The Rest of the Story
June 3rd, 2008. Filed under: Tuesday's Tempting Reads.I always liked those little radio spots done by Paul Harvey telling the rest of the story. Now I will share the rest of the story from A Scandalous Freedom by Steve Brown. I shared the first part of the book with you two weeks ago.
Moving into chapter six, Steve frees us from our heroes and idols. “When you deify people in an unrealistic way, you set yourself up for guilt not rightfully yours.” In other words, when we look at our church leaders, mentors and other “good” people and start comparing ourselves with them, we end up with guilt because we don’t measure up. Guess what, we don’t have to measure up to anyone or any one’s standards. We’re free to be who we are. Conversely, we create enemies out of those who aren’t really our enemies. Steve tells us “It is so freeing to realize that we don’t have anything to prove or to protect.” Did you get that? Why waste time fighting battles that take away our freedom?
As Christians we are free to be bold. You heard me. We don’t have to be wimpy because we don’t want to hurt someones feelings. Would you rather take a chance on possibly offending someone or let him slide on down into total darkness instead?
We’re free of the pretense that if we’re Christians then everything in life is just hunky dory. It that isn’t a bunch of something you wouldn’t want to step in, then I don’t know what is. If a person truly believes that, then it’s time to read this book. We are free to admit that life isn’t perfect and that we have pain and problems. God never told us we wouldn’t have. He promises to be there to get us through it all.
And we’re free to break loose of our failures. Remember now, we’re free. That means that our failures don’t define us. “You can define yourself by your inevitable failure to live up to the standards, or you can define yourself in terms of God’s love.” I’m free. Guess which one I’m going to choose.