Freedom comes when self-destruction is no longer an option.

What kind of freedom……?  Freedom from what……?

 I spent at least 45 years of my life thinking that I was in control of me and or trying to control everything around me.

I labored under the illusion that I could affect the outcome of a given situation. That I could affect another person’s decision. That I could hold things together if I could just get everyone to see things my way.

When I was a little boy about12 I would stand on a chair and dry the dishes for my mom and we would race. I could dry faster than she could wash, therefore my conclusion was, if she could wash faster I could dry faster and thereby beat her!

 ILLUSIONS…………………….!Illusions are not true. To live ones life in “illusionment” is to live self destructively.

 I figured out that if I could average the speed of 60 MPH on a trip I would be going one mile per minute, therefore I was in control because I chose that.

Not realizing that had I been in control I would have arrived at my designated destination instantly!  I made a choice but I could not be in control. All I could do was go fast.

A person can be in control of much of what they know but they have absolutely NO control over what they don’t know.

 Self-destruction comes when we try to have control over what we don’t know. We fret, stew, worry, debate, make wrong decisions based on those things, and we cause all kinds of dis-unity to those around us who are affected by it.

Reality is………I don’t know anything at all about 1 minute from now! Nothing, zilch!

Freedom, What is that?

If I have one dollar to my name and I owe you one dollar, that dollar is really not mine because I owe you one dollar.

If I give you that dollar then I don’t owe you a dollar and even though I’m broke I am free from owing you one dollar.

Now, if I owe you one dollar and I don’t have one dollar to give you I have a problem. I owe you but I can’t pay you. You then can say to me, Pay up, or you can say, forget it. You don’t owe me anything. I am canceling your debt. You are free from owing me.

The Bible tells us that God forgave us, thru His son Jesus, for what Adam did. Every offspring from Adam on has been born without the Spirit of God in them and because of that, the race of “Adams”, to make up a word, was born apart from God and had to be re-united to God

How does that happen, what’s that got to do with freedom?

Something happened to Adam. A change took place, physically and mentally when he did not trust Gods word.

Imagine coming out of an absolutely perfect world (as Adam did) into a rocky, thorny, barren imperfect world.  You are aware that the perfect world is still there but you can no longer see it. Your ability to see and feel and exist in that perfect world has been removed from you and even though you remember it you can’t participate in it any more.

You had a body that was perfectly suited to be inhabited by God and indeed God communicated with you because He was part of you. And now because of a freewill choice to “find out for yourself” God was gone and you were naked, without God. You were no longer “clothed” by or with, God.

You no longer existed in the Spirit world. You had no sense of communication with a world you knew was around you.

Your eyes were opened to a world in which you were living apart from spiritual life.

Death is living apart from God.

Adam of his own freewill made a choice to not believe what God had told him to be true.

Today, we have a problem with the same thing. The difficulty for us is that we are told so many different, conflicting things about God.

It seems as though each sect, or church or denomination, has their own version of God and what He requires of us.

Satan, as he did with Adam and Eve, tries to trick us with half-truths.

Imagine the bright nature that Adam and Eve had; the abilities to communicate with God and all of nature.

The Bible tells us they lived in the spirit world, that God came and walked and talked with them in the cool of the day.

Adam named the animals. And now the animals were his enemies, nature was his enemy.

Adam was now a slave to a world he had caused by not trusting Gods word to be true.

Adam had self-destructed.

Adam became a slave to his own freewill.

Mankind has freewill. We can make any choice we want about anything.

The problem is, that we don’t have all knowledge. At best our choices are faulty most of the time.

We don’t know what’s going to happen anywhere, about anything, 60 seconds from right now.

Make a choice-give it your best shot.

A God who spoke into existence everything that exists, gravity, planet movements, times, seasons, (you finish the list) can be trusted.

I CAN OF MY OWN FREEWILL TRUST MY FREEWILL TO BE A SUBJECT OF THAT GOD!    Or I can live in the prison of my freewill apart from God.

It is a self-destructive illusion for us to think that we can live a free life apart from God.

Whatever Adam was, however he was created, when he chose to not believe Gods word to him, he became mortal. He lost his relationship with the spirit world.

Perhaps that’s the reason he needed some type of clothing, He became physical and was subject to weather conditions.

We are subject to this physical world. Different countries, different governments, politics.

Adam was created in the light of Gods presence, perfectly innocent.

He was the start of a race of people, “children of the light” if you please.  He would produce a race of people who communicated with God. In a perfect world, ordered by God, directed by God. A place to live in contact with the creator of all.

One thing God did in order that this race would be like Him is give him freewill. God can do what he wants and so can man.

God told Adam about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CHOICE YOU DON’T HAVE FREEWILL!

The only real choice that we have is this, we can choose to trust God or we can choose not to.

Dr. Peck, in The People of the Lie, says, “Freewill is a reality…on the other hand we cannot choose freedom. There are only two states of being: submission to God and His goodness or the refusal to submit to anything beyond ones own will-which refusal automatically enslaves one to the forces of evil. We must ultimately belong either to God or the devil.”

Adam, because he didn’t trust God, lost the Light of God and propagated a race of people “not of the Light of God” but apart from it. God warned him but he didn’t listen.

God did not give us the choice of whether we could be God or He was going to be God.

He is God.

Our choice is whether we will trust Him or not. Our freewill is summed up right there. Choose to trust Him or choose not to. That is the definition of freewill.

God made a covenant with Adam, the covenant was  this---

No amount of human suffering can make up for what Adam did. He told Adam that He, God, would come and become born into the human race and become subject to the suffering and darkness of this world.

God who is eternal, who is not measured by years, said He would become subject to our limitations in order to save us from this disaster that Adam caused.

What has this to do with freedom and self-destruction?

Take a look at the remedy to this dilemma.

Most of us grew up with the knowledge or information that “Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins.”

We heard that all have sinned; therefore we all are under the penalty that He bore for us, the pain should have been ours, Jesus as our substitute. He bore the punishment that was meant for us.

This says that God got mad and condemned us to Hell and Jesus somehow changed Gods mind and took it for us. (Even though Adam did it, we pay for it.)

A little girl came home from Sunday school one Sunday and said, “Mommy, I love Jesus but I hate God!”

However, despite the scare tactics of well meaning men, the Bible says that God so loved the world; it says That God is love. It says Christ died for us while we were yet enemies.        GOD LOVES US, YOU…. ME.

The Christ on the cross is telling us this; you can bruise me, batter me, make fun of me, and you can forsake me. You can spit on me, put a painful crown of thorns on my head. Even though I am innocent you can scourge me,         I LOVE YOU!

The Bible says “it is the goodness of God that brings men to repentance.”

If Jesus had not died it would have meant that at some point God stopped loving you and me. It would have meant God said, “No more, I’m done with those people!

Read the story of the Prodigal Son, he broke his fathers heart but when he returned his father said, “I love you”

God loved and gave himself for me…………Gods love is beyond our understanding. We can only choose to believe, thereby accepting it.

The old hymn says;

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were an offering far to small,

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my life, my soul, my all.

FREEDOM COMES WHEN SELF DESTRUCTION IS NO LONGER AN OPTION………………….We choose

…………………………..David