Today we celebrate freedom, but what is freedom exactly?

Today or tomorrow depending on what time I press the publish post icon we celebrate our nation's independence.  A weekend of fireworks, cook outs, beach trips, and whatever to celebrate freedom.  But are we truly free?  Watching the baseball game today I saw tv commercials with American flag decorated beer cans, and it just made me wonder, does it really make sense to celebrate freedom we have received by our service men and women losing their lives by getting sloppy drunk.



If that's how you choose to celebrate this weekend, don't get me mad for asking that.  It's your choice, and by all means if that's what you want to do you are free to do it.  Still is that freedom?  The great American song writer once sang "You've got to serve somebody."  "It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody."  Now you can try to remain neutral, in Matthew 12:30 Jesus says, "He who is not with me is against me".



From a worldly perspective that may not make much sense, but looking at that statement with the scales removed from your eyes makes all the difference in the world.  If you read the Bible the word free is mentioned 125 times and liberty 41.  Freedom may look like doing whatever you want to do on the outside. but in reality the choices we make can ruin our lives physically and spiritually.




I know this may sound to preachy for some, but that small still voice just put this on my heart tonight.  I know for me personally I never knew freedom until I made some changes in how I was living, and let the Lord lead me to a new live where I was free to say no to things that used to control and say yes to a live of purpose.  In the next few blogs I'm going to talk about that purpose.  I also hope to start back with some culturally relevant discussion on my other blog, http://highwaybyway.blogspot.com/.  Until then have a safe July 4th.

Still Small Voice

"It's time to come back home", that's what I heard as my head pounded and my body lie aching all over.  After twelve hours of drinking I could have easily have excused it as a figment of my imagination, but I was stone cold sober.  The voice spoke again, the voice didn't gust like a wind, or rumble like an earthquake, or even burn like a fire.  It was still quite voice.  To this day I'm not even sure that it was audible, but I heard it and more importantly I felt it, and I instantly knew who it was.

Since I was a baby I was in church.  I expected the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior back in second grade.  Still life had pulled me along way from saying that prayer under the covers of that top bunk with my dad so many years ago.  Disagreements with Sunday school teachers, the pull of friends and acceptance had me at odds with I knew I believed.  So far from a time when I felt a calling to preach there I lay, with the mother of  all hanger overs, yet I had the sound mind to process what was going on.  I think they call it "a moment of clarity", but I saw the past six years flash before my eyes.  Just like the prodigal son I was taking a long hard look at error of my sinful ways.

I wasn't happy with what I saw.  Leaving the church lead to drinking, while drinking led to a toxic relationship in which I was married because I fathered a child out of wedlock only to see my son die twenty minutes after birth and the marriage end in divorce almost exactly one year later.  I was depressed, lost and broken.  I no longer loved myself and I wondered how any one could love a wretch like me, but still I heard the voice say again, "It's time to come back home."  So there on the spot I prayed the prayer many drunks before and after me have prayed, "Lord if you make this feeling go away I will change", only this time I meant it.

I didn't know how I was going to change, but I knew if the Lord cared enough to reach down for me in the state I was in he would help me find away to change as well.  I knew one thing I had to do was get over my personal hang ups about "organized religon" and atleast attend a church service.  Which I did one week to that day, and while I thought I may start having to attend a meeting once a week to keep up my end of the bargin with the All Mighty, I ended up on a journey that would take me around the world to learn about how He loves me, and then in turn spread that love.

Why Another Blog?

The idea for this blog has been a long time coming.  Since the beginning of the year I've been into reading biographies.  I've read about the writers of the New Testament, professional athletes and rock stars.  I've read about John the Apostle and Paul the Beatle, Keith Richards and Alice Cooper (who believe it or not has a great testimony), and everyone of them had a story.  I began to think of my own story, or the story Christ has allowed me to live, and I felt it needed to be told.  Not just my story but the people I've had the pleasure of meeting in the past seven years.  So I had the bright idea to write a book.

Well several months have passed and a book was still never started.  While on a missions trip last week I felt the Holy Spirit speaking to me in that "quite voice".  While the logistics for me to write a book right now aren't exactly there, I can blog and get my story out there.  Just like king Namaan wanted to do something more dramatic than just bathing in the Jordan (2 Kings 5), I was hoping to do something a bit more important.  So now with pride in check and a humble heart, I am going to start to a series of blogs that will tell of the great things God has done and the awesome people I have met.