A Most Liberating Day

 If i obey God, it's going to cost other people more than it's going to cost me.  To those who do n ot have Jesus, my obedience will cost a great deal.  i have upset their plans.  i'm not smoking or drinking with those who purported be by my friends in the fist place.  i've runed their plans.  Yet i must remain friends with them.  i have to purport to be friends because God commands it.

God has covered all the costs, so i cannot, nor need not, take on the costs myself.  God loves me unconditionally until i impose on Him any conditions for obeying Him.  It's not worth the time, effort, or energy to come up with conditions for God; i'll end up on the asphalt on my ass again.

i died.  That was a most liberating day.  i felt that i had the option of freedom, and it came from You, Abba.  my dad had been dead for more than a decade.  Mother had died less than three weeks a before.  i had died to sin and the process of repentance had begun.  If i indeed died to sin how could i allow my flesh and my lusts rule me?  Repentance, ongoing as it is, takes over and i just don't feel like doing any of the old ways the old man did.  Most folks these days wouldn't consider being a slave to anything or admit to being a slave for God; but, for me, that's what it coms down to.