Forgiving Frees Us

"To forgive another person from the heart is an act of liberation. We set that person free from the negative bonds that exist between us. We say, "I no longer hold your offense against you" 

But there is more. We also free ourselves from the burden of being the "offended one." As long as we do not forgive those who have wounded us, we carry them with us or, worse, pull them as a heavy load. The great temptation is to cling in anger to our enemies and then define ourselves as being offended and wounded by them. 

Forgiveness, therefore, liberates not only the other but also ourselves. It is the way to the freedom of the children of God." 

- Henri Nouwen

The Free and the Rebellious

"The free person in Christ and the rebellious will always look the same to those who labor under religious obligation, because both ignore the conventions that govern men and women.


But there is a major difference between the two. The rebel does it to serve himself and his passions, always harming others in the process and leaving a wake of anarchy behind him.


The free person in Christ, however, does so because they no longer have a need to serve themselves. Having embraced God’s love at a far deeper level than any method of behavioral conformity will touch, they will guard that freedom even if it means others will misunderstand their pursuits. They reject the conventions of control not to please themselves, but Father Himself."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Religion Is Not The Culprit...

by Colin Lagerwall

Religion only has a leg to stand on when you think you are missing one...

Many of us are taking a swing at religion as if religion is the enemy...
Religion will only have a landing place of there is one available.

And whilst religion is despicable, it is not the culprit... The culprit is the lie that we believe about ourselves, which causes us to think we are 'missing something' and therefore needing an extra leg...

We blame Hitler for his despicable acts, yet the major issue was not with Hitler, it was the self-perceived deficiency in the people of Germany that caused them to follow his promises of becoming a super-race...
If the people of Germany knew who they were, they would have flicked off Hitler's promises as the ridiculous drivel that it was...
And so it is with every controlling or governing body; it only has control if it is perceived that something is missing in our own selves...

Whilst seeing and standing against the false promises of religion is good, it can be a futile waste of time and energy if we do not tackle the real issue, and that is the identity of Man...
When this Identity and all that it entails is intricately known in the width and breadth and depths of us, the lie of religion will be flicked off of us like the booger it really is...

We are One with He who is Life, we are Loved by Our Father, we are honored beyond measure by the Most honorable, we are served by the Greater because He thinks we deserve it, we are the Living Dream of our Creator...

We have two legs to stand on, do not let a lie think you are missing anything, for in believing that lie, something will find it's home in that perceived gap, and it will not be good

.......
Nothing missing, nothing broken...
Mankind is in Him and of Him who is true, and we are Complete in Him...
Jesus' death burial and resurrection and our inclusion in that process is ample proof and a wide open display of God's only thoughts of us...

He is so confident in who we are that He gave us two legs to run on...
So run with the Wind!

How Jesus Reacted To Two Wealthy Individuals

Myth:

Jesus asked the rich young ruler to sell and distribute the wealth amongst the poor; therefore, wealth is bad.

When viewed from another angle:
The issue was about his TRUST in his wealth (Mark 10:24).

Now let's meet a "bad" guy - Zacchaeus. This guy was rich (Luke 19:2), and yet, we do not see Jesus asking him to liquidate his assets and disperse the funds.

The difference here is, Zacchaeus was not banking on his self-righteousness, unlike the rich young ruler, who supposedly kept all the commandments. When grace and unconditional love came to his life, the fruit followed.

It's never about people having money, but money having people.

Salvation is not just about a passport to heaven. The Greek word from which 'saved' is translated is Sozo, and here is the link to what it means.

Listen to the first words of Jesus after he began his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” - (Luke 4:18-19 NKJV)

Freedom in every area of one's life is what Jesus came for. Sickness or poverty does not glorify the Father, who is Love, especially when the redemptive work on the cross took care of all those problems with one sweep.

Was Jesus a Socialist or a Capitalist?

"God created man in His image and then man returned the favor." - George Bernard Shaw

One of the things that we love to do is mold God to fit our views.

Contrary to the folklore, Jesus was neither a socialist, nor a capitalist. Both these resources operate using the resources on earth. Jesus' source was the kingdom of God.

When the need came up to feed the five thousand (not including the women and children), neither did the poor give what little they had, to fund the need at hand, nor did the disciples organize a fund-raising event to gather the money from the rich. With the little that was given to Jesus by a little boy, He multiplied it supernaturally and in abundance. He did not just meet their bare needs. There were baskets of leftover food.

Since Jesus' source was not the economic systems of the world, it did not matter how bleak the circumstances around Him looked like. He was the answer, because He was connected to the Kingdom.

The kingdom of God is within us. The One who is in us is greater than all the earthly resources put together. Even though we are in this world, we are not of this world. We are supposedly, the "children of God". We are supposedly the "Ambassadors of Christ" and the ambassadors are not taken care of by their host countries.

But leave it to the enterprising churchianity to sell this truth on how to earn this blessing! I do not know if there is another truth that has been more abused by the organized Christianity. The solution is freely available through the redemptive work on the cross. The fact that this has been been prostituted much does not take away from the truth that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of poverty. There is nothing "spiritual" or "virtuous" about poverty. In my view, the organized Christianity played a prominent role in glamorizing poverty when not one human soul has to live under the yoke of poverty or mediocrity anymore. The church should be part of eradicating the curse of poverty, instead of inadvertently glorifying it.   

In Christ we are blessed!

But why?

"The blessing" is not the end of the story. We are not blessed to testify that, "God has blessed us", while our neighbor struggles. We are blessed, also to BE a blessing, to be conduits of His unconditional love. Giving a homeless man a cute sermon on how Jesus loves him won't answer his immediate problems. We need resources to spare. 

But how can we, when we are allergic to the very term 'money'? Aren't we supposed to be "spiritual"?

No sane person who is financially struggling would say that they do not want money. Broadly classified, there are mainly two groups of people who criticize wealth. The first group has never experienced poverty. They have their needs and desires met, month-to-month. The second group has bought into the lie that poverty is godly, when it is actually a curse.

Money, by nature, is neither evil, nor good. It comes from a tree. When zoomed in, it is energy. It is a neutral element. In the hands of a drug pusher, it is called "drug money", but to the person who is a conduit of Love, who knows WHO the Source is, money is nothing but a tool.

Freedom is a Choice

Ego is the part of our mind that keeps us wanting which in turn produces pride, sadness, anger, worry, insecurity and judgementalism towards others. The source of any negativity can be traced to the ego. It literally is a heartless taskmaster that drains one’s emotional energy.  

For the ego, the answer is always “out there”. We subscribe to its edicts in hopes that it will fill the void in us that we so desperately want to be filled. “Follow my prescribed path, for then, will you receive that which you seek for”, says the ego. But to our chagrin, we discover that the happiness or the freedom promised by the ego is nothing but an unreachable mirage.  

The simple fact of the matter is that, the ego is a bully and bullies are epic weaklings within their core. It thrives on imprisoning the heart, but it does so by not realizing the fact that the heart has the power to rewrite the mind.  

Freedom begins when we realize that the heart is infinitely more powerful than the mind. Authentic emotional freedom has nothing to do with anything that comes from without. Nothing and not one human being can grant us freedom. Freedom is experienced from within.  

One way to experience that freedom is by loving unconditionally. Love is a power source that transforms our mind. It is similar to the water gushing out of a hose. Before the water hits the plant, it saturates the hose from within. When we meditate and speak negativity, no matter how justified we think we are with our assertions or how factual we think the thought is, the negativity soils our mind and binds us. But when we proactively and unconditionally love, it saturates us first and sets us free, free to be ourselves and to be effective conduits of Love.