free to be

Today is Canada Day, and Independence Day for our neighbors to the south is fast behind.

These dates remind me of the cost of freedom.

Much blood has been shed, and even more prayer, hope & dreams invested in freedom around the world.

And yet, we still have slavery, prejudice, racism & hatred in the forefront of many news stories.

It isn’t enough to be free.

We need to stay free.

Free to not make those same bad choices we may have made in the past.

Free from seeing others through our selfish human viewpoint.

Free to be all God desires for us to be.

We are not called to judge one another.  God is more than enough and capable of handling that role without us.

We are called to love, and proclaim freedom in His Name, for His ways.

We need to stay free of stepping into the role of judge.  We are to be His hands & feet, walking free and speaking His freedom for all.

Does that mean we don’t comment on the atrocities going on in the world around us?

Not at all, because God’s heart is breaking over the hurt caused in the wake of full blown sin.

We are called to help heal the wounds, not add to them.

We are called to help set the captives free. Love up on hurting hearts. Pray for those who don’t yet know they are meant to be free to encounter Him.

We are free to leave the judgment to God. His Word speaks for itself as to what His standards are. The cross shouts His love to open hearts. His Spirit speaks to those who are listening.

We are free to be ourselves, and love the world as He leads us to love them.  How that looks for you may be very different than it does for me, because of how we are gifted.  God uses each of us as He purposes, for His glory.

We were set free at a great cost, in the ultimate battle.
God won.

May we press in close to Him, as His Spirit leads us into greater & deeper freedom. 

May we share His freedom & His heart, and allow God alone to be the judge.

May we hear where we are to best serve, and wholeheartedly do so for His glory.

We are all free to choose how we interact with one another.

His choice was your freedom.

Forever.

Let Your freedom be part of our battle cry, Lord.

May we worship with abandon, and freely love as You have loved us.

Forever grateful.

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there can only be One

There can only be One.

We may think that there are more, we may even deceive ourselves that we are it.

But what the world screams the loudest is usually fueled by the enemy, the one who tries to counterfeit the Original, isn’t it?

At the center of humanity’s inability to get along is the lie that we know best. That we are capable of knowing what is best for other people, how they should live, whether they should have a certain job or not, whether they should be a part of the in group or left to the outskirts.

In these ways, and so many more, we judge one another.

But not only do we judge one another on what we think is best for each other, we judge them on what they have done wrong, as if we have never failed or sinned ourselves.

Humanity was never designed to be its own judge.

That role belongs to the Only One who is capable of administering it.

The Only One who has not fallen or sinned or made an error of any kind.

The Only One who was, and is, and ever will be the best for that position.

The Only One who is perfectly suited to judge, because He is perfect.

And He created the system of right and wrong, simply through being Himself.

Not only is He perfect, He is loving, kind, merciful…and eternal.

He is beyond time, this Judge, and so is not swayed by the urgency we have to resolved things in the here and right now.

He is also patient, and with the best purpose behind being so…

God does not want any to perish, and as such, has postponed His judgment until Jesus returns, because Jesus paid the price which allows God to pass over us until that time to come arrives.

When we try to judge one another, we hurt Him.

When we refuse to forgive, and lay down our offenses, we hurt ourselves, the Ones He loves, and muddle up our relationships with those He loves.

And when we judge, withhold forgiveness and hurt those around us?

We join Pilate on the Judgment seat.

We were never meant to judge one another.  God allowed the Israelites to have kings, and governments, full well knowing that it would entangle humanity  into the judgment debate…where before it had only been God’s way, with God as judge.  He knew the enemy wanted this, to turn us against one another.

But God wasn’t surprised, not unprepared for the cost to come to restore proper balance.

Here’s the clincher.

There is Only One judge.

God.

I am not talking about someone judging your work to be substandard because you didn’t put in your best effort kind of judgment here.

I am talking judging over those He created, judging their hearts, their decisions and motives.

Just as Jet Li had to battle his evil duplicate in the classic sci-fi movie “The One”, we have to wrestle down the enemy duplicate of who we are meant to be.

God made each of us uniquely,. and we reflect Him in our only One-ness.

It is time to kick the fake you image the enemy is prompting your flesh to put on back to the pit where it was made for.

In order to  be His hands to the world, our focus is to leave His fingerprints behind, no one else’s.

That means when you are tempted to judge someone over their situation, you ask God how to pray and love up on them instead.

This means we take a good hard long look in the mirrored windows of our own homes before throwing stones at the glass houses of others.

It means we deal with our hearts, decisions and motives on our knees before the Only One qualified to judge us, versus placing blame and deflecting through our judgment.

I soooo get this isn’t a nice soft word today…the mirror in front of me is screaming for me to get clean again.

I am so thankful I can ask Jesus to clean me and make me anew every evening, and every morning, because of what He did for us all on the cross, because He alone has the power to resurrect the dead & restore the broken, and Only he was ever meant to judge us.

I am so thankful His grip will not let go of me, until less of me and more of He is what the world will see.

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bind with grace & mercy

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When was the last time you were shown grace when you least deserved it?

Mercy is NOT getting what we deserve.

Grace is getting what we DON’T deserve.

Both show us just how much God loves us.

But are we in turn showing that to those around us?

I have had a few doozy situations where I have been badly hurt by someone I loved over my lifetime.

Forgiving them is offering grace. They don’t deserve it for the hurt they caused, but neither do I for the hurt I cause others either. God’s grace plan for all of us…in His mercy.

Forgiving them is showing mercy.
Not cutting them out of our lives over the hurt that they have caused.

Sometimes we do have to part ways with someone. Things may be too unhealthy in how we relate to hang out anymore.  If God tells us to move on, there is a good reason for it. Usually so we can both grow healthier.

But we aren’t to take the baggage of unforgiveness along with us as we go.

Not offering mercy and grace locks us in a prison within. We add our own wound of to those we are already needing healing for…making a worse mess to clean up than had we released ourselves to forgive.

Let me be clear.

Forgiving someone does not mean what they did was okay. It wasn’t and isn’t and never will be.

Forgiving means we aren’t standing as their judge. We allow God to judge them instead.

God forgave us at a high cost to himself. Jesus, the Holy, had to take all of humanity’s crappy dirty scuzzy let’s just call it evil unholy acts of sin on Himself, and did for us to be given mercy and grace.

Because of His great love for us.

By honoring that selfless act of sacrifice, we chose to align with the mercy and grace He offers us, by offering it to one another when we hurt one another.

It keeps us free and whole within when we forgive each other, and ask God to bind up and heal our hearts from our woundedness.

We are no longer tethered to one another in ways we can not always understand when we release and forgive.

I know that I am sooooo not qualified to judge anybody else. I know what I am capable of when I don’t follow the Spirit’s promptings, and the messes I can cause and make along the way.

I am thankful in His mercy, I am made right with God. I am grateful by His grace, I am able to walk with God.

Our forgiving one another opens the receiver of that forgiveness to catch a glimpse of His gift to us, Jesus.

Forgive.
Show mercy.
Radiate grace.
Soar free.