Real Freedom
Ever wonder what it would be like to walk strong, never wavering, being able to say no without feeling guilty, only offering advice when it was right, taking captive all of those ugly thoughts, while not being bound by the law?
Someone posed a question the other day that made me think about freedom versus the law. They asked me, "Did God require that the Israelites take the law, or did He ask them to come and spend time with Him, but they refused? Did God give them the law because they refused a personal relationship with Him?" I've read and re-read the scriptures in Exodus...I can't really tell. You can assume that was the case, but it's not laid out in concrete clarity. One thing is obvious though...throughout the Old Testament, God's chosen ones have declined a wholehearted relationship with Him (this is also true of us today - Jew and Gentile), and opted to do the bare minimum requirements to keep themselves presentable. I wrote about this in a previous post on Isaiah 1. Considering all of this...are we bound by the written law? Are we stuck meeting requirements when there is so much more?
God has been speaking to my heart about what it means to have real freedom. This burden I've felt for so long is the LAW! I'm bound by the law instead of being free in His will. If I were to only act and speak when God tells me so, what would I need the law for? Paul explains this in detail in Galations. My faith in the goodness of God is what prompts my obedience to Him. If my heart is so in tune with His, and if I am completely His, living abandoned to His will, purposing to hear His voice all of the time, then I will know when to move and when to speak. Then...I am not taking on things that are not mine, then I can say NO and not feel guilty, speak the truth without offense.
Of course, this can only happen when your motives are pure. It's so funny, that from the outside your actions can look the same whether your motives are pure or not. This is something else that God has been showing me. He knows the difference...and when we are hearing His voice, He tells us so. Psalm 24:3 - 5 says, "Who shall go up into the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His Holy Place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted himself up to falsehood or to what is false, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
He is calling me to His heart, so that there I might get rid of the chains of the law that strangle me. Real freedom, resting in Him and His truth instead of the man made laws and burdens the world would have me strap on my back. When will I allow His rod to protect me and His staff to guide and correct me? When will I allow Him to invade my way of thinkng and doing? Truly taking control of my perspective? If I follow His lead, I have no need for the law. Psalm 25:12-14 says, "Who is the man who reverently fears and worships the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way that he should choose. He himself shall dwell at ease, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The secret of the sweet satisfying companionship of the Lord have they who fear Him, and He will show them His covenent and reveal to them its deep inner meaning."
Even the most innocent of words or actions on my behalf, He's been showing me are really more about my own glory than His. I've been bound by the rules of society that say I have to help someone. Then I help them, but my motivation is not pure. Sure, it looks really good on the outside...so why am I even doing it? To satisfy the world or to make sure they think highly of me? What about Him?
Tenderly He chastise me. Gently He turns me around. Softly He opens my eyes to the way I've wronged someone else - if only by having the wrong motives in my heart. I've found such freedom in this!!! I know it sounds strange, but to be able to speak because He's told me to is so much more than speaking because I want others to know that I know something important...even if the words are exactly the same!! I have to believe He's good, it all hinges on my belief that God is good and He is good TO ME.
I've always loved Jason Upton...but I think I am just now beginning to REALLY understand what he means when he talks about the "form" and "real freedom." These are some of the lyrics that struck me so deeply as I wrote this:
Freedom, not just a thought.
The understanding of Your victory.
Freedom is purity, purity in victory.
Till the ground in me until it's ready (when I'm ready to give up my own glory)
Freedom not to be like everyone else, freedom, NOT to follow the crowd - but to be as unique as I was created.
There is so much more on my heart concerning this...I can't even put it into the right words...but I feel like this is so important! I wish I'd understood before! Maybe everyone else already does, and somehow I missed it!
Someone posed a question the other day that made me think about freedom versus the law. They asked me, "Did God require that the Israelites take the law, or did He ask them to come and spend time with Him, but they refused? Did God give them the law because they refused a personal relationship with Him?" I've read and re-read the scriptures in Exodus...I can't really tell. You can assume that was the case, but it's not laid out in concrete clarity. One thing is obvious though...throughout the Old Testament, God's chosen ones have declined a wholehearted relationship with Him (this is also true of us today - Jew and Gentile), and opted to do the bare minimum requirements to keep themselves presentable. I wrote about this in a previous post on Isaiah 1. Considering all of this...are we bound by the written law? Are we stuck meeting requirements when there is so much more?
God has been speaking to my heart about what it means to have real freedom. This burden I've felt for so long is the LAW! I'm bound by the law instead of being free in His will. If I were to only act and speak when God tells me so, what would I need the law for? Paul explains this in detail in Galations. My faith in the goodness of God is what prompts my obedience to Him. If my heart is so in tune with His, and if I am completely His, living abandoned to His will, purposing to hear His voice all of the time, then I will know when to move and when to speak. Then...I am not taking on things that are not mine, then I can say NO and not feel guilty, speak the truth without offense.
Of course, this can only happen when your motives are pure. It's so funny, that from the outside your actions can look the same whether your motives are pure or not. This is something else that God has been showing me. He knows the difference...and when we are hearing His voice, He tells us so. Psalm 24:3 - 5 says, "Who shall go up into the mountain of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His Holy Place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted himself up to falsehood or to what is false, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
He is calling me to His heart, so that there I might get rid of the chains of the law that strangle me. Real freedom, resting in Him and His truth instead of the man made laws and burdens the world would have me strap on my back. When will I allow His rod to protect me and His staff to guide and correct me? When will I allow Him to invade my way of thinkng and doing? Truly taking control of my perspective? If I follow His lead, I have no need for the law. Psalm 25:12-14 says, "Who is the man who reverently fears and worships the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way that he should choose. He himself shall dwell at ease, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The secret of the sweet satisfying companionship of the Lord have they who fear Him, and He will show them His covenent and reveal to them its deep inner meaning."
Even the most innocent of words or actions on my behalf, He's been showing me are really more about my own glory than His. I've been bound by the rules of society that say I have to help someone. Then I help them, but my motivation is not pure. Sure, it looks really good on the outside...so why am I even doing it? To satisfy the world or to make sure they think highly of me? What about Him?
Tenderly He chastise me. Gently He turns me around. Softly He opens my eyes to the way I've wronged someone else - if only by having the wrong motives in my heart. I've found such freedom in this!!! I know it sounds strange, but to be able to speak because He's told me to is so much more than speaking because I want others to know that I know something important...even if the words are exactly the same!! I have to believe He's good, it all hinges on my belief that God is good and He is good TO ME.
I've always loved Jason Upton...but I think I am just now beginning to REALLY understand what he means when he talks about the "form" and "real freedom." These are some of the lyrics that struck me so deeply as I wrote this:
Freedom, not just a thought.
The understanding of Your victory.
Freedom is purity, purity in victory.
Till the ground in me until it's ready (when I'm ready to give up my own glory)
Freedom not to be like everyone else, freedom, NOT to follow the crowd - but to be as unique as I was created.
There is so much more on my heart concerning this...I can't even put it into the right words...but I feel like this is so important! I wish I'd understood before! Maybe everyone else already does, and somehow I missed it!
posted by KariBryant @ 5:00 PM
3 Comments:
At 10:07 AM,
Anonymous said…
Kari, how well you have articulated what is a truth that most of us never even begin to touch or comprehend. One of the things He has been showing me is that we would rather follow a simple set of rules (law) than to freely walk in relationship with Him, just as you said. But the reason for that has to do with our need to be in control, perhaps? I am not for sure or for certain. I wonder what it would be like to walk consistently in such deep communion with Him that we hear His every thought toward us, His every direction, His every command? It just FEELS more free to contemplate that, doesn't it?
But there is a price to pay, and that price is total, 100% giving of ourselves to Him. That is difficult for us to grasp because we consider giving 100% on our terms, not His. What I mean is, we give what we perceive to be 100% to serving Him, but because it is done in our own strength, we burn out. And so, is it possible that the enemy has convinced us that to truly give up 100% would look the same? Is this what dying to self really is? Is this what it means to take up our cross, for how many in the church would understand, and go along with us if we suddenly decided not to tithe, but listened instead to HIM giving us direction on meeting a specific need for one of His?
And the same goes for everything that the institutional church holds as doctrinal requirements, doesn't it? I saw a documentary of St. Francis of Assisi the other day, and I was blown away by his commitment to touch Lepers, those who are untouchable. He did what He heard His Father in heaven say to do. What if we decided not to be part of the ever constant and non-ending committees and programs in the institutional body? Would we continue to be accepted and thought highly of by those?
What if we chose to not participate in the "body life" that is typically built around a Western culture mindset of capitalism? To walk in these ways, ONLY IF CALLED TO BY HIM would certainly bring about a co-crucifixion with Jesus. You see, that is what He walked in. He did not give in to the religious structures of His day. He didn't tithe. He didn't give in to the pressures of His cultures. Instead. He found 12 scragly followers, outcasts by the standards of that day, and He taught them what He knew of life in fellowship with the Father. And He taught them how to die to live. Is it possible that is central to the thingd about which you are speaking?
At 6:27 AM,
KariBryant said…
That is precisely what I am talking about...I am part of a church right now, and also longing to walk only in the way of HIS will. It is SO difficult to seperate the "shoulds" of the body, the man made laws that require what He has not asked of me, from the very simple YES on my part to whatever He asks. It is SOO much different, and so risky. Very risky. Because we want people "to be happy with us, to love us, to like us." It's hard to be the sore thumb, doing what seems to be the opposite of what the church requires...I wonder why there's such a gap there - between the heart of the Father and what the church requires?
At 8:03 AM,
Anonymous said…
I think, Kari, that what I understand you to say is that you long for church life to happen as a result of Christians living "in Christ" to such an extent that there is a "spontaneous" response of doing the things He instructs them to do. The key, I think, is being "in Christ," and that is much much different than being based on organizational structures. The church becomes a living, breathing organism, so to speak, rather than a structure of organized programs, committees, etc.
Somehow, when we begin to move in the terms of our Western culture of capitalism when we function under such structures, and the very Life of Jesus is tossed aside, and a robotic organization is substituted and called church.
But it is NOT church as Jesus presented church to the world. He told them to go out, in their own world, and minister HIM to those around them. He didn't ask them to evangelize the world. He certainly did not expect them to be "sent out" prior to having been established in a place of deep fellowship with Him, and then, deep fellowship with one another.
That is what our churches are totally lacking, is fellowship--with HIM, and with one another. We substitute works for fellowship, rather than letting the works follow such. We don't even allow for a training period during which individuals grow in intimate knowledge of Jesus. As I said, it has become a business that has been influenced by the Western capitalistic perspective.
I wonder what it would be like to be in fellowship with other Christians? I have found that happens for me, not in the context of the ORGANIZED CHURCH, but in the context of relationships within the Body of Christ wherein no guilt trips and false expectations are put upon me. I long for more of that. I long for much more of that, out of which energy would be derived to finance those things JESUS, HIMSELF calls us to do!
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