{"id":1112,"date":"2001-02-08T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2001-02-08T07:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2001-02-08T02:25:00","modified_gmt":"2001-02-08T07:25:00","slug":"1112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those guys rock.  The Bible study puts me at such ease every time I go.  I really would like to get Paul involved.  Who knew silly songs and insightful discussions could take place within the same hour, with a group of seven college-age guys, no less.  It&#8217;s not often that I find a group I fit into this easily, and I&#8217;m not going to let this one slide.<\/p>\n<p>Many people talk about having a relationship with Jesus as something restrictive, something full of rules and regulations that impairs your freedom and squelches &#8220;fun.&#8221;  I see it differently, though.  We were designed, created by God in the beginning as perfect, in His image.  We were in constant communication with God; we heard His voice and did His will at all times.  Through sin, we strayed away from that; the bond between God and man was broken and we helplessly followed our now inherent sinful desires, corruptions of God&#8217;s original design and plan.  We were then and are still now in bondage to our desires, incapable of breaking free from them.  Each rebellious thing we do isn&#8217;t more &#8220;freeing,&#8221; instead, it&#8217;s empty and just reaffirms our slavery to our flesh and the influence of the devil.  Beginning a relationship with Jesus, then, rejecting the corruptions of our sinful desires, is true, absolute freedom.  It&#8217;s freedom to be how we were originally created to be, fellowshipping with Him constantly, hearing from Him, having Him reaffirm our worth and value, and glorifying Him in return.  It&#8217;s freedom to live the life He created you to experience, guided one step at a time by Him.  It&#8217;s freedom to experience your destiny, in the truest sense of the word.  This freedom is available to anyone who wants it.  It&#8217;s a gift; nothing we could ever do can restore our broken relationship with God.  It&#8217;s yours for the taking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those guys rock. The Bible study puts me at such ease every time I go. I really would like to get Paul involved. Who knew silly songs and insightful discussions could take place within the same hour, with a group of seven college-age guys, no less. It&#8217;s not often that I find a group I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}