Author: Terrence Burton

FREEDOM VS CONTROL

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And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Gen. 2:16-17

I’ve heard people say that you’re not free to do what you want, you are free to do what you must. I don’t agree with that statement. Freedom is only freedom if you can do the opposite of what is desired by another. That would be like telling a slave that you are free to pick cotton, chop wood and bale hay, but not what you want to do. That is not freedom, not because of the type of work it is, but because it removes the volition of the slave. Control is when you restrict someone from being able to disobey you. When God told the man to freely eat from all the trees except the one in the midst of the garden, He did not take away man’s ability to disobey Him. God told him what would happen when he eats from the tree He told him not to eat from. In this incident, you see what freedom looks like. You are not free unless you have the ability to disobey a stated order.

Look at the language of the 10 commandments. God never said, You can’t do…He stated…you shall not or you shall.

Ultimately, life is about managing freedom. The tool by which freedom must be managed is truth. This is because without truth there is no freedom. You see, the purpose of a lie is to remove or limit a person’s choice to the one selected for him. The purpose of a lie is to take truth off the table so that it won’t be an option in the mind of the person lied to. God will recommend or tell you which option to choose, but He will not make the choice for you. Neither will He take the opposite choice off the table so that you can only select the one He promotes. Remember, He said I set before you life and death, therefore choose life. He didn’t say I set before you life, but the devil set before you death. He claimed responsibility for setting them both before us.

Therefore, truth must be what your heart is set on more than anything else. Without truth, your freedom is at stake. And the opposite of freedom is slavery or control. Truth delivers you from all other masters. Jesus called Himself, the way, the truth and the life. What does this have to do with this lesson? You don’t experience life solely through desire. There is a way or path to all things. On that path called Jesus, you will find truth which takes you into life. Those 3 elements are all intertwined into one thing and found in the person of Jesus the Christ.

What about bad outcomes? God is not interested in fixing outcomes directly. He is interested in man obeying Him by choosing life and as a consequence man’s outcomes will naturally change. The problem is not death, it’s man’s choice of death that is concerning. It’s no different than the woman who aborts a baby once she already had unprotected sex with a man that she did not want to have a child with. The problem was not the pregnancy. The problem was the decision she made to have sex with the man who she did not want to father her child. You see man is trying to control the consequences of his actions instead of his actions that led to those consequences.

So what is freedom then? You are free when you accept responsibility for the outcomes in your life because you have taken responsibility for your own behaviors that led to them. Freedom means that noone is responsible for your life, but you, because you are not under the control of any other. Freedom ultimately means that you do things because you want to do them, not because you must. So you see, you are free to do what you want to do. Just please understand that there are results that come with those decisions as well.

THE CLEANSING EFFECT OF HOPE

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(Originally written on June 16, 2015)

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

1 John 3:3 (KJV)

In context, this verse is talking about believers purifying themselves (ourselves) because of their (our) hope in Christ. There is a truth that I would like to extract from this verse. This morning the Spirit of God spoke to me and he used this verse to show me the following lesson.

You can identify what your expectations are by what you are willing to let go of to have them. If you are not willing to let go of the things that are preventing you from having what you want, then you have not truly stepped into hope. What is holding believers back from receiving is not the devil. What’s holding believers back is their unwillingness to let go of the things that hinder their progress. 

They want God to give them something while they hold on to what is holding them back. Let’s use weight loss for example. A person will say they want to lose weight, but they hold on to poor ways of eating and they hold on to the couch. Real Bible hope would do the following instead. Decide what you want to look and feel like. See yourself like the finished you. Add the ingredients into your life that make for fitness, such as exercise. And eliminate the things that caused you to get up to the weight you find yourself at now.  

There has to be a laying aside of the weight that so easily besets you. The more stuff you carry, the more energy you have to spend to get to your destination. This causes you to spend more time en route because of the load you’re carrying.

We have been duped into believing we need something else to manifest our desires, but in truth, we need to let some things go.

Bruce Lee became the greatest fighter ever because of what he was willing to walk away from. He separated himself from the things that didn’t contribute to being a great fighter. But he was able to separate himself from the things that held him back because of his expectation. His hope purged him of every trace of coward and he became the best at what he did because of it.

What are you willing to walk away from in order to walk into what you truly want to have in life? You cannot walk into your destiny until you let go of the things that hold you where you are right now.

YOU CHOSE YOUR DEVIL

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Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?

John 6:70

I know I’m about to risk being misunderstood, but here we go. Jesus chose 12 men to follow him and he made all 12 his disciples. Where he went, they went because he chose them. They all knew what it was like to hang out with him in the streets, at parties, in the temple or wherever. In the verse above, Jesus made a statement in the form of a question. To be clear, Jesus didn’t talk like Christians today. If there is a devil in your life, you have been trained to blame someone else for the presence of that devil. However, here Jesus admits that He chose His devil. He doesn’t take credit for choosing the other 11 and then shifts the blame for this devil being in his life. He chose Judas. He chose the one who was filled with the devil just as He chose the ones who would later be filled the Holy Spirit. He chose ALL of the people who were in His circle.

He never said, the devil sent Judas based upon his pending betrayal. Oftentimes it is hard helping Christians because they are lying to themselves regarding choices they made and the consequences that accompany those choices. One key difference between Jesus and Christians is that Jesus consciously chose the one who would stab him in the back and many times we don’t anticipate the betrayal at the onset of the new relationship. However, whether we are aware of a future betrayal or not is not the point. The point is that, outside of family members, we chose the people who are in our circle.

To be clearer, I’m not talking about people committing crimes against you, but betrayal, in particular. Betrayal is basically when someone who you have reason to trust does something to you with the intent to harm you. Now, you cannot have betrayal without a level of intimacy. A stranger robbing you or raping you did not betray you because there was no reasonable expectation of trust. What they did was horrible and wrong, but it was not betrayal.  But a friend, which Judas was, had the ability to betray the Christ because of the connection they had. He was included when Jesus called the disciples his friends.

Here’s what some Christians do. When things are good, we talk about how God sent this great person into our lives, but then once they are not so easy to get along with or mistreat you, you say the devil sent them. And once the relationship is over, you tell people the devil sent them instead of being honest with yourself and the world that you chose this person to be part of your inner circle who you now see as the devil. You say the devil sent your ex-spouse, your ex-boyfriend, or so forth.

Here’s why this is so important!

The power of your life rests upon the foundation of truth. There is no power in blame because blame holds someone else responsible for your life. 

RUNNING WITHOUT WEIGHTS

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(Originally written on June 14, 2016)

Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble.

Psalms 119:165 (NIV)

Note: This verse highlights a foolproof system. All I have to do is love God’s principles and nothing in the universe has the capacity to cause me to stumble. I can only stumble if my love for the law is unstable. This harmonizes with Paul’s statement that “love never fails.” Love, therefore, has a stabilizing factor about it.

  • Love (man’s part)
  • Peace (God’s part)
  • Eternal Stability (when God’s part and man’s part meet)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Hebrews 12:1 (NIV)

Note: This passage is about letting go of things that interfere with your race. This verse comes on the heels of Hebrews Chapter 11. Chapter 11 talks about the things that were obtained, but beneath the surface, it talks about the things that were let go of in order to run the “heroes” of the faith race. For example, Enoch, let go of his ties to planet Earth. Abraham and Sarah laid aside their family. Others laid aside peace with ungodly people. Moses for example, forsook royalty for the sake of being a deliverer for his people. They all had to let go of something in order to grab what the Father had for them. So the real question that immediately follows “What do I want?” is “Am I willing to walk away from something in order to walk into what the Father has provided for me?” What am I willing to relinquish so that I can run?”

I went back and re-read Hebrews chapter 11 with fresh eyes and here’s what I saw. In verse 24, it says about Moses, “When he had grown up, refused…” Immediately this showed me that refusal is a mark of maturity and faith. If he had not grown up, he may possibly have accepted what he refused.

As I’m typing, another example came to mind. Joseph refused Potiphar’s wife. Why? Because he was grown up. Joseph made a grown man’s decision and refused to have sex with another man’s wife.

A grown man is known by what he refuses to have in his life as much as by what he chooses to have in his life. In fact, although Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose rather to suffer with his people. This was definitely a grown man’s decision.

Other Examples in Scripture:

  1. The Hebrew boys refused the king’s food.
  2. The Hebrew boys refused to bow to an idol god.

Another observation I made with Hebrews 12:1 is that we are advised to throw things off solely on the bases of them hindering us. It doesn’t matter if it’s fun, enjoyable and we like it. The only real question is, “Is it hindering me from running my race?” If so, it must be discarded. I can clearly see where our error has been. We have allowed things to remain in our lives that in some way hinder us from progressing. We have focused so much in our day on getting things, but we have talked very little about what must be refused.

Note: As I was typing, I pondered what these verses listed above have to do with each other. Then I saw it. They are both about the ability to function without stumbling or being hindered. Psalms 119:165 highlights God’s principle of stability and Hebrews 12:1 lets us know we have to lay aside things that hinder our progress so that we can run the race that has been marked out for us.

VISION, LAW AND SELF-RESTRAINT

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Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Proverbs 29:18

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Genesis 11:6

Vision – sight

Law – instruction

Perish – lose control, inability to restrain yourself

There are 3 basic components that control events or manifestations in our lives. The first is vision. The second is law. The third is control of self.

I will use fitness to illustrate the principle. In order to achieve fitness, You have to see beyond the present and envision or capture in your heart the end result that you would like to achieve. Once the end result is decided, now you’re ready for instructions that will become your law (set of rules to follow to guide your conduct). This is very important as you don’t need instructions until you have decided where you’re going. To expect guidance before making a decision would be like expecting your GPS to give you directions before you input your desired destination. Once instructions are given and you have received them, you must limit your behavior to that which the instructions dictate. The instructions must become your rule of conduct to carry you to the place you envisioned.

According to Genesis 11, nothing shall be restrained from a group or a person who uses his imagination. The word restrained in this verse means “inaccessible.” Therefore, God is saying your imagination gives you access to the thing imagined. This is why you cannot look at what someone else accomplished or didn’t accomplish to determine your limitations. Each person’s limitations are within the bounds of their own imagination. And God’s conclusion of the matter is that nothing shall be inaccessible that you have imagined yourself being or doing.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Isaiah 26:3

The word “mind” in this verse means creative imagination. Now the word imagination is connected to possibilities not necessarily what is already manifested. So the verse is saying that God will keep you in what you create in your mind. Therefore, if you want God to keep you in something different, you must first create something different in your mind. This verse also suggests that if you don’t create something in your mind, God has nothing to keep you in because He will keep you in what you create in your mind.

The word “perish” also means “to uncover.” Therefore vision covers you. Your vision is to clothe you. To be without vision is to walk around naked. It has the idea of being “exposed.” So vision protects you from being exposed to certain elements.

In conclusion, if there is something that you desire to experience or possess, you need to first envision yourself having it and or experiencing it. Then you must develop a plan that will get you the results you desire. Finally, once the plan has been made, you must execute the plan with the full expectation of achieving the desired results.