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The Language of Freedom

Prayer is not conquering God's reluctance, but taking hold of God's willingness.
Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks commensurate with your strength. Pray for strength commensurate with your tasks.
Phillips Brooks

Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.
Martin Luther

O God, Founder of the universe, help me that I may pray aright,
that I may act as one worthy to be heard by you and, finally, set me free.
St. Augustine

Freedom is perhaps the most central issue to the question of good and evil, love and hate, truth and illusion.

God in his holy nature has set freedom as a cause. He has created us free to make our own choice to love him, - for only in liberty, is love truly experienced and understood. The tree of knowledge and the tree of life are reflections of this freedom.

God could have designed his creation to automatically do, think and be good, - and thus preventing evil to enter in the world. But that we have made us mere 'automatons', not conscious creators with the same power as the Father.

God made us in His Image, of free moral agents. As Saint Thomas Aquinas stated:

"The highest manifestation of life consists in this:
that a being governs its own actions.
A thing which is always subject to the direction
of another is somewhat of a dead thing."

As free agents, God gave us the power and the dominion to make choices!
We are free to choose God's will for our lives or not to, to do good or to sin, to create or destroy... It is this freedom that has brought evil into our world, and it is also this freedom that can bring back the good.

The source of all power is thus in reclaiming our God given right to choose. For only through our conscious choice can we become the righteous men and women that we were created to be.

We find the freedom from the effects of sin, through continually choosing the way of heaven.

God's Will is therefore our liberty. Or as St Paul stated, 'everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial... You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love."

In prayer we remind ourselves of the choices that are beneficial, and how to be the kind of person that God can trust with His awesome mission.

 

The Language of Love
The Language of Truth
The Language of Beauty
The Language of Freedom