Freedom’s Deadliest Enemy

One great writer has said that “Freedom’s deadliest enemy is irresponsibility.” Sometime back I was watching Joyce Meyer talking about the death of her younger brother on God TV as part of her message on the life of self-pity compared to a life of diligence and faith.

She said that she learned about her brother’s death after Los Angeles authorities called her in December about a week after Christmas, to inform her that they found him dead in an abandoned building in the city. He had been dead 30 days and his body was so badly decomposed that in order for the authorities to identify him, they had to have his dental records.

After a few days she received his cremated ashes and a few personal effects that included a pocket knife, empty wallet, key chain and broken watch. She imagined that he must have been filled with regret during the last days of his life for not making the right choices.

My personal effects and his are sadly different. What are your personal effects going to be when your time here is up?” she asked the congregants at the meeting. During her address, she compared her life with that of her brother’s to illustrate the point that it’s up to the person’s determination to follow God’s plan, not his circumstances, that allow him to reap God’s promises.

How one’s life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us, there is no man on earth or devil in hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

Joyce Meyer preached on the story of a man in John 5 who laid by a pool for 38 years; then  Jesus asked this man; “Would you like to get well?” The man didn’t respond with a clear yes, but with self-pity. He said “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

Joyce then related her story to her own life and that of her brother’s. For many years, Meyer had suffered from sexual abuse from her father, which led to her to become controlling, manipulative and rebellious.

She was saved at the age of 9 but didn’t live out her faith. It was later in her life that she heard the voice and calling of God to preach. Today, she is a world known preacher, selling millions of books and making a difference in other people’s lives.

Meanwhile, her brother David joined the Marine Corp and started taking prescription drugs. He married young and had a baby. He left his wife and refused to pay child support.

Meyer said she tried several times to help her brother but kept running away. During one point in his life, he received employment under Joyce Meyer and worked there for a few years until he was asked to pay $ 60,000 in unpaid child support.

He quit his job and went through a string of girlfriends and drug habits. Another time she helped him receive drug rehabilitation at the Dream Centre in Los Angeles, but after a few months into the program, he said it wasn’t for him.

Joyce Meyer said that both she and her brother came from the same bloodline, same family, in some aspects, both went through their own struggles. However, while she eventually took responsibility for her behaviour, her brother always ran away from his.

Joyce Meyer continued her message by saying that “even though the crippled man in the gospel story couldn’t move much, but during the 38 years, he could at least wiggle to the edge of the pool, whereas David just wanted to lay by the pool another year, feel sorry for himself, blame somebody and remain crippled, I got tired of laying by the pool and I decided to wiggle.”Joyce said.

Joyce said she wasn’t bringing up the story of her brother to be disrespect, but she believed he would have wanted her to speak about him to teach all of us a lesson.” She said there was a time she and her husband considered paying off his overdue child support, but she wanted her brother to show his commitment to working and not quitting the Job.

This story is similar to many stories of families around the world. We don’t want to take responsibility for our actions and worse still we blame everyone for our sins and mistakes.

The Lord God Will Restore The Years

The Lord is God is the meaning of Joel’s name. No matter what has happened in the past, the Lord is able to restore. In Joel 2: 18-27, the Lord urges the people to be glad rather than afraid. He promises Israel that if they really repent from their hearts, God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.

This is a principle that applies today. Many of us regret the wasted years in our lives, but God says he will restore those years to us. But He will only restore the years that the locusts have eaten if there is true repentance.

The root of repentance is that we ‘change our minds’. So it is appropriate to say that if we repent, God will change His mind.

So as we look at this irresponsibility, we are seeing an escalation of breakdown in the family, communities, cities, and all the nations of the world. The whole world is reaping the consequences of an irresponsible humanity.

Almost every one of us are where we are today because that is where we have chosen, either subconsciously or consciously, to be. We are all good at blaming our mistakes on someone else since the fall of our first parents Adam and Eve.

As a man, Adam became the first spiritual leader in human history. He was given the responsibility of overseeing the garden and providing direction for his family. He was to be a steward over his resources and relationships. Unfortunately, he failed. Adam also mismanaged his God-given responsibility by remaining passive when he should have refused to eat the fruit which led to both of them sinning against God.

When God confronted him with this sin, he blamed Eve and the spirit of irresponsibility and blame entered the human race. Adam should have risked, stood up, and took responsibility by commanding the serpent to leave him and his wife alone.

When Eve picked the fruit, ate it and swallowed it, nothing immediately happened. But the Bible says she took the fruit and gave it her husband, who had received the original instructions from God, and when he ate of it, suddenly everything changed.

Death came, and the purity and holiness of our first parents was gone: “At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves” (Genesis 3: 7).

After sinning, Adam and Eve felt guilt and shame because of their nakedness. Because God planted eternity in the hearts of all men (see Ecclesiastes 3: 10), Adam and Eve also had consciences God had placed in their hearts, and this is what goes off when any one of us has done wrong.

When God came, He didn’t ask for the woman because of her sin; rather, He asked the man. It was at this time that Adam started blaming Eve and thereby forfeiting his God-given responsibility which led to a spirit of irresponsibility and blame entering the human race.

The Bible says: “The man replied, ‘It was the woman You gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it’” (Genesis 3: 12).  Not only did Adam neglect to establish and uphold God’s instructions, but he, transferred the responsibility for his fruit-eating decision to the woman, who had offered the fruit.

“God the woman You gave me… In other words, Adam was suggesting that God was responsible for the choice and decision that he made. If Eve had used other means of force to give the fruit to Adam, then the woman would have been responsible, but she didn’t force him in any way; it was Adam’s choice.

Where was Adam when the devil was tempting Eve? The Bible says he was standing right there beside her. “The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too” (Genesis 3: 6).

Men and women have the ultimate responsibility for their decisions. But since the fall, every one of us doesn’t want to take responsibility for our own choices, actions, decisions, situations, or circumstances. Instead, we find it easy to hide and blame others for our sins.

Maturity does not necessarily come with age; it comes by the acceptance of responsibility in every area of our lives.

Accepting responsibility for our failures is the substance on which success rests. No one can be responsible for success unless he is willing to accept responsibility for failure as well. This is true in business and marriage, as well in all other aspects of life.

Today is a new season of responsibility in which God is saying to each of us, whether your are poor, rich, Black White, Indian –no matter who or where you are-“Stop blaming the system, your parents your pastor, your former girlfriend or boyfriend and stop blaming your past. Get your act together, and accept responsibility.

We can’t change the past, but by God’s grace we can determine the quality of our future. We might not like the family into which were born, but we sure can by God’s grace determine the kind of home in which we rear our children.