daily java

This article was written for the jail ministry magazine, Real Freedom, at Cooper County Jail in Boonville, MO.

Daily Java:

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:8-9)

Nobody likes to be wrong. Everybody likes to be right. And sometimes you can make somebody really made if you tell him he is wrong.

But sooner or later, everybody is wrong. The key is knowing it and admitting it.

You have done everything you could to do what you thought was right and now here you are in a jail cell wearing black and white stripes. Obviously, something has gone wrong with your life.

Jesus says that he had that which will repair your life, make it new and let you start over again. And not only can you start over again, you can start over again every day. You don’t just get a second chance – you get a continual second chance.

If we let him into our hearts, if we accept his grace, if we confess to him that we have sinned and call on his name, he will make us perfect. Sure, we will still be in jail, but we can know now that in the long run what we have done wrong will not count against us. At least not in his mind.

With him in our lives and in our hearts, we will be perfect, sinless. Again, we still have things we are dealing with, but when God looks at us, he doesn’t see the stupid idiot we can be. He sees one of his children. And he calls us to be better. But he also will help us be better. We don’t have to struggle by ourselves.

In fact, struggling by yourself will get you where you are right now. Giving your heart to God will get you into his presence.

Confessing that he is Lord and that you have sinned, asking him to come into your heart – this is what will save. And it is what will make you children of God by faith in Christ Jesus and children of his love.

daily java

Daily Java: 
After Jesus had risen from the dead and ca me back to talk to his disciples, he was talking to Peter.  Peter was a good man who had done a stupid and cowardly thing: 

He had denied Jesus to a group of people.  Because of this he felt like Jesus would never love him again.

Jesus told him, however, that Peter was going to live a long life in service to Jesus.  The only thing was that at the end of his life, the great apostle Peter was going to become a prisoner because he was a Christian.

"Jesus  said,' I tell you the truth, when you were younger you  dressed yourself and  went where you wanted;  but when you are old you will  stretch out  your hands,  and someone else  will  dress  you and lead you where you do not want to go.'  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of  death by which  Peter would glorify God.

Then he said to him, 'Follow me!'  (John 21:18-19)

It was amazing how many people became prisoners for Jesus and were eventually executed.  Church history says Peter was crucified upside down.

Being a prisoner is not necessarily bad.  The apostle Paul, who wrote most of the Bible was a prisoner for a lot of his ministry.

The thing was, though, that he didn't do anything wrong.  But he used his prison experience to do great things.

Some of the best prison ministers today were inmates themselves and found Jesus in jail or prison.  Which shows that good can come from bad experiences. They obviously did something right.

You can be a good man or woman and be in jail.  The key is to give yourself to Jesus and let him change you.

After all, even in the middle of the night in one of the worst places you have ever been, he still loves you and will set you free.

daily java

Daily Java:

Soon afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples. (Luke 8:1-3)

There was an old man in my church a few years ago. He got to talking one day and told of how at the age of 17 he ran around on the carrier deck pulling bodies off as the Japanese strafed Pearl Harbor. Here this old man had participated in one of the watershed events of American history.

Another old man had walked across Europe following Patton in World War 2.

You are talking to someone at church, a rather sweet woman, and you realize that before she came to Jesus, she used to live a life of such depravity. Another had been in prison for murder. Another had been a drug pusher and addict and a consequent thief. Another person had almost starved in World War 2 and had eaten tulip bulbs and tried to bake grass into bread. Another had lived on the streets. Another …

There is a scene in a movie with Robert Mitchum as a preacher. He shoots something and the woman (Inger Stevens) says, You sure shoot good for a preacher. His answer I have always loved: Every preacher was something else before he was a preacher.

Every Christian was something else before they were a Christian. When you see people in the context of church, or after they get old or in their homes, it is hard to imagine what all they went through to get to where they are now. They were not always the nice person you see. Some of them came through immense adversity to get to where they are. What you see is the finished product, not the beginning.

The people with Jesus were no exception. The women who went with him were varied. They probably cooked and cleaned for the men (that was a strong part of their culture) and also helped Jesus minister to women who came up needing help.

One was a wealthy woman, Joanna. Others had a fair amount of money and helped Jesus and the apostles just in living expenses.

But there was also Mary Magdalene. Traditionally, she was a prostitute, but the Bible never says that. What it says, however, was pretty horrible.

from whom he had cast out seven demons.

Here was a woman with a bad past. She had been possessed by seven demons. She had been at the beck and call of the devil. Every waking moment was spent being inhabited by demons. What a hell her life must have been.

Whatever she was and whatever she had done in this situation (some in the Bible were used by their owners, or pimps, to tell fortunes), she probably was miserable.

Then one day she is standing there and there is a young man in front of her. He looks at her and says to the demons, Be gone!. And for the first time in many years she felt such peace in her soul.

She would have gladly died for this young man. She began to follow him around and do whatever she could to help him. Because of him, she was free.

I always like to hear people’s stories, the accounts of their lives. And I always ask. Sitting around the dinner table, having coffee, whatever, I say: Tell me about yourself. Tell me your story.

And many of them do. Some do it in astonishment. Here was where I was and here is where I am. I was crazy and now I am sane. I was out of control and now I am in control. I was lost and now I am found. I was hated and now I am loved. I was trash and now I am treasure.

It is only in Jesus that this can happen. And it does daily. Mary is not the exception. She is the rule.

Jesus frees. And people rejoice.

daily java

Daily Java:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
      for the Lord has anointed me
      to bring good news to the poor.
   He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted
      and to proclaim that captives will be released
      and prisoners will be freed.
 He has sent me to tell those who mourn
      that the time of the Lord’s favor has come,
      and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.
 To all who mourn in Israel,
      he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
   a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
      festive praise instead of despair. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

I was raised in a strict denomination. We had more rules than freedoms. Yet we talked about how we were free in Jesus.

On the one hand, we allowed ourselves to be bound hand and foot theologically, yet claimed we were free.

It was an anomaly, a contradiction, just in general a strange thing. It was like prisoners claiming to be free, people tied up claiming to be able to do what they wanted.

The problem was, Jesus did not come to give us rules. He came to give us freedom. and the freedom he came to give us is not just the freedom of the mind (as some who try to enslave the body say) but real freedom. He came to set us free.

And he cannot set us free by imposing more rules on us. You can call it freedom and sing about it all day long, but if you have a bunch of rules and regulations that tie you in knots, and all in Jesus’ name, you are not free. You have just exchanged bondages.

Jesus came to set us free, to bring good news to the poor, to give us comfort and release. He came to dry our tears and give us joy.

The tears we shed were the tears of frustration of not being able to do what we needed, the tears of failure in having wasted our lives, the tears of knowing that we could not do what we needed to do to be right.

He came to give us adequacy, the ability to stand before God anyway. We could not and now we can. We are blessed instead of mourning, we praise instead of despair.

And this is all because we are in Jesus and in his grace.

He came to set us free. Praise his name.

daily java

Daily Java:

For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”  (Romans 1:16-17)

You are sitting at a table of people that are beginning to deride Christianity. One of them is a person who hates to be told to do anything and he sees Christianity as nothing more than a list of rules and regulations. So off he goes.

He is a popular guy, so there is one more who does the same because he sees the popular guy doing it. Now there are two.

A third chimes in because it seems the whole table is going that way and he is the one that is afraid to take any contrary stance anyway. He isn’t going to buck the majority.

Pretty soon the entire table is ragging on Christianity. And now it comes down to you.

You haven’t mentioned anything or agreed with anybody so far. Someone says to you, well, what do you say? You’re not one of those Christians, are you?

What is your answer? It is easy to imagine the world coming to a stop to hear what you have to say. You can almost imagine a spotlight on you. It is a tense moment.

Everybody has expressed negative thoughts on Christianity. Now you can make it unanimous and everybody can be “happy.”

That is a very real problem. You have two choices to make. Well, maybe three. You could fake a heart attack and have to leave. But mainly there are two.

You can 1. Join the crowd and take the burden off your shoulders to be the sole apologist of Christianity in the room, or 2. you can say “I am one of those Christians.”

It depends on how strong you are. Kids have a problem there. Young people are terrified of looking outside the norm and will do pretty much whatever they need to do to fit in.

But older people sometimes get caught up in this, too.

I read an article in which a man went to a seminar at which the other attenders were ten women. They sat in a semi-circle. The woman giving the seminar was an old-fashioned school teacher. When it came time for the break, she said that there were donuts on the table and that everybody could go one at a time and get one. she started on the end opposite the man.

The first woman declined, not wanting to be the first one up there. The second declined since the first had too and she didn’t want to be the first. The third one went with the trend until all ten of the women had declined to go get donuts. They were all afraid of looking foolish in front of the others.

When she came to the man, he said, yes I think I will and got up and got the first donut of the morning. The women were almost shocked that someone had bucked the trend. After a moment or two, one of the women said, I think I will too. She did, sat down, another got up and soon all ten women had a donut.

It was the power of bucking a trend. Everybody is doing something and you are afraid to be different.

The apostle Paul said, in essence, no matter how many people are against Jesus, I am for him. No matter how many turn away, I will turn toward. No matter how many people are shamed, I will be proud of him and boast in him.

Contrary to what the first guy at the table said, Jesus did not come to tell us what we could and couldn’t do. He came to set us free. This “Good News” tells us how God makes us right in his sight. He came to make us right, not make us be right.

There is a lot of difference there, the difference between freedom and a new different kind of bondage. Jesus came to bring freedom. And all he really requires of us is faith.

The next person at the table is you. What do you say? Are you ashamed of him or will you boldly acknowledge him even though nobody else did?

daily java

Daily Java:

For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

Today is Independence Day. That is in case you are truly dense and didn’t realize it. If nothing else, you can tell both by the amount of barbeque food you ate for lunch and the sound of the war zone with all the fireworks outside.

But there is something in the celebration, or commemoration or whatever you call it of Independence Day. It is the joy of a nation of people who consider themselves free.

But are we free? As I read the news, I see a lot of problems in our country. I see a lot of ways in which we have given ourselves over to servitude without really realizing it.

We surrender our very modesty when we get on airplanes. We allow local bureaucrats to tell us where we can dig on our own property. Someone wrote the other day that the average American breaks three law every day without realizing it. That is because of the way the legal codes are so vaguely worded.

It seems that we are surrounded on all sides by people telling us what we can and cannot do, can and cannot eat, things that in the past were part of our inalienable rights, but now forbidden.

My son one day several years ago was talking about a non-smoking law that was being enacted. I said I didn’t like it. He said, but you don’t like cigarettes. My answer was, no I do not, but I like laws against things worse. I told him that every law, no matter how well-meaning, was one less freedom.

I tend to be a libertarian. I believe in less laws.

But there is one problem with it all. Real freedom is not in decrees or lack of laws.

There is more to freedom than libertarian views. There are those who are in prison that are more free than those who are outside prison. There are those in totalitarian societies that are more free than those in presumably free societies.

That is because there is more to freedom, real freedom, than the absence of personal laws.

Real freedom is knowing that in Jesus Christ you are free.

But what does that mean? It is easy for Christians to talk about freedom and all, because too many times it becomes vague generalities. We are free in Christ, they say, while all the time they enact far more stringent rules and regulations than Jesus ever would.

But freedom in Christ means we are free. Free from legalism, free from the effects of sin, free from fear – all these are the freedom that lies only in Jesus. It is more than the freedom of the body. It is the freedom of the heart and the soul.

Our freedom is not just the freedom to go to church, or just to sing and pray out loud. Our freedom is the freedom from rules.

Jesus never came to give us rules. The people of God already had rules. The law of sin and death was one of rules. And the main rule was that if you break any law, any law at all, you are sinful and you are guilty.

Jesus came to get rid of rules and to bring grace.

We are not saved by anything we can do. There is nothing we can do to be saved. We are saved by who we are. If we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus we are saved, no matter how hard it may be to do what is right.

And conversely, we are not condemned by what we have done, we are condemned by the fact of who we are not. If we are not in Jesus, we are not saved. No matter where we live, if we are not in Jesus, we are not free.

If you are living by rules and regulations of any kind, no matter how well-meaning or justified in the hearts and minds of Christians, you are not free.

Jesus said, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32).

And what is the truth. It is what James called the Royal Law (James 2:8), to love. Love God and love your neighbor. Do that and you are free.

Celebrate the day. I sure do. I like the fact that I live in this country. I served in this country’s army and have paid taxes and I pledge allegiance to the flag.

But real freedom can only come through the power and blood of Jesus, not mandates or declarations or constitutions. Not really.

Those are good in their sphere, but real freedom only comes only through Jesus.

set me free from my prison so i may praise your name

Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name.
Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me. (Psalm 142:7)

I just woke up from some unpleasant dreams. They were not necessarily bad, just no much fun.

In one – which I suppose was more goofy than anything else – I test drove the new Volkswagen beetle coupe. It was a two seater. It had a tiny VW body on the front with two small seats behind it. The driver and passenger sat out in the open so that they were exposed to the weather. For some reason, the fact that they were exposed to sleet (in the dream)  bothered me a lot. It was also so small I felt stupid driving it and people laughed.

In the second, I was at a gathering of some kind. Lots of things were going on, but I lay in my bed, which for some inexplicable reason was outside kind of in the middle of stuff. At one point I got up to do something and had no clothes. All of my clothes and everything else had been moved to another location that I didn’t know. I ran naked to an office to get some clothes. I found pants that had been cut off at the bottoms as they were a little too long, and a shirt.

For some reason, I was treated by a general contempt by many present.

In the course of all this, I met Tom Hanks and found out he was only 5’6”. He felt bad for that and I tried to comfort him by telling him he looked a lot bigger on screen.

When I woke, my hands hurt from being asleep and my sleep mask kind of hurt.

In general, a lousy way to wake up.

Last night, we watched Sixth Sense, a movie about a psychologist trapped here after having died. His main problem was that he himself was dead and didn’t know it. It was a very good movie and you never found out about the man until the very end. Quite a surprise ending.

But also quite a depressing movie. Maybe that infected me.

Whatever did, I awoke in a miasma of depression that is strong. And, at 7:15, it still has not lightened up outside in any appreciable way. It still looks like night. A passing thought was that I had died and it would be perpetual night. But that was fleeting. I seem to be given to weird stuff like that sometimes.

That depression has always seemed like a prison. For a couple of years after my baptism in the Spirit, the depression was gone. In its place was almost a smirky happiness. Then little by little it came back. Not sure why. I liked it when it was gone.

Elijah the prophet suffered from the same problem in 1 and 2 Kings. At one point he was almost immobilized by it and wished to die. The funny thing was that God had just accomplished an amazing miracle through him: the fire from heaven consuming his sacrifice in front of the nation of Israel. He had no reason to be depressed.

I suppose I do. but I hate it and wish it was gone. There are times when I eagerly await death so that I can be freed from this thorn in the flesh.

Set me free, O Lord. Please.

running and hiding

I just read what has to be one of the most depressing articles I have seen. Molly Norris, the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon artist, has “gone ghost.”

That means that on the advice of the FBI, she has disappeared, changed her name, assumed another life and no one knows where she is.

She drew this picture of the alleged prophet Mohammed and encouraged everyone to do so.

For some reason, in the past few years, Muslims have decided that pictures of Mohammed were blasphemous. This is in spite of the fact that there is almost 1300 years of artwork depicting Mohammed in various things, all from a Muslim perspective.

And they have also decided that it is blasphemous for anyone to draw anything that claims to be Mohammed. Not only that, if you do, they will kill you. It doesn’t matter where you live or what the culture allow where you live. Their ideas trump your ideas and if you go against what they say, they will kill you. It is called a fatwa, an order of execution.

Do you remember a few years ago, the Piss Christ? It was a crucifix in a jar of urine. There was also the picture of the virgin Mary painted in human feces. There was the series of Jesus as a homosexual, including a play on the subject.

A woman draws Mohammed and troops die in Iraq, the world stops turning on its axis and the woman has to go into hiding. A pervert draws a picture of Jesus and nothing happens. What was the difference?

Christians do not bomb and kill. No matter what Hollywood may say, the only place a diversity of faiths can flourish is in a Christian nation. In a Muslim nation, the women are invisible and the people are afraid.

Back in the 80’s when Salman Rushdie write his book on the Satanic Verses, which was uncomplimentary to Islam, there was a fatwa on his life. everybody got mad about it and voiced their displeasure. Today, it is amazing at the number of people who said, It is her own fault for being dumb enough to make Muslims mad.

Have we come so far in our culture that we are afraid to do things if there is a fear of retaliation? Of course, you can diss Christians all day long without fear of reprisal, but don’t dare do anything against Muslims.

We live in a pathetic culture.

freedom

So where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  (2 Corinthians 3:17)

Freedom is strange.  It means something different to everybody.

To the average person on the street, freedom calls up pictures of the American flag and Fourth of July celebrations. 

To someone else, it is something that people in Communist countries don’t have, freedom to travel and to speak aloud what they think. 

To someone who wants to go and have a good time but has to go a job he hates, freedom means the ability to do what he wants.

To an inmate in jail or prison, it means a chance to walk around in the sunshine and eat regular food.

To the Christian, it means that he or she doesn’t have to worry any longer about being foolish in his or her life choices.

Everybody makes mistakes, whether they are big, important people or smaller, less important people.  The Christian knows that when he or she makes those stupid mistakes, he or she has a God that loves them and a Friend that cares for them.

The Christian has a guide and a helper that is greater than they are.  When bad choices come up, there is someone that will help you make better ones that help you keep your freedom.

After all, your freedom is awfully valuable when you don't have it any longer.

the order of Melchizedek

The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind:
"You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek." (Psalm 100:4)

When I was younger, some preacher would always talk about the order of Melchizedek. I had no idea what it meant, and it just sounded more like religio-babble.

When I found out what it meant, it was great. It was something that mattered to me. It meant that I was free.

Melchizedek. He was a man who was a priest king independent of any other country who Abraham offered to way back in Genesis 14. Abraham had gone to fight a bunch of people who had taken his nephew Lot prisoner. On the way back, Melchizedek came out and Abraham offered a tithe of his spoils, the stuff he had take, to him in homage.

Melchizedek was a priest king who lived at the city that would become Jerusalem one day.

This was before the Old Testament law came into being. By doing this, Abraham recognized Melchizedek’s place as a priest king. And by doing it, the nation of Israel did it because Abraham was their ancestor.

When Jesus came, he came into a situation in which there was an established priesthood. There was a group of men whose job it was to bring the people before the Lord. Without these men, the people really couldn’t do the stuff they needed to do to sacrifice to the Lord.

It was a closed-ended situation. To be one of these men, you had to have been born to women from a special family. No other way.

And if you couldn’t find one of these men to make your sacrifice, it was too bad.

When Jesus came, God said, I am changing the situation. I am going back to the way it was before I gave Israel my law. From now on, everyone will come to me, not just a special group  of men. Everyone will be able to make sacrifices and offerings to me, whether men or women, no matter what family they are in. As long as they are members of the family of God they are welcome.

That is the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek was not Jewish or from a tribe of priests. God says to us that we do not have to be special priests to come to him. We can just come. Jesus was a high priest from the order of Melchizedek and as such was independent of the priestly system in the Old Testament. Since he was and we are his followers, so are we.

Being of the order of Melchizedek means that we can just come to God ourselves without having to have a preacher or priest or rabbi or someone like that to carry our prayers or offerings. It is a special relationship.

We are independent and can come to God through Jesus by ourselves.

Nobody can tell me how to worship. As a follower of Jesus, a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, I worship how I feel best. As long as my relationship with God is good, I am fine.

There is a certain liberation there. I am free from the confines of religion and other people’s ideas and mandate. I am free.

daily java

Daily Java: For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:15-17)

I wrote the other day that I am a libertarian. I believe in liberty in Christ.

But I am not a libertine. The online dictionary I use all the time, http://dictionary.reference.com, defines libertine as:
Noun: a person who is morally or sexually unrestrained, esp. a dissolute man; a profligate; rake.
Adjective: free of moral, esp. sexual, restraint; dissolute; licentious.

That I am definitely not.

I believe in a pretty strict moral code and believe that the innate knowledge and desire to be moral comes from God and is present in everybody. Only those who desire greatly to get rid of God become libertines.

A libertarian is onewho, again in dictionary.com’s definition is:
–noun: a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct.; a person who maintains the doctrine of free will.
–adjective: advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty; maintaining the doctrine of free will.

That I am. I believe in liberty, not in hedonism. I also believe that we are not determined to do something because of some divine plan. That is determinism. I believe in free will and the fact that, along with God, I am free.

The downside of that is that I am also free to skip blithely into hell if I want to. Choice does, after all, carry responsibilities.

As the scripture that I used before says: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17).

I believe in freedom, not license. After all, You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free, Jesus said.

daily java

Daily Java: God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. (John 4:24)

Freedom is strange. It means so many things to so many people and they are all different.

I was raised in America, of course, like most Americans. But my family came here from somewhere else, again like most people in America.

They came to America to be free. It was a different freedom for all of them.

It may have been economic freedom, or freedom to pursue their own interests. It may have been freedom from oppression.

For many it was the freedom of religion. They didn’t want to be told how to worship and in what churches that worship was acceptable.

Nobody comes to us to make us do otherwise. That is strange to us in America since we have that freedom and take it for granted.

That isn’t the case in many of the Muslim countries. The news (or at least the news that isn’t biased) tells of conversion squads that go through villages in Africa and some of the Asian countries forcibly converting people, maiming and raping those who refuse, killing pastors and leaders.

Of course, you also read of those in America that would like to curtail all mention of Jesus in society. There is even an organization called Americans for the Separation of Church and State that tries hard to squelch all mention of God anywhere.

The liberal school system tries hard to cut any mention of God. It seems that every week, I read of another lawsuit against a school system on behalf of freedom of speech in mentioning God. That may include t shirts with religious comment, prayers at lunch, having a Bible in open view in front of a teacher who is “offended” by it.

And it is a funny thing. Funny in an ironic sense, that is. These people would never be able be able to say what they want to say in any society that wasn’t Christian. It is only under that Christian framework that people have the ability to worship as they please.

Freedom means different things to different people. But to the Christ-follower, it means that he is no longer under the bonds of sin and death. He is free.

And he knows that God loves him. Love brings tremendous freedom.

last tuesday was texas independence day

Last Tuesday was Texas Independence Day.

It came to my attention that no one but me around here was celebrating it.

Unfortunately, no one in Missouri seems to care about the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and all of the stuff that went with it.

But consider for a moment. A group of people wanted to be free from foreign oppression so badly that they were willing to die for that freedom.

The Alamo and the Massacre at Goliad were examples but on opposite sides of the coin.

At the Alamo, about 185 defenders fought for 13 days against an overwhelming Mexican army led by Santa Anna, the Napoleon of the West. Ultimately, it was a loss and they were all killed except for  two women and their children and possibly a slave named Joe.

At Goliad, almost 400 men were rounded up, imprisoned in a chapel, led out on the prairie and executed while they were trying to run away.

Completely different military exercises, yet done completely differently. One group fought to the death, the other ran and were killed.

These people wanted freedom. Freedom has always been a watchword. Many of us want it enough to die for it. But it has to be earned.

The Goliad people tried to run and were killed. You cannot run from problems. The Alamo people faced it head on and were still killed. But they are remembered for their courage. It takes courage to fight.

How badly do you want to be free from sin? That freedom is not something that you can earn necessarily, but it is something that you have to die for. Galatians 2:20 says, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ who lives in me. In order to be truly free, you have to die.

The Texans wanted it badly enough to die for it, as did the American colonists, and multitudes from other cultures throughout history.

God gives you freedom but in order to be free, you have to die. And when you die, you are raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6). You cannot run from sin, because sin will find you and ultimately kill you.

Live free in him who gives you freedom.