Freedom Ministries

05/22/2026

05/14/2026

This Definition is going into my book, entitled "Becoming Love: Living the Gospel from the Inside Out."

Love’s Definition

Love is the one truly qualified source to provide guidance, direction, correction, and wisdom in every matter of life. Love is not merely one option among many competing voices. It is not simply a feeling, a mood, an emotion, or a sentimental affection. Love is the highest governing reality because Love originates in God Himself. Scripture declares, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Therefore, true Love is not something humanity invents, redefines, or manipulates according to personal desire. True Love is received from God, revealed by God, and demonstrated most clearly through the life, character, sacrifice, and heart of Jesus Christ.

Love is the divine standard by which my thoughts, words, motives, attitudes, decisions, relationships, and actions are to be examined. It is the governing influence that teaches me how to think, what to say, when to speak, when to remain silent, how to respond, how to forgive, how to confront, how to serve, how to sacrifice, and how to live faithfully before God and others.

In other words, Love is not simply something I am called to show occasionally. Love is what I am called to become.

This means Love is not an accessory added to the Christian life. It is the substance of the Christian life. Love is the evidence that God’s life is being formed within me. It is the inner transformation by which my character begins to reflect the heart of the Father. I do not merely practice Love as a behavior; I am progressively shaped into Love as an identity.

Love becomes the lens through which I interpret life. It becomes the filter through which I evaluate my motives. It becomes the discipline that governs my reactions. It becomes the wisdom that restrains my flesh. It becomes the truth that confronts my selfishness. It becomes the power that heals what sin, fear, pride, rejection, and woundedness have distorted within me.

Love has the authority to guide my thinking because Love does not think from selfish ambition, fear, resentment, pride, or insecurity. Love thinks from truth. Love thinks from purity. Love thinks from faithfulness. Love thinks from the heart of God.

Love has the authority to guide what I say because Love does not use words carelessly. Love does not speak to dominate, punish, manipulate, accuse, or destroy. Love speaks truth, but it speaks truth with redemptive purpose. Love can be gentle, but it is not weak. Love can be direct, but it is not cruel. Love can confront, but it does not condemn. Love’s words are governed by the desire to bring life, clarity, correction, healing, and restoration.

Love has the authority to guide what I do because Love is never a passive sentiment. Love acts. Love serves. Love gives. Love protects. Love sacrifices. Love takes responsibility. Love moves toward what is righteous, even when it is costly. Love is not proven by emotion alone; it is proven through faithful action.

Love is also trustworthy because Love always has my true best interests at heart. This does not mean Love always gives me what I want. In fact, Love often refuses what my flesh wants because Love is committed to what my soul needs. Love may correct me when I am wrong. Love may restrain me when I am impulsive. Love may confront me when I am self-deceived. Love may require surrender when I want control. Love may lead me through discomfort because it produces maturity, holiness, wisdom, and freedom.

This is why Love is different from self-interest. Self-interest asks, “What do I want?” Love asks, “What is good, true, righteous, and life-giving?” Self-interest seeks comfort. Love seeks wholeness. Self-interest seeks advantage. Love seeks redemption. Self-interest protects the ego. Love transforms the soul.

Love’s singular motive is my true success. But true success must be understood from God’s perspective, not the world’s. True success is not merely achievement, recognition, wealth, comfort, or personal satisfaction. True success is becoming who God created me to be. It is living in union with His heart. It is being formed into the image of Christ. It is learning to live from truth rather than fear, from humility rather than pride, from faith rather than control, from service rather than selfishness, and from freedom rather than bo***ge.

Therefore, Love is not simply interested in helping me get through life. Love is committed to forming me into the kind of person who can live life rightly. Love does not merely want me to survive. Love wants me to become whole. Love does not merely want me to behave better. Love wants my inner life transformed. Love does not merely want outward conformity. Love wants inward union with the nature and character of God.

To become Love means that my life is no longer governed primarily by fear, pride, anger, lust, insecurity, control, selfishness, bitterness, or self-protection. It means I am learning to allow the nature of God to become the ruling influence within me. Love becomes the answer to the question, “What should govern me?” Love becomes the answer to the question, “Who am I becoming?” Love becomes the answer to the question, “What does God want my life to reveal?”

Love is the qualified source because Love alone knows how to lead without corruption. Love alone desires what is truly good. Love alone can confront without hatred, correct without rejection, guide without manipulation, and sacrifice without selfish ambition. Love is pure in motive, perfect in wisdom, faithful in purpose, and redemptive in action.

So, when I say that Love is what I am to become, I am saying that the goal of my life is not merely to know about God, speak about God, or perform religious duties for God. The goal is to be so transformed by God that His Love becomes the defining reality of my life.

Love becomes my source.

Love becomes my guide.

Love becomes my motive.

Love becomes my measure.

Love becomes my way of life.

And ultimately, Love becomes the clearest evidence that Christ is being formed in me.

04/22/2026

Jesus did not let WHERE MEN WERE NOT PRESENTLY WILLING TO BE decide who He was or where He was headed. WHAT THEY WEREN'T ABLE TO SEE AND RECOGNIZE did not determine His vision. He was focused on being the Light of the world. Neither man nor man’s opinion could change who Jesus was. He did not make MAN His Source. His Source remained singular.

If you are letting people get on your nerves, it is an indication that you need to get new nerves and change the perspective that is having the current ability to fray your nerves. When I allow the reality of love to come in and transform me. I no longer see and understand things the same way as I did. I understand that I don’t wrestle with flesh and blood, but the spiritual wickedness that has made its way into the position of directing the thoughts, perceptions, and choices of the person I’m interacting with. The main issue is the battlefield of my mind: what I’m going to allow to have my attention, direct my focus, and define my understanding. Because the enemy is attempting to use what that other person is focused on to be able to influence and begin directing me based upon what I’m seeing and dealing with. It wants to use a vessel that is currently yielded to that controlling spirit to find access to me and begin controlling my thoughts, my choices, my perception, and define my day. The fruit of the Spirit working in me is Love. Love is the only substance that qualifies to empower the manifestation of my freedom from the lies and deceptions of the enemy that uses all that has been made available and at the disposal of the enemy to get me to move my focus off from the Truth and thus surrender my self-control. I begin “being controlled” rather than being “in control.”

The final outward manifestation of Love working in me, as listed in Galatians 5, is “Self-Control”. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells me that God hasn’t given me the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and “Self-Control”. (Translated as “a sound mind” in some transcripts) The Spirit of God wishes to come and dwell within you and empower you to participate in the great exchange – His power for your weakness. Give Him your weakness, lay it at His feet, and allow Him to instill within you His power. He will help you to move into the reality of scripture that says,

“What then shall we say to [all] this? If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]” (Romans 8:31 ampc)

“Looking into their eyes, Jesus replied, ‘Humanly speaking, no one, because no one can save himself. But what seems impossible to you is never impossible to God!’” (Matthew 19:26 tpt)

03/10/2026

Selfless love that takes no account of the wrong done to it. I will never walk in that love if things are about me. That is why it is imperative that I die to self and the old man, taking up my cross daily, to follow Him. We think we are doing people a favor by getting everyone signed up to make the trip to heaven. We have tons of people now walking around daily who have spoken the words of the “Sinner’s Prayer,” but have no reality of a relationship that has the power to bring peace into their own being, especially not into their home. This is why so many have fallen away from their professed belief in Christ. They were professing with their mouth the words that had no power of expression in their lives. This tiring masquerade became too much to maintain. So, they stopped. The religious talk had no power to produce the relational walk. These will come to church on Sunday morning, having just had an argument in the car on the way, as they discussed where they were going to eat after church. They walk into the church building saying, “Peace to you, brother. What a blessed day it is.” When inside themselves, they are in the turmoil of strife. They are living a lie and expecting it to produce life and truth. NOT!

The consistent attention to seeing yourself “dirty or filthy” is NOT the perspective brought to you by the righteousness that was given to you by Christ Himself. There was nothing “dirty” about His gift. In neither His righteousness nor His love for you as He paid the price for your “dirtiness” and removed it all from you so you could stand before God blameless. As the result of standing in the Father’s presence blameless, you were in a position of being able to partake in the reality of what relationship with Him brings – Mature Sonship! This truth MUST get down inside of us to the point that we realize the freedom within it. Why would it be our “Godly Duty” to consistently give attention to something, in some warped understanding of humility, that God gave His Son to remove from you? It doesn’t keep you humble… it keeps you chained to what Christ came to set you free from! It is you participating in what keeps you seeing yourself far beneath who God created you to be. That revelation…that understanding of your true self is what the enemy fights desperately to keep from you. Within the revelation of who you truly are resides the power of the kingdom to be manifested through the window of heaven, you, and letting it shine in the midst of the darkness. The enemy is fine with you making empty talk concerning Jesus while at church on Sunday morning. Because he knows the reality of your walk had you in the grasp of po*******hy the night before… or in the stumbling of your walk due to drunkenness.

We’re not “dirty sinners saved by grace”. If you have been forgiven of all your sins, what sin remains that makes you dirty? If Christ takes away the sins of the world, what sin has He not taken away? If He cleansed you from all unrighteousness, then what unrighteousness can possibly remain? We’ve got to stop letting our walk in this dark world system provide the experience that we use to guide our understanding of God. We must press in to know the Truth that sets us free. Direct access to the heart of God is what provides the Truth (the power) that sets us Free! In that access, we see ourselves as He sees us. When you change how a person sees themselves, you will see their behavior change to align with that Truth.

02/24/2026

One of today’s most challenging obstacles is our tendency to place feelings above what is truly worthy of guiding our lives. Truth was always intended to be the guiding aspect of our lives. Truth guided by Love is the foundation of the Child of God that strives to be more like their Father.

John 8:31-32 (ampc)

31 So Jesus said to those Jews who had believed in Him, If you abide in My word [hold fast to My teachings and live in accordance with them], you are truly My disciples.

32 And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.

[“The truth Jesus gives us releases us from the bo***ge of our past, the bo***ge of our sins, the bo***ge of religion. Jesus was speaking these words to those who were not fully free from man’s traditions. Truth must be embraced and worked out through the divine process of spiritual maturity. The Greek word for “truth” is reality. To embrace the reality of Christ brings more freedom into your life.”]

The Truth established in our lives was to be the foundation upon which our security (peace) was to be established – Truth coupled with Love. Can you imagine this being in the Word of God – “You shall know your feelings, and your feelings shall set you free.” No way! Our feelings that have been designed and established out of our interactions with a sin-sick world are the very thing we need to be free from, not feeding into, for the guiding substance of life. Faith vs. Feeling – this is the huge challenge facing the modern-day church in the U.S.

Being a good tree vs. trying to do good is a big difference.

We see our struggle as something those around us have no idea of the impact it has on our lives. It causes you to embrace what is taking place as “understandable under the circumstances.” Jesus came to set you free from your circumstances. You/I were never created to be determined by the circumstances, situations, and events of life. You were born to be “more than conquerors, and His demonstrated love is our glorious victory over everything!” We take the events of our lives and begin to learn, from those experiences, how to accommodate the evil messages within them into our lives. We make a place for them because we think it is “only natural” to do so. It may be common, but it is contrary to being a Child of God. We will never attain the glory of God by giving attention and learning from a system that is governed by God’s enemy. We don’t understand the folly of our focus – the lies and deceptions of the enemy vs. the loving heart of our Father. When we begin to “feel sorry for ourselves,” we give, unknowingly, evidence to our surrender to the lie presented to us. We reveal that we don’t know the truth that empowers our freedom. We reveal that we don’t know the heart of God, which is constantly turned toward us. We reveal that we don’t know how to love ourselves because we are willing to embrace our hurt and own it as ours. All the while, being the very architect of our misery. How? By learning to own many things that do not belong to us, such as other people’s actions and choices. We load ourselves with expectations that are based on the premise that it is other people's responsibility to live their lives in accordance with our thoughts and ideas. We have developed a well-defined ability to see the world from a self-centered perspective that fosters the hurt we are reeling from. That is why Jesus, the personification of Love, came to “set the captives free.”

01/26/2026

I thank God regularly for my wife, Damara Reynolds.