“For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace…Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way…I the Lord do not change…Teach me your way, O Lord; lead me in a straight path…I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free…Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. I Corinthians 14:33, 40, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 27:11, 119:32, 35


There is many a young person and even those rarer souls among the older generations we call adults (at least chronologically) who consider real freedom as living life “foot-loose and fancy-free. These are those whose minds naturally define “their freedom as a life free from restrictions, rules, commands, order or any structure which conform them to behaviors beholden to relationships with other people on the planet; much less the One who made them and all things. Even the “restriction of gravity is tested to less than optimum results.
Yet it appears, not only because God said so, but because true unfettered observation has proved it over the centuries, freedom exists only in running in the path of God’s commands. This is especially true with the fact that every person is born a prisoner of their own inherited and practiced sin, fencing them into its poisonous effects, producing a life which does not even approach freedom; a permanently caged life until the experience of Malachi 4:2 becomes your personal reality. “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Until this personally becomes true in your experience, you will remain under the false illusion you know what it is to be free, and your servitude to sin eventually engulfs you.
It is very telling that parents, or a parent, who is struggling with unruly children, or rebellious teens, will google “military schools as a potential place to send them for help; an observed proclivity by Google statistics.. Why is this? Because these parent(s) have a strong sense their child or teen lacks structure and order in their life which a military approach may, they think, cure. For a number of reasons such was not infused in these young people’s lives from an early age, and now the lack of structure and order is producing uncontrollable results. The optimum place for the help which is sought is a place like the PAYH where the structure and order integrates the spiritual, which is vital to the power of transformation.
Lack of structure and order in any life produces problematic results. Why? Because the universe we live in has structure and order, and this because the designer and creator of it is a God of structure and order. Edmund Burke said, “Good order is the foundation of all good things. One of the greatest scientists in earth’s history, Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered in his scientific studies and observations the immense, precise order of the universe, became convinced of the Divine architecture of it; seeing that the idea of random spontaneity was not only foolhardy, but denied the very truth of scientific observation. It was the orderliness of the earth’s Creator that was such a powerful factor in convincing Sir Isaac of God; a God of order who created a universe that runs with incredible precision. “Order is heaven’s first law (Alexander Pope). “Order is the shape upon which beauty depends (Pearl S. Buck). Even Gandhi could not escape the accurate observation, “There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. This order extends to all things; the physical universe, the makeup of human beings, the interaction of physical, psychological and spiritual in each life, society, government, etc. Order produces good results; disorder produces ruin.
Because of the very nature of our Maker, those who desire to imitate God must be people who live and choose to live with order and structure, not only physically but spiritually. This is running in the path of His commands; which is consistent with the world where you live. God promises as the gift of his path, delight. Frustration, weariness, and despair is the infectious disease acquired and affecting others around you when repeatedly ignoring and resisting the One who made you to run in the path which actually works. Order and structure, spiritually and physically, is the path to freedom; foot-loose and fancy-free never results in experiencing the joy of being free.


“Whate’er my God ordains is right: He never will deceive me; He leads me by the proper path; I know He will not leave me. I take, content, what He hath sent; His hand can turn my griefs away, and patiently I wait His day.
(2nd verse of Samuel Rodigast’s hymn, “Whate’er My God Ordains is Right, 1675)

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