Revelation

I don't think we know what freedom is.  I don't think I know what freedom is.

I can tell you what freedom means.  I can even appreciate freedom.  But do I understand it or grasp it?

This is part 3 of a story to help me process ... and discover Freedom. (continued from part 2- Discombobulation)

(Part 1- Where am I?)
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When I sunk to the ground I became acutely aware of where I was, like a fog dissipating on a clear day.  I was in my own mind.

I didn't recognize it at first and it no longer looked the same, but it was definately familiar.  A long time ago, I began to come to this place in my mind when I prayed.  A quiet peaceful seclusion where I could speak frankly with Jesus.  I remember the first time I pictured it was in a vision of a sword falling from the sky and landing on the top of the hill, the blade buried in the soil.  God was asking me to take up the sword, in much the same way of a young Arthur.  To take up my calling.  I struggled a long time before accepting what the sword represented.  I had many conversations with Jesus there, with the sword in the background.  Many one-sided arguments and excuses.  With such an intimate encounter with God, that place became where I would go when I prayed.

The tree wasn't there originally, nor was the creek.  They were there in subsequent pictures and visions when I way praying.  Sometimes I would be under the tree chatting with Jesus next to me.  Sometimes we would be on the hillside playing catch with a football, or even a couple times with trac-ball.  The tree ever present, but with much more life than what I was seeing now.  The creek had been more of a babbling brook, gently flowing in the background, with rocks and boulders that it meandered its way past.  Now, I was looking at a dead tree and an unpassable river.

The cliff face came much later.  I had gone through a period in my life where there was a unknown future.  I had often explained it as a "Black Veil" I couldn't see past or beyond.  That black veil was encroaching this prayer place.  At some point during that time, the cliff face was present when I went to meet Jesus there.  I had never explored this area in my mind like I had just done.  When I was there, what was before me was clear and crisp in my mind, but the distance was a blur, like an artist painting something up close and using dots and squares and lines of paint to represent whatever's in the distance.

More recently, when I visited this place it felt different.  It was like I was visiting a place from my childhood and it felt awkward to be there as an adult.  Since moving to Hawaii, things have been different.  God has exposed things in my life that are not of Him, and has encouraged me to discover more.  Sometimes I have been eager and sometimes I have not been eager.  To be aware of fruit in your life like anger or addiction is one thing, but to seek out and discover the root of that fruit, so you can remove it, can be overwhelming.

In an eager moment, I invited my pastor and his wife to come and pray with me and my wife through some of these roots.  To help "guide" me in discovering them.  Afterward I was emotionally spent.  For the first time in my life I could clearly see the chains that bind me.  And they were huge, like the chains from a massive draw bridge on a medieval castle.  What do you do with chains like that?  It was also revealed that I was trapped in some way.  While we were praying, our pastor's wife had a picture of a wall that was holding me in and I immediatly pictured the cliff face that was present in my prayer place.  The more I pictured this place the more I came to recognize I didn't know if I was or wasn't trapped.  I had never felt like I couldn't leave, but I had never tried.  As I described to her my place of prayer, she prayed that God would reveal a way out.

Here I was, seeing clearly for the first time what my refuge had become and realizing I was trapped.  As I pondered this, it was easy to wonder how something that was from an intimate encouter with God could result in a place of confinement.  I came out of my reverie and stood.  I turned my back to the hill and the tree.  Before me was a ledge trail that went up the cliff and away from this place.  Obviously the way out we prayed for.  With a new found eagerness, I set my foot on the path to freedom.


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continue to part 4- Hesitation