Tag: Freedom

Clean Slate Club

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Growing up in the Midwest we heard often at mealtime it was important that we “cleaned our plate” for there were people who had nothing to eat. When I think back to those days I realize there was no connection between me finishing my vegetables and someone who had no food to eat. What were we going to do send my uneaten broccoli to another country? 🙂 I still smile with a chuckle as I think about this. I was a member of the “clean plate club” not because I liked brocolli but because it was a value in my home that we eat all we put on our plate.

I was praying Psalm 32 this morning and the Lord said, “I have a clean slate club and you are a member!” I love how the Passion Translation says it, “What bliss belongs to those who have confessed their corruption to God! For he wipes their slates clean and removes hypocrisy from their hearts. Before I confessed my sins, I kept it all inside; my dishonesty devastated my inner life, causing my life to be filled with frustration, irrepressible anguish, and misery.” You and I, when we confess our sins are members of the clean slate club. Now this is a club I want to be and remain a member of.

A friend of mine and I have been digging into some new areas of life together. In doing so what I have discovered is when you let someone else into your shame, your history, your ornaments on the back of your tree that you think no one can see, it eradicates the lies that are lingering in the shadows. It sheds light on what was dark; it removes shame from what felt so daunting; it truly brings bliss in a way only authenticity and integrity can. The Lord has been showing me how individualism and isolation have been like termites hindering us from the abundant life found when intimacy and community connect.

Friends we are members of the “clean slate club” our sins are forgiven by God and when we share our stuff with others it takes the residue out of the shadows and it is swept away when someone else knows what we wanted no one else to know. Then intimacy becomes accountability not to avoid sin, but to live the abundant life together. The freedom is palatable, the laughter is audible and the coconut milk ice cream is delightful. Intimacy and community is the proximity that is enjoyed in the “clean slate club!”

Wild Horses

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Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to hear the truth? It does not matter our age, our gender, our socio-economic status, our title, our color, people struggle to hear the truth. Not just some people, all people. We do not like the messanger the truth is coming through; we find a reason why their life is worst or no better than ours, so we do not hear the truth they are speaking. What is our aversion to the truth? What is it in us that so easily defends our current reality when someone comes and shares some truth we cannot see in ourselves? We were created to know the truth, to love the truth and to walk in the truth so we can speak the truth, but the one thing we reject more than anything else is the truth.

People will even argue with this post saying this is not true. 🙂 John 8:31-32 “Jesus said to those Jews who believed in Him, when you continue to embrace all that I teach, you prove that you are my true followers. For if you embrace the truth, it will release true freedom into your lives.” (TPT) Our freedom is directly tied to the measure of truth we embrace not who is the President, Prime Minister or King of our country. We have a responsibility to be lovers of the truth. When we love the truth we will receive it whoever it comes through, wherever it comes from and we will adjust our lives to the truth, if we love the truth.

When I first got saved in January 1989, the Holy Spirit spoke two things to me, He said, I love you (John 3:16) and I will never lie to you (Numbers 23:19). Those two pillars have kept me all these years walking, learning, growing, trusting God and never changing my mind about Him. Circustances have not always changed to support the promises I have been given, but I know God loves me and God will never lie to me, so I love God and I love the truth. This is why I am always smiling, searching, listening, praying, loving. I love God and I love the truth.

I have noticed people who struggle, who are crabby, who are mean, who are angry, who are just hard to be around, they do not love truth and so they are bound not free; Critical not joyful; lonely not in community; the answer to be set free is to love the truth because whatever you are believing is not working as you can see. Other people tell us the truth all the time, in subtle and obvious ways; not always packaged well, but it is still the truth and our spouse tells us the truth more often than we can hear. My prayer is that we would not enter the New Year with some physical or financial resolution, but with a resolve to become a lover of the truth, for truth is the only thing that sets us and keeps us free.

Strongholds Coming Down

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What if a great deception has been levied against the body of Christ in the rapture theology we have been indoctrinated with? What if we have been watching for it to get darker and darker and waiting for Jesus to come rescue us and Jesus is sitting in heavenly places next to the Father waiting for us to put the enemy He defeated under our feet, which are actually His feet? What a great deception that would be, it would literally keep the body of Christ immobile, just doing religious activity to pass time and yet never mobilizing in power to put the enemy under our feet. I propose to you we have been deceived by a Babylonian church theology that keeps us powerless.

Hebrews 10:12 says, “He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET.”

Jesus forgave all sins past, present and future in His death on the cross. His shed blood spoke then and speaks now FORGIVENESS! There is no other word on the subject of sin that will be spoken for the blood of Jesus speaks forever on the subject. This truth is not a call to passivity, lawlessness, greasy grace or any other license to be lazy and sin at will. No this truth is a call to rise up in power and authority, equipped with the blood of Jesus to put sin in our lives under our feet and to help others do the same. Satan wants us sinning for that keeps us separated from God and others and keeps us powerless in our war against him.

Church the great awakening we need is to the kingdom of God. We have been lulled to sleep by the doctrines of demons and the theologies of men which have taught us to be passive and powerless. Jesus Christ and His shed blood wrote His laws on our hearts and we are powerful over sin, Satan and every system Babylon has created to ensnare us. We must wake up to the truth that will set us free for we have been lulled to sleep in apathy and then we wonder why we are not living life abundantly. It’s a fight to be free, but it is worth every tear, every prayer, every moment spent in the Word tearing down the strongholds Babylon has erected in our minds. It’s demolition of doctrines time so captives can go free!!!