Important Update!

Due to the time and focus required for our new Study Bible Project, we’re simplifying our workload to ensure that this critical project receives the attention it deserves.

This means that we will no longer be posting new content on this blog. We found that we were doing the same work twice – creating blog posts and then recreating them for our Daily Email Goodies.

The good news?

You won’t miss anything.

Our Daily Email Goodies now offer all of the same content, plus extra multimedia resources to help you grow and stay encouraged each day.

As we close this chapter, we’re excited to keep serving you through a format that’s easier, richer and more helpful.

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We Know Something Bigger

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We know that every single chapter of our story is written by a Father Who is good, wise and loving; that even when things feel unfair or unjust, He is working it all out for good; that He hasn’t forgotten us or left us. He’s not pacing heaven, nervously wringing His hands. He’s in charge. That’s freedom.

Not the kind that depends on perfect circumstances. Not the kind that waits for governments to change.

But the kind that anchors your soul in unshakable love. So yes, even in the midst of tyranny, we are free.

Free to trust. Free to rest. Free to stop judging and start loving.

Free to be full of joy, even when the world around us is full of chaos.

Because freedom isn’t a place. It’s a Person.

And He lives in us.

Steve Martin

The Wide-Open Spaces of Joy and Peace

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… Not quarrelsome, but lenient, pacific …  (I Timothy 3:3, CV).

… To be calumniating no one, to be pacific, lenient, displaying all meekness toward all humanity (Titus 3:2, CV).

There is a boxing-ring of conflict where the show of control and sensationalism is fought. The audience is charged, the cameras are rolling, the hype is electric. Yet, we have the freedom not to enter the boxing-square of an antagonist picking a fight. We can even leave the entire area, letting others duke it out above the sounds of cheering and booing. This is simply not our conflict, it is not our fight. We live in freedom – far on the outside of the conflict – in the wide-open spaces of joy and peace.

All is going perfectly as Father planned. We will continue to act out the role, written for us by Him: love, grace, acceptance, and freely following realizations that He has granted us, wherever they may lead.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

We Are JOYizers!

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One of the “grace” (Greek, charis) words used by Paul was charizomai (G5483), which is structured by the Concordant Keyword Concordance as “JOYize.” That’s what grace does – it JOYizes!

What a beautiful picture all of this is. That’s what we’re here for – to JOYize others. We’re JOYizers! Father JOYizes us, and then we in turn become JOYizers – JOYizing those around us.

Sadly, the King James Version often translates JOYize (charizomai) as “forgive.” Yet, the deeper one digs, the more freedom one finds – and the more sinister the conspiracy against freedom we discover!

One can’t help but think here of a contrast between JOYizers and Judaizers. Judaizers place people in bondage. JOYizers help to liberate them from bondage.

Grace is better than we ever could have imagined. It isn’t about being undeserving – it’s about being deeply cherished. What father doesn’t cherish his children, and want to bless them (make them happy)? Not because they are deserving or undeserving, but because they are his!

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

Grace as Liberation from Religion

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This realization set me free – not just from guilt, but from religion itself. I began to see how the systems we build often hijack grace, using it to lure people in, then control them with fear. But grace doesn’t bind. It frees. It liberates us from performance-based faith, from shame-based obedience, and from the exhausting effort to prove ourselves to God.

Steve Martin

Dying to Sin, Living in Grace

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Grace doesn’t magically erase your flesh or its struggles. It frees you from the constant war with it. Deliverance from sin doesn’t come from winning battles; it comes from dying to the fight altogether. Grace changes the way you see sin. You realize that it no longer has power over you, not because you’ve conquered it, but because Christ has.

This is where true freedom begins. When you stop focusing on your failures and start focusing on His grace, you discover something incredible: you’re free. Free to live. Free to love. Free to trust that God’s got this – even your sin.

Grasping this basic truth is essential if you’re ever going to live in total freedom. Grace is not a theological concept or a pretty word. It’s the foundation of our relationship with God. Until we believe in the unlimited, all-encompassing grace of God, we’ll always be stuck – striving, failing and wondering if we’re enough.

But you are enough, because He is enough. Grace is bigger than sin, and it’s time we stop pretending otherwise. We don’t live in fear; we live in freedom – and freedom, my friends, is the beginning of real transformation.

Steve Martin
Associate Editor, Bible Student’s Notebook

Ultimate Freedom from Sin

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In Whom we have deliverance through His blood, the freedom from sins, according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7, BSV).

It is God alone Who is responsible for all. One day, in the resurrection, God will “justify” just how all “sin” was actually perfect and necessary, so that in the absolute sense we will see how there never was any “sin” or “evil,” since what God has written for all of our lives was perfect – perfect imperfection – and that all “sin” and “evil” were but a divine illusion to bring about a contrast, so that our Father could be truly known in the fullness of His absolute wisdom and love.

Ultimate freedom from sin is far more than the traditional “forgiveness” or “pardon.” These are rooted in guilt. The followers of religion seek to obtain forgiveness through some means – concerted effort, confessions, prayers, penance, resolutions, etc. What Paul taught went well beyond “forgiveness.” The revelation given to him involved “justification” which, instead of being rooted in guilt, is rooted in righteousness.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

Fancied Apostles

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The religious spirit has always been active even among those who have left the traditional system. Some even fancy themselves as “apostles.” They think that their own limited, flawed understanding and teaching is the standard whereby others are measured. They imagine that they are somehow the ordained yardstick by which all others are judged, and that it is to their job to be the doctrinal police. They even attempt to justify their arrogance and pride by citing certain passages of Scripture. Thus under the guise of such religiously abused words as “rebuke,” they surreptitiously bring others into bondage while speaking of freedom.

In II Corinthians 1:24 Paul wrote,

Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith you stand.

The Concordant Version reads,

Not that we are lording it over your faith.

If anyone had the authority to lord over another’s faith, surely it would have been Paul, the apostle; but not even he assumed such audacious supremacy.

Those of us who walk by faith have the freedom from being dominated, manipulated, pressured and coerced into someone else’s own personal belief system – “for by faith we stand.”

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
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The Freedom from Being Judgmental

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We are all different from each other, and this can rub each other the wrong way. But since I know that I am as God means me to be, warts and all, so I know my brother is as God means him to be, and we love and accept each other as we are, for we are Christ to each other.

We are all being “conformed to the image of His Son.” My part is to have it fixed in my faith that God is doing that in my brother, as I see Christ perfect in him. That saves me from being judgmental of him.

Norman P. Grubb (1895-1993)
Yes, I Am
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The Only True Freedom

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Most people’s understanding of God and His plan have been tainted, due largely to the influence of religion’s faulty teaching that we are under law – contrary to Paul’s admonition that we are not under law, but under grace (Romans 6:14; cf. Galatians 2:21). Religion enslaves through the law, while grace liberates by justification (Galatians 5:1).

It must be understood that JUSTIFICATION is our standing before God today (Romans 5:9; cf. 8:30) – not law, not “forgiveness.” Justification is a done deal; we don’t need to keep asking God for “forgiveness,” but just thank Him for being made righteous. This is the only true freedom in which we can live.

André Sneidar
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