I was in Tamiment Pa at a retreat last weekend (10-25-98), just a mile north of Bushkill Falls in the poconos.
It was hosted by Wayne Monbleau of Loving Grace Ministries.  Here is a little from the first session.  Should you be interested in tapes of the rest of this and the next two teaching sessions just look them up on the internet.  They should be available in the next couple weeks.  This is gleaned from the beginning, so this is just an introduction:

I've seen over the years that there's this great freedom that is part of our new birth in Jesus Christ and yet, there's so many of us who really don't know what that is or means.  To be really free.
There are so many ways presented in our day and age; so many messages.  If you were around a hundred years ago - the messages you would get in a year would equal what you get in one day now. And it can get a little confusing out there.

It breaks my heart to see so many beautiful children of God whom I can tell by talking to them for a couple minutes; these are good people, they've really come to the Lord and they really want to grow in God except they feel so desperate because they're not perfect yet or they're not towing the party line - whatever it is and it's just , to me, a real tragedy.
You can take a gallop poll and you can say that X amount of people believe in God or Jesus Christ and I just have to shake my head and say, well if that's true, then shouldn't that be the message we're hearing shouted from the rooftops?

If the Son has really set us free then we're free indeed - isn't that something worth shouting about?
And it makes me sad when I talk with folks who are burdened down, and they are free in Christ but they don't know it, or they know it intellectually but it hasn't hit them spiritually or emotionally.

 It's an uphill battle talking to people about Jesus in this day.  Because the first thing I have to do is go down the whole list of things that I'm not.
"Oh, you're a born again Christian - aren't those the guys who are trying to run the republican party?"
No, no, no, some people do that, but that's not what I'm talking to you about.
It's just very difficult.  These are hard times for the gospel.
And yet we've got more at our disposal now in terms of our ability to share than ever before.

Let's take a look at this freedom.
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free"
Background:
Jn 7 the feast of tabernacles was at hand.
And the Bible says that Jesus was not going up into Judea anymore because people were seeking to kill him.  There was a  lot of controversy about Jesus just like there is today.  We'll find in Jn 7 & 8 two or three times that Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil.  People were accusing him of being demon possessed.  Some people said he was a prophet some people said no he's not.  There was lots of controversy about Jesus at this period in his life.
Jesus own brothers didn't believe.
The things Jesus says and does in Jn 7  set up the whole stage for the situation where the Pharisees attack Jesus in Jn 8 with the famous story of the woman caught in the act of adultery.
We'll prepare the stage like it is in Jn 7 so that when it comes to this situation, Jesus turns it right around as a living example of the things he was talking about in Jn 7.
Jesus had two main teaching principles in Jn 7.  One was: do not judge by outer appearances.  And the other one: if any one was thirsty let him come to me and drink.
What do the Pharisees give Jesus in Jn 8?  A perfect example - they don't know it, they think they're tripping him up; they think they're going to put Jesus in a hot situation where they know Jesus is going to forgive this woman; because they know that's the type of guy he is - that shows that they were getting Jesus' message.  Forgiveness.  But they didn't like that.

What they really figured that Jesus would not condemn the woman caught in adultery and then the Pharisees could use that against him to say "Look how soft on sin he is"
Remember this morning looking out on the lake, we were talking about Galations chpt 4 being children of the bond woman Hagar vs. being a child of the free woman Jerusalem from above which is our mother.  At the end of Gal 4 Paul says "And to this day, the children of the bond woman persecute the children of the free woman".

It's a strange element about religion.  I don't know if you've noticed this.  I've noticed it and it's very painful that, for me, when I came to know Jesus Christ I came to know the lover of my soul.  I came to know my Abba Father, I came to know the God who loved the world so much that he sent his only begotten Son.  And God is love.  And the great commandment is love God with all your heart soul mind and strength.  Paul says now abide three things: faith hope and love.  And the greatest of these is love.  The Bible says keep yourselves in the love of God.  The love of Christ controls us.
So there's a clear message of God's love and that's what draws us.
But the sad tragedy about religion is right next to that very message of the love of God breaking us and remaking us and shaping us conforming us to his image; right next to that Holy Ghost message of gospel love is a line of religious hatred.
And that's the greatest tragedy:
How many people use religion in order to promote hatred.  How many people use God to promote themselves against others.  And it's the tragedy of tragedies when we as Christians in this country start to sound that way.  When we start to sound like the Muslim fundamentalists - off with the head of anyone who believes differently.  But we don't literally take out a sword - but we'll verbally or legally take out a sword and lop off the head and criticize each other and condemn each other and pass judgment on each other.  And things ought not to be that way.  It's all I can say.  That God has something better for us who believe.

God didn't save me so that I could spend the rest of my life looking at what's wrong with everything.  Something's wrong with me if I'm seeing what's wrong with everything.  Cause I'll tell you there's something beautiful, wonderful and glorious about God.  And the beauty, wonder, and glory of God is so great so vast so big so overwhelming so life changing, that for me, to come down and talk what's wrong - I have to go down a few flights of stairs to get back down to there.

It makes me wonder if people putting out these messages in the name of Jesus really know Jesus.  I'm not doubting their salvation.  But I just mean on a daily basis when was the last time that they let themselves be totally poured out before the Lord; privately, not in some big convention when they're up on the stage conducting things but just in their own personal moments.  My gut tells me that devotion to God is missing.  And when devotion to God is missing it creates a vacuum in which all of these other messages and isms come in.
So we've really got quite a problem.  Within the body of Christ we've got hundreds of thousands of truly blood washed, born again, God loving believers -  but in bondage, not knowing their freedom in Jesus Christ.  More concerned about how they're doing than who God is.  More concerned about believing correctly than being swept up in the arms of Abba Father.  And I'm not against studying the Bible, it says to study to show yourselves approved; but it says handling accurately the word of truth.
Teach sound doctrine.

But, again, I think we are in this climate where the Bible is being dissected to such a degree that it's becoming meaningless.  And I think it's becoming disheartening for a lot of Christians to even pick up the Bible and read it because every time they turn on the radio, the TV, or read a book there's someone interpreting it completely differently than the person before.
All I can say is Jesus is the way, Jesus is the Truth, Jesus is the light.  And Jesus said if you know the truth the truth will make you free.

You might be bound up in something right now.  Jesus will set you free even before the situation gets set free.  Like when you got saved; did you set everyting right in your life and then God said, okay, I'll save you now...  No, of course not.  He accepted you just as you were.  He gave you a new heart and a new spirit and later on things changed one by one as they still are now in your life.  You're still growing in God and it is God who is giving the growth.
That is real freedom.
You're no longer dependent on the outcome of this thing or that thing.  You're free in Him.
So often we think it's just the opposite:  If this circumstance will change, then I know God will love me.  Or, if this prayer gets answered then I'll know that God loves me.  We judge God in that way.  We set ourselves up for disappointment.  Because we're telling God how to answer prayer in order to prove to us that He loves us, and, what happened to Calvary?  That's what I say.  Stay close to Calvary.
You don't have to wonder if God loves you.  When was the last time you took a look at Calvary?  How can you look at Calvary and wonder if God loves you?  If you don't see that staring you in the face - Jesus at the cross, shedding his blood for you, and you don't see the love of God being shed abroad in your heart - well then I don't know what you're looking at.  Jn 3:16

There's a difference between abiding in the word and some one using the word to get you to do something, isn't there?  Abiding in the word, resting in the word.  Abide in me and I in you Jesus said.  What do you have to do to abide?  You just have to know where you are and stay there.  That's all.
What would you have to do to abide in the chair you're sitting in?  Nothing.  Just know where you are, that's all, and you're abiding.
Learning a bunch of truth about God does not make you free.  Taking the Bible and boiling it down to what I believe about this does not make you free.  Compartmentalizing the scriptures to like okay, here's my position on the second coming, here's my position on the Holy Ghost, here's my position on - whatever...  fill in the blank, what ever the latest thing is.
The Son makes you free.

Beware of people who make points from scriptures that the scripture does not plainly make.
They'll take this verse here and this verse there and put them together and what have you got?
Two verses out of context, that's what you've got.  But some one comes up with some new thing.  If there's something that God wants us to know that's real important, it's going to be staring us in the face.  You're not going to have to uncover a rock and go to a fifty week class to figure out what it is.

Jesus brothers wanted him to go up but he said my time has not yet come.  But as soon as they were gone I guess his time did come, because he went right up after them.  And that's an important thing, how Jesus didn't allow the peer pressure to get to him, and neither do you.  If you're walking in the goodness and mercy and freedom of God, understand right away that you're in a minority, all right?  Understand right away that you can turn on the tube and very quickly find a program, that will have 20,000 people in some hall, thrilled at what?  The latest manifestations, not knowing anything about freedom in Christ.  Freedom in Christ is whomsoever will may come.  It's you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

Paul said the goal of his ministry was to present every person complete in Christ.  Wouldn't that be great?  It's my prayer that everyone here would know that "in him you are complete" as Col 3:10 says in him.  You are not going to find your completeness anywhere else but in him.  And don't look for it anywhere else but in him.  Because you might think you found it somewhere.  You can find things that seem to temporarily do it for you.  Teachings and experiences and new beliefs can temporarily do it for you.  They can excite you, you get invigorated, you think this is it - but it always lets you down doesn't it?  There's always the day when it just isn't helping you  - you know why?  Because the teaching and the experience of the day day it's just getting manna, it's good for that moment, it's good for that day.  If you want a river of life, however...
flowing out of your innermost being, 24 hours a day, consistently, constantly, not dwindling down to a trickle when your mind is elsewhere but it's a full flowing river of living water all the time, then that's in Jesus.

Jesus waited 30 years before he began his public ministry.  why didn't he begin when he was 18 or 19.  I got saved when I was 20 and I hit the ground running.  Nobody could be in my sphere without hearing the gospel when I was first saved.  If I had gotten saved at 20 and God had said wait until you're 30 I would have been chomping at the bit!  I don't know if I would have been able to do it.  Wait ten years why?  What's the point?  People need to get saved right now!
But Jesus waited till he was thirty.  People guess about that, well he was taking care of his mother and other stuff.
We don't know.  There's no word on that, every thing is speculation.
But I know one thing from that:  Jesus is a good observer.
All through those years you think he was deaf?  Deaf to the oppression of the Romans?  He was witnessing that all the time.  It's not that he didn't think about these things.
Jesus was a good listener.  He didn't even start teaching till about the middle of the feast which usually go for a week.

The teaching is not mine, but His who sent me.  Maybe that would correct a lot of teaching.  Cause lot of the teaching out there now do belong to people.  You can't find them in the Bible.  People are basing things on verses in the Bible to draw their own conclusions.  When people string verses together to get to some other point, it's the gospel and the love of God that usually go right out the window.  Then the world becomes the enemy.  Jesus did say he testified of the world that its works were evil.  But he never once beat an individual up.  Frankly, honestly, the only people in the gospels that I've seen Jesus get angry with were the Pharisees.  It represents that religious mindset where "everything I believe is right; so everyone else has got to be wrong".  And they walk around with a spirit of condemning people in error rather than lifting up God in His glory.

Show Jesus a woman caught in adultery and Jesus has got nothing but mercy.  Show Jesus a man with leprosy and he'll walk over and touch him.  Jesus even once thought of going to Simon the leper's home and throwing a party for him.  God had such an earthly way of ministering his spiritual truths.  Or Matthew a hated tax collector or Zacchaeus another hated tax collector.
The only people Jesus got angry with were the people who got mad at sinners.
The freedom Jesus is talking about in a nutshell is the freedom from judgment.
Free from judging by outer appearances.

There are people who can speak from God and there are people who can speak from their own selves.  Let it be God's word and not my word - the last thing I want to fill your heads with is my opinions.  I want to equip the saints for the work of service.
You're free in the Son.  He will personally lead you, guide you, direct you.
He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory.
The humility of Jesus is the single most prevalent teaching in the gospel.
Can you imagine being free from judging others?