The Ultimate Freedom — Free Will
Posted by Moses on Jul 9, 2007
I have spent a lot of time over the past few weeks contemplating freedom and what it means. Although it seems obvious freedom in the modern age can be a difficult concept to grasp. There are 2 basic types of freedoms. There is “freedom to”, which describes the freedoms that you possess such as the freedom to say what you want or eat what you like. There is “freedom from”, which includes the freedoms that protect you from harm ex. the freedom from oppression and tyranny. These freedoms are what determine the ultimate quality of your life, but where do they come from?
In the The Matrix Reloaded
If making choices provides the foundation for freedom, how did we obtain the ability to make choices? The simple answer is that God gave us the great gift of being able make choices. We typically referrer to this gift as the gift of free will. In the United States freedom and free will are so intertwined that they from the backbone of the Declaration of Independence the document that describes what we want this country to become. Opening sentence of the second paragraph begins with
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In our modern understanding we would exchange the word Rights for freedoms. However it is evident that this nation is built on the idea the our creator is responsible for providing reason for being that enables us to assume the rights (freedoms) of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The document is itself an expression of the collective free will of men from the original colonies who have chosen to defy the then most powerful empire in the world in order to ensure their own continued freedom.
I am continually impressed by the magnitude of this gift that God has given us. In order to protect us from ourselves, he could have chosen to make it impossible for us to defy him or to commit acts which would separate us from him. Instead he gave us the choice to worship, follow and stay attuned to his will. Think about that in the context of your own life. Imagine if you could make it impossible for your child to get hurt, but in order to do so you would have to take away the spontaneity and liveliness that made your child unique. What would you do? Would you hold yourself accountable every time your child hurt themselves if you allowed him to be himself and possibly get hurt?
The Bible is full of men and women who disobeyed God and suffered for it. Just to name few:
- Adam
- Eve
- Moses
- David
- Solomon
- Saul
All of these people were God’s favorites who he used to perform great works. However, each of them through their own choices fell from God’s favor. Even with their fall, God still loved them. He allowed some of the most important people in history to make mistakes that forever changed their history and the history of the world. His gift was so important in his eyes that he allowed the course of history (and possibly his plan) to be altered by the choices of men and women. It’s simply amazing.
Each of us have been endowed with this spectacular gift. So why do we let our circumstances stop us for doing what we want or becoming the kind of person we want to be? We have all made excuses, you know what I mean:
- I’m to busy to go to my child’s soccer game
- I can’t start a business, I need my current income
- I don’t have enough time in the day to do whatever it is that is important to me
These excuses are only a symptom of us abandoning our greatest gift. All we need to do is remember who we are and what we have been given and then our circumstances will not appear so overwhelming. If 13 loosely allied state that lack every material of war including an army and navy could beat the most powerful empire in the world, you can overcome your own challenges and have the life that you want
Take some time today and think about the life that you want and make the choice to embrace the ultimate freedom.
Tags: Declaration of Independence, free will, Freedom, freedom from, freedom to, gift, God, personal development, religion, spirituality
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Taking Your Blog to the Next Level
Posted by Moses on Jul 8, 2007
I know that I have been conspicuously absent this weekend especially for those looking for a post that focuses on personal development and Christianity. I have a good excuse. 
I’ve spent most of the weekend marketing Three Sticks. My regular readers know that I’ve changed the title of this blog over the past week going from Three Sticks — Empowering, Teaching, Healing to Three Sticks — Personal Development for Christians. Although, I’m not entirely satisfied by the title, because I don’t want to push away non-Christians, I am going to leave it for the foreseeable future until I come up with a title that makes the Christian and Personal Development themes of this blog readily evident.
Approximately, 1 week ago, I wrote an article entitled, Overcoming a Performance Plateau, which focused on my feeling like my performance had leveled off and how I planned to address it. When I spent more time examining my feelings, I realized that part of the reason I felt that way was due to the consistent stats I saw from Three Sticks. Unfortunately, those number are not where I want them to be and like any other blogger I need to increase the readership of my blog. The central issue has been marketing. Although, I have made some efforts to make Three Sticks popular see my article 20 Steps to Increase the Ranking of Your Blog 10X, I knew it was time to kick it up a level and really increase my reach.
I have come up with the following plan to take Three Sticks to the next level. The plan is broken into goals which are supported by objectives that in turn are supported by activities. The goals are measurable and provide a direction for the objectives and activities. The objectives are concrete requirements that increase the likelihood of meeting a specific goal, but also translate into specific activities. The activities are the actions that I will undertake to meet the objectives.
Goals:
- Increase the revenue generated by Three Sticks
Increase the traffic to Three Sticks
Increase the number of people that I help
Objectives:
- Increase the number of links to Three Sticks
- Increase the number of RSS subscriptions to Three Sticks
- Increase the relevance of Three Sticks for Personal Development and Christianity in such engines
Activities
- Increase the number of articles I publish in a month — I need to give readers a reason to come and visit the site every day
- Increase the number of search engines, RSS feed aggregators and directories that include Three Sticks
- Make the title more relevant
- Submit articles to blog carnivals every week
- Review the SEO for Three Sticks to make sure that I am using the appropriate HTML in the appropriate places
- Increase the number of high-quality comments and trackbacks I leave on other sites
Over the past 2 weeks, I have tackled each of these activities. I spent this past weekend submitting Three Sticks to the search engines, directories and RSS feed aggregators listed at the following sites:
- Ari Paparo Dot Com’s Big List of Blog Search Engines
- Fagan Finder Blogs and RSS Search Engines
- Blog Search Engine’s Where To Submit Your RSS
- Add URL.nu A Great List of Free SEO Friendly Directories
I have made it through the first 3 links and 100 of 985 directories listed at Add URL for a total of approximately 250 directories. Over the next month I will complete the Add Url.nu list.
I believe that consistent attention to these activities over the next several months will make my goals into reality. I have included the links to the directory listings for others to use.
Tags: blog directories, blog search engines, blogging, directories, feed aggregator, performance, RSS, RSS feed, search engines, SEO, site news, Three Sticks
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