Open your eyes

Do me a favor. As you read this, close one eye. Better yet, take your hand and cover that eye up so you won’t forget and actually peek. Now before reading further, look around the room. What do you notice? Can you see anything in your peripheral vision? Do you have to turn your head farther to see any certain directions? Now, keep reading with your one working eye.

Let’s change gears and talk about that thing holding you back. Picture it in your mind. Is it finances? Is it health? Is it problems with your job? What if you get so used to a problem, you forget it’s even there? Let me give you an example. I work out several times a week. One day, I noticed that I couldn’t quite bend my ankle the same way. It seemed like I just couldn’t stretch it as far as the other ankle. I figured I may have injured it slightly, and I moved on with my workout. A day turned into a week, which turned into a month. Life got busy, I kept working out, and suddenly, that ankle not bending was just a normal part of me. I didn’t even think about it anymore. It was just my ankle. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t prevent me from going to the grocery store, raising my family, or completing workouts. I still had a successful career, cute kids, and fun friends. My ankle was just my ankle.

So time passed. In fact, a whole year passed. Then, I injured my shoulder. It hurt badly enough that I went to my first ever visit to a chiropractor. He evaluated my shoulder, my back, and then *CRACK* my ankles. The next day, I went into the same stretch that I always do, and my ankle stretched itself. I was in shock. Because really, I had forgotten that my ankles were different. Suddenly, I had a new freedom of movement that I didn’t even know that I was missing.

The reality is that without my shoulder injury, I could have spent the rest of my life with that stiff ankle. But once I had that taste of freedom? There was nothing sweeter. I felt like I could suddenly run faster, and lift heavier.

So, what’s holding you back? What are you just accepting because you are used to it? Do you always have a comma in your credit card balance instead of in your checking account? Do you just accept that as a fact of life? God promises you freedom. To me, freedom means a choice. I have a choice in my health. I have a choice in my finances. I have a choice in my emotions and my reactions.

So that means I can choose to be blind to what’s happening to me. Or I can choose to be self-aware and take a step towards my freedom.

In the book of James (1:23-24) he writes, “For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.”

Have you forgotten what you look like? Have you accepted something that you shouldn’t have? Now, take your hand off of your eye and look around. Did it take a second for your eyesight to adjust? Did you forget that you had your eye closed? Or, was it awkward enough that you were aware of it the whole time? Do you suddenly feel the room is brighter, that you can see more than ever before?

Today, I want you to take your blinders off. Look at the world around you. Figure out what's holding you back. Choose freedom.

God's Will

What is God’s will? What does He want from us? We cannot see God. He created the universe. What does he want with us on an individual level? With such a big world out there, how do we even matter in the grand scheme of things? How can we please this great God? We can find the answer by looking at Jesus’ sacrifice and his last commandment.

Galatians 5:5 AMP states, “For we, [not relying on the Law but] through the [Holy] Spirit’s [help], by faith anticipate and wait for the blessing and good for which our righteousness and right standing with God [our conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action causes us] to hope.”

Let’s break this verse down.

First, it states, ‘not relying on the Law,’ so, what’s the Law mean? Basically, in the Old Testament there was a covenant. A list of rules that were created for man to follow. Perhaps you remember the Ten Commandments? Stone tablets, doom and lightening, very scary. So, we had these Laws and we had to follow them. If we stepped out of line, God would smite us down, send locusts, all that business. So, ‘not relying on the law’ means our righteousness- right standing with God- is not defined by a set of rules.

Instead, it’s based on the Holy Spirit, which helpfully is the next part of the verse, “through the [Holy] Spirit’s [help]. Help implies we can’t do this on our own. We can’t take our salvation by force. We can’t follow a set of Laws to claim a seat in Heaven. We can’t sit in the church and say all the right words to get to Heaven. Instead, we need help from the Holy Spirit.

The next section shows us how to get help from the Holy Spirit. ‘By faith anticipate and wait for the blessing and good for which our righteousness and right standing with God [our conformity to His will in purpose, thought, and action causes us] to hope.

It takes faith to come in right standing with God. By waiting, conforming, and praying, we get home from our circumstance. So, what is God’s will? When Jesus came along, he abolished the old Law with his sacrifice. In John 13:34-35 Jesus stated God’s will for our lives.

‘I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep showing love among yourselves.]

If we continue to the very next verse in Galatians 5:6 we see, ‘For [if we are] in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love.’

Circumcision and uncircumcision can be described as rules. In the old covenant based on rules, one of the rules of being a follower of God was to have a circumcision done at 8 days old. In the new covenant, God’s will was to remove the rules that men operated under. Jesus purchased our freedom so we could live a life of freedom without rules. Instead, we base our lives by living through God’s will, to love one another.

So how do we show our love? We can find that defined as well.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]. It does not rejoice in unjustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances and it endures everything [without weakening].

Love bares up anything and everything that comes. Not suffering, not anxiety, not gossip or depression. God’s will on our lives is to use love to bare up anything and everything that comes. I think I’ve got some work to do.