Tomorrow we celebrate freedom. This country, the USA, was founded on a declaration of independence that began over 200 years of freedom from the tyranny our founding fathers sought to escape. Years and wars have come and gone and we are still fighting to keep that freedom. Its form may change and its face look different than it did back then, but we still seek to be free from some type of oppression, don’t we?
And yet, I wonder. How many of us feel truly free?
At a heart level, are you free?
Sometimes I don’t FEEL free. Sometimes I feel bound to worry or confusion or the darkness that surrounds me.
But when I look up–or as the Psalmist says here–when I follow God’s precepts, then I can walk in freedom. The path isn’t so dark anymore.
Jesus said that he came to give us abundant life. He came to set the captives free. He came to declare that freedom that holds onto us from within.
He could have come to free His people from Roman oppression. Like our forefathers freed this nation from England’s rule back in the day. Like so many have sought freedom from tyranny in any form.
But that kind of freedom doesn’t last. Oh, it may last for a season – even a lifetime. But in my short life here, and in the lives of my parents and grandparents, we have seen World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Desert Shield, and many more Gulf or Middle Eastern wars. And that doesn’t even count the ones we aren’t supposed to be involved in.
Jesus said we would always have wars and rumors of wars. Someday there will be freedom from war and we will know true peace, but we can’t know THAT kind of peace until we know the Prince of Peace.
Jesus Christ came to free us from within. From the things that haunt us. Tomorrow we will celebrate our national freedom and I thank those who bought that freedom for us with their very lives.
But let us not miss the eternal freedom that can free us from what keeps us awake at night. Those things that remind us that we aren’t really free–not in the place where truth lives. That’s the place where we need freedom most.
When we walk with God in His precepts. When we live in His truth. When we seek His face and believe what He said. Then we are truly eternally free.
Selah~ #liveloveprayhope #itisforfreedomthatchristhassetusfree #truefreedomisfoundinjesus #letfreedomring
