Set Free

Do you ever find yourself occasionally longing for another time or place in your life?  A time when you recall certain things or circumstances with fondness, and you have a desire to return there, if only for a moment?  I know that I do.

For me some of these longings include a time with my children or a particular scene on a vacation. And in all honesty, in my case more often than not these longings involve running.  I'll be out on my run and find my mind wandering back to a particular day and I long to be able to run at a certain pace again, or to re-live a particular competitive moment.  Those days are, as they say, in the history books.  I might recall them fondly but there is no going back.

When I was a new Christian I used to look back on some of my sins that way.  Sure, I had learned that I shouldn't do them because God said so, but they felt so good!  It hardly seemed right that something that delighted me in a particular way should have to be left at the wayside.  Turns out that for God's people this is a way of looking at things that is very old, and likely very common.

I was reading from Exodus and the Hebrews were in a tough spot.  They were fleeing from slavery in Egypt and reached the Red Sea, a seemingly impassable barrier.  Faced with the sea in front, they also know that the army of Egypt is chasing them and closing in from behind.  And so in this predicament the people cry out to Moses, saying:

"What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?  Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: "Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'?  For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

The Hebrew people see the choice starkly.  Serve as slaves or die in the wilderness.  What they have lost track of is the fact that they are God's chosen people and that they are in the wilderness because He is leading them there.  In a moment of crisis they long for the familiarity of slavery. 

But the thing is that God loves them too much to let them remain as slaves.  He is leading them to freedom.  The road may be bumpy but He is, as they say, "driving the bus."

This God, the One True God, is doing the same thing today.  He is reaching into the lives of His children, snatching them from slavery to sin, and setting them free.  And I might add that He does this without asking anyone's permission.

As a person grows as a Christian they learn that those "good old days," separated from Christ and oblivious to that fact, weren't so good.  They learn that those sins that felt so good weren't just an illusion.  They were a delusion.

As a child of God, know that God loves you too much to let you stay in slavery to sin.  He has set you free in Christ and He is taking you to an infinitely better destination.  The road may be rough at times but nothing will compare to the joy you'll know when you arrive.  Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

It’s a Free Country?

For most people in the United States, the words, "It’s a free country" are a statement of fact, and not a question.  We citizens of the US treasure our freedom and we use that sense of freedom, for better or for worse, to justify all kinds of thoughts, words and actions.

I myself am a lifelong resident of the United States, the country I was born in and the country in whose military I served for four years.  But I find myself living in a part of it where there are a number of caveats to the idea of freedom, leading to the question that makes the title for this post.

For a little more than three years my family and I have lived on the reservation of the Jicarilla Apache Nation (The Nation).  The Nation is sovereign but not quite in the sense of other nations that we consider sovereign in their relationships with the United States.  For example, Canada has its own government, issues its own money and exchanges ambassadors with the United States.  Canadian citizens don't vote in the elections within the United States.  The Nation also has its own government but it uses the same money as the United States and is represented in Congress as a part of the delegation from New Mexico. 

The election season highlights some of the unique things about living on the reservation.  The reservation sits within two counties and I'm registered to vote in Rio Arriba county.  So last week I could cast my vote for president, congress and a number of other offices and issues relevant to New Mexico and Rio Arriba county.  But I live on the reservation as a non-tribal member and so I was not able to vote in the recent election for the Nation's president, vice president or legislative council. 

Going a step farther, as a non-tribal member there are rules and restrictions as to where I can go on the reservation.  I have no explicit rights to any kind of housing or the other benefits that are available to members of the Nation.  There is also a sense of restriction to what might be called "freedom of speech," in that there are a variety of things which I feel are "off limits" for me to express an opinion on.  For me to do could easily result in my being told to leave the reservation, which actually happened to a pastor here once.  I don’t write this as if  I feel suppressed in any way but merely as a statement of fact.  I live here, and serve God here, so long as the Nation allows.  This fact is basically true of all the non-tribal members living on the reservation. 

So I live as a citizen of the United States within the boundaries of land belonging to the Jicarilla Apache Nation, voluntarily surrendering some of those things I might ordinarily claim as within my rights as an American.  But I do so knowing that there is yet one other place to which I hold citizenship.  In Philippians 3:20 the Apostle Paul writes,

"But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ…"

No matter where believers in Jesus live on this earth, they all hold in common the fact that their true citizenship lies elsewhere.  There are Christians living all over the world with  restrictions that citizens of the United States would never accept. 

You see, there is only one place where there is a truly free country.  The freedom there is not based on its geographic location but is grounded in the nature of its ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Non-citizens may look toward it and shake their heads.  In so many ways it seems a country like any other, with rules and boundaries.  Give up the ability to live as I choose in order to live in ways that look more and more like the ruler's?  I don’t think so.

But from the inside the perspective is completely different.  In the presence of true freedom in Jesus the "freedom" given up in order to follow Jesus shows itself as just so much slavery. 

The United States is truly a great nation and there is none like it in the world.  But it doesn’t compare in the least to the freedom that comes in living as a citizen of heaven under the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Freedom

This year I am using some devotional materials based around the Prophets.  It includes the major prophets, such as Isaiah and Ezekiel, as well as the minor prophets, such as Nahum and Zephaniah.  As the year unfolds I expect to read some things that are very familiar to me (such as Ezekiel’s ‘Dry Bones’ story) as well as things are much less familiar, such as Zephaniah.  Whatever the reading is I expect that the accompanying written thoughts will give me fresh ways to consider the text and its place in God’s overall story of redemption.

But before digging directly into the Prophets the first few weeks provide an overview of basic information to help understand, in general terms, what messages the Prophets were bringing to God’s people and why.  So this morning I read Leviticus 26:1-13.

In this passage in Leviticus the Hebrews, and those of us reading today, are told in broad terms of the benefits that await us when we uphold the covenant we have with God.  Basically, if we uphold the covenant, doing the things God has told us to do, we will receive God’s blessings.  And in the text they are pretty good blessings!

I don’t know if the Hebrews who first heard this thought that they could uphold their end of God’s covenant, but I do know that there is no way that I can do it.  There will be times when I fall short.  Sometimes I’ll be just a little bit short and sometimes I’ll be so short it will be as if I am in the next county. 

But God knows this and as I read Leviticus today I know that I while I may receive some of the covenant blessings now I know that these are most fully future promises, to be filled in eternity.  They are blessings which I will receive through my faith in Christ, the only one who could perfectly keep God’s covenant promises.

But I digress.  The thing that really grabbed me about this text as I read it this morning was the very last phrase of verse 13:

“And I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.”

The Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt.  They were a people who were welcomed when they first arrived there but over time they had become despised and enslaved, brutally so.  God had acted decisively and ended their slavery, sending Moses to lead them from slavery in Egypt to their place of rest in Canaan.  God had set them free from the yoke of slavery so that they could walk erect and in freedom as His chosen people.

And that is what God has done in Christ Jesus for all who have faith in Him.  The yoke of slavery to sin has been broken and believers can walk in the freedom of faith.  Sin still exists and dealing with it in our lives is something that must be dealt with daily.  Minute-by-minute on some days. 

But sin can no longer enslave us.  For we have true freedom.  Freedom in God that doesn’t come through our own efforts but through the work of Christ, the only one who can, and does, keep the covenant and give us wholeness with God.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Real freedom

I’m reading a book about Harry Hopkins, who worked in a variety of roles for Franklin Roosevelt while Roosevelt was president.  Among the things that Hopkins did was to write and edit many of Roosevelt’s speeches.  In the book there is a brief reference to one particular speech, the “Four Freedoms” speech, which Roosevelt gave before Congress in January, 1941.  The four freedoms were things that Roosevelt believed should be held by everyone in the world.  Specifically they were freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  It was this last freedom, from fear, which I found myself pondering.

Regarding fear, Roosevelt said this: “The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.” 

Roosevelt delivered this speech while war was raging in Europe and Asia, a war in which the US would join later in the same year, following the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Freedom from fear, both in the US and the world, remains an elusive goal.    We who live in the US today, post-911, know something of the kind of fear that Roosevelt referred to on a daily basis in the form of the War on Terror, where US troops are engaged in multiple foreign countries and the Department of Homeland Security is active at home. 

But we who live in Christ know something else about where we may find freedom from fear, and that is in God’s word.

Yesterday I was reading Psalm 118, and it spoke directly to fear and our source of freedom, real and abiding freedom.  Verses 5-7 say:

            “Out of my distress I called on the LORD;

                        the LORD answered me and set me free.

            The LORD is on my side; I will not fear.

                        What can man do to me?

            The LORD is on my side as my helper;

                        I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.”

The Psalmist isn’t saying that we will never suffer harm.  The things we fear may bring about very real physical and emotional harm to our bodies and minds.  But even so, God will always be God and the promises of His word will always be true.  The Psalmist reminds us of this in the verses that bracket the Psalm as both its opening and closing words:

                        Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;

                        for his steadfast love endures forever!

The abiding love of God, revealed in Christ, is the true source of peace and the freedom from fear, both in the world and throughout eternity.  May you know His peace each and every time fear arises in your life.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Boundaries

Last Friday was International Mud Day.  I have never heard of it before but my wife learned about it on the internet, so it must be true.  And given that Robin is fun-loving schoolteacher she set-up an event to celebrate it.  For two hours there were 6 kids ages 3 through 6 running around in the backyard, engaged in various activities, nearly all of them making liberal use of mud.

Each child was given a bucket of dirt and access to a hose.  They danced in mud, made mud cakes, threw mud at each other and wiped their muddy hands on their clothes, and then on each other’s clothes.  When the muddy children needed a break they rested while eating popsicles and drinking lemonade.  They went through a lot of popsicles and lemonade!

When I got home from work and Robin was filling me in on the details she said that here was one particular activity that the boys present were absolutely enthralled by.  On the property where we are living there is a pick-up truck that hasn’t moved for a number of years.  It has sat so long that the wheels have sunk into the ground nearly to the axles.

Robin picked up a handful of mud and chucked it at the truck.  The boys were dumbstruck!  They didn’t quite understand what was being made available to them, so she told them clearly, “Throw mud at the truck!  As much mud as you want to!”  And they did so, with great enthusiasm.  They spattered the truck from front to back, on all sides. 

While there were some boundaries to the Mud Day celebration, such as no throwing mud at the moms or the house, something that they had assumed to out-of-bounds as a target for their mess-making, a parked truck, was actually in-bounds.  And they took great delight in this knowledge.  In our human nature we sometimes push back at boundaries as being restrictive to the things that we want to do.  But as the children learned, there can also be great delight while staying within the boundaries.

One of the things we learn as we follow Jesus is that God has set boundaries for our lives, something the Psalmist makes clear in the writing of Psalm 16, particularly verse 6, which in the NIV reads:

“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

The ways in which God makes known his boundaries for us varies.  Some of them are very clear, such as in the Ten Commandments.  Others take a bit more discernment to determine, calling us to prayerfully consider the words of Scripture and apply them to the circumstances we are in.  An example would be in the words of Galatians 6: 16-24.  Paul lists a number of things that are clearly outside of God’s boundaries on our behavior and then follows it with a short list of characteristics that describe what is found within his will.  If what we are considering is in agreement with those characteristics then we can be assured that we are living within God’s boundaries.

God’s boundaries are not meant to oppress us, but to give us freedom.  Psalm 16:9-11 closes with this confident assurance of the joy to be found living within God’s boundaries:

            “Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;

                        my flesh also dwells secure.

            For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,

                        or let your holy one see corruption.

            You make known to me the path of life;

                        in your presence there is fullness of joy;

                        at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Like the children throwing mud at the truck, may you know great delight living within the boundaries God has established on your life.  He delights in our joy, and our delight in him makes his glory known to the world.

Freethinker or free thinker?

Like many states, the one that we live in, Minnesota, has a program where people and groups can volunteer to clean up the trash that collects along the side of a highway.  The responsible person or group organizes a clean-up about three times a year, picking up litter and leaving it in large trash bags that the state then collects and disposes of.  Last week as we were returning home from a trip to Wisconsin we passed one of those signs that tells who is responsible for cleaning up one portion of the highway within our county.  The two-mile section was taken care of by the Rochester Area Freethinkers.

This was a sign I had seen many times before, one that I had thought about a little bit.  In my mind I had assumed them to be some sort of group that was primarily atheist in its intentions.  My curiosity being pricked, I went on-line and visited their website, which provided this definition:     

“A Freethinker is someone who strives to base their opinions and beliefs on facts.

As opposed to basing them on hearsay, dogma, superstition, or faith.

Faith is the opposite where you suspend rationality and the need for evidence.”

Reading that definition I think I can reasonably conclude that the essential premise of atheism, i.e. that God, if he/she exists, cannot act supernaturally, may not be their primary value but clearly underlies that which they choose to believe, as well as what they choose not to believe.  Investigating a bit further I learned that Freethinkers are practitioners of Freethought, which had a particularly strong base in Wisconsin as Germans immigrated there in the 19^th century.

So on the one hand the Freethinkers have facts and reason, which they uphold as proofs against faith in the other hand.  Looking at faith in greater depth, beyond the definition given above, where is faith as defined by what it isn’t, we have these definitions:

           

1. Confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. Belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3. Belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4. Belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5. A system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

6. The obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.

7. The observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

8. Christian Theology: the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

I believe that the Freethinker would only object to definitions 3, 5 and 8.  And while they may agree with the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11:1, which is a definition of faith based on what it is rather than what it isn’t, they would not find any comfort in it.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

 Another thing that it appears Freethinkers are opposed to is dogma.  Here is a link to a dictionary definition of dogma.  Moving briefly to pop culture I want to cite a quote by Steven Jobs that circulated widely after his recent death, where he said this:

“Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking.”

I’m not so convinced that dogma in and of itself, or as Jobs phrased it, “the results of other people’s thinking,” is an inherently bad thing.  To me he certainly seemed happy to see his own thinking permeate the computer industry, shaping aspects of the entire industry according to his particular vision for it.

And I believe there is much that is based in dogma of one kind or another that the Freethinkers would agree with, such as the thinking that guided the Founding Fathers, particularly in establishing the Bill of Rights, which allows Freethinkers in this country the right to publicly express their views free of the threat of oppression.

This isn’t a blanket defense of dogma, for there certainly has been much evil done in the world that has been driven by dogma, such as the fascism found in Nazi Germany and the twisted variants of Christianity that condoned the Spanish Inquisition and the crusades. 

Yesterday, as I left my house to run near dawn, the waning moon hung low in the sky, with the barest sliver in view.  And as I heard the honking of geese, I turned my head to see a group of nine flying north towards their summer habitat, as improbable as that seems in mid-February. 

All around me there was evidence of creation, a creation that can not be fully explained by objective facts.  And neither can the intricacies of creation be fully understood by the testimony of the Bible.  But the Bible does testify to the Creator, who created this world for his pleasure, placing within it a people he could lavish his love on. 

I can’t prove that the Bible’s claims are true, outside of the testimony of my own story and where God has been actively involved in my life.  I do have the faith of Hebrews 11, and I trust in the promises of God, promises that find their fulfillement in the finished work of Christ on the cross.

The Freethinker, or any person who does not have faith in God as made known in Christ Jesus, may feel that they are free to live and act in the world as they see fit, believing in whatever ethical structure suits their fancy.  I thank God that he has revealed himself to me in the person of Christ, and that he has filled me with the presence of his Spirit.

In Galatians 4:8-9 Paul writes:

“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.  But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”

Accepting the grace of God, by faith, allows me to think freely, and to know fellowship with my Lord and Savior, now and forever. 

I have many friends who are not Christians and if you are one of them and reading this blog, or any non-believer reading this blog, then I would encourage you to seek that which can not be known objectively but is certainly real, more real than anything that has ever existed, which is the deep and abiding love that God has, and offers, to you.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.