Wednesday May 6, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

Therein lies our freedom. Not a total independence of life, for there is no life outside of Christ, but a freedom of choice. The Bible never speaks of any person being his own master, but it does speak of each person choosing whom they will serve.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, (20) loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Joshua 24:15 …choose this day whom you will serve…

Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Is that not the entire narrative of the story of Eden? The Lord placed man in the midst of perfection and required only that they would obey Him in one thing.

Genesis 2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, (17) but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

By placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, the Lord gave them the freedom of choice. They could choose to submit to the word of the Lord, or they could disobey and choose another master. They were free to choose, even if the results of their choice would be disastrous. Indeed, the Lord created them knowing that they would choose another master. Yet the Lord considered our freedom of choice to be so valuable that He did it anyway. Sin seeks to restrict our ability to choose. Any person who has tried to battle addiction can tell you that. If you decide to obey God, you find that your flesh fights with you the whole way trying to keep you from doing what you want.

Romans 7:18-23 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. (19) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. (20) Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (21) So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. (22) For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, (23) but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

-Jared Freeman, “Slaves Of Christ”