(also posted on The After-Oakdale Chronicles)

“Freedom”

“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.”
Galatians 5:13 NLT

When we have found the path to true freedom, we have discovered the joy found in service to others. By exercising our individual freedom serving others, we become beacons of light for others to follow.

“Serve one another in love.”

In those five words can be found the steps we need to take to follow Jesus. In those five words is the key to understanding the true nature of Christ. Those simple words contain the road map to the complexities of living on this earth that will lead us to eternal life in God’s Kingdom.

Following the admonition of the Apostle Paul, we discover a way to use the talents and gifts God gave us in a manner that serves Him and glorifies His name. God never said we couldn’t own things. God never said we could not be successful. In fact, God gave us the ability to design, develop, and build the images of our dreams into the reality of successful businesses, but He also gave us the ability to do it in a way that gives Him glory and serves our brothers and sisters with love.

In a post from August 24, 2013, I wrote about the freedom that comes with allowing God to open the ‘eyes’ of our hearts:

“God has opened wide the eyes of my heart, and He can open YOURS as well. With our eyes wide open we can see many things we could not see before: We can see hope; we can see peace, happiness, joy, love, and forgiveness; we can see the goodness that lives and breathes all around us.

And with our eyes wide open we can also see the hunger, the pain, the suffering, and the desperation of other people. But these are not bad things to see, because once our eyes are open, we can also see our place in God’s plan to HELP those who are afflicted. Seeing our place will allow us to take the action necessary to improve the condition of our brothers and sisters who are all God’s children.

And THIS, my friends, is freedom.”

“Hope”

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11

Imagine a place where leather goods, pottery, jewelry and other quality hand-crafted items are produced and sold; a place where a variety of unique restaurants are clustered; a place where tasteful Christian-themed apparel is printed and embroidered, then offered for sale in an attractive shop containing other Christian books, gifts, and music; a place where fine herbs and a colorful variety of gourmet tomatoes and other select produce items are hot-house grown and sold the day they are picked; a place where beautifully re-upholstered sofas and chairs and professionally refinished and refurbished dressers, tables and other furniture can be found; a place where you can take your car to get an oil change or perhaps even a custom paint job; a place where vehicles laden with workers and tools leave daily to go out and assist those in need while helping to make the community a more beautiful place; a place where you can drop off a load of canned goods to be distributed to area food banks and then park your car and peruse some locally produced Christian-themed paintings and sculptures; a place where adults can go to learn how to read and then enroll in a group to read about God; a place where Christian musicians are offered training, the opportunity to join with others to create music and then afforded the opportunity to record that music while others learn the art of doing the recording; a place where anything that can be produced by the hands of man is produced and sold in an environment of restoration and renewal of the human spirit; a place where anything is possible if it can be imagined; a place where no one is refused the services or the opportunities offered, regardless of their faith, but where everything is done in an attitude of Christian service and love.

Such a place will be built by people who believe that there is, indeed, hope and a future for those who are ‘hopeless’ and cannot see the future. Such a place will be called “HOPE CITY”.

Imagine that you are a part of it.

Imagine yourself standing at the intersection of Freedom and Hope.