Reluctant Farewells

Today is my last day in Pennsylvania. I came here over a month ago to help my sister-in-law and her husband work on getting their house ready to move into by December 1. We have been working very hard to get it ready and have accomplished a lot, but it is time for me to leave. My plane leaves early tomorrow morning and I will get home just half a day before my 31^st wedding anniversary with the love of my life and definitely better half.

This last weekend I once again attended the church in Wilmington, Delaware that I discovered three weeks ago. I posted my thoughts on this at that time and was very glad to find such a friendly church. Over the three weeks that I have attended there I have to say that it has only gotten better. The study class that I visited each week was so accepting and affirming and diverse that I could hardly believe it. I continue to be amazed at how ethnically mixed this church is in its composition with a large segment of members originating in Africa and some from Europe with a good cross-section of age as well. And yet I could hardly detect any spirit of competition or jealousy in this congregation. I am sure that they are not without problems, but the way in which they choose to relate to their differences has resulted in a group of people who seem to be reflective of the spirit that God wants to use to reveal His glory in this world. Their spirit of genuine friendliness still boggles my mind.

I was surprised at how many people in such a short time of me being there actually remembered my name and would greet me at random in the hallways. (This may puzzle someone who doesn't know me, but I am not an outgoing, greeting kind of person naturally.) I ended up spending the whole day there this week and nearly all day there was one person or another who would come up and spend time visiting with me. I even ended up inadvertently playing the piano briefly for an African choir that was getting ready to practice in the afternoon before I realized who they were. Then after their warm-up with some hymns that they insisted I play for them to sing, the director invited me to practice with them as they learned a new song. Later after they started practicing a song in Swahili I decided it was time to let them take it from there and I moved out to the hallway to see what else was going on. They ended up singing and worshiping for the whole afternoon, which one member in the hallway told me they do nearly every week.

As I visited the study class for the last time that morning I came with a sense of heightened emotions. I could not help but feel a great deal of sadness for leaving such a wonderful group of people who had welcomed me so warmly over the past few weeks. In fact, as they went around the room with each person relating what they were thankful for that week as they do each week, when my turn came I found myself unable to even speak over a few words. My emotions become so intense that I began to lose my composure. The teacher was very understanding and immediately guessed what was going on and verbalized my feelings for me. How gracious and kind. I just wish that I could take every one of these people back and import them into my church at home.

But I also cannot mistake the conviction that God has plans of His own for my church and that this refreshing reprieve for my soul is for a purpose. It is giving me perspective and a model for my heart to remember so that I can have some idea of what can happen if I will allow God to use me to initiate this same kind of friendliness and kindness to those in my own church. I have been praying for a new vision and new eyes to see each person in my church through heaven's eyes instead of the filters that I am so used to using. I want to perceive what God is up to and to join Him in cooperating with His ventures in my part of the world.

I have learned many things while I have been here this month. But more importantly my heart has received fresh infusions of experience from many different directions. Having access to high-speed internet while here has enabled me to download a number of talks and videos from inspiring sources that are having an impact on my thinking and direction. And of course, being separated from my wife for a month except by phone each day always reminds me of how important our relationship is.

I have really been blessed by getting to know my wife's sister and husband better. I have wanted to spend more time with them for a long time so that I could get to know them and I have not been disappointed. They are such kind and caring people who have done everything possible to make my stay here enjoyable and have bent over backwards to provide anything I wanted or might want. Both of them are very hard-working, fun-loving people who enjoy life and are devoted to each other. I am going to miss them after I leave as well.

But though I physically must leave many behind when I return home I will also take my memories and bonds of friendship with me for further development. I have been really blessed over these past few weeks and hope that I can be half as much of a blessing to others when given the opportunity.

We are looking forward to our daughter coming home for the weekend the day after I arrive. She is very special to us and we look forward to spending time together with her. At her suggestion we are planning to get involved in some activities to help be a blessing to those in need this Thanksgiving instead of just focusing on eating alone. I look forward to seeing how that develops.

Well, I must get ready for my last day of work here. I look forward to seeing my brother-in-law's brother once again who has been working with us the whole time on the house. He is also a very energetic and friendly person that I have very much enjoyed getting to know. Today will be my last day and I need to get everything packed and ready to leave tonight. So it is time for the goodbye's and the hello's of life once again.

Hopelessly Saved

There are some thoughts that are starting to come together in my mind that I want to explore a little further. I recently heard some discussion about the doctrine of once-saved-always-saved that is quite popular among many Christians today. Apart from the fact that a careful study of Scriptures will not support such a theory, I pondered the significance of what this teaching portrays about how God relates to us and how He feels about us.

This doctrine claims that once a person has given their heart to Jesus and has been “saved” (according to a unique interpretation of this word), then nothing can ever change that immutable decision and they are locked into a guaranteed place in paradise. Nothing they choose from that time on for the rest of their life can reverse their situation with God or prevent them from entering heaven.

When it comes to people who have gotten “saved” but later turn away from God and live a life of open sin, the stress that such an example puts on the credibility of this doctrine is easily brushed aside by claiming that obviously the person was not sincere when they accepted Jesus the first time. It is claimed that they were just probably faking it and that they were not really saved at all but were just pretending to be Christian.

But instead of producing the effect of confidence and assurance in people's hearts as the intention of this doctrine seems to be, this kind of logic can actually produce even more doubt and fear about our salvation. For if it is true, as religious leaders claim, that people who wander off into deep sin after claiming to be saved were never sincere in the first place, then how do I know if my own encounter with salvation was sincere enough to stick? This teaching places much of the responsibility for salvation on our own shoulders by asserting that the level of our sincerity is the determining factor in whether we are really saved or not.

Because all of us have different feelings and moods at different times in our lives, we can never be completely sure how to measure our own level of sincerity about anything, much less try to second-guess someone else's depth of sincerity. Instead of producing boldness and peace in the heart to overcome sin in our life, we are too often subtly led down the path of judging – both ourselves and others. We are trying to live in an illusory world that is arbitrary and irrevocable and that actually robs us of much of our freedom of choice.

I am very sympathetic to our need for assurance and peace about our salvation. I grew up in a religious culture that was just the opposite as that described above and that itself has been the motivation for many to embrace this doctrine. I lived for many years in constant fear and uneasiness about whether or not I would ever make it to heaven and the religion in which I grew up seemed to intentionally like it that way. Insecurity about salvation was seen as something of an asset for promoting our desire to put more energy into striving for a perfect life to please God and get to heaven. And though it is seldom stated openly, the insinuation was always very present that only those who achieved complete perfection (whatever that meant) would ever enter the kingdom of heaven.

In reaction to this tendency toward legalism by people like us, those who embraced the opposite theology gravitated more and more toward the other direction and emphatically taught that it is impossible for humans to be perfect. I hear many Christians today who quickly insist that they will never be perfect because that is an impossibility – only Christ was perfect and all we can do is trust in His perfection as a substitute for us. This kind of logic seems to get us off the hook so that we don't have to take sin or righteousness too seriously; it allows us to remain comfortable with hanging on to whatever vices we think are just too difficult to give up.

This tension between opposing views of salvation has created endless arguments, heated debates and deep schisms among Christians for centuries. And instead of honestly seeking to know what God thinks about this or caring how our views reflect on God's reputation, we more often simply align ourselves with the teachings of whomever promotes what makes us feel the best and that most accurately corresponds to our preconceptions.

But I think one of the best tests for any doctrine or belief is to carefully consider how it causes us to view God and whether those ideas cause us to see Him as more consistent and loving or whether they paint Him as arbitrary and unpredictable. Does what we believe about God tend to project onto Him the characteristics that reflect what we are like or do they, by contrast cause us see our own faults and our disharmony with His perfect character? Do we find ourselves having to twist the plain truths about His unconditional and never-ending love to fit our own paradigms?

What I have seen over the years is that both sides of this debate are forced to use very twisted rationalizations and convoluted reasoning to substantiate their positions. They sometimes become very defensive when challenged about the logic and truthfulness of their respective positions and often resort to demanding that you must just believe and have faith that their teachings are true without understanding the reasons behind them. This is really resorting to force when the weaknesses of a theory begin to undermine its credibility. But the human heart is so aligned with the ways of selfishness and the logic of sinful thinking that sooner or later it seems we have to go back to fear and force and shame in our interactions with others who differ from us in order to try to maintain the kind of unity that we insist must be present in the body of Christ.

So what does it say about God if it is impossible for us to be lost after getting “saved”?

We often use the analogy of marriage to describe our relationship with God after becoming a Christian. I believe in many respects this is very accurate. But if we go with this illustration of our connection with God, does that mean that we are locked into marriage with Him no matter how miserable we become, no matter how much adultery and abuse we commit against our Husband? Does God force us to remain married to Him no matter how disconnected we become from Him or how much we want to be married to more exciting partners?

Malachi 2:16 says that God hates divorce. Does this mean that it is completely out of the picture as an option in our relationship with Him? This certainly seems to be part of the foundation of much of the theology we see today in beliefs about Israel. Christians are embracing teachings that claim that Israel is hopelessly locked into the promises God made to their ancestors no matter how rebellious they may have become. Consequently all sorts of scenarios are being presented to explain prophecies from the Old Testament that revolve around physical wars in the mid-east and Jerusalem being the worldly capital of God's kingdom on earth.

But there are other places in the Old Testament that clearly quote God as saying He had written a divorce for His chosen people. But every time He talks about this it is with intense anguish and is always based on the unfaithfulness of those He had worked so long to draw close to Himself. And prophecy itself actually reveals that shortly after His people crucified the Son of God and rejected their marriage with God, God reluctantly accepted their final decision and allowed them to divorce themselves from being His chosen bride. The New Testament is very clear that now the chosen people of God are made up of people from every imaginable description of people groups on earth who choose to accept His invitation to be bonded in love with Him.

But if we insist that once we have become firmly attached to a relationship with God that it is impossible for us to ever be lost, we are denying many plain Scriptures that teach the contrary. But worse than that, we are distorting the picture of God in the hearts of others and even ourselves by presenting a God who will not respect your freedom of choice once you have chosen to follow Him. This kind of thinking is far from making Him more attractive – it actually makes Him out to be more of a despot locking us to Himself like the slavery that sin holds over our lives. God wants to deliver us from abusive bondage, not take away our freedom to choose.

The marriage-type relationship that God offers to enter into with us is not based on an irreversible, one-time decision that we are never allowed to escape. It is a relationship of real freedom that allows us to grow in maturity, to make mistakes without fear of being rejected, of having the opportunity and time to grow up into Christ while not living in fear of losing our place in God's heart by acts of ignorance or even lapses of loyalty. What is really at issue here is God's faithfulness that challenges the assumptions on both sides of this doctrine.

For the “conservatives” who imply that we must be perfect enough for God to save us in heaven, the truth challenges us to examine the real nature of God's heart toward us and His complete lack of fickleness. It challenges us to trust much more in the faithfulness of God's love that will never, ever end. It reminds us that God's patience is not something that snaps someday when His dark side erupts in anger to destroy those who are not good enough for Him. The truth about God and reality is actually far better than we have ever dared to dream.

For the “liberals” who believe that perfect obedience is never possible and that God refuses to let anyone leave Him after making a decision to follow Him, the truth challenges us to examine our dim view of His power to transform us and restore us completely into His perfect image. It is true that righteousness is never about our achievements in being “good”, but at the same time we must stop underestimating the power of God to accomplish in our lives just what He says He intends to do. Living a righteous life – which is crucial to being prepared to survive the rare atmosphere of heaven in His presence – is not something we are supposed to achieve by our own efforts but is something that we have to allow Him to accomplish in us if we ever want to see His face and live. This is accomplished when we change our pictures of God and seek to dwell on the real truth about Him. For as we focus on His perfection we will inevitably become transformed into that perfection, not by our own efforts but by the principle of beholding.

Let is not accuse God of robbing us of our freedom to choose whom we will serve. Our destiny does not hinge on just one choice in our life but on the direction of millions of daily choices. All throughout eternity we will continue to have complete freedom to choose whether or not to be obedient and loyal to God, for this kind of freedom is the only climate in which real love can flourish.

The last part of the verse from Malachi that where God says He hates divorce has one of the most important messages to each one of us who desire to truly know how to be saved. God says, So take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously. It is never God's idea to initiate a divorce, but ultimately He will always respect the final choices that we make about our relationship with Him and His offer for us to spend eternity in close fellowship with Him.

What I want to experience more fully in my own life is a clearer view of God's true character, to even see the emotions reflected on His face, to be filled with the same passionate love that ever flows from His heart. I want to have such a clear view of God that my life will glow with His glory and sin will lose all its attraction and effects on me. I want to know the life of natural righteousness, not forced perfection. I love a God who values my freedom so deeply that He will not lock me in without options to a life in heaven with Him when my desire may be to live in selfishness. I like it that God respects me that much.

Father, show me Your face more clearly today. Fill me with the assurance that comes from Your faithfulness and Your compassion. Thank-you for the truth I find in Your Word about You and how You feel about me. Continue to draw me closer to Your heart and cause me to reflect Your beauty more accurately so that others will better see Your loveliness in my life.

Fire In The Hole

I am aware, but probably not nearly enough, of my lack of natural appreciation and gratitude. But there are times when things happen that simply cannot be missed, especially by someone who really wants to learn to be more grateful. One of those events happened to me yesterday and I do not want to let it go unnoticed or underrated.

I was working with my brother-in-law getting his house addition ready for them to move into in a couple weeks. I have been working with him and his brother for several weeks now and have enjoyed working with them with their fun-loving, hard-working, easy-going attitudes. I was helping to put in a floor addition that will expand the size of the living room to a more comfortable space and was starting to nail the floor joists into place.

The room addition was inside the garage that we recently built and the day was a rather gloomy, rainy day outside so the light was rather poor. In addition I was trying to work down close to the wall far from the doors or windows so it made it even harder to see where I was nailing exactly. Suddenly just after I shot the air nailer gun to fire a 16 penny nail (about 3 inches long) into the floor joist I felt the nail whiz past my ear and felt my glasses sitting a little askew on my face. I wasn't sure what had happened so I stood up and tried to straighten my glasses.

I finally took them off to see what the problem was and then realized what had happened. The nail had ricocheted from where I had intended it to go, had grazed my finger on my other hand drawing a little blood and then evidently had passed through the corner of my glasses on the way past the side of my head.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that I had been extremely close to either getting killed with a nail into my brain or at least loosing the sight in one eye, neither of which I have any desire to experience to say the least. I also sensed that God had used one of His angels to possibly guide that nail past my face and even through my glasses in such a way as to protect me once again from harm that demonic forces would like to inflict on me.

I realize that many people would just chalk this up to really good luck. I know that it would be somewhat easy for me to do that as well unfortunately. But I also am becoming more aware that there is much more activity in the supernatural realm than we ever realize, and that sometimes their effects show up in things that we can detect if we are willing. And I also believe that our choices about our spirit and how we decide to relate to those supernatural forces have a great deal of influence to determine the outcome of events in our lives as well as the abilities of either side to work in our lives in the future.

So in light of this and as soon as it came to my conscious attention, I began to thank God very intentionally and sincerely for the protection that I knew had come from His hand. I also prayed that I would not downplay this incident due to my fear and shame that too often causes me to only talk about Him to people who are like believers. I want to be more real and more consistent in what I believe internally and how I talk and act around those who do not believe in God or think that He is not worth trusting.

I have observed that there are numerous times that I have been very close to serious harm and that it is completely possible that I have many times recently had supernatural assistance to prevent disasters that could easily maim or hurt me seriously. I know that there is no way of proving most of these encounters, at least to a scientifically skeptical mind with a predisposition to doubt God's care for us. I also strongly suspect that most of the deliverances I have experienced go completely unnoticed and the angels must be in constant amazement at my naivety. But that does not prevent them from continuing to serve and protect me anyway while hoping that I will soon begin to be more appreciative which may in turn give them more permission to work more actively in my life.

At any rate, I want to take this opportunity to thank God publicly for this very specific incident of protection. It causes me to be more conscious more about how blessed I am to have eyesight as good as it is, not to mention the rest of my head that could have been affected. And most of all I am so grateful for the fact that the reason God does things like this is because He is like that in His character and His desires toward me. It is because He is such a faithfully caring God that He looks after me each moment in ways I will never know until I am shown my life in heaven. But I can get to know Him better right now and learn to trust His heart and His consistently good intentions towards me irregardless of whether I am hurt or not.

Father, I want to praise you for protecting me and having your angels intervene on my behalf during this close call. Thank-you so much for your grace and mercy and kindness and faithful love. Dwell in me and cause me to be more free in my praise for you. Heal me of the shame that inhibits me from being more lavish in my gratitude. Thank-you for the work you are doing in me and the incredible plans you have for me. You are my God and I worship you in gratitude and humble appreciation.

Heart Talk and Worship

I just had a discussion with someone that opened my eyes a little bit more as to how much I am still influenced by my old problem of image management – living in such a way as to influence what others think about me. As I thought about it more this morning I also realized that this is one of the greatest inhibitions preventing me from being able to worship God freely as my heart desires to do.

In the culture in which I grew up and am still a part of to a great extent, there are some things about expressive worship that by many people in my culture are considered too far outside the box to be acceptable. Oh, they may or may not say something about it to me, but it is sufficient that inside my own mind the accusations and subtle feelings of condemnation are very present and effective. So generally, I don't feel the freedom to worship as my heart needs to unless I am in a completely different culture – which then presents its own different set of inhibitions – or more likely when I am totally alone.

Actually I am very resentful in a way, of this state of affairs. And I suspect God is not real pleased about it either. For if the worship that is due Him and that connects our hearts to each other is being short-circuited by the false gods of image management and men-pleasing, then in fact I am being controlled and am serving false gods in violation of the second commandment.

I became aware of this sinful condition in my life a couple years ago and wrote extensively about it then. I also think that my awareness of this state of my heart has at least help me to make some progress toward freedom, but I still have a long way to go. And it will not help to simply try to lay a guilt trip on myself in an attempt to shame or frighten me into changing the way I act and think. That is the counterfeit religious practice of my past that I am determined to turn away from. But at the same time I must be willing to accept both the attractions and convictions of the Holy Spirit and also the warnings that alert me to the tragic consequences that are inevitable if I refuse to submit to coming into harmony with the principles of reality as revealed by God.

I, like everyone else, am designed and wired at the deepest level of my psyche to worship. And I, like everyone else, will worship quite frequently even though it is not generally labeled with that term. But the more I understand the truth and substance of what makes up worship, the more I become aware that far too much of my worship is going to the wrong places. I am giving too much authority to false gods in my life, and as a result I have no room to view critically or harshly those in the Old Testament who worshiped idols and think how silly they were. When the light of truth begins to expose my own futile practices of living in fear of what others think of me instead of living in joyful service to my Creator and Savior, then I have joined them in their disloyalty and idol worship and am in need of repentance just as much as they were.

I do not want to keep hiding from this problem. I (at least a part of me) do not want to keep resisting the promptings of the Holy Spirit to be more open and honest in all areas of my life. I realize that I have some very intense areas of blindness in my thinking, but I continue to ask God to open my eyes and show me what I normally cannot see. I believe that this is just one of those blind spots that He is trying to get me to face more directly.

I actually feel very encouraged by this conversation I just had that helped me remember and see better this problem in my life. I feel encouraged in a strange sort of way when I see some of my faults because I know that God is showing them to me because He cares enough to offer me healing and restoration in that area if I am willing to accept and apply His grace to my heart.

During the discussion I was able to actually peek into some of the feelings behind my actions and inhibitions and realize that what I am doing much of the time is trying to avoid shame. Shame and fear are two of the greatest inhibitors in my life and are some of the worst slave-masters that keep me from enjoying the true freedom of the sons of God. Even many of my diversionary temptations are targeted at helping me to avoid facing the shame and fears that still lurk in the background and affect so much of my thinking and my relationships with others. My desires to watch movies are deeply rooted in trying to use pleasure produced vicariously through artificial emotional stimulation as a means of masking my real need to address the much deeper roots of shame and fear that haunt me from the background atmosphere of my soul.

But it is up to me to exercise my power of choice to face these things and to fast from anything that I may be using to avoid facing them. As long as I resort to anything that may help me procrastinate facing the inner pain of my past, the resentment that I carry toward others, the shame that is still so prevalent from my childhood and the fears that haunt me from the residual lies about God in my heart – as long as I allow those diversions to satisfy my hunger for real freedom I will remain in the slavery of bondage to those things even though I may feel like I am free on the surface.

The symptoms of that bondage can be seen in the inhibitions at the gut level that still bind me to the manipulation of what others think of me. I may be ever so independent in many ways and believe that what others think about me has little influence over my choice to live outside the box that others are trapped within. But in deeper ways that is still a mirage in many respects. At the heart level I still crave acceptance and affirmation and to be valued and appreciated by others. I suppose in some ways there is nothing wrong with those desires except when they cause me to subtly seek satisfaction for these needs from others above seeking God's face and believing in how He truly feels about me.

As I was sharing in my conversation, shame is one of the primary emotions that I still don't have very much skill in dealing with effectively yet. When I first became aware of the enormous influence and presence of shame in my life some time ago I was shocked at how much it controlled my thinking and my relationships with others. That is still true today, but it is very difficult to perceive it most of the time because it stays under the surface of my conscious awareness. So because I am not conscious of the presence and strong influence of shame's control over me I too often fail to take action to face it more directly and learn how to deal with it effectively.

During our discussion we both agreed that fear and shame are the primary problems that we both have to deal with and that strongly influence how we relate to others and inhibit our relationship with each other. We also realized that we really desire a mentor in our lives who could show us how to face this problem effectively and learn to live in the freedom and peace that our hearts crave so much. But the problem seems to remain that there are extremely few people around who are mature enough and willing enough to mentor others in the ways of God, and whoever they are they don't seem to be anywhere near our lives right now.

As a result it appears to me like God is going to have to mentor us directly without using any humans to be His agents unless He has someone in mind that we are totally unaware of at this point. Many times in my life when I felt totally alone going through intense struggles and wishing for someone to join me and emotionally guide me through those times, I wondered if maybe God was allowing me to go it alone in order to be trained to help others whom I would encounter later who felt totally alone. I can distinctly remember situations where I nearly felt like screaming out, longing for someone to be with me in my problems and frustrations to overcome problems in my life. But the only answer that seemed to come was that when I learned this lesson I would be better situated to have compassion and sympathy for others in similar circumstances.

I don't know what God has in mind for the process of my healing and I am cautious to try to second-guess how He plans to accomplish that in me. But I do know that what I am learning about Him from the Bible in my own personal encounters with Him each day is full of encouragement and is awakening more hope and love in my own heart. I ultimately have to come back to throwing myself on the promises and words of God that I find written there and trust His heart to guide me through the confusing maze of inner mysteries and outer temptations to the freedom and joy and security that my heart was designed to thrive on in His presence.

Freedom

I got to thinking this morning about freedom. It came to my attention while I was remembering one of my own failures recently and how it related to my own freedom to choose what I do with my time. I thought about why I sometimes make the wrong choices even though I know it is not best for me and then I wonder what the real underlying reason is for me making those decisions. Thats when the issue of freedom came into the mix.

What I am starting to sense is that true freedom can only be enjoyed by advancing in true maturity. This may seem simplistic at first but I am always exploring the “whys” behind things to better understand how my mind works and understand others as well. So I wanted to think a bit more about this issue of freedom and I began to ask myself what freedom really is.

Right now I am thinking that freedom, at least in one important sense, is the removal or absence of artificial restraints. These restraints may be physical or they might be social or emotional. But freedom means that I am not inhibited or controlled by another person or institution or even artificial rules.

It is easy to observe this in the process of growing up and the increasing freedoms that we allow children to enjoy as they get older and learn to have more internal self-control. They learn skills and reasoning, but more importantly they learn to self-regulate and utilize their minds and hearts to make informed decisions based on various reliable sources of information and personal experience. They learn from cause and effect as well as learning from the wisdom of others who have experienced things they have not had to. They learn to consult and seek guidance instead of thinking they have all the wisdom necessary for life and as a result they are entrusted with more responsibility and given more latitude to make independent choices in their lives.

The amount of freedoms granted to young people by wise mentors and parents will be determined by the evaluation of the safety involved in the young person's abilities and preparedness for the next level of freedom. Safety does not mean that a person will never make a mistake but is based on the person's willingness to coordinate with others as well as acquiring personal training to prepare them for greater responsibility.

Preparing for greater freedom and responsibility involves synchronizing the mind with the principles that govern the circumstances for which a person is being trained. It is learning the skills, learning the potential problems as well as the correct way to do things and learning to have a level of self-confidence while interacting properly with others around them. It also involves learning to balance the various parts of the being to better function in ways that are both effective and helpful.

I decided to take this concept of freedom out to its logical extreme potential conclusion. And even though this world's system of restrictions and permissions is a far cry from God's view of real freedom, there are some parallels. Those who misuse their freedoms to inflict problems on others people's lives often find their own freedoms curtailed. The world's system of imprisonment for nearly anything and everything that crosses the whims (laws) of the ones in power are not a good example to examine to understand God's ways of justice. But the cause and effect relationship is still often valid.

But in the realm of true reality toward which we are all moving and must all live within sooner or later when the artificial system of this world finally collapses, we will have a much clearer view of what freedom is all about and how much God values it far more than we ever do.

One thing that came to my attention about freedom is that real freedom always involves a level of selflessness. Those who desire freedom for the purposes of serving their own desires and cravings do not understand the true nature of freedom. For real freedom has far more to do with internal peace and serving others than it has to do with allowing us to indulge ourselves without limitations. When we use our freedom to selfishly serve our own needs more than using it to improve our ability to bless others, we are on the road to losing our freedoms instead of improving them. This is not so much because of an arbitrary decision imposed on us as it is a natural result of the principles inherently involved. Freedoms misused are squandered away and sooner or later are lost.

In the kingdom of reality which is where heaven operates and toward which all of our destinies will ultimately be determined by our current choices, I believe that we will find that God intends for us to return to the full freedom that was once known in the universe before sin was ever thought of in the mind of Lucifer. Back in those times the angels and other created beings didn't even realize that there was such a thing as laws governing the universe. They simply lived them out naturally and their hearts and minds always functioned in loving, selfless service and praise in whatever capacity they found themselves involved in.

I think that quite possibly at some point in the future eternity after sin has been long gone from the scene that there is coming a point of perfect freedom again. All of the surviving beings living in the joys and perfection of paradise will once again find themselves so perfectly synchronized with the principles of reality that they may no longer even notice that there are underlying laws involved in day to day living. In fact, the following text came to my find that now makes more sense in this context.

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:33-34 NRSV)

The ultimate goal for most teaching is to increase our ability to enjoy freedom through the combining of greater knowledge and maturity. What this text seems to be saying is that there may come a time when we will be so mature and have the principles of reality so internalized that there will no longer be any need for such teaching. That sounds to me like the most ultimate freedom that anyone could ever imagine.