Skip to main content

Define Freedom


     Freedom is the ability to control myself. It is the ability to administer self-discipline. Freedom gives me the chance to work hard. It is the way I learn my limits and how much I can give. Freedom is the choice to do right. It is the chance to know Christ as my Savior, the privilege of denying myself for His sake. Freedom is the promise of Heaven. Without Christ, I cannot know freedom. 

     Christ's freedom gives me the chance to stop and choose a better way. His freedom gives me the comfort of knowing Someone wiser than I is overseeing my life. His freedom gives me a guidebook to order my life by. Freedom in Christ is to be tucked under His wings. It is to know the reality of love. But I can choose to not be free. I can choose bondage. 

Bondage is the scope in which I find how much something else controls me. Bondage pushes me beyond my limits for the sake of fear. It does not allow me to give to others. Bondage makes the wrong choice look better than the right one, and it is how I never learn things. If I am in bondage, I may not choose Christ. Bondage ultimately bars me from Heaven.

Freedom is a choice. Bondage is a passive state of being. I can choose to be free. I can choose to want to be free, but I must start with one first step. Bondage is where I am stuck without the love of Christ.

The love of Christ is offered: I must choose it. The power of Christ is omnipotent, but I must choose to let Him work. The grace of Christ is far reaching, but I must let it cover me. The peace of Christ is indwelling, but I must choose to embrace it. The joy of Christ is deep, but I must draw from the wells of joy. The presence of Christ is real; I must choose to dwell in it. The freedom of Christ is always available, but I must walk in it.


There is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4:18


 

Comments

  1. Thankful DadJanuary 12, 2023 at 9:34 AM

    I think the American culture holds on to what they call Freedom as if they want freedom from most all rules. But our laws ensure the freedom of law abiding citizens
    Freedom without any laws leads to oppression of the weaker or poorer people.
    In the first lines of Freedom above, you identify the true freedom that starts with being free from whatever bondage we have, through sin, bad habits, or how other people added burdens to us.
    Thanks for sharing what you wrote on true freedom .

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God's Smile

  I rarely gasp. Almost never am I surprised to the extent of an involuntary exclamation. Excitement comes in the form of a slight flutter or pounding of my heart, a smile or grin on my face. I have never heard myself gasp in pleasant surprise until the other night. I walked down the flights of stairs to the ground level. I was met with the balmy evening air—balmy though it was February. The sky was dark; the stars were out. I turned my head and saw the moon and gasped aloud. A perfect crescent, almost as small as it gets, but the full moon was outlined in the shadow. Above the moon were two bright stars. I could not see many other stars, just the two above the moon. And then the sky. It was not black, but a deep, deep blue that faded into the horizon. As picturesque as the full moon in autumn. Why did I care? I was on my way to a book study meeting, and I had just left my knees, where I told God how I forget too easily. Recently I had been questioning why God cares so mu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Does it Matter?

I have sixty seconds to live in 8:30 AM. Once the zero becomes a one, the chance to live that minute is forever gone. There will be no October 2, 2023,, at 8:30 AM ever again.  I have sixty minutes to live the hour of three in the afternoon. Three thousand six hundred seconds of time ticking away.  I have 24 hours to live a single day. Seven days in which to live a single week. A month, a year, a decade. These only matter in the face of passing time.  In twenty years, will it matter what I did that afternoon in high school when I read for three hours straight?  In five years will it matter what I ate for breakfast this morning? In one year, will it matter if I was maximally efficient for the minimal amount time I can stay at maximum? In one month will I care if my bed was made every morning of every day? In one week, will it matter if I completed every task on my daily to-do? In one hour, will it matter how I just spent the last? In one minute, will I care ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Story, Excerpt from My Magazine

  Dear Friends, I find myself in bed again with Lyme’s Disease. I’ve been in bed since October 21 st , and I just spent two weeks in the hospital. We went to the ER to try to get treatment for a migraine that started at the beginning of October. When I initially started having a headache, I went to the chiropractor and got adjusted and a week and a half later, my head still hurt. I went back, but the adjustment only made my headache worse, and I was losing the ability to function normally. I finally went to the doctor and got some medications to try to stop the headache, but they only made it worse. I hit the weekend and I could no longer get the shot for migraines, and the pain was just getting worse. We headed to the ER. Mom requested a test for Lyme Disease, and it came back positive, indicating a new infection of Lyme. We started a course of antibiotics immediately, using IV treatment, and I remained in the hospital to continue to try to pursue causes and remedies for my h...
Post a Comment
Read more