Freedom is a Tricky Thing // You Have Been Set Free, Part 2

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Freedom sounds like such a wonderful thing and it is. So why is it then that so few people experience true freedom in their lives? It turns out there are plenty of things that would rob you of your freedom, plenty.

Freedom is a tricky thing. So often we are our own worst enemy, our perspective, our thoughts, our behaviour, they all rob us of this elusive thing called freedom. Try as we might we just can't grasp it. You've had that experience right, you know what it's like? There's something in your make up, an Achilles heel if you will, that's constantly your undoing.

For each one of us it's something different but at the end of the day it trips you up again and again and again. Mine is perfectionism which has a tendency to fuel anger. Yours? Well you probably know what it is, maybe its insecurity, gossiping, a lack of compassion, selfishness; hey the list runs as long as my arm and then some.

God has a simple name for it, He calls it sin. The devil loves to rub your nose in it and just when you're feeling weak or tired, emotionally spent he pushes your button and there you go again. For the Apostle Paul it was an obsessive hatred of the Church. He was of course a Pharisee in the Jewish religion when Jesus came along and turned everything he'd ever believed in, everything he'd ever worked so hard for, completely upside down. No wonder he hated Christians.

But then, then he met Jesus and something changed in him. People were talking about it, Galatians chapter 1 verse 23:

... They only heard it said, "The one who was formerly persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy” And they glorified God because of me.

And he had been too, he was a terrible persecutor of the Church until that day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus. You can read about it in the Book of Acts chapter 9. Okay so he met Jesus but what happened to turn him from a man breathing threats against the early Church to the guy who ultimately wrote almost half the Books of the New Testament.

That's quite a turn around you'd have to admit. I'll tell you what happened - Jesus changed his heart. You know and I know that when we have a change of heart our thoughts and our actions flow out of that just as God promised in the days of old through Ezekiel chapter 11 verses 19 and 20:

I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them.

When you encounter Jesus on your road, when you draw close to Him, when His Spirit fills you to overflowing He does what you were powerless to do, He changes your heart which, as it turns out, changes everything. Sometimes though it feels as though nothing is happening, NOTHING.

So what? Has God forgotten me now? Has He left me on the shelf? We all want to feel as though God has some great plan for our lives so in those months, even years when nothing much seems to be happening it can be terribly disheartening.

Jesus: "I came to set the captives free”

You: "yeah right, it feels like you've forgotten me."

Other people, they seem to be powering on. You on the other hand feel as though there's nothing really exciting ahead.

Saul is on the road to Damascus, off to persecute some more Christians, he meets Jesus along the way, that's pretty exciting but then he loses his sight and for three days he's completely blind.

Now that doesn't sound like such a long time unless you've been struck blind in which case it probably feels like an eternity, adversity has a way of doing that. Which is why when you're feeling as though you've been left on the shelf it does seem like an eternity, am I right? Freedom? What's that? You ask yourself in this prison of inactivity.

When we get to that point there's something we need to be reminded of, it's what Paul says of himself in his letter to the Church of Galatia, Galatians chapter 1 verses 15 to 17:

But when God who had set me apart before I was born and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son to me so that I might proclaim Him among the Gentiles, I didn't confer with any human being nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already Apostles before me but I went away at once to Arabia and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

In other words God already had a plan for Paul even before he was born. Along the way people tried to kill the guy, they rioted against him, he was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, bitten by a viper of all things and eventually he rotted out the remainder of his days in a Roman dungeon on death row.

But that powerful encounter with Jesus, that incredible revelation of Christ Himself when he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, that changed everything because no matter how dire his circumstances became he knew that God had a plan. So in the middle of those difficult circumstances Paul had the freedom that Jesus promised.

You know God still has a plan, a plan for today, for tomorrow, next month, next year and indeed for the rest of your time on this earth. God hasn't forgotten you, He hasn't lost the plot. God has a plan and that fact gives you freedom even if you've been locked away in a dungeon or forgotten on a shelf. And that's a promise God wants you to take into your heart today. The only sort of hope the Bible talks about is certain hope so may the Holy Spirit write that hope on your heart.

One of the things I'm so passionate about is sharing God's Word with you in a way that makes sense. I'm sure I don't get that quite right every day but do you see how real, how practical, how powerful the Word of God really is? The problem is that all too often we don't take God seriously; we don't take God at His Word.

We read stuff in the Bible or we hear the stuff preached and we think, "ahh yeah, sure but....." But what? You don't think that God means to give you hope? You don't think that God is up to something good in your life, really? Well don't just believe me, listen to God’s Word again because I know that as it's spoken out the Holy Spirit will do the one thing that I cannot do, He'll write it on your heart. Jeremiah chapter 29 verses 11 to 14:

For surely I know the plans I have for you' says the Lord, 'Plans for your welfare and not your harm. To give you a future with hope, then when you call upon me and come and pray to me I will hear you. When you search for me you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart I will let you find me' says the Lord.

That's the Word of God spoken to a people who thought they'd been forgotten by Him, who thought they'd been left on a shelf but with God there's always hope because He will show up, He has set you free, He is ready to do things in you and through you than you can scarce imagine.

With all my heart I believe that He has put us together today to speak that truth into your heart. May you receive the powerful truth of His Word and may His Spirit breathe a certain hope into you that you have a future, a future of freedom in Christ. That's what I believe God wants you to receive today - hope, real hope and certain hope. Whether you take it or leave it, hey that's entirely your choice, only you can decide.