Release Date Announced!

Alright so here begins Lesson 1 or shall we say "Day 1" of my "not-so vacation journey!" I actually learned this all last week and began lesson 2 today BUT my friends, it is not fair for me to just blurt out what I learn immediately without meditating on it first and making it mine. So, having done that, you will actually always be a lesson behind where I am really at but to be fair to myself I must think it thru to apply it and then share what I'm thinking it all means. I want to remind you that THIS IS NOT MY STUDY. Any "educational" material is taken from Beth Moore in "Breaking Free." Only the wisecracks and my opinion about her material is mine. :-) K, if she ever decides to look into my humble blog, I want to make sure I'm not plagiarizing or stealing her hard work and credit.

(The text is from Isaiah 9:2-9, Judges 6:1-27, Judges 7:1-18)

From this lesson titled "Goals for Breaking Free" I learned that ONLY where the Spirit of the Lord is--will there be Freedom. Rephrasing that in my own terms would be that if the Spirit of the Lord is not with me or if I am outside of it, I will not experience true freedom. I also learned the God wants victory to be the rule and not the exception. This to me means that he wants defeat to be the exception and for me to be able to experience Victory after Victory after Victory in every challenge that I face. It is the enemy (devil) who wants me defeated so that I do not fulfill God's purposes; yet God, Himself, allows the devil to test me. Why would a good, loving God allow this?

I have learned that God allows me to be "oppressed" (held back, in captivity, to burden with cruel or unjust impositions or restraints) for four important reasons.
1) to test us-although we may not be ready to pass a test, He gives us "pop quizzes" to show us our unpreparedness to pass without Him and the tools He provided for us.
2) as chastisement for rebellion-when I do not walk in obedience to Him, He keeps me wandering about.
3) for lack of submitting to His authority--kind of like a parent in a way. By this I mean, when I know He is telling me to do something or not to do something and I hit the "ignore" button. Like when your kids tune into what they want to hear you say instead of what you are actually telling them! or as I refer to my kids, it is called "selective listening"--you select what you wanted to hear and PRETENDED not to hear the rest.
4) Witness warfare--which I honestly don't know exactly what that means so now I'll have to look into that more deeply and probably end up w/a whole "nother" blog post about it! YIKES!

I said earlier, why would a good, loving God allow this and I think to myself, I understand most of those reasons but how is that good? Well, He is good and he shows us His goodness and His mercy if we look deeper into how He prepared us and what tools did He provide for us to achieve the victory. At any time during my recent struggles, I knew the answers were: turn to God in prayer, read His Word and reach out to another Christian while fellowshipping or to claim His Promises. Instead, I "hit ignore." I chose none of the above. In hindsight, I murmured and complained about the church and what God wasn't doing for me. He had, ALL ALONG, given me the tools to "fix" my situation but I refused to pick them up and use them. I wanted different tools.


Are you following me on this? Basically, I had a shattered window. I foolishly tried to put the pieces back together again with a hammer, only breaking the glass more! We all know, that duct tape can fix anything so I should have picked that up to restore the window, yet I smashed it to smithereens with the wrong tool--the hammer. So, in essence, He stocks "our tool boxes" (our faith-o-meters) with the proper tools but WE are responsible for choosing the proper tools (Bible reading, prayer, claiming the Promises, etc.). My God, is so precise. He doesn't make ANY mistakes. He is all-knowing, all-powerful and even gave us a "handbook" (Bible) with ALL the answers to EVERY problem. So, to answer the question, that I posed--He is a good, loving God who has already supplied us for what we needed all along to stop the struggles/wandering but we chose to think we knew better than He and tried to fix it our way-or to not fix it at all.

His Word, spells out my rights and my heritage. His Word tells me, as an heir to His throne, (and I am His Princess for I have accepted Him to be my King (Lord & Saviour), I have an inheritance. I must learn what that is and know it! This gets me! I am the "queen of rules!" I love rules and the legal law--always have--but ONLY because I love to think outside the box and find the loopholes in them! They are a structure put in place for me to know where my boundaries begin and cease. They allow me to "constructively think" about the limitations and what "they don't say!" How can I be an "expert" on God, if I don't even know my own rights?! I would never walk into a courtroom without knowing what my rights were--how in the world can I fight these "earthly or spiritual" battles, If I don't know what my rights are either??? (Umm, I've got some serious studying to do cuz this sounds fun to me!)

Continuing on, I think of being held captive and how long can we be kept wandering or locked up? Who is in control of our "release date?" or our freedom? and how is one to "break free?" If we compare this to a jail sentence then we know that "until our time is served" or we are released on "good behavior". I believe, that God allows us to be "held captive" until we are ready to be free and we have learned what He has taught us in the barrenness. We, in fact, (as B. Moore states) hold the very keys necessary for our release!!!!

I say this to myself now after Lesson 1: "Hey, you, you've got the keys to be free, how long do you want to stay "locked up?" Then I say to myself: "Duh, I've had the keys all along and wasn't wise enough to use them!" Next time, I should try the set He supplied me with and stop trying to make my own!"