Freedom As People Of Christ And Freedom Through Christ

The following program is sponsored by evangelical life ministries.

Welcome to engaging truth, the manifestation of God's word and the lives of people around us. Join us each week. As we explore the impact of his message of spiritual renewal from the lesson of forgiveness forged in the crucible of divorce, to the message of salvation learned by an executioner from a condemned killer to the gift of freedom found in the rescue of victims of human trafficking. This is God's truth in action.

Welcome to engaging truth. This is Dave Schultzer host for this particular program. We have a guest on the air this evening who has been a guest with us before, and you'll recognize the name Randall Mooney. Welcome Randall. Thank

You, pastor David. Appreciate it very much. We

Are going to look at the month of July of this year, uh, especially what happens on the 4th of July, reminding us of the freedom that we have as people of this country, freedom that up as people of this state, but the best freedom of all is the freedom that we have in Christ. And there are just numerous Bible passages throughout the new Testament that talk about this freedom. Uh, for instance, um, freedom from God's condemnation to the forgiveness of sins, freedom from self con automation, uh, which is guilt. That also comes through the forgiveness of sins, freedom from the slavery of sin, freedom from the fear and anxiety that surrounds us freedom to pray, um, freedom to confess our sins and receive forgiveness. Those are the biblical freedoms that are just, just countless places throughout the whole scriptures. But I wanna, first of all, ask you, before we get into that, um, tell the listening audience of the books that you have written. And the reason I'm asking this is because each one of these books deals with something specific in the, in the communities, in which we live today, the joy of our salvation in Christ.

Amen. Uh, a book that I wrote several years ago that is still, uh, has a lot of traction is the homeless church. And especially with COVID and a lot of churches closing their doors, a lot of Christians having to meet, uh, indoors or through the zoom or stuff like that. It gave a lot of fresh meaning to the homeless church because people couldn't go inside the walls. And, uh, I had written in that book extensively about all the church, uh, happening that we find outside of the walls. And then we end up at a place in this country where we all had to go outside of the walls for peer of time, uh, make America saved again released last year. I think that, uh, it, it started out really good. I think it still has a lot of room for traction. Uh, it has clarified, uh, the born again, experience the, uh, the relationship that we have with Christ.

It has taken out all of the denominational confusion and, and debates on a lot of it and just said, this is very clearly what we have in Christ. And like we said, in this home, the sunsets free is free indeed. And I think a lot of people aren't experiencing free indeed because they don't understand, uh, how all of that came to us from the son of God. Uh, finding hope is a book that we've distributed throughout Africa, uh, in, uh, starting in Nigeria. And, uh, we now have doors opening to us from Benin and, uh, Swaziland and some other countries where French is the predominant language. So we're working on a French translation for finding hope. We already have an English translation, uh, the French translation. We're trying to have it ready in November for, uh, crusades. It will be starting in those places here in November of this year.

If the person looking for your books would just type in RA moon, would they come to your website?

Uh, if they type in Randall Mooney, they'll find author, uh, they'll find links, uh, to the website, they'll find the book available, any number of places online it's available at. I noticed other day, it's now available at target online. Uh, it's available at Amazon Walmart, any, any number books, a million Barnes and noble. You can find the books if you just type in my name or type in the name of the book.

The freedom that we have in Christ is the most precious freedom because of the fact that freedom from the forgiveness of sins gives us a new insight into what God could have us do to, um, to become part of his kingdom of grace and serve him in so many different ways. But there's been an erosion. There's been an erosion in our lifetime, in my lifetime of the truth of freedom from scripture, and also the freedom that you are reading in the declaration of independence. What is that all about?

I think the word free by itself has become confusing for people. We don't understand whom the sunset's free is free. Indeed. Even in this country, we don't understand our own freedoms because they're trying to rewrite history and not, uh, allow us to understand the great prices that people have paid for those freedoms all through history from the time, uh, the pilgrims, uh, and the Puritans decided to come to America, uh, up through the revolutionary war up through today, there are still people paying great personal prices for the freedoms that we have in Christ and the freedoms that we have in this country to watch that word free, go completely understand, understood, misunderstood, and to watch people wrestle over what kind of freedom we're supposed to have, uh, is confusing to me because freedom means freedom. And if I'm too busy worrying about who I'm gonna offend with everything I say and everything, I, I do my freedom stops where someone else's feelings begin, then we have missed the whole point of freedom to begin with.

When you look at that simple word, freedom, it, um, it gives us a sense of, of, of true peace and people in the world. Even looking at America differently today than they did 50 years ago still say, this is the place to live. It still has the, the freest community of any place in the world. Um, when you look at that as an author, as a dad, as a builder, as a, up as a, as a grandfather, what is it saying to you about what we are facing today and what needs to be done to rectify this? Well,

We live more and more in a culture that is doing everything it can to remove God from the equation and our rights are inalienable rights, come from God. And so if we're gonna take God out of the picture, where do our, our rights come from, if they no longer come from God, we no longer have respect for God. We have no respect for each other in that process either. So we're gonna have to return to God. We're gonna have to get back to making him the Lord and not us and making him the Lord and not the God or, or not businesses or corporations or media organizations that decide, uh, who, where, who has freedom and who doesn't have freedom. It has to start with God because he's the one that gave us these freedoms to begin with.

Jesus says in the gospel of John, if you continue in my word usual, know the truth and the truth shall set you free, you will be free. Indeed. Um,

You know, the interesting part about that scripture, I, I was reading that just the other day when Jesus said, you should know the truth and the truth shall set you free. He was talking to the Jews that had opted to, uh, follow him and believe in him before that conversation were ended, had ended. They were arguing with him about where those freedoms came from and they, and he's looking at them at that point, going, well, you, you just wanna kill me <laugh> so they just got way off track with that talking about freedom. And they wouldn't give Jesus the, the privilege or the right to say, if you who, who the sunset's free is free. Indeed. They all know, whoa, we're from Abraham. We're, we're free because of we're children of Abraham. We're not free because of anything you've done. And so here we are, again, debating who is Jesus, who is God, where do these freedoms originate from?

You've chosen to reread the declaration of independence. I do this every year, kind of religiously because of the fact there's so much wisdom in there. There's so much truth that you've got to say is inspired these forefathers of ours to write this stuff. When you, when you read that, what is it saying to you as a, and is a citizen of this country that still has a, uh, some freedom left to abuse?

I used to care. Freedom left to abuse is that's. I, I used to carry the constitution around all the time and I would read the constitution and keep it in my pocket all the time. When I was looking at the declaration of independence here recently, I saw it not as a letter, but I saw it as a bullet list. And when I started breaking it out and creating this bullet list, I thought, my goodness, we're, we're still there. Or I don't know if we ever left there, but we still have, uh, regresses with our government. We have a list of things that we can say our government is trying to take our freedom away and take our right away and rule our lives by what it thinks we need instead of what we think we need. And that was the same thing that the men that helped write that and signed it 56 men that signed that thing.

And many of them paid high prices for that, uh, were basically just airing out their grievances with the government and saying, God, didn't create us for you to rule for us. God didn't create us to give up these freedoms. So here we are, uh, having people trying to reinvent the declaration to get rid of it, rewrite it, it's a living document it from what I'm reading, it's still very good. It's still very relevant. It's like this studio with Beatle pictures all over the place. The Beatles music is, is still relevant to many people today. The declaration of independence is still relevant to this day. And the grievances that they had are still relevant. So we, we need to read this stuff. We need to look at our history. We need to look at the lives of people, even in the Bible and the lives of people in the, in the, the us in the beginning, and look at the prices.

People paid for freedom. There are people all over the world that have paid high prices for the freedom that we have never to have gotten that freedom at all. And that's kinda like when you go back to Hebrews chapter 11, and it talks about all these people walking in faith and trust in God, and it goes, oh, and they all died not having received the promise. So there's a lot of people that have given their lives for the freedom. Not only that we have in this country, but for the freedoms that we experience in our churches through God. And they, the people that made it possible for us paved the way for us. They have never themselves were able to partake of it in the way that we, uh, can partake of it today. And, and we're the ones just kind of, you know, not interested anymore because we're too busy with whatever it is we're busy with

When you, when you see that erosion taking place and it's erosion always hurts because it, it, it affects someone and the erosion of freedom will truly affect us unless it is, is stopped somewhere. Uh, along the line, what are the causes you think that, that people have walked away from, for instance, the declaration of independence, the, um, that that tells us bullet by bullet or what these men had in their mind, what these people had in their mind when they wrote this, what are the causes?

Let me go around the band a little bit to get to the answer to that, because erosion is an interesting word. You can have a perfectly built building. You can have a great foundation, but you can have what we experienced at Harvey, come in here and bring enough water that it starts washing out around the corners of these foundations and washing out under these foundations and suddenly this great house and this great found cannot hold up against that flood. There is a flood of evil. There is a flood of disbelief. There is a flood of sin that is just coming against people's lives, coming against the church, coming against our own government, coming against the values that we hold. And that flood is washing out from under every footing that we have. Every foundation, we have the things that hold that, hold it up, and you can't ignore that erosion because that erosion is what's gonna do the damage. And it doesn't happen like in Harvey. Some of it happened in a day, but you look at other erosion like, like the, and canyon. You look at other erosions that's taken long times to have. There's an erosion that has taken place in America and its values even before America became a country, because the enemy is always at work to do what kill still and destroy. So he wants to do that by eroding everyth, that God is trying to, to set up and put in place.

When you look at what you've just talked about as being, um, part of the cause of, of what is happening, how are the young people today affected by what they see us and society doing? There was a time when there was a wholesomeness of, of the culture. The wholesomeness of the culture seems to have been gone. It's just, it's, it's slowly disappearing. Um, how are they to look at this true freedom and the culture in which we live as something that has value versus they're thinking today that other isms have better value?

You know, it's, uh, information overload has, uh, helped a lot of kids, uh, not be able to focus on anything that's important. So they've got every media outlet and every source. I mean, when, when I was a kid, we had three channels and it was black and white. And, and, uh, as far as news, you got 30 minutes a night, Monday through Friday, there were a lot of things that we didn't know, and weren't, weren't available to us. I've turned all that off again. I'm at a point in my life where I just don't care anymore. And you know what? It hasn't changed my life. It has reduced my anxiety. So if we want to bring kids up into understanding what is valuable and what is necessary in their life, then we've gotta figure out a way to turn off most of the noise that they're listening to and give them something to be hungry for.

Now, if in our churches, we're trying to have children's church and games and music and everything else. It's great. I've participated in all that. I've, I've initiated all that, but it gets to a point where we never just get around to teaching these kids, the word of God, teaching them how to study and read the word of God on their own. And for me, it always ends up back at the word of God. I was 16 years old when I left the life of sin and living in the streets and being a runaway from home and decided I was gonna follow God. I talked to parents. Now they think that their 21 year old kids too young to find out anything serious about the Bible. Well, I think the fact that our generation of the, the Jesus movement in the early seventies, the reason we still to this day have an impact upon the world that we live in is because we learned at a young age.

We can make a difference with this book. We can make a difference with the word of God. It can make a difference in us. We're giving 'em the candy. We're not giving. 'em the meat we're giving. 'em the milk we're not giving. 'em the meat. And then we're wondering why they don't have an appetite for the word of God. So if we really want this generation to step up to the game, like they need to, we're gonna have to give 'em something to be hungry about something that's real. And we may have to take away the donuts.

Let's pause for just a minute and get back to the question I'd like to tell you just a little bit about what this is all about. Evangelical life ministry is a, the mother of all of the programs that we call engaging truth. We done engaging truth programs for almost 12 years. Um, we have sought the, the country, the church for people who are gifted in one particular or two particular areas, but one area that in which they are gifted is truly the gifting of, of grace knowing the wonderful work of God. And so when you hear people on the air with us, they are people who have been sought out who have been prayed over, who, who have been asked to participate in sharing the gospel from their point of view, from the point of view of labor, of love of service or whatever it is.

So what you can do for us is to pray for us, pray for evangelical life ministries. That's number one, number two, if you'd like to support us, let me give you an address. E L M, which is even life ministry box 5 68, Houston, Texas 77 1 7 7 4 0. And you can also support us with dollars. Uh, nobody here receives anything who the most of the, the opportunities that we come to are volunteer opportunities. So thank you for being willing to listen, but thank you for praying and supporting us as well. Getting back Randall to the text itself, um, what do we need to turn this ship of freedom around?

We need some captains. We need captains of faith. We need men that have sacrificed are willing to sacrifice that are willing to give their lives to the gospel, give their lives to the call. Uh, guys like you that have spent your entire life doing this. We need the youngins to step up. Uh, we need to mentor them. We need to guide them. We need to teach them <affirmative>. We need to snatch them away, uh, from the things of the enemy. There's, there's great loss. We'll send them to fight our wars. We'll send them to go fight for the freedom of other countries, you know, and it's interesting. The revolutionary war only forty four hundred and thirty five people died in, in the revolutionary war. The war on terror, sixty eight hundred and fifty two, we've had more people, more kids die in service on this global war on terror than we had in the revolutionary war.

What have we set free with the global war on terror? It hasn't set us free. It's provided freedoms for other people. You know, it's really interesting in the civil war, there were 498,332 people killed that's 42.6% of all deaths over the course of the years from the revolutionary war to the war on terror were killed, fighting each other. The most deaths that we've had in and in our country in any war happened as a result of us fighting each other on our own ground. The reason the church has dropped the Baton for evangelism is because we're so busy, fighting each other. All of our denominations are fighting and picking one up, picking on one another. We're not raising up young men in the gospel. We're not raising young men up to send them into the fight, uh, into a fight that they they're guaranteed to win because the devil is guaranteed to lose. Uh, we'll send them into wars, but we won't send them into the streets with the gospel. They're ready to go. They're looking for something exciting. They're looking for a reason to be involved. Let's get 'em involved in the gospel.

The harder question, what happens if we don't,

If we don't, we all lose. We abdicate the throne for, we abdicate the throne for our own freedom. And for this own, for this country, we walk away and say, it's not worth the effort. It's a good thing that the men that participated in the signing of the declaration of independence, didn't walk away. Didn't say this is not worth it. They lost everything in Hebrews. It talks about the hero of our faith. They lost everything. Remember when we were young and we prayed, I'll give everything to Jesus. When did we stop giving all we had to Jesus, that's what we're gonna have to do again, Lord, I surrender. I give you all of my life.

What is it gonna take Randall to, to reinstill what you just talked about in the hearts of our young people. As I look at them, I look at them differently today than I did 50 years ago. When you looked in the life of the young people 50 years ago, there was, there was a willingness to hear. I don't even see a willingness to hear much less respond to that divine call. What is it gonna take then knowing what we know,

Something worth hearing,

What is that? Something worth hearing

It. It's the word of God. It's still alive. It's still living. It's, it's still there. It's still available to us. They have not taken our Bible away and told us we couldn't read 'em anymore. Yet.

When you look at the end times, uh, there's a lot of people talking about end times that all that's gonna happen right now, cuz it's predicted in the book revelation. Uh, that may well be true, but I'm not gonna waste my time at working about, about end times when I can know that there is something today that needs to be faced. Head on, take a look at your spiritual eyes for just a minute. What do you see?

You know, it's funny, you bring that up and I'll make this real quick. In the parable of the wheat and his hairs, Jesus did something very unique. He explained it to his disciples. And while the church has spent all of its time looking for, uh, the rapture, instead of looking for the kingdom, uh, they missed the fact that Jesus' explanation says let the wheat and the tears grow up together and then pull out the tears he's coming. He's sending his angels to take the tears, not to take out the wheat because the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof. This kingdom of God is gonna be here. We're gonna be a part of that kingdom here. If we start telling young people, they're part of the kingdom of God right here right now and throughout the rest of eternity, they'll get excited again.

I wanna thank you. Uh, you've always been as we always predict, uh, a special guest. So thank you for being willing to, to be part of this again. Uh, the freedom, the true freedom that we have in Christ through the forgiveness of sins is the freedom that our forefathers saw as the very basis for which they wrote the declaration of independence and eventually the constitution and the bylaws and, and all the issues that they face. Heavenly father, we just wanna close this thing with prayer. May your grace continue to be with us? The joy of salvation, be our true freedom, asking this precious name of Jesus. Thank you. And goodnight.

Thank you for listening to this broadcast of engaging truth. Be sure to join us each week at this time to help support our ministry, contact evangelical life ministries, post office box 5 6 8, Cypress Texas 7 7 4 1 0. Or visit our website@elhouston.org or find us on Facebook at evangelical life ministries. Thank you.