We all are being held hostage, enslaved by whatever is controlling us. Some of us know this, most of us don’t. We enter the first room looking for change in hopes of getting free. we know what we want to get free from, but what are we getting free to. Is it another trap that enslaves us. What  is true freedom? Hopefully, the game will show us.

    In the first room we find all the different religions, philosophies, and Christianity. The problem is they contradict each other. They can all be wrong, but they cannot all be right. When we do the research, we find Jesus stands alone, not only offering freedom and eternal life that adopts us into His family and gives us the right to become sons of God. Jesus is the one that did what only God could do and has 14,000 manuscripts to back it up. But the real proof is in the game.

    Our Christian walk is an exciting life changing Quest to freedom. The walk starts when we meet and receive the ransom payment Jesus made for us on the cross, taking the death penalty for our sins. Here we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead. This is done by asking Jesus to come into us and deliver us from our sin nature and our old life. We start the journey to the new life Jesus promises. He gives us the helmet of salvation and the gift of the “Holy Spirit”.

    In the next room we find the “Sword of the Spirit” which is the word of God that translates Gods unobstructed view of this world to us. This is where we find the truth. The sword is heavy and hard to pick up at first because it is contrary to the entrapping lifestyles of the world that led us into bondage. When we persevere, the Holy Spirit will start training us to wheel the sword. The Holy Spirit makes the word of God come alive, full of insights with present and future application. It’s no longer a historical document of events that took place in a faraway land with people that died a long time ago. It guides us into the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE, helping us to grow into the full salvation experience.

    We begin to love and trust God in all things. However long the process takes to reach freedom is up to us. He allows us to proceed at our own pace and doesn’t impose His will on us. Some will open the Gift immediately, the Holy Spirit breaks their chains, opens the cell door. Enabling them to run up the stairs and out of the front door to freedom. He even moves through us to bring His gifts to others for the common good. Gifts like Words of wisdom, Word of knowledge, Faith, Gifts of healing, Miracles, Prophecy and much more. Some never open the Gift of the Holy Spirit and their sword remains a historical writing. They remain chained to the wall. Or get out of the chains by their own strength but don’t leave the basement. They end up chaining themselves to the wall again and again in a vicious cycle. Others partially open the Gift and their chains do fall off, they escape the cell and even run up the stairs, but never leave the house. When we trust the Holy Spirit enough to let Him guide us. We realize, we only see one room at a time, but God sees all the rooms at the same time. He equips us to enter the next room.

     In this room we find the ‘Belt of Truth” that will hold together all the pieces of armor waiting for us in the rooms ahead. The belt of truth can be hard to see at first or may appear thin and transparent depending on how much truth we are willing to believe. As we wheel the sword, we are shown why the truth is always true and doesn’t depend on what we think or how we feel. In this room God let’s us face ourselves a little at a time. Old things start passing away, limiting mind sets, behavior patterns we couldn’t escape and old lifestyles that hinder us. God starts replacing them with new things, great and mighty things that God shows us to build our character. Until all things become new.

   This room holds our biggest struggle. Here, we are confronted with the belt of lies which we all wear proudly. It too started out thin and transparent, but got thicker, wider, and heavier, with many layers holding it together, self-justification and selfish motives. It gets heavier and heavier as it weighs us down collecting layer after layer of selfish lies and false beliefs we learn from others, that help us justify our lifestyle. But most of all the selfish lies and false beliefs we have convinced ourselves are true in an attempt to justify our lifestyle. Lies take continual maintenance, we must keep adjusting the lies we told ourselves and remember the lies we told others, who we told what to. The belt of lies does not give up easily, it will keep fighting the “Belt of Truth” sending us back to start again and again.

    The more proficient we become with the sword. The more we love and trust our Guide, the more permission we will give the Holy Spirit to join in the fight. As we start cutting away at the layers of lies that hold the belt together the belt of lies gets thinner and thinner. But the belt of truth grows thicker, wider, stronger, yet lighter and lighter, because we carry the truth with us through knowledge and experience. The tuth doesn’t need to be adjusted. The belt of truth never stops growing as we continue our quest to the abundant, purposeful life God promises. It becomes well able to support the “Breastplate of Righteousness” waiting in the next room.

    When we enter the next room and try to put on the “Breastplate of Righteousness” we realize it’s not ours. It belongs to Jesus and will not fit over our “breastplate of self-righteousness”. We must first take off the “breastplate of self-righteousness”. True righteousness is right relations and equality regardless of social status and people are not the enemy, they are the mission. People have always been trying to legislate righteousness to no avail. It is something only God can do because it is an affair of the heart and is done one heart at a time. We keep moving from one  breastplate to the other through the day. When we have our eye is on Jesus, the “breastplate of Righteousness”, will stay on. That is until the next time we take our eye off Jesus by using a God given opportunity to show grace and love and show anger instead. We are enabled to enter the next room with the “Breastplate of Righteousness” on.

    In this room we find the “Shoes of the Gospel of Peace.” These shoes are very special. They allow us to bring peace into dangerous places and situations. Places we normally would not be able to walk. These shoes can only be worn without when we are wearing the “Breastplate of Righteousness”. If we walk into a potentially volatile situation wearing our breastplate of self-righteousness we will also be wearing bring our boots with heals of contention. Not only will we make the situation worse, but we could literally be killed or injured and not just be sent back to start. Keeping our eye on Jesus will get us safely to the next room.

    In this room we will find the “Shield of Faith”. This is the make it or break it room. This shield is able to protect us from all the weapons the enemy uses to attack us. “But what is faith? People tell us to have it: but where do we get it? We get it from hearing the word of God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. The substance of the things hoped for seems obvious. But what is the evidence of things not seen?

    There is no evidence before an event. Evidence is collected after an event. We want the evidence to reveal the what, how, why and hopefully the who of the event. That’s the way it happens in the natural realm.

    However, in the faith room we start with the Who by telling God, the what and the why of our need or want. It’s only after our prayer has been answered, that we can go back and collect the evidence and see “the how!” We couldn’t see the evidence at the time because it was a random series of unrelated circumstances coming together. Many times, we don’t realize our prayer has been answered until well after the fact. That’s because God rarely answers our prayer the way we expected. The good news is God always answers our prayer much better than we expected.

    The “Shield of Faith” also starts out small and thin, but we are given the ability to grow this shield large enough to cover every area of our lives. God’s love for us is unconditional, it doesn’t depend on what we do. The more we trust God the easier it is to love Him and the bigger our “Shield of Faith” grows. That’s why without faith it is impossible to please God. And there lies the problem; is our faith based on the outcome of our prayers? Is God going to answer my prayer when and how I want it answered? That is conditional love and shows lack of trust.

    Genuine faith is to love and trust God through His process, no matter what the outcome? Either way we enter the “Prayer” room.

    In the “Prayer” room we get to talk with God. The best formula for prayer is to talk to God. Be mindful that God knows all of our NEEDS before we ask. That is be a good thing if we are not blinded by our wants. If we pray with outcome-based faith, we may run into a problem, when we ask God for something we want. God is willing to give us what we are asking. However, God may see our NEED to strengthen our character in a certain area to become the person that can handle what we are asking Him for. He may have to allow a storm to come our way to strengthen our character and prepare us. How we react to the storm will show if have we have outcome-based faith or faith in His process. Are we going to grow from the storm, or run.

    James and John asked Jesus to let them sit at his right and left hand when He came into His Glory. Jesus answered, are you able to drink from the cup that I drink. They replied yes, without knowing Crucifixion was in the cup. Jesus said what you ask is not mine to give, but you will drink the cup. The other disciples were indignant to James and John, probably saying to themselves; I’m able to drink the cup and almost all of them were martyred.

    From our point of view, they suffered great hardships and persecution. But to them, they counted it as all joy. They trusted in God’s process of getting them ready to drink from the cup without fear when the time came. If we are obstinate, prideful, or arrogant God may give us what we ask for before we are able to handle it, in an attempt to humble us. This can be a hard make us or break us lesson to learn and could take a long time to recover from. God is more concerned with who we are becoming than what we have. Does God give us what we want? Of course, He just wants us to become a person that can handle it. God wants us to have and do things. He doesn’t want things to have or do us. When God is truly our source, He gives us with something billionaires will never have. God gives us “Enough!”. And even though we get enough, God keeps blessing us with more till we have more than enough.

    God wants to show us there is something much better than getting our prayers answered and that is for God to put us in the position to be the answer to someone else’s prayer.

    Enjoy Gods exciting game of real life. I’ll give a clue that will make all the difference in how we play the game. LOVE SHOWS! It shows when we HAVE it, and it really shows when we DON’T.