I am motivated by the visual. To me a picture is truly worth a thousand words, or more for that matter. This fish in this picture is so much like us. He is living encased looking out from a place of confinement while at the same time in the midst of a beautiful reality. This poor fish can look at the surroundings but never touch the surroundings. Let's call this fish Claude. (That was the name of my deceased fish in Abu Dhabi. He lived a good life. :) ) Claude can live a life vicariously through what he sees yet never enter into the reality of LIFE because he is existing and not living. How sad is that? Better to put yourself in a dark caged room and admit the reality of your existence than to live in the midst of beauty and life and truly cease to exist. How sad to conform to the limited reality of your existence and slowly fade into nothingness.
I look around at Christians. I look at Claude. We can talk a good game. We can live through others and call it our own. We can talk talk talk. We can create a vivid reality of who we think we are or wanna be. We can use all the right words but look at the situation. Claude is confined and miserable. He can see freedom but not touch it. Are you like this? I bet some of you are. My advice to Claude and to YOU.
Risk it all Claude! Get out and live! Once the Lord spoke something to me that has stayed with me for a long time. "My people fear life more than they fear death." How sad to be living in the midst of the promises of true freedom and yet never really live. To look at the waves and not touch the water. To see the effects of the wind but to never really feel it touch your face or blow through your hair. To see the sun shining but to not feel the actual warmth of it touching your face. Need I say more? I truly hope you are getting the picture. Are you?
Jesus spoke in parable and was an enigma. Enigma means someone or something that is often misunderstood. That is me. Truly, that is me. People don't seem to get me or they presume to know me which they really don't. Those who are close to me know me. My ups and downs. My ins and outs. My good days and bad days. I was a lot like Claude. I lived through other people vicariously and in a life of fascination, imagination and imitation. Until one day, I said "Enough is enough." (Okay can you hear God speaking so far? No "thus saith the Lord' in this one.........just plain talk.) Okay back to my thoughts.
Enough is enough. Either I believe Him or not believe Him. Either I live in Him, walk in Him and BE in Him or why am I even saved. Appropriate verse is below.
John 8:36 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. NKJV
He, Jesus Christ, has set me free to BE. Simple and clear and concise is that statement. We as Christians are supposed to BE the most expressive, creative, free people on the place of the planet. Are we? That is for you to answer. To shake the bonds of complacency and conformity, you have to take risks. And having watched Steel Magnolias, I remember that accurate statement. 'THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER.' Amen and amen. But OUCH. Risks will often come in the midst of choosing freedom and you will often feel that you are going to lose, to die, to be forgotten, and so much else. Yet, risks are meant to propel you into a realm where you are walking in the reality of His life and His freedom. Where you touch and feel and walk and talk and hurt and cry and laugh and shout................BUT YOU LIVE.
The realization that FREEDOM is in Christ and only in Christ allows us to truly see that without Him there is no life. So look at this saying. Look at it hard and long. Until you lose YOUR LIFE you can't be free IN HIM. Life is a prison but the way is clear..........in Him. We got to stop talking and start walking in what we claim to believe. We lose it all to find Him and when we find Him we find ouselves. So keep reading.
Here it is - JET LAG in California. But I am smiling because in these wee hours of the morning, God is with me to talk to me about this next move in the Spirit YOU and I are going to take together. A blog, to me can be very boring, if I don't impact the people that I am talking to right now. It would be empty words going out into cyberspace and that is not my thing. I like hands on stuff and relationship but this is a good start to this new season we are in right now. Officially started when we took our first step in Calfornia just a few days ago.
That is my journey right now. TO WALK IT AND TO TALK IT. But like the title says, you can't TALK freedom, you have to WALK freedom. God gave me that title. Is it "Thus sayeth the Lord". Well to me it is. Do I have to speak in first person to help you to see that God is speaking through me to you? Would it add more credibility to this post if I say, "My children I want you to know that you can't talk freedom but you must walk freedom." Come on. Get a grip. The word of God dwells within me and I am walking the message as well as being the messenger. So here goes the blog. Week by week, day by day seeking God for His path to walk this with you into this new season. In the midst of this, we are praying here as to when the timing and position and placing is right to start something of Rivers of Eden right here in the Bay Area. God will show us and we will know and we invite any of you to come to be equipped as the future unfolds before us.
So I am going to focus on FREEDOM right now. The topic will change when the Spirit of God says to change it. Freedom is everywhere. We, as Christians talk about it and sing about it and declare but what I actually see are so many Christians that actually don't believe it. They talk it but don't walk it. So many Christians bound by fear, worry, unbelief doubt and every such thing right as this topic is so prevalent in Christian circles.
I know some people that always tell me to 'Be Free." When they say it I want to cringe because they are so bound and have only been taught to speak it with the right Christianese tone and gestures to look spiritual but are wrapped in grave clothes in their personal walk with the Lord. I believe we are saying things that we truly may not mean. Or perhaps we want to truly mean them but we don't know how to take that first step. Enter Debra Westbrook. My call is FREEDOM. Freedom to walk, to make mistakes, to confront our failures, to fail, to fall, to get up.....let's see. What else? Well, let's see as the weeks go by.
So how to start this? Okay - freedom starts from the INSIDE OUT not from the OUTSIDE IN. It is not what you do but who you are inside. That is why I have avoided using freedom pictures that depict all those people jumping and dancing and such. That is the second step. The first is internal. Internally free in Christ will allow the external to be motivated within you to move out. And you can't just talk it or live it through anyone else. It must come to you to exit through you.
The best verse. The absolute best verse. This freedom verse says it all. No doubt in my mind. Here goes.
Acts 17:28 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, NKJV
There is NO freedom apart from Jesus Christ. None. Know Christ and you have freedom. He is freedom and He is the way, the truth, and the life. In Him is the path of freedom. So to talk freedom is to talk Jesus...........no other way. You walk in Him. Move in Him and have our being in Him. So while the majority of people around you are TRYING TO BE FREE or TALKING TO BE FREE, you my dear ones are simply to walk........in Him. Go ahead. Try it. Walk a little. Step by step. Then extend that foot and dance a little. Then sing a little. Shout a little. But do it IN HIM and WITH HIM as He directs you because when you have nothing to prove, you have nothing to lose. You are free. You just don't know it and perhaps have been living your life through something or someone....................................bad decision. Find Him. Find yourself in Him. And you will be free.
More coming......what a great journey is beginning.
