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 Two months after finishing college in December 1966 I was drafted into the military, and after boot camp found there were two types of soldiers. One type fought the system for two years because they couldn't adjust to military style discipline. The other type, (which I hoped to be) learned hard lessons from their time of service to our country. These lessons weren't ones like how to clean a rifle, or march in cadence. These were lessons of character and were factors in survival.
In retrospect, one lesson I learned from my military time was that in order to be free, you had to have personal discipline about safety, and awareness of danger. While in the military you carried your rifle with you at all times because you were on the lookout for the enemy. In the Christian life, we carry the Bible on our shoulders, so to speak, for it becomes a light to our path.
In the almost 40 years since, I learned other lessons from life's ups and downs. It seems strange but lessons about freedom usually come from conflicts on our jobs, or in our families, or our finances. When the lessons are learned and life resumes balance, we find that we've grown in ways that may not have been possible. So we can then say that resolving conflicts is one aspect of the Freedom Factor. There are however, times when conflicts are of our own making for we sometimes choose the wrong thing over which to fight. In these situations, we find freedom when we choose to not make issues of small things.
I've just finished reading the book of Galatians and found a key thought is that Jesus Christ means for us to live in freedom. We are free to enjoy life as it comes, but not free when we do things to impress others. One message in the fifth chapter of Galatians is the freedom we enjoy is one that allows and urges us seek someone else's good, but not as a means of personal gain.
When we live in freedom, we usually treat our neighbors and friends with honest affection, and do for them as we would do for ourselves. We thus find new exuberance, patience, and serenity. The more we look for the good of others, the more our lives are freer than we thought possible. The Freedom Factor begins when we love in the same way God loves us, and the more we love, the more we are free.
A friend of Jesus,
Gary Kallio
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