I’m afraid that many who think they are FREE, living the good Christian life, are going to find out one day that maybe they had it wrong. Bars aren’t the only things that make a prison. We are imprisoned by our fears, by debt, anxiety, and above all things, by our egos.
I don’t know why it took so much life, so many years, to discover that I was a servant, a slave to my ego. Maybe it’s because I thought I and ego were one and the same. How could I be a slave to myself. Well Duh! There’s another dumb question.
It seems as though I find a different entrapment every week or so. How could there be so many places in my life where I was incarcerated and yet didn’t know it? I think it’s called self deception. One of the reasons we need others, strong others who are free, is so they can help us with what we can’t see.
We’re all blind in many ways. None have 20-20 vision.
God’s looking for a people presently not at the banquet table (Matthew 22), to be His people. Jesus is longing and looking for the despised and the rejected- like He was. That is why Jesus came: to set the captives free. He came to set me, you, and all free!
However, when a person “thinks” they are already free, what does Jesus have to offer anyway? I know there are men and women serving time in prison that are more free than we who try to go to sleep in our own soft beds at night. I say try because there are too many worries filling our heads, too many thoughts that aren’t good that keep us awake.
Rozerum anyone?
Having said that I am reminded of Karla Faye Tucker. What a life she lived the last few years of her life. She did more from inside a prison that many Christians do outside. She was more free while facing a death sentence at the hands of the state than we on the outside facing unknown deaths.
A good Biblical symbol of what I’m talking about would be Jerusalem as compared to Sodom & Gomorrah. Just mention Sodom (Genesis 18) and pictures come to mind quickly. Sexual perversion, lust, immorality, and homosexuality. Jerusalem on the other hand brings images of the seat of God’s power in His people: the mother city.
Yet, when you read Ezekiel 16 we find that God sees Jerusalem as “greater in depravity” than Sodom; committing more abominations, and more than double the sins of Sodom.
Depressing isn’t it!
But liberating as well if you receive what’s truly being said. Quit looking at the other person as less righteous than you, esteem others higher than you (one of the 4 pillars from yesterday), and open your eyes to the prison that your judgments of others have you in. It’s the starting place to begin experiencing true liberty!
Oooooops!!!!!
You really know how to touch my nerves!
We are ALL there to some degree!