I’m sure you’ve heard before the line from the Declaration of Independence that lists 3 of the freedoms that are inseparable from us as human beings because we are created by God with such freedoms being part of who we are…<\/p>\n
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”<\/p>\n
It goes on to say that the purpose of government is to protect such rights.\u00a0 Did you ever stop to think about what the pursuit of happiness is?\u00a0 We don’t have a right to happiness.\u00a0 We only have the right to pursue it.\u00a0 Interesting…don’t you think?<\/p>\n
Some interpret that right of pursuit as “property.”\u00a0 In other words we own our own body and our own ability to work and to build and to trade our labor for property.\u00a0 So the money\/property we trade our work for is our right–and therefore shouldn’t be taxed (as with the income tax).\u00a0 So it’s everybody’s God-given right to trade skills and labor for money or goods in order to better our own lives.\u00a0 Or you could say that “work” is pursuing happiness because it’s your means to improving your life.\u00a0 Anyway, that’s the political definition.<\/p>\n
From a spiritual perspective it’s slightly different.\u00a0 Happiness comes to a person who obeys God’s law.\u00a0 When you break that law, you enslave yourself to sin and death.\u00a0 But real freedom comes from living a moral life.\u00a0 If you avoid all those things that hurt you and hurt other people (lying, stealing, lusting, etc.) then you never become a slave of sin or death.\u00a0 So you have the God-given right (and obligation) to pursue happiness by living the way God wants you to live.\u00a0 And the natural result of living that kind of life is better than happiness–it’s joy, which is a deep seated glad contentedness that comes from having a relationship with Jesus–who, by the way, is the only one who can equip you to live a life of purity and total morality.<\/p>\n
And if you have already made yourself a slave to sin and death because of your selfish and evil choices, your one hope for freedom is Jesus.\u00a0 Wanna know more?\u00a0 Listen to the podcast…<\/p>\n
Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a> (Duration: 43:58 — 20.1MB)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m sure you’ve heard before the line from the Declaration of Independence that lists 3 of the freedoms that are inseparable from us as human beings because we are created by God with such freedoms being part of who we are… “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,149,179,66,115],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-choices","tag-freedom","tag-law","tag-sin","tag-slavery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pastorfrog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}