Freedom

Good Morning! Claire I loved your last post. I'm so excited for you that you've found that class to be a part of. I know that must be wonderful and will really be encouraging during this stage of your life.

So I've been thinking about the freedom that Christ bought for us through His death and how much I cling to it and how much I don't even acknowledge it.

Galations 5:1 says "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery."

Isaiah 61:1-3 says "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

Yesterday, Steven was preaching from 1 Peter, and he was talking about the freedom that we push aside. He gave this example. He said its as if a husband saved his wife from a rapist with hiv, and in the process was killed. It would be as if the woman, after the funeral, called up the rapist and asked him to meet her at a hotel room. That's the picture of our clinging to our past life, to our sin. I am that woman. I'm so often that woman. Its in the small amount of time I spend in God's Word and prayer, its in my need to watch my certain television shows, my inability so often to be self-disciplined, the way I can spend my money, my insecurities, and my fear of the future, of how everything's going to come together. I cling to these things living as if I have no other option, no power to fight them. In reality, the power of Christ is in me to fight them; the power of Christ has defeated them. Obviously, I'm a sinner and I'm going to continue to fail, but I can certainly live with the knowledge that God has freed me from these things.

The Lord has prepared for us garlands instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of the spirit of mourning. I pray that I would begin to cling to the things of God instead.