June 29, 2012 Free, really?

John 8: 31b-32 If you abide in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

True freedom can only be achieved when one gives oneself over to the good (health and well being) of the community. Jim King 2011

(The Message I Timothy 2:8-11) Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray-- not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.

I know it may appear that all of these words have little in common, but they all flowed together for me this week. I remember as a young woman in the church, and older, not really feeling very free. In fact, I was really afraid I would do or say something wrong...not what you might today identify as sin, but something my church people would view as sin. It probably stems back to when I was 16 and worked at an A and W Rootbeer Stand...No alcohol and we wore black capris and white blouses (not tank tops) and one of the older ladies in my church informed me that was not a godly place to work.

So, I learned to watch what others deemed acceptable, and followed suit - in a prison of my own making, trying to win the acceptance and approval of men.

I won't go into my journey to this place where I am coming to be comfortable, but I think we in the church all those years ago, and too many churches today are not all that interested in freedom. The focus is more on a safely prescribed behavior, deemed safely by people. God calls us to know Him, to take in His Word and allow it to change us, and then we will find real freedom....loving God and loving others in very practical ways.

I keep in my car a copy of the Message and read it while waiting. Yesterday I read the above passage and loved the simple beauty of it: praying and doing something beautiful for God, and not wasting time and energy and witness by hating. I am tired of that, and I see way too much of it - believers wasting their time attacking other believers, attacking our nation's leader and ...anyone who doesn't use the same words they do in the way they interpret them.

I am going out on a limb here - God tells us to pray for those in authority over us, but too many believers are in a prison of hatred. Imagine the freedom available to them and disregarded because it is too easy to hate and criticize rather than obey God and love and pray and live in that space where God dwells.