Freedom is Free (to you)

My favorite holidays revolve around freedom. Easter has to be my favorite holiday of the year. But a very close second is the 4^th of July! Some might say it is because of fireworks, fried food, festivals, music and gathering together with family, friends and your community. (wow that was a lot of “f”. I must be preparing to speak a lot this week) While all those things are important reason why I love the 4^th, the main reason is the freedom we celebrate in this holiday.

I have often heard it said that freedom is not free. That is a very true statement. Freedom always cost somebody something. My closest friend in the world is serving our country in the sandbox right now to help insure our freedom as a nation. Freedom as a country has always been build because men and women have been willing to pay the price of separation, fighting, hurt and death so that the rest of us can enjoy freedom. The same is true of our freedom in Christ. While salvation is a free gift from God, there was a price for that freedom. It was the complete wrath of God that sin deserved. Jesus was our wrath absorber so that we can be free. He paid the ultimate price for freedom!

Freedom is free, though! You and I have had to do very little today to earn the freedom that we have as a nation. We have been enjoyers of that freedom. It has been free for you and me. Salvation is also a free gift that God gives to us. It requires only believe and confession. Freedom is free.

I think some times that is the problem from many of us. When it comes to our nation, we are uninvolved in voting, supporting troops, or volunteering because freedom was free. When we get things free we tend to treat them with less value. Yes we are thankful for Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines but how often apart from Veterans day, July 4^th and other patriotic holidays are we truly thankful for them on our own? When is the last time you said thank you to someone in the armed services for their protection of you?

I also think that it is the problem with many Christians. Because salvation is a free gift, many of us are quick to treat it as something we can take for granted. We live day to day as if that freedom holds little value and live many times as if nothing was paid.

I have been listening to this song a lot this week by cherryholmes. If you have time, take a listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvEwzLdyCp4

On this July 4^th, do not take your freedom for granted. Thank every solider you come in contact with and thank God daily for your freedom from sin. Until we are truly thankful for our freedom I am afraid we will continue to take it for granted.

Happy 4th of July

-chris

Thought

I know it has been a while and I promised every week would be the frequency of my ramblings. My father passed away 3 weeks ago. Don't worry this post is not going to get sappy. I just am telling you that so you know that i have been super busy and this has slipped from me. So today I post a simple thought:

The Amazon Rainforest grows with incredible speed because the land stays saturated with water...we as Christians grow slower than the process of thawing a turkey at thanksgiving. Why? because we are not saturated with the Word of God. John MacArthur suggest that you take a book of the Bible like 1 John and read all 5 chapters for 30 days. He argues that in 30 days you will be saturated with the word of God. Then you might experience Psalm 1 that talks about being established like a tree by rivers of water.

deitsch

3 to 6 actually means ½ in

I read a twitter post yesterday “I would like to know where all weathermen in VA got their degrees from bc they should get a refund for their tuition. @djlamonte.” When I woke up yesterday morning,  the radio, which was on the country station so you know it had to be right, claimed that Lynchburg could receive up to 8 inches of snow and when I went to bed last night around 11:45pm maybe there was a half of inch. And while my heart was disappointed because it was set on working from home in front of the television today, this inability for weather forecasters to accurately predict the snow fall got my mind thinking about our spiritual lives.

How many times have I sat in a service moved by music or speaking and forecasted to God that my life was going to look a different way or declare some new action I was going to master in my life only to return to that same seat the next week, cause I am Baptist,  with little to no new spiritual accumulation into my life.  I start a new year with intentions of reading the whole Bible this year or reading so many times a day and by February I am a month behind. I have become a VA weather forecaster!

So how do I keep from being hypocritical? I do stop inaccurately predicting what my spiritual life is going to look like and start actually growing in my relationship with God?

The same way you eat an elephant…one bite at a time. See the truth is so many of us want our spiritual growth to be like a blizzard. We want it to snow and within 3 hours there be a 1 ½ feet of snow and by the time we wake up in the morning the accumulation has peaked at 3 feet. I know that every time the air turns white, the little kid inside of me wants there to be snow up to my windows and every time I sit in a service and feel the prodding of the Lord I want to wake up the next day a super Christian.

While snow fall happens that way sometimes, hardly ever does spiritual growth look like that. It takes small steps and little decisions. But a ½ inch of snow a day adds up over a month and a small step of obedience and pursuit of God adds up as well. And in my opinion, ½ inch is better than nothing at all.

So here is a little saying I have started using:

If you are doing nothing, do something

If you are doing something, do more

If you are doing more, reach your goal

If you reach your goal, ask God to give you a new one!

-deitsch

New Year, New Thing

Online Blogging is not really my thing. I don't read many blogs can count on two fingers the number of times I have written anything that has resembled a blog. (i know not really the way to start the first blog and get people to want to read your blog)

As I thought about this year and the ways the Lord would want to grow me, writing a weekly blog was one of those areas. So, today I started a blog and i intend to write something, small or large, each week. I can't promise ti will be good and I don't know whether it will be funny or serious but I can promise you it will be from the heart.

- deitsch