Genesis 2
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day Yah ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And Yah blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which Yah created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord Yah made the earth and the heavens,
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord Yah had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 And the Lord Yah formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
8 And the Lord Yah planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord Yah to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
15 And the Lord Yah took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord Yah commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the Lord Yah said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the Lord Yah formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the Lord Yah caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord Yah had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
CHAPTER 1
The Promise of True Freedom
The Yah who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. -Thomas Jefferson
Freedom is a burden that only the mature can bear. It happens in our minds as we accept our responsibility to move forward and allow the reconditioning of our oppressive thinking. Those who won't move forward travel in aimless wilderness circles, because nothing truly changes until your mind changes.
I read a report in a science journal recently about a scientist who was studying the power of conditioning. This scientist's team leashed a dog to a stake. Then they put the animal's food just out of reach. When the dog tried to get the food, he hurt himself because his leash wasn't long enough. Every time he lunged toward the food, he felt pain.
By the fourth week of this cruel experiment, the dog stayed right by the stake. He didn't even try to reach for the food. During the fifth week they removed the dog's leash and put him two feet away from the food. But by now the dog stayed next to the stake. The animal refused to go near the food. He had been so conditioned by the pain that kept him from reaching the food that, although he was free to eat again, he believed he couldn't.
That dog almost starved to death during the last seven weeks of his testing. He wouldn't move from the stake even though the food was accessible. They actually had to pick the dog up and carry him to the food to slowly recondition him.
This experiment, cruel as it was, demonstrated that when the mind of an animal is conditioned, it will live within the limitations imposed upon it even after it is set free. It also clearly illustrates the problem Yah had with the children of Israel. They were in slavery, tied to Pharaoh's stake of bondage for 430 years. Then one day Yah sent a man named Moses to remove the leash and deliver them. And he did deliver Israel from the hand of their oppressor. But delivering them from their oppressed way of thinking was another thing.
The reason Yah refused to take the Israelites directly into Canaan following their deliverance was because they were still mentally enslaved in Egypt. They had been delivered from Egypt, but they weren't yet free. So Yah had to deal with their minds, though their bodies were already liberated from bondage. This illustration captures a principle that applies to individuals, communities and nations: Conditions determine conduct until interrupted by an external force.
The major component missing in the life of most believers and Hebrew communities is the knowledge base of management. It is toward the end of changing this situation that I have written the following chapters. We have not learned to harness the irresponsibility handed down fromAdam and have misunderstood and mismanaged ourcalling to rule the earth. To so many of us, heaven is the objective and oppression is our mindset. Like the Hebrews of old we are marching in circles, unaware of the good life on earth. In the meantime, we can speak Hebrew, but we can't speak to the banker. We can jump and dance "in the Spirit," but we can't manage our own lives.
Some so-called successful Hebrews who have positions and titles in companies can't manage their own families. They're making $600,000 a year, but they're wandering around in the wilderness when it comes to loving their spouse. They have learned to manage and earn money, but they can't manage their homes. Psalm 127:1 says, "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders laborin vain." In this book I want to address management Yah's way-which makes everyone whole.
To achieve my goals of instruction, I will be using some illustrations from the business world to make some management points. We will also discuss the negative-what "not to do"-in some aspects to accentuate the positive. And we will let Israel's historic exodus from Egypt serve as redirective teaching points. The end result will hopefully be a management cap that fits perfectly around your Hebrew crown.
Created For Freedom
Freedom-what it is and what it's not-is the core principle of Adam's original relationship and the purpose of this book. In the Genesis account, Yah, the Creator, placed the man in the Garden and said, "You are free."
And the LORD Yah commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
-GENESIS 2:16-17, EMPHASIS ADDED
Yah declared man free and gave him work. Freedom is basic to Yah's will for man. Adam was free to produce, duplicate, multiply and replenish everything Yah had given him to do, but he wasn't free to violate the law of Yah. Yah put just one item in the Garden to maintain man's obedience-the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Imagine the millions of trees Yah had made, yet He placed a "No Trespassing" sign in front of just one of them. This was necessary in order to activate the will of man through the power of choice.
Deliverance Is Not Freedom
You may have built a nice little homestead on the edge of Sinai's wilderness. You have become comfortable in your oppression, but you know there is so much more that Yah has in store for you. You've given up on miracles because you don't see them anymore. You haven't been listening to the mentors assigned to your life. And you haven't been faithful to Yah's Word. You've been delivered, but you aren't living free. Still, you know there's more to this life. That's why I'm writing to you.
There is no way to walk into freedom without shouldering its responsibility. If you want that promotion to general manager, you must want the position's responsibility.The price of responsibility requires more time, talent, energy, initiative and substance. The title is nice, and the pay is wonderful, but the workload is sevenfold. You have to be there earlier than everyone else and be the last one to leave when you are in charge. If anything goes wrong, they call you-day or night. If the water pipe bursts at 3 A.M., get ready for a phone call. The nine-to-five work day doesn't apply to you anymore, because now you're the general manager, and now you work all the time.
It's easy to be a janitor, because you can leave at five. When you're working as a clerk, you can sometimes slip out for a two- hour lunch, and nobody cares too much. But if you ever want to progress, you will have to grow up into the responsibility of freedom, because there is a cost to being free.
Being released from the oppressor does not guarantee a release from oppression-responsibility does. Responsibility makes the hard-working choices to get up earlier and work into the night to get the job done. And this is what freedom allows us to do when we honestly want to be truly free.
Are You Sitting By The Door
When Yahusha began His ministry, He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and read from the Book of Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18- 19).
The terminology used in this passage paints a picture of someone who visits a prison and finds all the doors are opened, but the prisoners are still inside. Yahusha said He came to proclaim freedom to the prisoners. The prison doors were open, but the prisoners were still sitting inside. They were glad, like so many individuals and nations today, that the door of deliverance was open. They were proud the door was open. But they were still sitting inside on their prison cots. Why? Because prisons provide free food. When you're in jail, your clothes are paid for. Showers are provided, and you can sit and watch the world move around you on cable TV.
I've actually met young people who have told me, "I do better in prison than on the outside; at least I know I'll get three square meals a day behind bars. I have a job in prison. I know who I am in prison-I'm a prisoner. Out here I don't know who I am." How sad.
Too many people are wasting their time today as prisoners in their own cells. Hamachiach 's words of freedom may be taped to their living room walls. But so many are sitting in their cells with the jail door standing wide open, enslaved to the spirit of oppression that held them bound before accepting deliverance.
The word gospel means "good news, good report, good herald or good information." The good news of the kingdom is that Yahusha converts our deliverance into freedom. When a man is born again, the Spirit of Yah re-creates his inner man and makes His abode in him. But the freedom that comes to our mind and actions is left completely up to us. We are free to walk out of our jail cells, and we are free to stay in our cells, because according to Hamachiach 's gospel, no one is automatically set free. In your oppression you have chosen to sit in your jail cell and watch TV. You bought that VCR, and now your new ministry is the video store.
The great Hebrew apostle Paul writes, "It is for freedom that Hamachiach has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1).
As ministries, nations and individuals travel the road to responsibility today, it is important to understand that many of us have been conditioned by our former oppression. Our social, economic and religious conditioning tiesus to an invisible stake (like the dog in the experiment), which keeps us from moving forward in the things of Yah. The jail cell is open, but there we sit, bound and oppressed. This is why Paul tells us to stand firm against the conditioning to renew our minds from our old ways of thinking.
GET RID OF THE OLD THINKING
When I was growing up, we lived in a part that wasn't economically desirable. Then one year our family built a new house.
Before we moved, thirteen of us-eleven children plus a mother and a father-were living in a little four-room house. When we were getting ready to move into our newly constructed house in the promised land, I remember my mother saying, "You all can't act up there like you act down here." That sounds simple, but she was imparting a deep revelation: "Look, we are moving to a new place, so we need new children." There was a water pump outside of our old house that had to be primed and pumped every morning when starting our day. That was a tough job. I used to hate to prime the pump. My arms ached as I longed to be eating breakfast or getting some more rest.
When it was time to bathe, we had to pump water into a bucket, carry it into the house and pour it into a tin tub. Each one of us got into that tin tub and stood up so Mama could bathe us. Every morning it was pump, pour and shiver in the cold well water that started out our day.
When we crossed over into our promised land, the pumping and pouring was a thing of the past. Now we had running water inside the house. But we still had our old wilderness "tin tub" mentality. We had a brand-new porcelain tub, but we didn't know how to bathe in it! We stood up in the new tub just like we used to stand up in that tin tub; it took years to realize that we could actually lie down to take a bath.
This may seem a funny little illustration, but you see, we had been conditioned just like that dog. We were in a new land, but mentally we were still in the old place. Position does not guarantee disposition.
In the old house we used to wash the dishes in a basin. Imagine the dishes for eleven children plus mom and dad- thirteen plates, thirteen forks, thirteen knives, thirteen cups, thirteen everything. It was like a hotel. We used to pile up the dishes in an enamel basin and wash them.Then we would place them in a rubber tub so they could drip dry.
When we moved to the promised land, we had a new built-in sink, but instead of letting the dishes dry in the sink, we put them in the old rubber tub. It took a little time to realize we had a sink-and what it was for! So "new" does not guarantee change.
Good-Bye Egypt
Now here is the point: When some folks move from Egypt, they carry their old washboards with them. When they arrive in Canaan, they carry those old washboards into the laundromat, put them in a new Whirlpool or GEelectric washing machine and scrub away. They don't even question the strange, new wash tubs with open lids and shiny dials. The electronic wonders are staring them in the face, but they have been so conditioned in slavery that they don't even question what the new things are.
This is a good illustration of being delivered, but not free. Washing machines clean clothing at the flip of a button. With them, scraped fingers and sore arms are things of the past. But when the past consumes your present, it makes no difference. The laundromat becomes just a new place to do what you did at the river the year before. This is the kind of oppressive thinking that Yah wants out of us. Of course it's tough to change-without mental transformation, the actions we take to "change" may only produce a new place where we continue to do our old things.
There are millions today who are tied to a stake or scrubbing in laundromats because the oppressive conditioning of their past is still controlling their present. Many have been conditioned to say, "I can't be holy; I am a worm, hoping for heaven. I hope I make it, because I certainly can't be righteous on earth. What are we having for dinner in the prison cafeteria today? I can't be myself. I can't be delivered. I can't be healed. I can't be liberated. I can't be free." They're so used to believing those lies that when Yah tells them they are free, they can't believe it's true. They sit in their prison cells, simply hearing the good news of freedom in the gospel, but they don't believe it.
Millions are bound by their past. Though their chains have been removed, they are so bound by the lies of Egypt's conditioning that they never walk out into freedom to enjoy the fruits of their destiny. The comfort of having others control their lifestyle in slavery is too appealing for many. So they hang around the stake, starving. They don't exercise their minds, and they never learn what is outside of their comfortable prison doors.
The twenty-first-century message of the Creator is this: Obedience demands responsibility to walk out of our prison doors. We have wandered in the wilderness naming and claiming long enough. Our free ride is over. It's time to get to work!
Renew Your Mind
As amazing as it sounds, the one thing Yah could not do with the Hebrew children in the wilderness was to change their minds. And He can't change yours, either. He will inspire you in your Yahly desires, but He won't change you. The only one who can change you is you. This is why the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Hebrew ministry at Rome, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2).
Remember what my mother taught us before we moved into our new modern house? "You all have to change." The word transformed used by Paul in this verse in Romans means "changed." But that has nothing to do with our spirits. Spiritual transformation takes place when we are born again. When we change kingdoms, our spirits are renewed. I compare the new birth change of kingdoms to the move my family made from our little four-room house to our new deluxe home on the east side of our island.
He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. -COLOSSIANS 1:13
All things were new when we moved in; the old had passed away. But once we arrived, our thinking remained the same. It is the mind that must be renewed before we can walk out of oppression's chains.
The trouble is that when we are born again in our spirit, we still have our washboard in our hands. We're still carrying all this weight. We still have old thinking patterns with us. Our minds need to be renewed.
We never had any lawn at our old home. We just had dirt. When we arrived at our new home we had grass. Grass is better than dirt, don't you think? But I'll never forget how angry I became the first week we were there because I couldn't shoot marbles on our nice new lawn. You need dirt to shoot marbles, but instead of planning to shoot somewhere else, because of my old-house oppressive thinking, I was angry at the grass! I was angry because I couldn't play my old games in the new place.
You can't play the old wilderness games in the land of Canaan. They don't work there. Are you still a player? If you are, you need a conversion in your soul.
The soul consists of the mind, will and emotions. Nothing changes until the soul changes. It is Yah's lawHis living active written truth-that converts the soul. Have you ever heard the expression "A man is what he eats"? How about the term "soul food"? Both of these phrases are pregnant with wisdom and contain the key to change and freedom. What you feed your soul determines your quality of life and degree of freedom.
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul. -PSALM 19:7, KJV
The Book of Hebrews tells us, "For the word of Yah is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Heb. 4:12, emphasis added). The soul is separate from man's spirit, which is re- created at the new birth. The soul is called psuche in biblical Greek and refers to "the seat of the feelings, desires, affections, aversions."
The apostle James writes, "Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls" (James 1:21, NKJV).
Change comes through mental reconditioning after a person is born again. So it is up to every individual to save his soul after his spirit has been born again. If you don't, you will lie by the same old stake and sit in the same old cell that your carnal mind conditioned you for before you were born again. Every one of us must renew and retrain our minds for freedom.
Have you ever made or heard this statement, "I need a change"? In response to this, many make a geographical, physical move (sometimes internationally), change jobs and even spouses, only to discover they are still frustrated. Why? Because change comes not by where we go, but through what we know. Transformation begins with information. If you truly want to change, change your library, friends and influences.
Delivered Spirits With An Oppressed Mind
The way a person thinks about himself is a key to how he will think about others and to his general outlook on life. Certain people could move into your neighborhood and bring the property values down. If they moved next door to your $200,000 house and treated theirs like it was a $50,000 home, all of a sudden your home's value would start dropping.
When the realtor drives by and sees the uncut grass, weeds and trash covering their lawn, the realtor will think twice, attempting to cut your sale price because of yourtrash- thinking neighbor. The realtor will say, "We need to take an extra $7,000 off the sale price to help the buyer endure the unsightly house next door."
Do you know what is Yah's number one problem on the planet? It is humans with delivered spirits but the same old oppressed minds. He has to put up with old trashy minds in a new and holy kingdom, and we bring Yah's value down by our bad attitudes and by the way we treat ourselves and others.
Yah knew He couldn't take the Israelites directly into freedom when Moses delivered them, because they would have turned Canaan into Egypt. So He took the time to work on their minds. Those whose minds He couldn't change, He later buried in the wilderness.
Only people who are mature, willing to fight and willing to take responsibility for the future are going to bear fruit for Yah in the new millennium. I believe we are going to bury some wilderness people because they are not ready for the awesome responsibility that lies ahead of us. They will still be naming and claiming or sitting and doing nothing, and when Yah stops answering their baby prayers, they'll think He left. Then they will murmur and die in the wilderness just as the Israelites did. He is going to wake a lot of these folks up. But some of them will have spiritually deaf ears.
It takes free minds and a lot of guts to face Jericho. You need some backbone to look at the Amorite kings and declare, "We're going to defeat you." It takes a lot of internal fortitude to stand back and tell Joshua, "We can well take the land." It is easier to exist in slavery than to live in freedom. This is why many individuals, communities and nations who have experienced the excitement of deliverance turn their celebration into criticism when the reality of responsibility confronts them.
Free Minds
There is a situation recorded in the writings of the apostle Paul to the Roman metropolitan city of Corinth that illustrates the struggle to be truly free.
Some Hebrews in Paul's day experienced the same kind of Egypt-thinking problems in the New Testament promised land of the ministry as Israel did in the wilderness. Many of the Greeks were idol worshipers before they came to the Lord. After they were redeemed they realized there was only one Yah, but a problem arose. The idolatrous thinking from the past threatened their new Hebrew lifestyle. So Paul wrote these words to them:
So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no Yah but one.... For us there is but one Yah, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Yahusha Hamachiach , through whom all things came and through whom we live. But not everyone knows this. Some People are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.
-1 CORINTHIANS 8:4-7
Paul knew that meat sacrificed to idols meant nothing because the "Yahs" to whom it was sacrificed didn't exist. But some of the new Corinthian Hebrews had been so conditioned by their past that they were afraid to eat meat that had been offered to their culture's mythical Yahs. Their oppressive past affected their present, and they allowed the practice to affect their new freedom.
Other Corinthian Hebrews grew in their understanding of Yah's soul-restoring truth and had no problem eating "pagan- brand" meats. But because of the dangers of oppressive thinking, which can kill Yah's people in the wilderness, Paul warned the Corinthians:
Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Hamachiach died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Hamachiach . Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will not eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.
-1 CORINTHIANS 8:9-13
Paul calls the people who were offended by eating meat sacrificed to idols "brethren" because they were redeemed , born- again people. They had the Ruach HaQadesh. The problem was , they were still oppressed by their old pagan life. So when they saw meat that they used to offer to idols, they still saw the idols with the meat. They had been delivered from that old culture and lifestyle, but they weren't free in their thinking to progress spiritually.
Our former idols today don't usually consist of wood and stone idols. An idol may be a former hobby that Yah wants you to cut down on to give Him more time. Or it may be a habit you gave up that keeps trying to come back. If you aren't free in your mind after conversion, even your eating can become bondage. When you are free, your mind needs to be free with you.
Paul declared his own freedom late in 1 Corinthians. But he also acknowledged that he would back down from that freedom if it would prevent others from sinning. "Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible" (9:19). In his freedom, Paul put serving others above his own desires. He went where the oppressed people were and, through the truth, delivered them into freedom. There is no true freedom without responsibility.
Let The Past Pass
When Yah delivered the Israelites from Egypt, He gave them the opportunity to be free. But they refused the opportunity. So Yah buried them in the desert, and He used their children, who were not born in Egypt, to possess the land instead.
Deliverance provides the opportunity for freedom, not the fulfillment of freedom. The jail door is opened, but you must choose to walk out. Once you hit the wilderness, watch out with whom you're hanging out. If you keep company with Egypt-thinking people, they can contaminate you. It was for this reason that Yah didn't allow the children's parents to circumcise them. Yah didn't want this new generation to bear a mark that was made by their slave-minded fathers. He didn't want any memory of Egypt to remind them of slavery's past.
The Israelites had moved about in the desert forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the LORD. For the LORD had sworn to them that they would not see the land that he had solemnly promised their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised.
-JOSHUA 5:6-7, EMPHASIS ADDED
I sit down and talk with older people sometimes, but there are certain ones with whom I'm careful about talking. There are some who only talk about how they were oppressed. Some can talk about it for hours. And if you sit there and listen, a hatred can develop in you for a people you don't even know. So be careful; the oppressive past of others can contaminate your spirit and inhibit your true freedom.
I highly value the talk of old people who say, "Son, appreciate what you have, because we didn't have this." To me, that's gratefulness. That's an encouragement to be appreciative of what Yah is doing in your life.
But I am very careful about others who say, "I remember when we couldn't eat in the same restaurant with those scoundrels who controlled our land. We couldn't go here, or go there. We knew our place, because they told us where it was!" These are the ones who can pass along their hatred, and it can become a cancer to you.
We can become so preoccupied with the realities of the past that our present and future can be consumed. Some people are so busy trying to get over their past that they don't have time to live their future. Paul tells us to forget those things that are behind, and that "straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which Yah has called me heavenward in Hamachiach Yahusha" (Phil. 3:13).
To this, Yah adds in Isaiah 43, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!" (vv. 18-19). This does not mean we are to pretend that the past did not exist. We must simply not allow it to control, inhibit or condemn our future.
This is a powerful word to the ministry of the twenty-first century. Today we are embarking on a whole new era for the ministry. But to get on with Yah's leading we must look at our lives and make a responsible decision to "forget the former things." We can't preoccupy ourselves with the way we were or the way we were treated, because it only produces bitterness. We must consider any past grievances as the works of ignorant people, forgive and move on. The past is as strong as you allow it to be. To the Israelites, the scent of onions and garlic became stronger than their desire for sweet honey and milk.
This is a basic issue of spiritual salvation. To get redeemed , you have to turn your back on where you were going and whom you were with and go totally in the other direction. You can't look back to the wilderness or to Egypt. Those Good old miracle days of the Charismatic movement are gone. We are whooping, shouting, dancing and falling down out of tradition, because the anointing is gone. But Yah hasn't left. He just wants to do a new thing. So don't look back. As Yahusha said, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of Yah" (Luke 9:62). Yah has a higher level of responsibility for your life. But you must forget what is behind you to progress in your calling. You can't take hold of the new without first letting go of the old.
Delivered But Not Free
When Yahusha called you, He didn't just call you to save you. He called you so you could be free. "You, my brothers," writes Paul again, "were called to be free" (Gal. 5:13). Paul is talking in this verse to saints, which indicates they were redeemed -but not free. We all have to respond to our freedom call because of the reality of remaining bound by the spirit of oppression after we have been born again.
This is a timely message for the ministry today, because it's time to grow up. We can actually be born again and remain unborn in our minds. So the apostle writes again, "Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love" (Gal. 5:13).
In other words, Paul tells us, "Don't use your freedom to indulge in `Egyptian living."' Some of us are glad to be delivered from the oppressor, but we don't want deliverance fromthe oppression. We are excited to be redeemed , but we know those areas of our mind that need to be renewed-and we like to hold on to them. "Yah, I'm so glad You redeemed me, but don't redeem me from those other things. You know I still like to sip a bit in the Pharaoh Bar and Grill. You know I'm busy, and I can't get this together with my weight, and I still like to hang out with those old mummies down the street. Let all of my freedom from them come when it's time to hit heaven's gates." So there some sit in their little homesteads on the edge of the Sinai wilderness, visiting with old friends, in sight of the Promised Land.
Listen: The people of Israel really didn't want to go back to Pharaoh. They wanted to go back to the food. They hated Pharaoh, but they loved what he offered them-free food, free housing, free clothes. So in essence, they said, "Deliver us, but don't set us free from this stuff."
Get The Stink Out
Just as Yah called the Israelites, He is calling you to be free. It's time to grow up. It's time to cut off all that Egyptian scent. Get up off your jail cot and bathe yourself in the blood one more time. Put down those old smellyCairo leek-and-onion sandwiches you've been secretly eating, and wash yourself in the fresh truth of Yah's Word. Get all the garlic scent out of your system. Go on a long fast if you can. Get the onions and leeks out of your blood.
The worldwide Hebrew ministry is currently on the outskirts of the wilderness. We can hear the Jordan rushing along just over the hill. We are at the end of our generation, and we are moving into the Promised Land. So it is time to learn how to walk in our freedom. It's time to stop playing our games and to break away from the chains that hold us to our stakes. Let us move on now to learn more about walking in freedom.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
CHAPTER
THE PROMISE OF TRUE FREEDOM
1. Conditions determine conduct until interrupted by an external force.
2. There is no way to walk into freedom without shouldering its responsibility.
3. Being released from the oppressor does not guarantee a release from oppression-responsibility does.
4. The good news of the kingdom is that Yahusha converts our deliverance into freedom.
5. Position does not guarantee disposition.
6. "New" does not guarantee change.
7. Without mental transformation, the actions we take to "change" may only produce a new place where we continue to do our old things.
8. The comfort of having others control their lifestyle in slavery is too appealing for many.
9. Obedience demands responsibility to walk out of our prison doors.
10. The only one who can change you is you.
11. It is the mind that must be renewed before we can walk out of oppression's chains.
12. You can't play the old wilderness games in the land of Canaan.
13. Nothing changes until the soul changes.
14. What you feed your soul determines your quality of life and degree of freedom.
15. Every one of us must renew and retrain our minds for freedom.
16. Only people who are mature, willing to fight and willing to take responsibility for the future are going to bear fruit for Yah in the new millennium.
17. It is easier to exist in slavery than to live in freedom.
18. When you are free, your mind needs to be free with you.
19. Be careful-the oppressive past of others can contaminate your spirit and inhibit your true freedom.
20. Some people are so busy trying to get over their past that they don't have time to live their future.
21. The past is as strong as you allow it to be.
22. Some of us are glad to be delivered from the oppressor, but we don't want deliverance from the oppression.
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