Liberty Takes Courage

Let’s find our backbones and stop apologizing.

Have the courage to be fully who God made you to be, instead of the half-hearted shadow person others want you to be.    Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, the full freedom to be nothing more and nothing less than everything He wants you to become in Christ.

Have the guts to indulge every holy desire and obey every good impulse and act on His promptings without doubt or second-guessing.   Lukewarmness of soul and playing it safe is the bane of the spiritual life.   We spend so much time and energy trying not to fail that we spend little time and energy on risking everything to do the positive good Christ calls us to do.

Be brave enough to enjoy your liberty in Christ without guilt or fear, especially in the face of list-making, card-carrying controllers who don’t know how to love or be loved–including the little controller inside of you and inside of me.

Let your conscience be bound to nothing more and nothing less than the expressed will of God in His Word.    Then you’ll stop quaking before the add-ons and traditions of religious impostors who twist the Word to hold insecure people in their grip.   You won’t need to pose for them, or wear a mask of superficial conformity any longer.   They may bare their fangs and snarl; but remember this:  it is they and not you who are inside the cage.

Use every good gift God has given you with all of your heart and use it to the glory of God and use it without guilt.    Stop being so afraid of what other people might think or say.     Your liberty scares them because they are afraid to let go of control and abandon themselves to God’s grace-giving love.

Any possession or enjoyable activity or recreational pursuit can be an idol; but every possession and enjoyable activity and recreational pursuit can be used to introduce someone to their Maker.    Just because something good is abused by one person doesn’t mean that good thing isn’t good and can never be enjoyed by everyone else.

It’s time to stop looking over our shoulders, to stop being so hesitant and timid and double-minded and half-hearted.    I can understand why we’re afraid to do evil, afraid to get caught.    But I can’t understand why I’m so often afraid to do the dangerously right and holy things, or afraid to let my hair down and enjoy all the good blessings of God.

So let’s do so.