What Freedom Really is

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1, ESV)

__________________________________

Each morning, I head to the Starbucks right down the road to work.  Most of the faces in there are familiar, so I tend to have similar conversations with the same people each day.  Yesterday, I sat down in my usual spot (yep, I'm one of those) and began my routine.  There was a guy sitting next to me, about my age, that I had never seen before. We said hello, and that was it.

Half an hour later, he leaned over and apologized for asking the question he was about to ask, but he needed me to look up a phone number for him.  When I googled the place he told me, I found the phone number, and realized it was some sort of treatment center or halfway house.  Before I could even recite the phone number to him, he explained what came up: It was a halfway house he had been living in since January, when he was released from prison after four years.  At that moment, my heart and mind clicked that I was sitting next to him by God's design.

We continued our conversation, and I found out a lot about this guy: He is 29 and grew up in Plano.  He spent 4 years in prison because of drugs, and confessed the only reason he got out so early is because his dad is wealthy and "knew people."

His next question to me was one that is usually a conversation killer: "What do you do?" When I tell people that I'm a pastor, more often than not the conversation usually dribbles out.  Not this one.  It opened the floodgates. He immediately began asking about the church I worked at, what kind of ministry I do, if our church had any recovery programs, even if we had a website.  When I answered all of those, I was a little curious, so I asked him if it was required by the state to go to some sort of "religious" center as a part of his release. 

The best way I can describe his answer is that it felt like listening to a live version of Galatians 5.  Halfway through his sentence, after having been moved around to a dozen different prisons because of safety reasons, he got involved with a ministry called Ransomed Heart Ministries, and Jesus wouldn't let him get away.

He said that for the first two years, there wasn't a day he woke up in prison that he didn't fear for his life.  He felt abandoned, his parents and girlfriend and friends had quit communicating with him, his lawyer quit on him, the state kept shuffling him around, he had nothing. 

Then, all of a sudden, he had everything:
Grace. 
Love.
Forgiveness.
Hope.
Freedom. 
JESUS. 

The next thing he told me amazed me.  When people find out he just got out of prison, they always ask if he is enjoying his freedom.

His response was this: "Yeah, I enjoy being free from prison.  Free from my cell, from the guard, from being locked up.  But that freedom doesn't come close to matching the freedom I felt IN prison when Jesus told me he loved me."

THAT is an incredible testimony, a beautiful definition of the freedom Christ longs to bring each of us.  Getting out of prison, regaining your personal freedom can't begin to compare to the knowledge that Christ has made you free from sin and alive in Him.


Christ has set us free! What is there to look back at? Why would we want to put that yoke back on? Jared basically told me he would rather go back to prison, daily fearing for his life, than to put back on the "prison sentence" of not knowing Jesus.  THAT is the power of grace.  That is the beauty of our Savior. 

How furious must Satan be at Jared, my friend from Starbucks? Just when it looked like the enemy had him exactly where he wanted him, the power of death and sin lost again to the beauty and grace of Jesus?

I pray that you experience the freedom that Jared has.  I pray that the forgiveness and grace and hope and love of Jesus has given you LIFE.

Pray for Jared as you read this, that the Lord will continue to strengthen and encourage Him, and that his excitement about his freedom in Christ will not be quenched.

Why Did Something Bad Happen to the Someone Good?

I get no greater joy in watching students grow from believing in Christ simply because their parents do, to believing in Christ because THEY come to know there is nothing greater.  But in order to arrive at that life-altering moment, you've got to go through the tough stuff, and that is what my students and I are doing this month.  We are looking at some questions the world poses, some issues that simply keep people from following Jesus because they can't love a God who does __________.

Last night, we went head on with perhaps the toughest question any person (believer or not) asks at some point in their lifetime: WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE? I have had a friend look me in the face and say he will not love a God who allows such bad things to the people he "loves."  So that's what I want to take a look at here: Why do bad things happen to good people?

The foundation for this question lies in two simple verses, Romans 3:10-11, which say this: "As it is written: 'None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.'" (ESV, emphasis added)

To even begin to answer this question, we must redefine the things we consider GOOD.  The word of God clearly states that NO ONE is good, or does good, or seeks good.  When I stack my life up against what the world considers good, I come out looking ok! So why does the Bible say I'm not good? Because the good talked about here is good from God's point of view, a perfect good...a good that we fall miserably short of (Romans 3:23). 

When I stack my life up and compare it to God's definition of good, I find out one crucial thing: I AM NOT GOOD.  YOU ARE NOT GOOD.  No one is good.  Therefore, bad things cannot happen to good people, because people aren't good.

I heard this answer before in a sermon, and it stopped there.  I think that stops way short of fully answering the question people struggle so big with.

So here's how I answered this question to a my students just last night: I want you to make four separate lists: 1) Good things that you have DONE 2) GOOD things that have happened TO YOU 3) Bad things that you have DONE, and 4) Bad things that have happened TO YOU.

Once you make those lists, think about this: I would be willing to bet that for the vast majority of the good things, you have given glory to yourself.  It's human nature.  When something good happens, we call ourselves the cause.  And the two bad lists, look at them.  This time, taking an honest look, I would guess that for 99% of them, you have given credit/blame to GOD.

There it is.  We think all the good things that happen are because of us, and God only brings about the bad things.  Adults, students, old adults, all have to continually learn to give God the glory in all things.  Check out Isaiah 45:7: "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things." (ESV)

 The Lord, Creator of everything, created light and dark, created well-being (good things) and calamity (bad things).  No where in the Scriptures does it say that He delights in the bad things, but it clearly says He created them.  And one thing that we know about Our Creator, is that He is intimately involved in His creation.  How?

Near the conclusion of the story of Joseph and his brothers, more than 20 years after Joseph's brothers wanted to MURDER him, Genesis 50:20 says, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." (ESV) Another translation uses the word "intended" instead of "meant". 

The word meant, or intended, is crucial.  God does not just take the bad things in this world, and say "Oh gosh, now I've got to make some sort of good work in this."  The Bible says that the bad, horrible, awful things of this world were intended by our Lord from the beginning. 

What man, what Satan, intended for bad, God intended for good.  From the beginning.  He doesn't flip bad things and make them good, He intended things that we call bad for a perfect, only God can understand, GOOD.  If we look at it through our lens of good, we miss Jesus altogether.

It's not a nice, fluffy, complete, satisfying answer.  Lots of times, I don't think it's a fair answer.  And that's when I have to remind myself of what an incredible, just, HUGE God I serve.  There are so many things about God that I don't grasp, don't understand, and won't understand, Romans 11 tells me just that.

But I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that "For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28, ESV) God's good, a good I can't comprehend, is at work in all things for those who love and are called by Him. 

I'll leave you with the same challenge I left my students with: Instead of asking "Why do bad things happen to good people?", begin asking yourself a completely different question: Why did something so bad happen to the ONE GOOD PERSON?

Jesus Christ is the only person to walk the earth who fits in God's definition of good.  And 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us why something so horrible happened to him: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,  so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Why did the Lord allow Jesus to be murdered? To give us hope in the midst of things we can't figure out. 

I love you, and pray you see Jesus in your life today.