We’d love to see you this week at America’s Keswick. Dr. Roger Willmore is speaking Sunday night through Thursday night, and Dr. Dino Perdrone is speaking Monday – Thursday morning. You can also watch live at: www.americaskeswick.org. We’d love to see you. Check out our website or call 800-453-7942 for more information.

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me…Grace?

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.”  Romans 14:13-14 (ESV)

I am sure there is a good majority of you who remember hearing about a guy named Patrick Henry who said “Give me liberty or give me death”. It’s a pretty cool statement to make isn’t it? It says I would rather die than live my life as a slave, doesn’t it? And as remarkable as the philosophy is behind such a bold statement we live in a society that can, at times, not realize that it is a slave to one thing or another. For those in Secularland, slavery goes very much unnoticed but in Christendom the argument about slavery has a loud whisper amongst us, doesn’t it? I am speaking of the territory called “Christian Liberty”.

It’s that territory where verse’s like “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.” (1 Corinthians 10:23) get tossed aside because we found this, ^“Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4), as a justification factor for our skewed view on “Christian Liberty”. It has if we have decided that the Apostle Paul is confused, in and of himself, and some 2000 years later he needs our help to re-iron out the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. May it NOT be so!! “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

On a nice Saturday afternoon my wife, Kathy, and I had been cleaning out a storage building we have on our property. After plowing through all our kids’ stuff we found ours and some of the stuff we found deserved to thrown out but there was one box that I ignored because I thought it belonged to one of my two teenagers…it belonged to me. In this box was some knick-knacks that I use to keep on my desk when I had an office job but there a manila envelope with a few surprises. One was my father’s obit from when he passed back in December of 2008 along with all the sympathy cards I received the other was a manuscript for a book of poetry I had been working on…back when I was addicted to methamphetamine in the mid 80’s.

Nothing good was in that writing I assure you but in it I found out something I had been a slave to and it wasn’t so much the drug as it was my justification to keep on consuming the drug. I had built a character around the whole idea and named him “Crankenstein” (monster, cuddly monster). Nothing good I assure you was in him and by the grace of God he died when I left him at the foot of The Cross. But he made me think about those who think it is okay to just skim the surface of those things, any of those things that not just can BUT WILL cause us or another to stumble. It boggles my mind when I hear about Christians who defend their right to enjoy those things that subtly lure us into slavery.

Isn’t it better to understand what the gift of God is than it is to keep on paying for the wages of sin? I hope your answer is yes and you are one who understands that freedom in Christ Jesus comes by grace and is not a liberty for you to misuse. But for the grace of God, go I as well my dear brothers (and sisters). Just because I have written this doesn’t make me immune to it myself…oh, no, no, no. I need to be careful all the more, after all, I would rather be a trophy of God’s grace then a poster child of constant rehabilitation. Who wants to be a slave to that? Amen? – Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and is a weekly Freedom Fighter blogger

Daily Bible Reading: Psalm 140-145

Think About This:“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”—Patrick Henry

This Week’s Verse to Memorize: Oh, what joy for those who disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight! Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty! Psalm 32:1-2