Emancipation Proclamation

Do you know that in the first century AD the word baptisim referred to dipping light colored fabric or yarn into a dye bath? Once the fabric or the yarn was dipped into the dye it’s color changed forever from the origonal to the new hue. Dipping it, baptizing it, would change it. When we were dipped into the waters of baptism we were baptized into Jesus’ death and burial and raised into newness of life. Like the cloth or the cord, we started out one color and came up from water the color of the ressurection. Our life was placed in His and we died and rose with Him. No longer slaves to sin and the old ways of behaving and thinking. No more stumbling around hoping to keep up with Him. He promised to live in us and we are to live in Him. This makes His power our power, His ways our ways, His thoughts, His desires, our desires. This is His Emancipation Proclamation to us from the slavery to sin. We are now free to serve our new Master. We have now been adopted into the Master’s family.

Consider this: that even if we do sin, God is intent on forgiving us as His beloved children, because that is exactly what we are, His children. We are to “reckon” or claim this as true, that He is our Father and we belong to Him.

Being His, we are to present ourselves to God as those who are ALIVE from the dead, as those who are no longer helpless victims of lustful urges and uncontrollable weaknesses. Christ has opened the door to death’s cage and we are free to fly.

Some of us sadly in the body of Christ today are not flying. Some are still sitting in the cage thinking that the door is not really open. They don’t know enough about the word of God to know that What God says is true. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. Some are too scared to fly out of the cage, they need to claim the promise that perfect Love casts out all fear. Some think, well if I do try to leave this cage, I will never be strong to be able to take flight, not knowing that the joy of the Lord is their strength. We get trapped in cages and lose our freedom when we believe things that are not true. Only the word of God is true.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus was presented a demon-opressed blind mute man and he healed him. The man spoke and saw, amazing everyone. The man was healed of physical and spiritual blindness and was able to use his mouth to testify of it. This moment of rejoicing, however, was scoffed at by the legalistic Pharisees who told the people in the village that Jesus had accomplished this healing with the help of Satan. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them all, in Matthew 12:25: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” Jesus was esplaining that if they would only look at the fruit of the healing in this man’s life, it was plain to see that this was a work of God and that Jesus was therefore acting in concert with God. The Pharisees were the ones trying to divide God’s house with their rumors and murmurings against Jesus to the people.
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Three years before the sucession of the eleven states of the confederacy Lincoln delivered an address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives. Even Lincoln's friends believed the speech was too radical for the occasion. His law partner, William H. Herndon, thought that Lincoln was morally courageous but politically incorrect. Herndon said Lincoln told him he was looking for a universally known figure of speech that would rouse people to the peril of the times. here is part of that speech:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

One hundred and fifty or so years ago our nation was double minded on the issue of slavery and states rights resulting in the terrible bloody conflict, the Civil War, with stuggles in subsequent years of even to this day concerning civil rights. This event occured in the natural world, in the spiritual world we too can be so double minded that we become at war with ourselves, half instead of whole heartedly walking with Christ. Walking around like we are half slave half free. Claiming the freedom we have in Christ when we have developed habits of wordly thinking and doing can be hard. But habits can be broken.

Throughout history, there have been many people, “grace killers” who have inadvertently served him like the Pharisees of Jesus’s time, planting seeds of doubt, fear, stirring up confusion, divisiveness, misunderstanding, selfcenteredness. Through manipulation and rigid control grace killers can kill or cripple the spirit of fellow human beings keeping them from flying out of cages of bondage into the freedom of Christ, dashing their hopes and dreams to the ground, convincing them they are unloveable, unwelcome, unsuitable. From personal experience I can say I have been hindered by “grace killers” in my walk with Christ and I have also been a “grace killer” at other times towards my brothers and sisters in the Lord using God’s word as a hammer to beat people over the head and control them. That is not the way of Grace, Amazing grace.

Habit’s and grace killers aside, the evil ones design is to try to divide and conquer. Any way a conflict or a misunderstanding can be stirred up the adversary , he will prowl about looking to do it. He started in the garden of Eden. His signature was written on the first murder of Abel by his brother Cain.

Jesus gives us a way to overcome the work of the devil through three things outlined in the book of Revelation12:11.
“And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” Repentance and claiming the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, over our life is the first important item mentioned. When we sin we need to restore our fellowship with The Father this way. We also have our testimony. A testimony is something that we have experienced in or from God that we tell others about. It is our personal life changing story. The last thing we need to have to overcome is a selfless mind. “And they love not their own lives onto death”, by having the mind of Jesus, the selfless mind, the desire to put self first is nailed to the cross and Jesus is enthroned as King of our lives. Jesus said something about Satan in the gospel of Matt.16:23 when he was rebuking Peter for allowing Satan to use him. "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." When we are mindful of the things of men we give satan a foothold, when we are mindful of the things of God we become grace builders.

If you are in the bird in the cage looking at the open door, grab hold of the truth in God’s word, claim it and fly out to freedom. You are the adopted sons and daughters of the King! A royal priesthood. Teach and use the example of your lives to show everyone around you that the freedom from sin and shame we all have in Christ they can have too. Isn’t that Good news? You don’t need to worry, it is God’s job to restrain them if folks get carried away with their freedom. God does His job so much better than we do ours. We allow others to choose, we let go we let God.

Letting Go ( author unknown)
To let go doesn’t mean to stop caring,
it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off,
it’s the realization that I can’t control another.
To let go is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences,
To let go is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another,
I can only change myself.
To let go is not to care for,
but to care about.
To let go is not to fix,
but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to effect their own outcomes.
To let go is not to be protective;
it is to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny,
but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold, or argue,
but to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes.
To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone,
but try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more!