Category: Freedom

  • Escaping the Prison Industrial Mindset

    Escaping the Prison Industrial Mindset

    Tonight I realized that I feel safer in cars that look like I can afford them. That is a sad awareness that I need to work on more deeply. How I realized this was that I had to rent a car. I had a coupon that enabled me to get a compact for the same…

  • Who Is Qualified for True Love?

    Who Is Qualified for True Love?

    When I first decided that I was going to be a Christian, I knew that the endgame for me was being able to live the love of Christ expressed in the Bible. How I knew that I would have arrived was if I could–with a genuine heart–say the words, “Forgive them for they know not…

  • Be Still And Know: Who Is the Free One?

    What is freedom? It’s one of those words that is used frequently, but I suspect many of us have no idea what it really means. I have come to the conclusion that when most people use the word, it is a way of saying, “I want to be able to do whatever I want to…

  • Do Not Resist Evil?

    Do Not Resist Evil?

    “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak…

  • Do Your Names and Labels Define You?

    How do you relate to the labels that have been assigned to you or that you have assumed?  Are they prisons that bind you or do they demonstrate choices that you have made and relationships that you are a part of? Do you define the labels or do the labels define you? Here is a…

  • Lead Me Down the Path

    Who in life knows what is to come? Even when walking a path blazed by others who have come before you, there you might find unexpected obstacles. Surrounded on every side, though you remain on the path, the surrounding forest can be a hiding place for would be attacker or a temptation to explore. Who…

  • Who Does Jesus Belong To?

    John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.…

  • Where Are You?

    One of the words that freaks out many of my fellow liberal Christians and people abused by religion or even the people who qualify themselves as “spiritual but not religious” more than anything is “REPENT!!!” Sometimes I imagine myself saying it in a sermon and seeing people’s eyes bug out.  They might say, “Oh crap!…

  • Coming Out of the Dark…

    Somewhere in time there is a part of me that I visit frequently.  He is in a dark room and he feels alone.  He is living a lie.  He believes that he is separate from God and from everything else in life–the consummate individual.  Even though he knows that he can get up and walk…

  • Pour Yourself Out (ANTS Commencement Address 2013)

    In Joel 2, there is a prophecy that there will be a time when God would pour out God’s own Spirit on all flesh.  And it says that when that day comes: “And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall…