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to providing personal freedom so others can breathe free and enjoy an ocean of endless possibilities, we're not nearly so cooperative. Isn't it strange? Most seem to prefer restricting and resisting someone's getting to freedom rather than helping that person along. Nations are willing to set aside vast ideological differences and cooperate in a joint effort to do whatever is necessary to help the natural world breathe free, but when it comes to the Christian community's assisting one of its own to find true freedom, well, that's another story. Cruel as it may sound, there are grace killers throughout this world, who are plugging up breathing holes and trapping people under the ice pack of their manipulations and rigid controls. What is so unbelievably tragic is they continue doing so, even if it cripples or kills the spirit of a fellow human being. We'll free the whales, but not one another. With all this talk about grace and liberty, perhaps it's time for me to clarify something. Some may be asking: Doesn't liberty have its limits? Shouldn't folks restrain their freedom and occasionally hold themselves in check? Yes, without question. Grace can be - and sometimes is - abused. By that I mean exercising one's liberty without wisdom...having no concern over whether it offends wounds another believer. But I must hasten to add that I believe such restraint is an individual matter. It is not to be legislated, not something to be forced on someone else. Limitations are appropriate and necessary, but I fail to find in Scripture any place where one is to require such restraint from another. To do so is legalism. It plugs up breathing holes. It Kills grace. The best restraint is self-restraint that comes from the inner prompting of the Holy Spirit through the person and presence of Jesus Christ in each individual life. It's been my observation over the last thirty years that the vast majority of believers need to be freed, not restrained. Our job is to free people; God's job is to restrain them. God is doing His job much better than we are doing ours. 2. Desiring God - Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by: John Piper. An excerpt from page 33: "If God were not infinitely devoted to the preservation, display, and enjoyment of his own glory, we could have no hope of finding happiness in him. But if he does in fact employ all his sovereign power and infinite wisdom to maximize the enjoyment of his own glory, then we have a foundation on which to stand and rejoice." And: "The ultimate ground of Christian Hedonism is the fact that God is uppermost in his own affections: The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever." 3. Commentary on the Book of Romans by: Martin Luther. 4. The Great Divorce by: C.S. Lewis 5. They Found the Secret by: V. Raymond Edman. This book is especially meaningful to me because it outlines the lives of 20 great leaders in the church of the past 200 years and how they discovered the "abiding life," the exchanged life," or the "vine life" that Jesus talks about in the beginning of John chapter 15. An excerpt from the experience of Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China inland mission, showing the release he felt when he discovered this way to live (page 6): "How does the branch bear fruit? Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air; not by vain struggles for those vivifying influences which give beauty to the blossom, and verdure to the leaf: it simply abides in the vine, in silent and undisturbed union, and blossoms and fruit appear as of spontaneous growth. How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No: there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace. Christians in whom these dispositions are once firmly fixed go on calmly as the infant borne in the arms of its mother.  6. The Wonderful Spirit-Filled Life by: Charles Stanley. An excerpt from page 87-89: "To walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Holy Spirit. We are to take our cues from Him. By sending the Holy Spirit to indwell us, God provided each of us with a personal guide, a moral compass, Someone to show us the way. Paul did not say we are directed by the Holy Spirit. That would have presented an inaccurate picture altogether. The Holy Spirit is not out there somewhere directing us like a police officer directs traffic. We are not to envision Him as a controller in a tower telling jets where to land. These examples do not take into consideration the personal aspect of being led by the Spirit. Have you ever been in an unfamiliar building and stopped someone to ask for directions? Have you noticed how comforting it is when the person says, "follow me, and I'll show you where you need to go?" There is all the difference in the world between that and someone saying, "ok, what you do is, take these stairs to the third floor, turn left at the second door, go down the hall to the water fountain . . ." That is the difference between being led and being directed. The Holy Spirit is a leader. He is our guide. He is always with us. He is constantly tuned in to both our emotional state and our surrounding circumstances. He is always sensitive to both. He leads at the perfect pace. He always takes our weaknesses and strengths into consideration. Being led by someone assumes a continuing relationship. It implies fellowship. It brings to mind cooperation, sensitivity, and common goals. When someone is following another, there must be trust, even to the point of dependency. All of these describe the believer's relationship with the Holy Spirit as the person allows Him to be the guide. To walk by the Spirit is to live with moment - by - moment dependency on and sensitivity to the initial promptings of the Holy Spirit." 7. The Holiness of God by: R.C. Sproul. 8. All of Grace by: Charles Spurgeon. 9. Sovereignty of God by: A.W. Pink 10. Jesus In Blue Jeans by: Laurie Beth Jones. An excerpt from pages 32-33 titled: He did not have a stiff neck (referring to Jesus). "A friend and I were  recently discussing the scripture where Jesus said the only unforgivable sin was to sin against the Holy Spirit. As we speculated about what kind of sin that would be, she remarked, "I think it means having a stiff neck." I laughed until she knowingly cited references from the scriptures about God's anger against individuals who were stubborn and rebellious. "The prophets always called them stiff-necked people," she asserted. It made me think about "stiff-neckedness," and I concluded, among other things, that stiff-necked people wouldn't turn their heads to accept or recognize forgiveness when it was offered to them. Jesus did not have a stiff neck. He was able and willing to look in any direction. If God said, "Pay attention to this woman about to be legally stoned to death," Jesus turned his head toward the problem. If God said, "Now let's address the issues of hypocrisy in religion," Jesus turned his head toward the scribes and the Pharisees. If any group could be considered stiff-necked, it had to be these men, who felt they knew all the answers. They needed only their own opinions to tell them that they were "right." |
