{"id":2624,"date":"2012-07-05T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T13:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devonline.us\/dailyevotional\/?p=2624"},"modified":"2012-07-05T09:06:15","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T16:06:15","slug":"freedom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/freedom-2\/","title":{"rendered":"FREEDOM!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\"><strong>1 Thessalonians 4:1-2<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"color: #c40000;\"><em>Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you\u00a0ought\u00a0to walk and to please God; \u00a0for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">While the date of this Daily-E-Votional is July 5<sup>th<\/sup>, I am writing it on the 4<sup>th<\/sup>. It is a day here in the US where we celebrate freedom. Canada celebrated their day of freedom and birth on the 1<sup>st<\/sup>. Mexico celebrates on May 5<sup>th<\/sup>. Other nations have their own day to celebrate freedom.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Years ago I heard a wise man remark that freedom is not the right to do what we\u00a0<em><strong>want<\/strong><\/em>, but the choice to do what we\u00a0<em><strong>ought<\/strong><\/em>. My freedom comes to a screeching halt when it imposes on the freedom of another person.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Freedom to do what we <em>want<\/em> is very self-centered. The craving of the flesh begs for something new and thrilling. When we base our life and conduct primarily on things that will satisfy only ourselves, we are guilty of using our freedom in a selfish manner.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">According to the <em>Word of God<\/em>, we are to constantly keep inquiring of the Lord what He desires for us to do, to go and to be. It is not our own life that we are to live, but His life flowing through us.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">I think it is way past time for true believers to stand out from the rest of the world in our freedom to serve Jesus in all that we do and say. My prayer is that we will be in touch with the Lord and truly say, NOT MY WILL, BUT YOUR WILL BE DONE THROUGH ME.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Blessings dear hearts. Draw near to God today, trust Him completely and be a blessing!<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><strong>&#8212;Pastor Cecil<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1 Thessalonians 4:1-2 Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you\u00a0ought\u00a0to walk and to please God; \u00a0for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. While the date of this Daily-E-Votional is July 5th, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-thessalonians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyevotional.com\/prior2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}