Day 3276 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Galatians 5:13 NIV

An altogether linear pursuit, freedom in fact runs straight ahead in opposite directions depending entirely upon the condition of the heart pursuing it.

For many, freedom is a right to indulge. It’s an opportunity to seek out anything and everything a person may want, want to do in their lives, for themselves, of themselves. That is in fact the freedom we find most folks most faithful toward in this world anymore. The pursuit of unrestrained intentions and a corresponding resiliency to craft the inventions or inclinations that allow a heart deeper into itself seeking more of what might be pleasing to a person.

This world knows well that freedom. We all know well that freedom.

But what if there’s more to freedom than just doing everything we want? What if there’s a bigger picture to all this than all that we can paint? Sure, it has been somewhat enjoyable to entertain our every idea of chasing after anything our hearts may have allowed themselves to become convinced we needed in order to find the happiness, peace and purpose we want and need in life. But what if following that line focused upon the filling of our every dream did nothing but limit us to our dreams?

Sounds silly I’d imagine. After all, to have our every dream and desire and goal and glory fulfilled is basically all we’ve all ever known to live for. Such is the common undertaking undermining many a soul still here on this side of a cross showing us what life means in every way imaginable. But, as it turns out, when it falls upon blinded eyes to see, open ears to hear and ready hearts willing to try, well, we’ve got all it takes to miss everything we want to ignore.

We’ve been doing it forever. Literally the very first of us showed us how it’s done and all we’ve done since they opened the door is to widen it even further so that all of life can be ushered through into this scope of our searching for all we want life to be, which is always void of everything we don’t. And in our deciding as to what we want in life, of life and the more that we don’t, a great many things have been cast aside and left behind simply because they appear burdens.

We talk quite often about responsibility and our going out of our way to stay out of our minds so that we might find every way and every reason to avoid it as if a plague or punishment. We’ve talked a lot about morality and decency and modesty as other possible pursuits in life that are normally considered things somewhat interesting or important or otherwise intriguing, but still, they’re things not really all that conducive to this direction of freedom we’re following. And so they’re among the many that get the axe in our understanding of what makes life what we want it to be.

Because again, that’s all we’ve chosen to know of freedom. It’s only there to afford us what we want along with the casting off of caution or care so as to be entirely unencumbered in our pursuit of whatever passion may be the pride of our list of priorities for the day.

And simply put, we can’t have all these considerations to consider along this race to getting everything we want in life, of life as to slow down to ensure we’re doing what’s right might cost us the enjoyment of not caring. And such is so enjoyable that it’s a hard habit to break. Once a soul learns to stop caring, we find a furthered freedom to do as we please as we find inside that idea a belief that there are no consequences or costs to our chasing after everything we want life to be.

But again, what is life if life is nothing but everything we ourselves want for only ourselves?

What can the meaning mean if all we mean to make is more of our own desires manifest in our short time on this earth? What bridging benefit can we possibly build when all we build is additions onto these castles of self-interest in which we stow away these souls that have come to show they don’t really care to live for more? Indeed, what will my life have accomplished if all I come to accomplish with my life is only all that ends when my end to the here comes?

That’s another one of those expendable considerations, isn’t it?

In fact, that’s arguably the biggest of the bunch. This freedom we’re following in the direction we insist it found has found us fervently afraid of death as such is sold as nothing but the end of life. It’s even in songs sung on Christian radio. That this ends six feet in a hole. That we have no idea what comes next. That life is short and we need to get to living it. Hurry up. What are we waiting for? What’s holding us down, keeping us back from barging into today in hot pursuit of what we feel the need to pursue?

Time’s wasting!

Or is it that we’re wasting time? Blindside! Is it that we’re wasting our lives worrying about our lives? Is our fear of dying not but a realization that we’re not really living and running out of time to start? Do we not avoid responsibility as such seems a reason only to invite back a sense of duty bigger than we’re able to shoulder? Are we not chasing this selfish formation of freedom only because it frees us from the awareness that there’s more to life than we can understand?

Indeed, do we not feel this endless need to focus on ourselves only because such keeps us persistently distracted from our lack of kindness and compassion as should be shown in response to the kindness and compassion shown to us?

Or do we even care to consider or contemplate such costs? See, that’s what I think we’re all convinced freedom is supposed to mean. We’ve come to equate freedom with free. Granted, you can’t spell the one without the other, but are they really one in the same just because the one begins the same as the one which stands alone? Even as I typed that I can say that I never noticed that.

Free stands alone.

But is not the ability to stand alone without the input or suggestion of others in fact what it means to be free? See, to be free is indeed a blessing from God, literally one bought at the price of the blood of Christ. He at first created us to be free, a people never having to worry about wanting freedom because we simply had it. We were free in that Garden. Free to live life enjoying the bounty of everything we didn’t make, couldn’t buy. Free to walk about without caution or care simply because God was there. Free to just be.

Haven’t we lost that ability to be free inside this search for freedom? How free do we feel to just live anymore? No, we’ve now got jobs and cars and taxes and concerns. How often can we enjoy the simplicities of life here inside this freedom we’re fumbling? Don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, we have perfumes to buy and people to please. Can we truly say that we’ve not a care or caution as we walk through this life our freedom has found?

Or has not all this liberty upon which we insist is defined inside of us found for us only a world in which everyone does as they see fit, even if it means others are considered so easily overlooked as to judge or dismiss or hate or hurt?

Freedom to do as we please pleases us. That’s why we love it so. It allows us to cast off the restraints put in place to tie us to a hope we’re none too willing to let go in exchange for one more chance to make one more choice that chooses to hear our voice louder than any other. Our freedom to live however we feel necessary leaves us the ones to decide what’s necessary.

And to hardened hearts, blinded eyes and ears that stopped listening to reason a lifetime ago, all that’s now left necessary is our own enjoyment of whatever time we have left to enjoy ourselves.

But as sadly shallow as that show must be, perhaps what’s even more heartbreaking is the many lost through the cracks as we leave a cloud of chaos in the wake of our chasing after ourselves. That’s not to say that they’re entirely unseen, unknown as we know that God knows every hair. No, it’s just to point out that we’re going without in our hot pursuit of making sure such never happens.

We’re going without the opportunity to tell someone about the love their Father has for them. We’re going without the experience of seeing a heart soften to hope once more after a life lived leaving a soul shattered inside the aftermath of sin’s freedom. We’re going without the ability to see beyond ourselves where the rest of the world, where the rest of life is found. We’re going without the chance to choose to lose what we don’t really need so that someone else might gain what they can’t live without.

But mostly, we’re going without the realization that we’re going to leave this place, and that when we do, not many will find the better end of freedom.

I said up top that freedom is a linear pursuit running in opposing directions. For most is goes left, away from right. It follows a line drawn by others who said they knew what they were doing and where to find what we’ve been left wanting. Worldly freedom finds for us every day every reason to waste one more on the odds of finding something that makes life fun again. But that’s all that this place’s version of freedom can offer.

Down the road of personal indulgence, all a person can find is fun and freedom and pleasure and success and glory and gain. For themselves alone.

But you see, that’s the gravity of the Gospel. Christ came to this earth to call our attention to all that we’ve found in following our personal freedoms. But the question that all those freedoms and all we’ve found within has left us to consider is what benefit did we reap from the things of which we’re now ashamed? Was all the limitless freedom worth the guilt or regret that we couldn’t, can’t outrun? Was fulfilling our every desire actually all that amazing when it turned out that even one desire lit a fire that burned our hope to the ground?

Was it worth it as we sit here now surrounded by the ashes of decades burned to nothing in the wake of our waking up all these days only to do all that we wanted which left us having done nothing worth doing?

Is it worth giving any of our remaining time or attention or effort or invention to the intention of our getting only our way? Or, having already done that for years only to be left still wanting and wandering, is perhaps there truly something more to life than our freedom to live for ourselves?

The Bible says there is. Humility says there is. Law and reason both agree. Reality and responsibility concur as well. Christ has clearly proven such upon a cross taken up. But alas, the work of the Gospel can only do that for which it was endured if a person is willing to admit, accept that our way sucks and has far more downside than our desires ever wanted to imagine. Yes, the cross can only cover the cost of a life misspent should any agree that we chased the wrong freedom in the wrong direction.

Because you see, there’s that other direction that freedom follows. It goes off to the right, following a light of love that lays down its life for the good of others. It stands upon a truth that doesn’t waver or want like our wishes like to do. It aims for mutual edification, a most beautiful symptom of the sanctification which defines God’s will as we discussed yesterday. It sets a soul on fire to burn away every idea that stops at benefitting self as it understands that a life lived for one isn’t a life lived at all.

Truth is that God’s will for us is to be sanctified, set apart, a people able to pursue what this world doesn’t want to so as to show that there is more to live for than these lives we’re living and how shallowly we’ve been taught to live them.

But such meaning can only prove meaningful if found by a heart tattered and torn by what the wrong idea of freedom can do. You see, freedom can lead us to living life wide open and without question. It can inspire inside all these ideas and ideologies that give us this sense of glory that leaves us gloating over a story our arrogance says we’re writing. Problem is we’ve never had the pen.

No, as it turns out, this wicked world’s false freedom has left us living like ghostwriters trying to add our ideas into His design, a most deadly undertaking as time will tell unto all. But the beauty of His patience and mercy is that we’ve the opportunity to decide how much longer we live as ghosts who just simply float through life unable to make a mark or have an impact or even be seen by anyone else.

Maybe today can be that day. Maybe today can be the one in which we stop living like we’re the only ones that matter down here. Maybe today can be the first time we find a freedom that isn’t built on our ego or opinion or preference or person. Maybe today can be the first time in our lives that we look for someone who needs something, someone we can help, someone we can even just pray about without them even knowing.

Because you see, that’s the freedom that we have from God. The freedom to be in communion, communication with our Creator. It’s to live our lives looking to Him and showing the world that it’s possible to look up from all we’ve all lived so focused on all this time. It’s to surrender our enslavement to sin and begin to serve rather than insisting we be served or keep serving ourselves. It’s to lay down our lives knowing that should we suffer for the truth, the Word, the Son, then and only then can someone see just how free we must be to not even fear the pain or persecution.

Now there’s freedom to do as we please, but freedom from worrying about whatever anyone else’s hatred finds reason to do unto us? That’s a kind of freedom that says something, and what it says is that both we’re not ours anymore and that because of that, we have nothing left to lose in a life we count as loss. And while this world’s idea of freedom seems unlimited, that it flees from fear or loss shows that it isn’t actually all that free from everything we don’t want life to be.

It’s just free to find as many distractions from that truth as a soul can crave.

But friends, we were made to be free, not just find freedom for ourselves. To be free is to be willing, able to stand alone without fear of inability or consequence. God made us to live that kind of life, one lived to honor Him as such will make us free indeed. Free from having to look to this world to tell us who to be or what should matter. Free from following ourselves only deeper into our selfishness and the sin it loves. Free to leave behind a life we’re leaving behind so that we can live before we leave.

Yes, free to reach beyond ourselves and seek that which benefits us all. Because while we may be free to do as we please, doing as pleases God frees us even from fearing death. And when we don’t have to worry about leaving this world behind, then and only then can we walk in a freedom that’s able to mean something. Because it’s only when we’re free in Christ that we’ll care to become slaves to this truth that set us free in the insistence that He somehow use us to set others free as well.

Because again, if all I do in my life, with my life is only everything that benefits me, then I’ve done nothing but help myself. And since that’s not in any way what we see inside what Christ did, how dare I come before Him at the end of this having lived and left a life that shows I missed the message?

He deserves more than my living for myself. And if I or anyone else can agree to that, then others might benefit from the freedom that such a truth speaks still today even after this world’s freedom tried to silence it a couple millennia back with a stone that never stopped rolling.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold