Imagine picking a cluster of grapes so big it takes two men to carry it. The Israelites didn’t have to imagine it. They carried it! And God was going to give them all this and more. All they had to do was have faith in God Almighty to give them victory as they fought a few battles! Would they take the risk and enter the land despite the obstacles and fighting?
Nope. After doing a risk-benefit ratio study, they found the risks far outweighed the benefits. Why? One of the reasons was their view of God was way too small. Remember they came from Egypt where among other things people worshiped the gnat, the dung beetle, and the cow. These were the images in their heads when they thought of God. In fact, they made a cow out of gold and called it the LORD.
In Psalm 8:1 the LORD is described as being bigger than all creation, let alone a cow! His glory is above the heavens. He’s humungous! The risks were weighed against the idea that their God couldn’t handle the fighting. They were thinking God was a bug who would get squashed, rather than the maker of the universe who did the squashing.
How big is Jesus to you? Is your drug of choice bigger than Jesus, like a cow that is eaten for meat? Or, is He bigger than the universe, let alone your drug of choice? There are spiritual battles to be fought on your journey to be more like Jesus. These battles are winnable because we serve and love a humungous God!
Risk taking is easy when you know who your God is and what He can do. Keep fighting by using the FREEdom Process to filter out the garbage thoughts that lead you to drug of choice and focus on your humungous God. Taking steps of faith, risks, will transform your life to the point that your God will not only give you hope to continually go forward, but can also use you to give new hope to those around you.

Set “Free” Nowww

Butterflies are so beautiful to watch flying, especially ones that are so colorful. But what if they wanted to stay a caterpillar?
Look at all the wonderful things it would have missed. A butterfly gets to experience flight. It gets to see life from another perspective – above it all. It gets protected from animals that can eat it as it flies away. All these experiences come about because it was willing to change.
How many of us fear change? Moses did in Exodus 4:13. He saw a bush speak and burn while not being consumed. He saw a pole turn into a snake and back into a pole again. And yet, he didn’t want to trust God to send him back to Egypt to experience even cooler stuff. He got comfortable with his lifestyle – leading the sheep in the desert. Life was good. How could it get better, could it? God showed Moses how life could get better, but change meant getting out of his comfort zone. He didn’t want to do it at the start, but eventually did.
God wants to show us Who He is and what He can do. It necessitates that we allow Him to change us. Change means getting past we what we know to what we don’t know. It means letting Jesus rid us of certain behaviors, our drugs of choice, He knows are not good for us. He knows we’re afraid to let go, but asks us to trust Him.
Each day we can either choose our drugs of choice knowing how they’ll initially make us feel or we can choose to listen to and do what Jesus says to do believing He can make us feel great in the long run. We can soar over our daily challenges. We don’t need to fear change, but can embrace it as Jesus makes our lives better.

Set Fre“E” Nowww

As I’ve been reading Psalms, the word “grace” keeps popping up. Then I remembered John 1:17, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Yet I find “grace” all over the Tenach (Old Testament). It isn’t like God starting being a God of grace with Jesus. No, God has always been a God of grace.
I asked a Jewish believer friend mine why I find the word “grace” in my Jewish translation of the Bible, but find the words “mercy”, “love” and “loving kindness” in other translations. For instance in Psalm 136:1, the translators use the word “love”, but the Jewish translators use “grace”. His answer to me was that any word other than “grace” is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament.
My fellow sojourners, our God has always been and always will be a God of grace! Yes the Law points us toward holiness. Yes, it points out our imperfections, drugs of choice. This should only drive us to the One who can make us holy, the God of grace who overcame our imperfections to give us a hand up! Yes the Bible teaches that we’re to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. In reaching this goal, however, we must rely upon God’s grace to get there.
God’s grace is telling us to relax on our journey to be more like Jesus! We don’t need to kick or beat ourselves up every time we blow it. This only drives us toward our drugs of choice. Get rid of your “beat me stick” and take hold of Jesus’ hand of grace to get up and get going again. I like what one author said, “Failure only counts if it’s your last attempt.” God’s grace keeps giving us another attempt at walking with and being like Him.

Set Free No“W”ww

I’ve heard people say if they could simply know the future, they’d be great. I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, I don’t believe we can handle knowing the future. We’d stress out as not everything that happens to us is good! Because we live in a fallen world, life happens and sometimes it’s not pretty.
But we can trust the one who knows the future and relax. The Word says that everything coming our way is Father filtered and is something we can successfully navigate through with the Spirit’s power (1 Cor. 10:13). When David saw the giant Goliath standing in front of him he didn’t know if he would win, but he believed he could because he knew his God (1 Sam. 17:37). He knew from the past that his God helped him defeat other “giants” and could do so again. This peace of mind allowed him to run, not shrink, into battle.
How well you know Jesus is crucial. What you know He can do from past experience, brings peace of mind, even though you don’t know what will happen today, let alone the future. The mere fact that you have seen Jesus defeat your “giants” in the past will give you the confidence, the faith, to keep listening to Jesus while facing your giants of today. A healthy faith knows who their God is from the Word and from seeing that God come through in their experience. Run toward the battle, not away when the giants come! Jesus is there to give you victory.

S“E”t Free Nowww

What we think about is worth far more than a penny. What we think about can either bring us into bondage or into freedom. It all depends upon the thoughts we allow to run around in our heads (Rom. 12:2).
Let me ask you, right now, are your thoughts running with the wild horses, taking you every where they want you to go? Or, are they running with the tamed horses, going where you want them to go? Notice the phrase on the penny, “In God We Trust”. Do your daily thoughts reflect your trust in Jesus or yourself? Are they anxious thoughts or peaceful thoughts? Are they thoughts of truth fed by the Word of God or lies fed by the enemy? Be careful what you let roll around in your head as you will become what you think about.
The next time see a penny on the street, ask yourself, “Is what I’m thinking about based upon the truth of God’s Word or something that will take me where I don’t really want to go?” You’ve been given the mind of Christ as God’s child (1 Cor. 2:26), which means you can think Jesus’ thoughts that bring victory over your daily struggles. Jesus came to set the captives, you and me, free and it starts with what we think about throughout our day.
“S”et Free Nowww