Hokey Pokey Freedom

I have a dog. He is my friend. He has a nub tail, pointy ears, and fur between his toes. I love him. In the mornings he gets in bed with me. When its cold, all 8lbs of him warms a couple inches on my body. I give him treats, take him on walks, and rides in the car—everything that can make a dog happy. I pet him often, and rub that spot on his rear that makes him sneeze. We play ball. We nap. He has everything provided for him that he could ever need.

                                                            He obviously loves me

But sometimes, I have to leave. Since I don’t trust him to roam the house unattended, I have to lock him up. He gets placed in the laundry room with the door open to another room, and a gate that blocks off the rest of the house. However, in this enclosure, he again, has everything he needs. There is a soft doggie bed, water, potty pads, and sometimes a toy and treat.

Keep hanging with me…I am going somewhere with this…

Recently, the dog has been escaping this enclosure. He slides himself by the side of the gate and out into the “free world.” So, I put weights against the gate. The dog proceeds to bump up his strength training workouts apparently, and still manages to slide the weights and the gate away from the wall to escape. When he does escape into the “free world” he does naughty things. He poops in the floor, and pees wherever he wants. Ah, freedom!....until I get back home. Then the place that once offered freedom for him, now becomes the place where he gets scolded, and in trouble.

Because he escapes the larger enclosure where he still had freedom to roam, I now am going to have to place him in a pet carrier…with no room, no water, no chance to escape.

I get so frustrated with him. I give him everything he needs, promising to return to rescue him quickly; to set him free. Yet, he isn’t patient. He wants the promised freedom now…so he seeks it himself.

Are you still with me? I`m getting ready to bring it all home…

How many times do Christians act like my dog? "Wait, say whaa? Christians don't poop on the floor!"

God has given us everything we need. He has given us freedom. Yet, we want freedom our way, in our time. So…we begin to seek “freedom” outside the boundaries that God provided. But those things that the world offers as “freedom” quickly turn to bondage. The more you do what you feel like doing, not caring about God or others, the worse your life becomes and the less freedom you actually have. You start to realize that you have taken your freedom for granted out of selfish desires, and now, you are trapped in a small cage wishfully thinking you could go back to those days of living in expansive freedom!

Luckily for us, God isn’t like me. He doesn’t rub our noses in our crap (literally) like I do my dog when he poops in the floor. Instead, he breaks those chains of bondage, and sets our feet to dance in HIS freedom once again!

Paul wrote to the early church about freedom in Romans chapter 6:

20-21 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
22-23 But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

Friends, I urge you to live in God’s freedom. Dance in it, shout in it, sing in it, do cartwheels in it, or even do the Hokey Pokey in it!! But the point is this…live in the freedom he provides you—and experience true, unfiltered, eternal life! 

You are loved! 

Rise from the Dust

Thomas Meron said, “When the Lord hears my prayer for mercy (a prayer which is itself inspired by the action of HIS mercy), then he makes his mercy present and visible in me by moving me to have mercy on others as he has had mercy on me.”

Recently, my eyes have been open to the freedom in experiencing God’s love. Because of this, it is so much easier to exquisitely paint a breathtakingly beautiful picture of God’s love to those around me, because I can relate to those who stand in my once messed up spiritual circumference. I can feel their pain and it breaks my heart when they ooze suffering and angst out of every desperate pore in their broken soul. Their life I could have mirrored-someone trying really hard to survive a cataclysmic life journey-but for reasons I still don’t understand, I cling to the coattails of mercy instead.

Because of my recent (and not-so-recent) experiences, the Lord has granted me the opportunity to see some people, as I truly believe he sees them. A friend that is hurting, desperate, and vulnerable to society’s expectations—I have been able to love with such an intense depth that it is simply indescribable.

Through that friendship, my eyes have been opened and my heart made full about the kind of God I serve. The amount of overwhelming love, mercy, and compassion I have for this friend, though sincere, doesn’t even come close to the love, mercy, compassion, gentleness and grace our heavenly father has for her—and all his children.

So many people live in spirituality where after every screw up, mistake, and sin, they feel the need to take part in a sort of spiritual masochism where they have to remind themselves of the wretch they are, and whip themselves with a cat-o’-nine-tails. The idea behind this being that maybe, just maybe after these acts and so many more, God will love them more and they have redeemed some kind of worth in themselves.

But friends, that isn’t the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible—MY GOD says “Rise from the dust O Jerusalem. Sit in a place of honor. Remove the chains of slavery from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.” (Is. 52:2). How many times have you mercilessly bound yourselves with chains so the walk toward the throne of mercy is made nearly impossible? Stop drowning yourself in dirty pools of guilt, shame, and sorrow! Stop being a fool by trashing your spirit with dung and mire instead of allowing sweet grace to take shelter where it belongs!

Rise from the dust, O captive one of Zion. Rise from the dust!