Remembering Spurs Us to Seek Freedom
By Lauren Frazier on 4/5/2024
I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness? - Romans 6:19 MSG
I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. - Romans 6:19 NIV
Don’t we live best when we have examples of how to live? When we have a picture of how to be, it is easier to emulate. Just like when we were children and we did as we saw others doing.
Remembering is one of the most important tools we have to increase our desire for the freedom God offers us. When we remember the old lives we led and how we were, “slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness,” we are able to have more conviction to seek a life filled with freedom.
A life filled with freedom is a life lived by God’s standards. He places His expectations very clearly to us. In His word He commands the ways in which we are meant to live.
Living the way He has instructed us may not seem easy when we are consumed by the world. However, when we remember the lack of freedom we once had we can be spurred to the life God has always intended for us. A life filled with obedience to Him that results in freedom.
- Is there a memory from your life before Christ that spurs you on to seek more freedom? Write it down.
Father in Heaven, Be with us here and now. Be with us everyday as we seek to obey You. We want to be free from the chains of sin. We know this can only happen when we know how You have called us to live. Please help us to learn more about Your ways each day. We want Your ways to be our ways. We pray for lives healed and expansive in holiness. Amen.