22May2014 - Taking Lumps

How you doin?  There's a super cool article in yesterdays Herald by a super cool author.  Here's the link, http://www.capemaycountyherald.com/article/100533-if+they+can+do+it+i+can+do+it#comment-form.  There was a comment at the bottom of the article from a religious AA-er.  One of the things I don't see eye to eye with the program is the concept of being one drink away from being a drunk.  In the same way I'm not a "sinner saved by grace".  True freedom from the Lord is just that true freedom.  Living in human tradition is like remain in your cell of captivity with the door open.  God offers you to walk out into freedom, but some people choose to remain in the fear of whatever God freed them from.  It's like being on parole.  You're out of captivity, but still under the authority of your punish-er.  Of course I'm not willing to get into an exchange of "comments" on the Herald's website, but I will say that I am NOT one drink away from being a drunk.  I walk in the freedom that only the Lord can provide.  I do now and have always done a lot of things that the program warned me against.  Things like handling alcohol.  I handle different kinds of wine, vodka, brandy, and sometimes beer at my job regularly.  I can honestly say I'm freed from alcohol.  I do NOT live in fear of it.  I also believe that human tradition keeps the program inside the four walls.  Human tradition also keeps what happens in church inside the four walls.  Fear is a nasty thing.  True freedom to me is walking out and away from the "cell" of captivity and being willing to share the "GOOD NEWS" with whom ever I can.  I'm more then willing to take my lumps along the way.  Freedom often involves perseverance and persecution.  That's a nice segue way into Job 3.

Verse's 1-4, "Afterward Job opened his mouth and cursed ^[a]the day of his birth. ² And Job ^[b]said,

³ “Let the day perish on which I was to be born,
And the night which said, ‘A ^[c]boy is conceived.’
⁴ “May that day be darkness;
Let not God above care for it,Nor light shine on it."  This chapter is dripping with pain and anguish.  Job is suffering in a tremendous way.  I did notice that Job never speaks against God.  In fact while he's wishing he were dead he still recognizes that God cares for his life and that light had shined on it.  These chapters are the chapters that make me think that the story of Job is about perseverance, not patients.  When I read them, I hear Job standing his ground with integrity.  He does not waver from the thought that God is good.  He states his life is torturous and that he wants out of it, but he never turns on God.  This is truly a great story of withstanding persecution and perseverance.  Stand your ground in the integrity that comes from the Lord today.