The
travesty of sin is that it looks good for a time, but the result and effect of
it can bring upon a person is total ruin.
Almost everyone has heard that “the wages of sin is death..” but the meaning of those words has eternal
consequences by the choices we make.
God has given us “free-will,” and
it has made our lives complicated; we can either choose to respond to the love
of God or choose to rebel and follow the way of the world, which is sin.
This complication I spoke of is that we are not pre-programmed robots who follow a
programmatic script to do what we are meant to do, we are autonomous with
independent thought and reason. We can choose our destiny, which can be a
blessing or a cursing, that choice is ours.
“This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t
tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With
our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very
men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same
mouth!”
James 3:7-10 The Message (MSG)
Free-will offers us much more than a choice of what to choose between sin or rebellion, It also provides us with the ability to connect with others and to either speak encouragement and blessing or to speak that which tears down and disconnects us from our community.
God doesn’t want us to be parrots, and
give lip-service with canned words or old concepts which come from the bible; He
has so much more for us than that.
God wants us to be creative as He is
creative, speak from our daily relational experience with Him, this way it is like we
are taking freshly baked bread and feeding ourselves as well as feeding others with
this fresh bread.
“Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life. The person who
aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever. I have told you this
explicitly because even though you have seen me in action, you don’t really
believe me. Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me.
And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. I came down from
heaven not to follow my own whim but to accomplish the will of the One who sent
me.”
John 6:35-38 The Message (MSG)
Creatively speaking, it is the love of God for you and me
that gets communicated; it is not just about biblical teaching. If it were
about teaching alone, then we would all be scholars and theologians,
and we would focus on facts and details rather than the love of God expressed
through Jesus. We are presented with daily opportunities to love others and to
give them this bread we have been given.
When Jesus fed the five thousand, it
is a story that shows us a way that Jesus can be miraculously shared and
increased with others we encounter in exponential ways.
“I’m telling you the most solemn and sober truth now:
Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your
ancestors ate the manna bread in the desert and died. But now here is bread
that truly comes down out of heaven. Anyone eating this bread will not die,
ever. I am the bread—living Bread!—who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats
this bread will live—and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that
it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self.”
John 6:47-51 The
Message (MSG)
We have the choice to be agents of creative change, or
not.
Jesus wants to express His kingdom through us in ways
that not only free us but free others to live a life in the richness of God’s
mercy. We can take up the left-over pieces of the living-bread we have and still give it
out to others who need fresh bread of Jesus. This living bread is a creative word of Jesus
that fills the heart with a longing for more.
It would have been exciting to be at the place where Jesus
and His disciples fed the five-thousand and have heard the words that He spoke,
which stirred the crowds.
Free-Will is a real thing, which at its core, is a good
thing. It gives us the autonomy to make our own decisions and allows us to
stand on our own two feet before the Lord. We can reflect the Lord in ways that
represent His true nature and His presence to others so that all can see the
goodness of God coming from our lives.
Or, we can use free-will to rebel and
follow the world in its ways, which does not know the life in Christ and
follows the path of deconstruction.
Our enemy uses every tactic to convince us that
deconstruction is not bad, when, in fact, only leads us to complete and utter
destruction and ruin in the end.
God’s grace is always available to us to give us mercy if
we come to Him and receive His forgiveness like taking a fresh piece of
living-bread, which is receiving more of Jesus into our lives.
Be Blessed;
Stephen Barnett
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