Other Pilgrims
Proverbs about freedom
God is proactively working a strategy to bring freedom, healing and deliverance to everyone on earth. Jesus launched it with the Freedom Declaration which is still in force.
Many people assume God is basically a killjoy, making rules and then making sure people keep them or else. They think of the Bible as the rule book, so they don’t read it much. Or if they do read it, they feel bad, getting reminded of all the rules they broke.
They don’t get the basic idea of the Freedom Season. Something different and bigger is going on in the Bible which is really one long story, not a patchwork of rules. In the story, the victims get delivered from their cruel master by the liberator, the rightful heroic king, but not as in a predictable fairy tale. The Bible’s story is more of a down to earth thriller with some amazing twists and turns in the plot.
The Freedom Season celebrates the biggest twist of all—Jesus, the spearhead of God’s Freedom Campaign, is rejected and executed but God brings him back to life. That holds the entire biblical story together from Genesis to Revelation and it puts freedom, healing and deliverance within reach of all of us.
God’s strategy is to have his kingdom of freedom go viral. The free citizens of his kingdom spread the news and infect others with their freedom until the whole world is drawn to Jesus, the Freedom King.
When someone is freed from prison, addiction, illness or danger there is always a huge sense of relief and joy. There is also gratitude to anyone who helped get the person free. God’s strategy banks on that relief, joy and gratitude.
As people accept the Freedom Declaration of Jesus and honour him as their King, they experience his deliverance. Often this is so thrilling and life-changing that they never get over it. It is like being scarred for life but in a good way. They are permanently relieved and full of joy and they keep trying to pay off their debt of gratitude to Jesus.
How does he tell them to pay it? Pay it forward! Become freedom activists, telling our freedom story so that others want some of the relief and joy we have. Your freedom infects them, they join his kingdom, they experience his freedom and their story infects others. This has exponential growth potential.
What works against God’s strategy for exponential growth? Self-quarantine. When we say, ‘Yes’ to the freedom of Jesus but we do not become freedom activists, we get out of sync with the essence of God’s strategy. He wants the freedom to spread; we bottle it up for ourselves.
This is extremely dangerous. God has a strategy, we know what it is and we are working to sabotage it? That does not sound like we are free citizens of Jesus’ kingdom. More like traitors. But we will excuse that behaviour if we do not realise that God has viral intentions for his kingdom.
We see ourselves in Christ as freedom activists, calling the world into the new era of freedom. We live in sync with God’s intentions when he sent Jesus to issue the Freedom Declaration.
In sync with Jesus we are rooted in Abraham: ‘And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.’ (Galatians 3:29)
When we SYNC, when you ‘See Yourself iN Christ’ as a freedom activist, we realise we are participating in the new era that Jesus launched with his Freedom Declaration. That freedom is for everybody but not everybody knows it. Not everybody has bought into it yet, activated it, experienced it. That is our cause. Give everybody a chance to get free in Christ. We are caught up in that cause, energised by it and delighted every time we have even a small success.