Unshackled Moment ~ December 28 ~ Spokes On The Wheel Of Life

Help us to grow closer together as we grow closer to you.

The above sentence is something I ray quite often about my relationship with my wife. We all have relationships in our lives that we are happy with but that could  always be better, that we want to be better. We also have relationships that we desperately need to be better. It's easy to get caught up in trying to do the things that will improve relationships to such an extent that all our focus is turned toward repairing or improving the relationship. I have certainly been guilty of this. It's logical. If we want a relationship to be better, we have to work for it. Even Christian book stores are filled with books on how to improve relationships.

It is vital that we clean up our side of the street, to do our part to seek forgiveness and make things right for the wrongs that we have done, big and small, old and fresh, that have damaged relationships. We also need to keep our attitude in check so that we don't keep making things worse. But after that, we really need to let it go. The answer is not in pursuing a better relationship with our spouse or parents or sibling or child or or or. The answer is in pursuing a deeper relationship with our Creator.

He must be our deepest love. Our relationship with Him must be the one we desire most to improve and repair, by the power of His grace. But wait. Relationship with others are important, we shouldn't ignore them, right? Right. I am not saying to isolate and say well this relationship isn't good enough but it doesn't matter because I'm pursuing God. We all connect and interact with others. That is how God made us. Each relationship in our lives is like a spoke on a wheel. There's a spoke for our father. One for our mother. One for our partner. One for each sibling. One for each child. One a piece for friends. There is even a spoke for our relationship with ourself. Individual make ups will vary, and some have more spokes on the wheel of life than others. But we all have these spokes.

The problem comes when we treat God as though He is just another entity with whom we have relationship, another spoke on the wheel. He's not. He is the wheel within the wheel that stays fixed and unmoving as the spokes rotate around Him and travel in toward Him, connecting to Him. As the spokes reach the center, they come together. The closer to the center, the closer the spokes are in relation to the others.

When we keep God at the center, where He set Himself, and pursue that relationship above and before all others, we move toward Him, toward the center. We can pray for our other spokes, that their relationship with our Heavenly Daddy will also improve and that they will grow closer to God. Sometimes we can encourage and help them to grow closer to Him. Sometimes the situation is bad enough that  we can't yet participate in the relationship. The spokes have to much distance between them for interaction. But if we keep moving to the center and praying for the others to do the same, we can rest assured that we will meet in harmony at the muddle. In the meantime, as we al get closer to the One who made the wheel and all the spokes in the first place, we will find the relationships improving and we grow closer to one another.

We surrender all, even our relationships to our Lord. We allow Him to do the work that  needs done in our lives to make us more like Him and who He wants us to be. We leave the work in the lives of others to Him and prayer (with the exception of children that are still young enough that we are to be faithful to train them and raise them up to pursue Him and know Him). The rest will repair itself. It may not happen as quickly as we like, and may not occur in the ways we would expect or plan if we were in charge, but it will happen.

So let us rejoice in the relationships that we have that are right and good, while praying for all involved to grow closer to God. Let us surrender the ones that aren't right to the Father so that they don't become something we pursue more than Him and pray and wait and continue to pursue Him above all else. One day we will wake up and find ourselves more tightly knit together.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 27 ~ Pump Up The Volume

When I started down Recovery Road I learned early on in the journey the importance of gratitude in order to maintain the proper spiritual condition needed to continue to stay free. The scriptures are filled with instruction and encouragement to have a grateful heart. In everything give thanks and enter His gates with thanksgiving are just a couple that come quickly to mind. I have experienced the truth that a grateful heart is a force that frees the soul.

A few years ago, after a motorcycle accident, X-rays showed spots on my lymph nodes around my lungs that looked like cancer. I prepared for the biopsy surgery by spending time making sure I stayed in a good place spiritually. Still there was an understanding that my life might be coming to an end. I began working on my bucket list. I wanted to make the time I had left with my wife and family count, however long that might be. I came across a bucket list idea that consisted of writing down five things grateful for every day for a year. I loved the idea and began implementing it immediately. It was an awesome experience, so much so that when the year ended I continued the practice. I shared the little gratitude list in my Facebook page each  night.

I've missed a few days here and there over the past three years, but the "Five things I am grateful for today: posting has become a consistent part of my life. Recently I began to wonder if it really made a difference. I can be grateful without having to publish a few things I am grateful for, right? Well, right....and wrong.  Over the last couple of weeks that I have taken a break from the gratitude list the volume of my praise and the level of gratefulness throughout my day has dropped. I wish I could say that wasn't the case. Over the past years of maintaining this practice I found myself going through my days looking for things that should end up on the list that evening. I spent little moments throughout every day noticing things to be grateful for and giving God praise and thanks for them.

Many times I  forgot something that I intended to make the list as I reviewed my day, but at the moment they happened I had those moments of thanksgiving and gratefulness. Within a few days of knowing that I would not be writing my list down in the evening I stopped searching for things to put down. I realize now that I began to go through my day without noticing many of the things that just a little while ago would have filled me with wonder at the blessings of my life.

As we approach the end of the year, many will be reviewing the past 12 months. Yes, we need to look at areas of our life we need or want to improve, but if you inventory the year, I would encourage special encouragement to look for the blessings and things that happened this year to be grateful for. Then as we start a new year and many start trying to improve and incorporate new and better habits I would say that increasing gratitude and praise on a daily basis should be high on the list.

Maybe taking the time to write down one or a few things you're grateful for every day might work, whether it is published on social media or kept in a private journal for personal review or texted to a friend, just something more tangible than a mental note. Maybe something entirely different would work better for you. I would simply look for a way to turn up the gratefulness keep the praise flowing throughout the day. There's no need to wait four days either. A thankful heart doesn't need to be ruled by a calendar, but give whatever you come up with enough time, perhaps at least 30 days, to begin to make a difference before doing any evaluation. Make being grateful an action verb and a regular practice. I will begin posting my gratitude list again this evening. Maybe I will see yours.  

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 26 ~ Love

Advent has ended, Christ is come. Let all the world rejoice. But we don't rejoice. Not everyone, and certainly not all the time. In everything, every moment and situation we do not find the time or the ability to have a grateful heart or to rejoice in the Lord. There is a Christmas song, probably more than one that mentions that this is the time of year that we remember Love has come. And it is. The last week of Advent, the week I took vacation from writing, has love as its theme.

Perhaps there is a part of all us that hears about that love and feels unimpressed and unmoved by the idea of it all. Love is an overused word in the English language. I loved Christmas dinner and all the amazing food my mother cooked. For that matter, I love my mother and my father. I love my nieces and nephews that were running around the house and the ones who weren't there. I love my wife. She is my treasure. I love my new Batman T-shirt and my boots. I love the Texas Tech Red Raiders, and I love that they are going to play LSU in their bowl game next week. I love Christmas music and staying up late to watch Christmas movies.

I could go on and on. We love all kinds of things with all kinds of love. When I write those words, I assume most people don't think that I have the same type of feeling for Christmas dinner as I do for my wife. We mean different things depending on the context when we say the word love. For that matter, there are meany times when we use the word to illicit a response or find a way to manipulate someone else when it isn't felt at all. So we can sometimes get a little ambivalent about love.

Really, I think we sometimes don't understand what it means when we say or hear that God loves us. Actually, I would say most times. We don't have proper context to assign it meaning. We know it should be a greater type of love than that for a wife or family member, but we act more like God loves us more like a football fan loves their team when they are winning but won't stand by them when they have a bad season.

For love Christ came. The Father loved the world to such a great extent that He sent His Son. The Son came and died for love. The Greeks understood that love is a complicated idea. I love cherries and my wife, but that love is not even remotely the same idea. So they had different words for the different ideas. The love that brought Christ to Bethlehem and took Him to the cross is called agape in the Greek. It means the highest form of love. Whatever the highest most pure form of love is, that's the way God loves us.

The problem is that we don't even comprehend that. We can strive to love with pure love, but we fall so short. We don't love God perfectly.  Nor do we love anyone or anything perfectly, purely or without pollutants. So how can we understand something we have no experience to associate meaning by? We can understand certain concepts and ideas though, even when we never quite know the reality of the concept ourselves. There is an amazing and deep love that a person can have for someone who does not return it. Perhaps years go by while one person rejects all other options and waits patiently for the other to notice and return the love. Getting nothing in return they give their heart completely. In fiction eventually the feeling would be mutual and the two would become a couple, because we can't stand the idea that such love not be rewarded and victorious. But all too often it's not. That's how God loves us. Like the lover anticipating the happily ever after with a bride to be that most times forgets He exists.

And there's the love that makes a mother willing to die for her child or a soldier fall on a grenade to protect his brothers. Yeah, God loves us that way too. The cross shows that. However we attribute the greatest idea of the purest love, that what we can find in Jesus. As we put Christmas behind us and turn our eyes toward a new year, let us go forward with an awareness of great love. Hold the definition, highest love, close to heart so that we can keep in mind our best understanding of what it means when we say that God loves us. Then, let us pray to return His love in the same form.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 19 ~ Come Let Us Adore Him

Joy, to be fully realized and experienced must be accompanied by the giving of thanks or gratitude. Any moment of joy that does not include gratitude will be short lived. But when joy includes thanksgiving it can cause the joy to continue, much like a perpetual motion machine that harnesses the steam coming of an engine, pumping it back inside to further power the motor. True gratitude causes and produces joy, which in turn increases gratefulness and produces more joy. When joy is lacking, the natural instinct is often to search for pleasure and happiness. But the joy found in such a way usually does not last long or is counterfeit to begin with.

The better path to increase joy is to start with praise and thanksgiving to the One who  is our source of authentic and power filled joy. Joy that can't be stolen or broken is joy that comes from the Spirit of God into our lives when we spend time in the presence of God. And the quickest way into the throne room of the Creator King is praise and thanksgiving. Like the shepherds who believed they were entering a barn with a manger and were unaware that they knelt before a throne, what we perceive with our senses is so much less important than the spirit of worship in our hearts. Come let us adore Him, for in our worship and gratefulness of who He is and His love for us is the source of all lasting joy.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 17 ~ The Lord's Joy

The joy of the Lord is your strength.

- Nehemiah 8:10

I have heard this verse so many times quoted just as it is above. This happens so much that I bet many believe that the above is Nehemiah 8:10. Occasionally you se the phrase Do not grieve, for added before it. A google search of images of Nehemiah 8:10 is dominated by the verse quoted in one of these two ways. But that's not the verse.

Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

- Nehemiah 8:10 in it's entirety.

When it's seen like this it's harder to forget that the phrase the joy of the Lord is your strength has a context to it. It's not a stand alone mantra after all. It's easy to get caught up in some idea that joy is our strength to such an extent that when we feel weak and overwhelmed we also feel justified in trying to manufacture joy. We try to force joy, to create joy out of a hope for joy. We fake it  til we make it and pretend to be  happy. Choose joy we tell ourselves and others so often that trying to walk in joy begins to feel hypocritical because it's a mask we wear rather than a true state of being. No one is really that happy we tell ourselves because we're not happy under the surface. Our joy is either fleeting or a farce.

One thing to keep in mind is the context of the verse. Nehemiah declared the joy of the Lord is the strength of whom? Was he saying this to good people under good circumstances? No. These were basically refugees. They had returned to Israel from exile as slaves and prisoners of a conquering nation. They returned to destruction and devastation that had been a direct result of sin and failure to walk with God. They were surrounded by the wreckage of the past. As they tried to rebuild they found opposition rather than help and encouragement. In fact their enemies wanted to keep them from rebuilding so badly that the men had to work with a tool in one hand and a sword in the other. Finally the walls of the city were completed and they had time to reflect and read the scriptures. Nehemiah read them the law of the Lord, and upon hearing it and understand the standard their lives were to be measured by and the great extent of their failure and short comings they were mightily grieved. They were devastated. The standard is holiness. Their lives were a mess, filled with sin. In that moment of revelation and despair Nehemiah told them to eat, drink, share with others, worship God and stop grieving. It is His joy that would be their strength to go on from that point. The word translated strength is actually stronghold, a place of refuge and safety from the enemies and the elements. It's a place to hide.

When everything is messed up, when we've messed up, when life, our circumstances, our enemies and our past all say there is no hope and no point, there is a safe place where we can flee and be protected from all of that. That place of safety is the joy of the Lord. But that place is not joy. If we forget that joy is not the answer or the hiding place  then we begin to search for joy as though it were the holy grail. Joy is the answer, look for joy. The enemy doesn't mind this at all, because it's looking for the wrong thing. In fact, he'll be all too happy to give suggestions of things and people that could provide joy and escape. In the end they only bring disappointment and bondage. No, joy is not the answer.

And it;s not joy in the Lord. Mentally or in practice making that little prepositional change makes a huge difference. While there is a call to delight ourselves, or take joy in, who the Lord is and in His love for us, even that is not our strength, our power to keep going in times of failure and hardship, in times of destruction and desolation. Our joy in Him and in our relationship with Him will fall short, because it is our joy. There is nothing of us or in us that is strong enough or consistent enough to rely on.

Nehemiah's call was not to remember or meditate on joy and find strength. His call was to first  worship God. The refuge is a result. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. - Galatians 5:22-23. We don't run on our own anything. To do so is to walk in the flesh or to be carnally minded. We run on, are fueled by and are guided by the power of the Spirit.  It is literally the Lord's joy that is our stronghold, our strength, not ours. His joy is what we can rely on, just as it is His peace that passes understanding and is there for us in the midst of storms and His love that changes how we treat others and ourselves.

Don't search for joy. Don't try to create it or maintain it. Search for the One who came at Christmas and rose on Easter. Come and worship Him. In closeness to Him we find the things we can count on. They are not ours, but His. The Lord's joy is our strength.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 16 ~ J.O.Y.

Sometimes it is so hard to tap into the joy of the Lord, and even harder to tap into the joy of the season. We know it's supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year with joy to the world. Yet, we want to scream for most of it and feel more frantic and frustrated than joyful. We get so wrapped up in ourselves, what we have to and need to do, what we won't be able to do, how everyone and everything around us is effecting us and effecting our ability to accomplish our to do lists, etc. There are times when taking a step back and getting the focus off self can make all the difference between being miserable and having joy. The truth that being self centered is the root of our problems does not change just because it's the Advent/Christmas season. It may even be more true. We can turn our eyes on Jesus and watch the anxieties and frustrations fade away as we give of ourselves in service to others, even if that service is no more than returning rude behavior with a smile and love. There is an acronym for joy that can help us find it: J. Jesus first, O. others second, Y. yourself last.

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.

Unshackled Moments ~ December 15 ~ The Gospel Of St. Thomas

I finished writing the Unshackled Moment for December 14, Unspeakable Joy, and shared it on Unshackled Life Ministries' Facebook page, as I usually do. After I posted the link on ULM, I switched back to my personal account in order to share it on my page as well. It was then that I noticed the only birthday Facebook could tell me about today. My friend Thomas was born on the 14th of December. I immediately thought that his story would have been a better tale of the joy the season than what I had written for the day, But while I won't be telling it on his birthday, there's no reason not to tell it.

If you had met Thomas in 2010, you would have met an amazing man. Nearly  50 years old, he didn't have much. He had a hard job that he never complained about and only expressed gratitude for being able to work. He had a car that barely ran, thanks to his hard work, that wasn't running when it was given to him. Everything else he owned would fit in that same car. He had an apartment in an apartment complex that many people would be scared to visit, much less live in, and he loved that he had it right up to the moment he died there. And up to the moment of his death in October of 2010, Thomas had joy. That joy wasn't part of his life or who he was when I first met him. But within a few weeks, you would rarely see Thomas without a smile that reached his eyes. Most of the time when the smile faded what replaced it was compassion as he reached out to someone who was hurting and in need. And while compassion colored his face, joy still sparkled in his eyes as he swore life could be worth living.

When I first met Thomas, he was a homeless and hopeless drunk and addict. And to the world he may have seemed even worse than that and may have appeared to not rise much higher. After all, he never accumulated much. He never had a nice place to live in a nice and safe part of town. He never drove to that nice place to live that he didn't have in a nice car. The majority of his friends were drunks and junkies. But if you spent more than five minutes with the man, you saw what I believe many saw in Jesus, an undeniable joy more real than a smile and a heart so full of compassion he wept for the hurts of others as quickly and as easily as he laughed.

Thomas shared the gospel or good news of hope that a beautiful life worth living can be raised from the ashes of destruction and despair just by walking down the street. It was his joy that caught the eye and sold his message. Today I have a life worth living and a hope that I try to give to others. It really is good news. We can be free, and we can be friends of God. What I long for is the joy that Thomas had that makes that gospel impossible to ignore. The promise of Advent is that because of Jesus that joy can be ours. Looking at the Gospel of St. Thomas, I know the key to unlocking that joy is found in gratitude and relationship with God, a relationship that is possible because of the two sided coin with Christmas on one side and Easter on the other.

The Legacy of Thomas by Dalyn Woodard  

Monday evening, around 36 hours from the time of my writing this, an honest, extremely hard-working, dependable, kind and gentle man, who lived his life to help anyone and everyone he could, regardless of race, sex, orientation or social standing became a victim of a senseless act of violence. A true handyman and jack-of-all trades he could help repair almost anything from carpentry problems and auto repair to broken lives died all too soon at age 49.

At the same time the this amazing and inspiring man was being killed, the final chapter of the life of a viciously violent drug addict and alcoholic who had spent decades lying, cheating, stealing, and yes, even killing came to an end. This horrible drug addict's autobiography included more time behind bars than most Americans spend years in school, a track record of hurting and deceiving everyone who came in contact with him for more than a brief period. He was a man who lived only for himself, to hell with everyone else, and spent his life doing drugs, consuming alcohol, and doing whatever was necessary to keep a supply of both in his life.

The selfish addict was someone you would've done well to avoid and your life probably turned out better if you never met him. The handyman was someone I wish everyone could have met because everyone who did meet him came away bettered by the experience. I knew them both, and the thing that is so hard to believe, but is nevertheless true, is that they were the same man.

The handyman I wrote of was all the more beautiful because he was the butterfly that resulted from the life and transformation of an addict caterpillar. As a child I found it hard to believe that the beautiful butterflies I loved to watch so much developed from ugly old caterpillars. If you could not see the process how would you ever believe that a creature crawling around in the dirt could become something so completely and unrecognizably different to fly from flower to flower bringing joy to those who saw it? The truth of this transformation and the process that causes it has always been one of my favorite miracles of nature. It is the only way I can come up with to accurately describe the awesome, miraculous and wonderful transformation of Thomas Grimes.

The Thomas so many mourn today and whose death shocked his neighbors, because he was not someone you would expect to see involved in anything ugly and violent, like his death was, was a completely different man and looked nothing like the addict who wrapped himself in the cocoon of a twelve-step program and let God grow him wings and paint him with all the beautiful colors of the angels. His life and the process of transformation will always be one of the most inspiring and beautiful miracles I have ever witnessed.

I knew Thomas well. I had been in the same prison white he wore for so long and knew that world. I saw him crawl into the rooms of recovery ready to die but not wanting to, hurting, sweating and scared. The caterpillar had existed for far too long, and the soul of Thomas ached for something else, anything else. Give me recovery or give me death, he once told me, twisting the famous revolutionary quote to fit himself. He then proceeded to launch a revolution against himself. He wrapped himself in the cocoon of the program, but this was no hibernation. Thomas dove into action, working the steps more quickly and thoroughly than I believed possible.

I will always remain grateful for the gift God gave me in allowing me to witness the transformation of Thomas. I saw him admit his powerlessness, and I could see the truth begin to shine in his eyes as he went from doubter to a man who believed. I knelt with him as he surrendered the man he was and made a decision to let God make him the man he had been created to be. I heard the anxiousness in his voice after he finished an inventory so honest and thorough that it made him physically ill. I listened to his inventory and cried as he glowed and changed before my eyes and we burned his former life in a parking lot. As his inventory went up in smoke, the Thomas butterfly began emerging from his cocoon, and the man so many love and mourn today was born. I do not know why God chose me to be the witness of that precious moment, but I will always be grateful for it.

Thomas knew the freedom he sought for so long. The obsession to drink and drug stayed with the cocoon and there was almost no trace of it in the butterfly that flew from that moment. But Thomas didn't stop to rest. With true gratitude and a determination not to ever revert back to his former state, Thomas became willing to have God change everything about him and remove all the character traits of the caterpillar. He prayed for the Master Artist to erase the markings of who he had been and paint him with completely new and beautiful characteristics.

Thomas looked back over his previous incarnation and honestly saw and accepted the damage he had done as he chewed his way through the lives of others. He set out to make it right, planting new life from seeds of sorrow. I saw the constant self-examination of his new wings and how quickly he did what he needed to do to clean them off if he somehow sullied them. He stayed as close to his Creator as he could, listening to the soft and gentle wind that guided him from one life to the next so that God could use him to pollinate and bless the lives of others. As a result of the action he took and his surrendering to the molding, shaping, and coloring of the Master Artist, Thomas became a new creation. He transformed into a man few who knew the former caterpillar would recognize or be able to believe had been the same creature. He spent the rest of his life flying and telling all the caterpillars he encountered that would listen that they were never meant to crawl on their bellies forever. He said with his actions more than his words that it was ok to look up from the dirt and decay, that they too could be transformed as he was and fly, beautiful and free.

I could not exaggerate this transformation. I could not use an analogy poetic enough to capture the true wonder and beauty of what occurred in Thomas' life. Thomas Grimes recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. He awoke from the state of being spiritually dead to living a life that revealed the truth and power of God to all who saw him. He found the solution and shared it. He died clean and sober and let it be known that we can all do the same if we want.

Today I am hurting. I cry as I write the truth about the transformation I can not do justice to in words that a man I knew as friend and brother experienced. There is a hole in my life today because I know there's one less butterfly in this world. But I do not hurt for Thomas. His metamorphosis is now complete, and he flies in the eternal garden of his Creator. I miss him, but more than that I wish to honor him. I meditated on the question of what I could do or say that would please my friend. This morning I imagined Thomas saying to me "help make more butterflies," share the story of his life and mine so that others may know there is a solution, there is hope, and most of all, I imagined him saying to me, "keep flying, keep flying and allow the Master Artist to paint my wings, never return to the ground to try to be the caterpillar again, live the legacy of Thomas."

Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments and or listens to the messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions to more people by sharing the Moments and messages that you read or listen to? Hitting the share button instead of or in addition to the like button will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.