Freedom

Let It Go

/ Joshua Thomas / 2 Comments

“Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.”

1 Peter 1:13

Well it’s that nice warm spring time weather. Here in North Carolina it pretty much skips the cool/warm and goes straight into the heat of the summer. This heat is too much for my bones, but it always reminds me of a classic warm weather movie; Frozen. Not you may being saying, “that’s a winter movie, silly,” but that’s technically not true. The movie takes place in summer, and is that important to what I’m talking about today? Not really, no. The reason I thought of this movie then shifted towards me thinking about the classic song from the film. Come on, I know you just started singing it in your head. The song “let it go” stands out in the flick, we see our ice princess finally using her X-men abilities and decides to cast off the words that people spoke over her. Now where Elsa is a tad misguided with her abilities and eventually learns the power of family love, it made me think of the idea, taking the emotions and words that we feel and hear, and simply letting them go.

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Sacred Over Scared

/ Joshua Thomas / 1 Comment

This week I begin my last full semester at UNCG. It’s a pretty exciting feeling, but at the same time, plenty of unknowns that go along with that. The things that are unknown in our lives can cause us to fear a great deal of things. Will I be able to support myself? Is this the right move? What happens if I got it wrong? These questions make us afraid, they scare us because the unknown is a scary thing. You see, life is full of these scary unknown situations. We have questions about each of our futures and the purpose we have in life, while at the same time, events come up in our lives over and over that cause us to question our God. We see people close to us pass away, we see the pains of addiction, we feel the sting of the hand that was laid on us, and we remember the words of death spoken over us. You see while those things may not have happened to you, but we are all affected in some way by those in our lives. We feel the pain and question why these happen to us; we begin to lose hope. But there is hope. There is always hope. I look back at my own life and I have watched friends lose their battle with depression, and I will never get a chance to see them again. When my friend passed away two years ago, I had no idea why or how God could let that happen to my friend who helped me gain confidence in myself and helped me be who I was in Christ. I began to lose hope, but God gave me new hope. You see in that moment I made a choice. I chose to follow and trust, even when I had every right in my mind to be angry, I chose to be sacred over scared.

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Living in Freedom

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Today is July 4th, it’s kind of a big deal here in America. For those of you readers who are not from the states, this is the time when we eat, eat, and do some more eating then shoot fire. Okay, it’s a tad more than that. It’s a time where we celebrate the conception of our country, a country that chose to be free rather than held back by another person. To this day we have soldiers that continue to fight for freedom, because we all want to be free. It’s hard wired into all people, we want to be free. Freedom is one of those tricky ideas, too much freedom can lead us into trouble, the first sin by Adam and Eve was caused by their desire to live independently from God. At the same time, God doesn’t want us to be mindless followers, so, what exactly should we do. The solution is that we live in freedom by dependent on Christ. That’s the beauty of our awesome creator, when we choose to follow him and his ways, he gives freedom unlike anything else. We have been called to live in freedom.

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We Are Never Alone

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This past Sunday evening, and student from my small group gave a message on the idea that we are not alone because God is always with us. I loved this topic because it’s such a true statement and an idea that I have faced and I think many have faced as well. This feeling of loneliness that plagues so many. It’s not the idea of being alone, because we can’t be around everyone all the time, the closest to that you can get is having a spouse, but that’s not what this idea is about. It’s an empty feeling, one that makes it seem like there is no one around to talk to, no way to open up about what we are feeling. It’s not only a horrible feeling, but a dangerous trap. Isolation is the word that best describes this lonely feeling because it encompasses the problems that can arise. Isolation leads to a blocking out of outsides voices trying to guide you. What happens is we fall into a downward spiral of chaos and cause us to sin, and be trapped with no way of escaping. This is a pretty heavy idea, but it’s one that needs to be brought to light for those who are feeling alone or have fallen into complete isolation, and it needs to be brought to light for one simple idea and that is that we are never alone.

Joshua 1:9 says, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” This I a simple statement from the Lord to Joshua, because Joshua felt alone. He was a man tasked with a job of leading the people of Israel after Moses passed away. He was left to guide hundreds of people, to lead them through the dessert as well as guide them in actions that were pleasing to the Lord. He was scared, he felt like he could not make it, yet God spoke to him and said that He was with Joshua wherever he went and through whatever he did. This passage in scripture has been a comforting piece for me especially. There have been many times where I have felt unable to keep going, when life gets hard and I feel alone, I want to quit. Yet over and over I am reminded of the fact that I am never alone. I struggle with this loneliness, I understand feeling like there is no one around you to help, but this myth is a lie from the enemy. When I feel this creep up around me, I turn to the one I put my trust in. It didn’t begin this way, it took me a long time to realize the importance of knowing that God is always there and that we need to seek out community. Today I’d like to share three of those discoveries that I have come to that have helped me overcome isolation.

God is with us in the darkness.

In all situations God is with us, this is the message my student Chris spoke about on Sunday. It is the key to begin this journey out of a life of isolation. When we feel like no one is with us, we don’t see the point in moving towards community with others, the darkness in our life begins to consume all that we are. Once we realize that we have an all-powerful God in our corner, we can rise up out of the darkness and fight back. It gives us the confidence to say that we can make it. When Joshua realized that God was with him, he rose up and knew that he could lead the people. Not by his strength alone, but with the strength of God.

We were not made to be alone.

God is always with us, but at the same time we cannot stay in that place. Back in high school I knew that God was with me, but I didn’t want to make any effort into looking for a community. I had been made fun of and that made it hard for me to want to get close to anyone else, I was still isolated. One of the best things for me, and I’ve talked about this before, my High school small group allowed me to be with others who were like me and who were willing to be open about their lives. I was no longer afraid of what people would say because I had a group that could guide me. They helped me to no longer fear what anyone would say. I knew that God was with me and I had a community of guys that helped me take on whatever was thrown at me.

We are better together.  

As you may know by the name of my blog, I love comic books, and one of the biggest life lessons that I have learned by reading comic books is the fact that we are better together. So many stories have a hero who finds themselves with a great power and learns how to use it to help others. They have a mentor and a close cycle of people they trust and rely on to be accountable and get better. Then they face an evil that is too big to defeat on their own, then they find a team, whether it’s the avengers, x-men, or any other team, they unite and win. I just described every superhero story ever to you, and guess what? It’s not just a story. In life we find a passion that we pursue, we seek a mentor who is wise and helps us. Then we cling to a community of like-minded people to grow together and encourage one another. A problem that happens is that we forget to take that final leap, and when we run into a bigger struggle, we fall away, when all we need to do is run to that team of skilled people. Once I joined Daystar I felt as if I had just joined a mission that was bigger than me, but still wanted me because they saw that not only I but everyone is important to the body of Christ. I began to serve, I helped others that were new to the Church, and we become a stronger force when come together. My struggle with isolation diminished, because I had a community that would love and help me no matter what I faced.

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I hope today you have realized that not only are you never alone, but you have a bigger purpose than to be trapped in isolation. It may seem like there is nowhere to go, believe me when I say that I understand, know that there is a way to be free. Just like God told Joshua that he was with him, God is with you. Find community, build a trust with them, and realize you are made for more in this world. I have seen the effects of isolation, and I have seen friends that were close to me never break free, believe me when I say this. No matter what is happening in your life, you can find freedom, you just need to grab hold of it.

Thanks for reading, where do you find life giving community? I’d love to hear from those who are reading these. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

-Joshua Thomas

My Archenemy

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In pretty much every superhero comic that has ever been written, the hero always has an archenemy. Batman had the Joker, Professor X had Magneto, Spider-man had the Green Goblin, and the list goes on and on. All of us deal with things that create conflict in our life, but we typically don’t have an archenemy that we face on a daily basis, or do we? This idea popped into my head as I was reading through Romans chapter 6, I’ve been reading through this book a lot recently because it is filled with tons of wisdom. Paul was writing to the people of Rome about this very topic, well sort of, he was speaking to the people on the fact that they were no longer slaves to sin, but become slaves of righteousness. Romans 6:19-23 says, “Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As I read this, I began to see that we do in fact have an archenemy, someone who wants to stop us from stepping into what God has for your life.

The archenemy who was working to stop me from achieving freedom is myself.

Let me explain, the passage above said that we are slaves to our sinful desires. When you are saved however, we become slaves to righteousness. There’s just one problem with that, we have an active enemy who tries to use our weakness against us. Every day we must go to battle with the side of us that wants to give in to the sin that is all around us, keeping us from our purpose. We become trapped in fear and shame, making us slaves to sin. This happens to everyone, Satan just whispers small lies to us, and we turn them into a deadly weapon only created to harm us. We are trapped in this cycle of being a slave, but there is hope.

Although our sin causes death, in Christ we find life.

Paul says that when we offer ourselves as slaves to righteousness, which will lead us to live a life of holiness in Christ. We have hope, we have strength in Christ to fight against these lies that Satan tries to convince us of. You see our enemy is the part of us that feels like it needs to go back to its’ old master, but Paul says that we have a new master, and this master has our best interest in mind. He has a plan in mind for our lives, and he wants us to live in to our full potential. Without him though, it is impossible to fight our dark side, the part of us that wants to be a slave to the world rather than a slave to the God who loves us. God equips us to be able to stand against the fear that tries to hold us back, and the shame that causes us to hide and run away from our problems. I know that life is hard, because I have had to go through the pain that fear and shame bring. It seems like we can’t do it alone, which is true, but in Christ we can do all things.

Alone we are weak, but with God, we are strong.

We can’t fight this alone, we need the strength of God to get through the hardest situations. This means that we will have to face our fears and step out of shame. It’s never easy, but it’s always worth it. I recently listened to an NPR podcast called, Invisibilia, where they were talking about fear and overcoming certain fears. In the episode, a man named Jason was interviewed about how he overcame his crippling fear of being rejected. He did this by facing his problem head on, and every day would try to be rejected at least once. He calls it “rejection therapy,” and each day he forced himself to get free from his fear of rejected by being rejected. It stuck with me because so often we feel like we are powerless from fear and we just want to run away. This man was tired of being crippled and decided to face it head on. I have no idea if he was a believer, but his story was an example for me of how to get free from the enemy that is myself. To fight it head on with the strength of Christ, because when we stand in the freedom that Christ gives us, nothing will be able to stop us.

Every super hero has an archenemy, but the hero always wins.

No matter how hard the fight is, the hero always saves the day in the end. You are set free from the sinful desires of yourself, and will live in Freedom through Christ. I hope this was an encouragement to you, because it was encouraging to me. I’m still learning every day, and I don’t have all the answers, but I do know one thing, that we find strength in the arms of our savior. I’m going to keep fighting, and I hope you will too.

-Joshua Thomas