiveness toward those that have hurt you. Unforgiveness will hurt you more than them. Forgive as the Father has forgiven you.
• Let go of the hurt. God is your healer. He came to bind up the brokenhearted.
• Let go of the anger toward God for allowing your wounds. Those wounds will bring deeper faith and spiritual fruit. God is more concerned with your character than your comfort.
• Let go of your life dreams and embrace what God has for you. He will give you the desires of your heart.
• Let go of the past to move forward. God has a future for you.

Let go. Give it to Him.

What kind of movies is God watching?

It isn’t like God sits down in front of a TV to relax. He is at work all the time but He has the ultimate big screen. He sees it all, even behind the scenes. He sees the gentleness and the violence, the love and the hate, the gladness and the sadness, the drama and what really goes on in our hearts, the war and the peace, the pure and the obscene, the funny and the serious, idleness and action, horror and courage. He looks down every day at the lives we live and sees it all. He cries, laughs, gets angry and has compassion on the people that won’t trust Him with the script for a better (plans to prosper not to harm), easier (my yoke is light), more satisfying role (purpose) in life.

God can handle what He sees even if He does not approve but we should be careful what we allow our eyes and mind to be exposed to. Not all things are beneficial.

Angry at God

Read 2 Samuel 6:1-11

David got angry with God because David thought he was doing a good thing and things did not work out as planned. David’s plan was not a God thing so when God intervened, David got mad. David was afraid of God because of what happened while trying to do what he thought was good. David was celebrating and was devastated by the events that interrupted the celebration.

Many have been in the process of just doing life when it is interrupted by an event or events that just turns our world upside down. When we experience a devastating event in our lives or the lives of our loved ones, our heart can shatter into so many pieces that we don’t even think God is able to put it back together. We can get so emotionally tangled up that we get upset with God and don’t let Him help even when He wants to. Sometimes we refuse to move ahead to restoration just to spite Him.

Our lives have so much potential when we give them to God. If I can be honest, instead of allowing Him to work, we choose to pout. God knows how we feel. He knows our questions and our resentments. He wants to be gracious and restore us to more than we could be on our own. Instead of asking God our questions, we choose to decide for ourselves why something has happened. We get stuck in a rut and can spend years there refusing to come out.

We make a choice everyday to who we allow to work in our lives. We can spend it listening to satan and his lies or we can tell God how we feel and ask Him for His answers. We may or may not get the why’s to what has happened, but we will be told what to do with what has happened. When we can trust God to use what has happened for His glory, He will give us back ground that has been given to the enemy.

Life in a rut will only get worse. We have a Cross that Christ offers to each and every one of us that can take us so far beyond what we can ask or imagine that we and others will see that it is only through Christ that all we do can be accomplished. It is time to let God get us out of the rut. We decide what our future holds.

When we get past ourselves, God will be able to take us past our past and into a future with a future.

Women Are Important To God

Strong Women: May we know them. May we raise them. May we be them.

We live with less power than we have available to us. We can gain access to that power by continuing to learn who we are in Christ and then applying what we learn to how we live.

Beth Moore has said, “We can know so much more than we know”.

Women are important to God and He has a purpose for each of us and wants us to know Him more fully.

We have all experience closed doors and open doors in our life. That is God’s way of leading us. God has a plan for each of us.

¹¹In him we were also chosen,^[a] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹²in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:11-12 (NIV)

God chose us and it is through Him that we find out who we are and what our purpose is. He knew us before we knew Him and had plans for us that would give us hope and joy. He will work all things together for His overall purpose and His glory.

Paul during his 1st missionary trip was enjoying success. And then he looked to the north, south, and east but had road blocks. Those closed doors led to an open door in the west. Lydia was there and responded to Paul’s message.

Max Lucado wrote “Is Lydia the reason the Holy Spirit blocked Paul’s path? Was God ready to highlight the value of his daughters? Perhaps. In a culture that enslaved and degraded women, God elevated them to salvation coheirs with men. Proof? The first person in the Western world to receive the Christian promise or host a Christian missionary was a female.”

We are all loved and valued by a gracious God that wants us to know that we are loved. The more we learn about God and draw closer to God, the more we will realize the love He has for us.

Jack Hayford says that those who answer Christ’s call are the freed. The freed then become the freers.

He writes, “Christ’s light seem to penetrate gradually. Boldness does not come quickly, but only as the freed learn the truth. Ongoing patterns of discovery, then, are needful–a constant challenging of old patterns of thought through growth in the truth. Ignorance is rampant, even among the enlightened. Bondage straps minds, even among the freed. There are power-releasing truths to be discovered. Truths which will become implemented as keys, as the freed become the freers.”

When we realize what we have in Christ, we need to share it with those that need it. It is something that we should desire for everyone. It is by this process that we can take back ground that was once ours that Satan has stolen from us.

God is working. There is power within reach and if we continue to desire to have more of God in our life, we will see that power work. He won’t just give it to us. God wants us to have it but we have to want it, ask for it and seek it.