God Style Freedom

Galations 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”

What a great design and love is shown here. I am set free from sin for the express purpose of … being free! God’s love wants me to have spiritual freedom because that freedom is the best thing I could enjoy. I was made for it. This freedom was obtained for a heavy price – freedom always costs something. Freedom also comes with it certain obligations, in this case God wants me to live by the Spirit or I will not remain in this freedom.

A historical example: after the Civil Warm, may emancipated slaves still lived as slaves, the knew of nothing else they could do. They were FREE but they did not live that way.

I don’t want to live my live as a slave to this life.

I am warned not to use my freedom to indulge my flesh (all my wants, desires and feelings) but to always be listening for what God wants me to do, have a soft heart and DO IT.

Everyone is a slave to something, it’s just a question of who their master is.

Now, you can stand

Joshua 7:10-11, [God said to Joshua], “Get up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned, they have violated my covenant…they have stolen and they have lied…That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies.”

God can do anything, but he will not align himself with sin, it is against his nature. I want to be a man completely devoted to Him and his purposes. I must devote myself completely to the ways of God. When Israel was divided (some were for God and some were for themselves – and thus against God), God stopped blessing and protecting them. I don’t want to be a divided man. My desire is to live for him 100% thus more and more sin must be removed from my actions.

I cannot do this alone.
In Joshua 7, Joshua needed God’s divine revelation to search out the sin in the camp and then they purged themselves of the wickedness. There is no difference for me. I must ask God to search out my heart, reveal the sin and confess it so I can be freed of it. There may be much more to fully getting free but if I continue to seek him I too will be victorious over my enemies.

Feeling Trapped?

Genesis 40:15

For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon. (Joseph’s full story is found in Genesus 37-47) I believe that barriers are nothing to God. This quote is from a man who at that time had spent the majority of his life in literal slavery (from the ages of 17-30).

I have felt trapped where I work, trapped were I live, wanted to take a vacation anywhere with no money to do it. But I’ve got nothing on Joseph. Joseph was really trapped. Not only was he trapped, his own brothers had sold him into slavery. Next, due to his purity, he was falsely accused of attempted rape (by the wife of his boss who wanted to have sex with him, though he refused), left to rot in a dungeon for maybe a decade and forgotten by the people he had helped there.

I wonder if he ever wanted to give up. I wonder if he ever got mad at God.

Then one morning he got up like he did every day, attended to his duties under the prison warden, but today the palace guards showed up. They shaved his face (imagine 10 years of no shaving and minimal cleaning), bathed him, changed his clothes and put him in front of the leader of the world, Pharaoh. Within a few MINUTES he was running the civilized world and within days (probably) Pharaoh had given him a wife. People even bowed before him as he rode through the streets. Quite a change.

In the end, Joseph said this to his brothers (who sold him into that life of hell), “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.” (Genesis 45:8).

My obstacles are nothing to Him, and the worst events of my life can be turned around completely if I remain true to Him.