October 27, 2009 – Culture of Freedom
Posted by Chris G | Filed under listen.
For those of you that download the message, please forgive our error. Due to a technical glitch, no audio was recorded tonight. I’ll give you a good bit of tonight’s topic in writing below:
What is freedom?
Romans 6:14
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Romans 7:6
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Galations 5:1
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
Do those that are not part of our faith see a culture of freedom on display through our lives? We read the scriptures and believe, but do we produce fruit that smells, looks and tastes like freedom? Or is it something else? Does our faith create a new kind of bondage?
Love creates an atmosphere for freedom, and that is where we can truly love.
But we sometimes get so scared of that freedom. We become blind to what freedom looks like. We become a slave to a new law.
And we enslave others into that new law.
We use fear to steer people towards making what we consider to be right decisions instead of counting on God to guide them into reliance upon Him.
Rules without relationship yields rebellion.
John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
We celebrate that knowledge of who God is and what He does will produce freedom. Freedom’s desire is to set the captive free. Do we live with a heart full of fear or a heart full of freedom?
We celebrate that God is the source of life and we can live in peace with Him, living life to its full potential.