The Gospel of the Kingdom and freedom
The Gospel of the Kingdom and freedom
It wasn’t until my very smart and articulate daughter questioned her faith did I question mine. For me, belief came easy. However, I don’t know that it was good thing. Easy faith may not survive when tested. I know time and time again, when a test came in my life, I would fail (or loop as I call it). There is a story in the Torrah and Old Testament about the Jews wandering through the wilderness for 40 years after G-d rescued them from Egypt. I too have wandered. But as the age of 40 rolled by, and the pressures of life starts to mount to its epitome, I find myself in a pressure cooker of a season. That is what economic downturns and hard times does to people, it peels things back that are often hidden when money is good. My desire is to be a freeman, free of others, and decide for myself, on my own reasoning, if Jesus is who he said he was. If he is, my decision to follow, continue to follow, is set.
I already know the answer because I am working the problem backwards. I would not compare myself to John of course, the wild man from the desert who proclaimed the way for Christ but even he sent his follower to Jesus to be sure it was him. That is what this is for me. Because if I am asked, when did you get saved? My answer is fuzzy. When I was in my early teens, maybe 13~ ish I went up to the front with my Mom in a small country church. I had no idea what the pastor was saying, like I literally cannot remember a word, but I nodded my head along anyway. There was another time, that I think was even before then, when I was about 12 and flying by myself to Pittsburgh. My mom and dad have been divorced since I was like 2 and at the time my dad was living either in Tampa or North Carolina and I was flying back to Ohio where my Mom and Dad (step) lived at the time. I remember it was the first time I experienced turbulence and it was probably also the first time I ever prayed and meant it.
From then I have had a pursuit of relationship, a cycle of sin and repentance, highs and lows. But today, I read through scriptures of what Jesus said about himself. He said he is the door. That’s it. He is the door. Either you believe that or you don’t. If you do you are free, if you don’t, then you have chosen another path and outcome. I believe HE is the door. Why do I believe that? Because Jesus is quoted saying that. Again, simple belief. I am a very complicated person, and I am extremley introspective, so to have something simple in my life is rare.
What about the freedom part? This is not freedom from laws of men. This is freedom from things much deeper and much more profound. Its freedom from desire, freedom from ignorance, freedom from foolish wisdom, freedom from darkness, freedom from wrath.
These are the real enemy. These are the things that you should fear, but you should fear God more, because its through him, through his son Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) that you can be saved from them, and through HIM you are given the power, protection, and authority to overcome them.
It’s deep for sure, but after understanding what freedom means it makes facing things like work and people a very different thing. You can take a step back and have compassion for people who truly don’t understand (ignorance). I don’t know where I am going with this, but here is the final argument and statement as to my belief on how this whole thing went down. Some is scripture backed, some is just what I believe in my core:
God, the one true God, the creator of all things seen and unseen created earth. He loved earth and everything in it, and then he did the unthinkable, he created a man and breathed HIS spirit into him and made him to commune with himself. God made a friend. He made someone to love and teach. He gave man a job, to watch and adventure with him in the world and creation he created.
Satan, at the time named Lucifer, who was the adornment of heaven and loved God was scorned. That’s what this is about, he (Satan) felt betrayed because God loved his creation more then he loved Lucifer. This set off a bitter decent in Satan, that just like any scorned breakup would know, the vengeance blinds them, and war breaks out.
Satan was going to lose, so he does the one thing that is so often done by hurt people, he takes away the thing God loves. He corrupts it so God, being perfect, cannot have relationship with his own creation.
So God, does the unthinkable. His triune of himself which consisted of him, his spirit, and his word devised the riskiest rescue mission. The word of God became a person, that because he was from God he could have God’s spirit in him and could hear and speak what God would say and do what God wanted him to do. The mission was to live a sinless life, display how to do it, clean up and simplify how men should live, and then to pay, attone for the all sin, all the way back to when Satan’s deception happened. This would allow for all people, under God’s law, to have a path to relationship and adventure with him again.
And that’s the choice. If you believe Jesus is the door, you are saved, you are forgiven, and God can communicate with you and have a relationship with you because your sin has been paid for. This relationship includes adventure, mission, danger, and sacrifice but also includes victory and life to the fullest.
So why has the earth not reset yet. Why the cloak and daggers, why make things so difficult? Why this cataclysmic ending. It’s simply because we are nearing the end, but we are still in the middle of the story unfolding. Jesus will marry (redeem) the church so gentiles who are not God’s chosen people will be included in God’s house. He will come back and rule for a 1000 years, and during those thousand years the world will be reversed. There will be no sickness that cannot be cured, no war, almost no crime and unlike today where there is mostly evil and a little good, it will be reverse. The world will be mostly perfect but a reminent of evil will stir, showing that God is just and proving that even in a 99.9% perfect situation, people will still sin and choose evil. Then and only then will Jesus’s victory be sealed forever. What happens after that? I have a feeling there is a reason why the universe is so big and why its still expanding. There is a lot of adventure out there, and this is only the beginning.