If you were to ask one hundred random people what freedom means, most of them will tell you something that looks like, sounds like, or maybe even feels like freedom, but really isn’t.
People regularly show a total incomprehension of freedom by their perpetual abuse of it.
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They settle for all sorts settling for a myriad of experiences and states-of-being that are freedom-ish, but in and of themselves are not genuine freedom. They define freedom with things like:
- Being able to do whatever you want.
- Being able to be whoever you want.
- Not being obligated to anyone else.
- Being able believe whatever you want.
Contrary to popular opinion, freedom isn’t being unfettered from responsibility. It isn’t release from consequence or accountability. It isn’t entitlement, license, or absolution. It’s not unchecked, unregulated thoughts, attitudes, or actions.
- Ask the alcoholic who needs an “eye opener” to get the day going, a lunch-time cocktail to make it to quitting time, and who can’t go home until he’s had a few drinks “to take the edge off” if he’s free.
- Ask the porn addict who daily has to clear his internet history to hide his habit from his wife and children and is terrified of anyone using his computer, his tablet, or his phone if he’s free.
- Ask the shopaholic whose paycheck is gone before she gets it because she’s paying 30% interest on credit cards that are maxed out if she’s free.
- Ask the gossip who nobody trusts and nobody opens up to, because she takes friends’ vulnerability and uses it to her own advantage if she’s free.
- Ask the guy who’s working 80-hour weeks to pay for a home, cars, toys, and vacations he can’t afford if he’s free.
- Ask the over-eater who can’t drive by the drive-thru line without stopping for a snack and a Super Sized drink if she’s free.
- Ask the person who lies so much he can’t speak the truth and is so self-deceived he actually believes the lies he’s saying if he’s free.
- Ask the person who explodes with anger at every conflict, lives in bitterness and blames everyone else for every problem she has if she is free.
- Ask the church that is so mired in debt that it can’t pursue God’s mission if it is free.
- Ask the church that is so focused on being hip, cool, and relevant that it can’t ever speak on moral issues and has lost its voice for crucial messages if it is free.
What’s sad is that if you were actually to ask them if they are free…most of them will not only affirm they are free, but will pound their chests in pride about it.
Indeed, if there is anything that has mastered the ability to deceive the “duck test,” it’s the lambskin-wearing wolf of slavery draped in the faux fur-lined cloak of freedom.
No one ever experiences freedom until and unless he has been unshackled from that which holds them in bondage. Only then may he be free to chase this most noble pursuit. However if the now-free person chooses to instead pursue a different quarry, he unfortunately will capture only another oppressor, another enslaver.
To understand freedom, you must understand why you have been created. If you believe that you were created to enjoy the sensuous pleasures of life, that is what you will pursue. Subsequently, you will be enslaved by that those things that you think make you free, imprisoning you in sensuous torture. If you believe you were created to fulfill the consuming appetite of vanity, then you will be shackled poolside, wasting away your life gazing in Narcissisine puddles that appear much deeper than they actually be. As a humbled man once said, “I gave my heart to know knowledge and madness and folly. I now perceive that I was grasping at the wind.”
Freedom is described by but not defined by what you have been freed from; rather, freedom is defined by what you have been freed for. You have been created for the purpose of loving the one who loved you first. If (and when) If you pursue your loving Creator, only then can you be free. If you chase any other purpose in life, then no matter how free you may feel, you are really living under bondage.
Freedom is the ability to pursue without restraint who God created you to be.
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Here’s the fun…and funky…part of being set free by loving your Creator. You experience and express this freedom by being…you gotta be kidding me…in bondage to Him. The only way to experience true freedom is by doing what the Creator has called you to do, exactly as He called you to do it, for as long as He called you to do it.
And nothing else.
Quite a simple paradox. Compounding the simplicity of it all is that you do not earn God’s love by what you do (for this is the mark of a slave). Instead, you are empowered, enabled, equipped to do God’s will because of His love (which, by nature, is a distinction of freedom’s empowerment). You do not “do” because of who you hope to be, you “do” because of who He promised that you already are. “Doing” is the expression of your freedom. By refusing to “do” as freedom’s manifestation, you demonstrate only an ongoing bondage of self-incarceration. (I had to re-read that a couple of times to make sure I understood it. And I wrote it. So read it as many times as necessary to get it, too.)
Do not fear the prospect of being a slave to God. After all, the yoke of the God is light. Much lighter, in fact, than the one from which you have previously been freed.
Your joy is complete only when you are free to accomplish that for which you are created. You are only free when you are worshipping God with every breath, every thought, every step, every deed of your life.
You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Jesus
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