Freedom

Whose Voice Are You Listening To? Standing Firm When Others Try to Make You Feel Guilty

/ Terrence Burton / Leave a comment

Have you ever walked away from a conversation feeling guilty, only to sit with it later and realize you had not actually done anything wrong? That uneasy, nagging feeling can be one of the most convincing lies a believer ever accepts, especially when the pressure comes from someone in a position of spiritual authority.

Condemnation Requires a Real Violation

Scripture is careful about how condemnation actually works. Romans chapter four reminds us that where there is no law, there is no transgression. Follow that thought all the way through. Condemnation is tied to sin, and sin is tied to a real, identifiable violation of God’s word. If someone cannot point to an actual command you broke, then what you are feeling is not conviction from the Holy Spirit. It is pressure from a person, and those two things are not the same.

Do Not Let Someone Else’s Standard Replace God’s

People will sometimes hold you to expectations that are not found anywhere in Scripture, and if you are not careful, you will start measuring your peace with God against their approval instead of His word. That is a dangerous trade. God’s standard is what governs a believer’s conscience, not the opinions or emotions of someone who may simply be having a hard time processing their own feelings.

A Clear Conscience Was Purchased for a Reason

Hebrews 9:14 tells us the blood of Christ purges our conscience from dead works so that we can serve the living God. Notice the purpose clause. A clean conscience was not given so you could feel comfortable. It was given so you could actually serve Him without distraction. Carrying guilt that does not belong to you steals that freedom and drains energy you were meant to pour into worship and ministry.

If you have examined your heart honestly and you know you have not violated God’s word, release the guilt. It was never yours to carry.

-Terrence Burton

There Is No Condemnation For You

/ Terrence Burton / Leave a comment

Romans 8:1 may be one of the most liberating sentences ever written: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Read that again. Not less condemnation. Not reduced condemnation. No condemnation. None. The verdict has already been rendered, and it is not guilty. If you have ever walked through a day weighted down by guilt, shame, or the haunting feeling that God is disappointed in you, this verse was written for exactly that moment.

The Difference Between Conviction and Condemnation

It is important to understand what Paul is not saying. He is not saying that sin does not matter or that growth is unnecessary. The Holy Spirit does convict, and that conviction is a gift. It points us back to the Father, back to alignment, back to who we truly are. But conviction and condemnation are entirely different. Conviction says, “Come back.” Condemnation says, “You are too far gone.” Conviction is the voice of a loving Father calling you home. Condemnation is the voice of an accuser trying to keep you stuck.

The accuser has no legal standing in your life. Jesus silenced that case at the cross. What was held against you was nailed there. Colossians 2:14 says He took the written record of debt that was against us and canceled it, nailing it to the cross. That record no longer exists. You are not carrying it anymore, even if it feels like you are.

Walking in the Spirit Changes Everything

Paul continues by describing those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. This is the lifestyle of someone who has received the no condemnation verdict and decided to live accordingly. Walking in the Spirit does not mean being perfect. It means being oriented. Your face is toward the Father. Your heart leans toward life. When you fall, you get up quickly, not because you earned your way back, but because you never lost your standing.

Receive What Has Been Given

The greatest challenge for many believers is not believing that God forgives others. It is believing that God forgives them. Receiving grace is an act of faith. It takes courage to say, “I am not condemned,” especially when your feelings insist otherwise. But feelings are not your final authority. The Word is. And the Word says: no condemnation. Receive it. Walk in it. Live like someone the blood already covered.

-Terrence Burton

DON’T LOOK BACK: THE STRONGHOLD OF THE PAST

/ Terrence Burton / Leave a comment

Remember Lot’s wife.

Luke 7:32

Your memory can be a blessing to you, but unfortunately, it may very well be a curse. Jesus made this statement above in reference to the miraculous deliverance executed to free Lot and his family from the wrath that befell Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Bible does not specify how long Lot and his family lived in Sodom. Nonetheless, they lived there long enough for Sodom to exert its influence on Lot’s wife. She was unable to refrain from looking back at the judgment as it befell the region.

Some details are excluded from the Bible regarding their exit, but I’m sure they heard the death cries of friends they’d acquired, people they did business with, and neighbors they’d left behind. The thought of what these people were suffering had to be painful. These thoughts had so gripped Lot’s wife’s mind that they outweighed the instruction to not look back.

But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

Gen. 19:26

What an example of looking in the wrong direction! God had given her and her family a new life…a new beginning. However, instead of this righteous woman focusing on her new life, she looked back at the one God was delivering her from and paid for it with her life.

What you give your attention to matters! Do not allow the pull of your past to so grip your mind that you look in the direction that it is calling you to focus on…no matter the logic or rationale. You must fight with everything in you to be single-minded, looking only in the direction of your freedom. Because this woman looked in the direction of the destruction, she suffered the same fate as those who were still in the place she was delivered from moments earlier.

This lesson perfectly illustrated how a person can be physically delivered from a situation, but their mind is not yet free.

Let this lesson serve as a reminder to you that your freedom is tied to the direction of your focus. Do not look in a direction where you do not want to go. Do not risk your future by focusing on your past.

Closing Point:

Notice the language in Genesis 19:26. Lot’s “wife looked back behind him.” This tells us the order in which they escaped to the city of Zoar. Lot was in the position of the rearguard. This means that Lot was standing between his family and the destruction of Sodom. The role of the rearguard is to protect the one who he’s assigned to so that if anything comes their way, he’s the one to get hit…not his protectee. But his wife chose to get out of position and away from his protection. In that moment, her husband was preventing her from seeing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. So she positioned herself to see behind him. She had to put her eyes on what she was hearing with her ears. In her mind, she had to see what was going on. Her desire to look back cost her her life. It cost her husband his wife. And it cost her daughters the blessing of having their mom in their lives. The cost of looking back is way more than it seems in the moment of the pressure to backward focus.

FREEDOM VS CONTROL

/ Terrence Burton / Leave a comment

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.