Free In Him

 "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Corinthians 3:17

We spend so much time trying to avoid undesirable places. Trying to avoid pain, suffering, sacrifice, and just about any kind of circumstance that we find distasteful. Our prayers are so often focused on God getting us out of unwanted situations and circumstances. We want to have freedom from these things. We miss that this is not His purpose at all. He never promised or said that it would be. His desire is that we find freedom, His freedom, in them. And we can, if we will walk in trust with Him in whatever circumstances He allows to come into our life.

Think about what our usual responses to trouble and pain are. We have anxiety, fear, stress, anger, a whole gamut of possible responses. We are totally unsettled and feel as if everything we've counted on has been removed. It is that "feeling" that the Lord means to change in us.....because that feeling, like so many feelings, is a lie. Circumstances, no matter how severe, can never remove His presence from our lives. It's amazing how often we forget that, especially since He has made so many promises to us concerning His faithfulness, that He will "never leave us or forsake us." 

What a beautiful promise 2 Corinthians 3:17 is; wherever His Spirit is, there is freedom. So why do we experience so little freedom in the course of our trials? It's because we allow these trials and challenges to our foundation in Him to deceive us into thinking He's abandoned us, or worse, that He doesn't care. Or, if not that, to convince us that they are mightier than He is. So we plead for Him to remove them from us or remove us from them. He rarely does this, because He's at work to do something far greater and more lasting in us, and what He seeks to do in us is always of more importance to Him than what we think needs to be done around us.

If He simply gives us freedom from something, then the root issues of our lack of trust, rest, and faith don't get addressed, and so we remain captive to our ongoing tendency to stress, anxiety, fear, and panic. These are not overcome by changing our outward circumstances. They are overcome by His changing our inward responses, our inward condition. By His changing us.

Jesus said that we were not to fear the troubles that will surely come upon us in this world because He has already overcome that world and every one of its afflictions. Not only what that world attempts against us outwardly, but inwardly as well. These troubles will not cease, but He means that we will have freedom even in the midst of them. Rather than being captive to all the anxieties that they can bring, we have the freedom of living in His peace, joy, strength and assurance. This is our victory that overcomes the world. We are unshakeable because we stand upon and in the unshakeable One. The seas of life may be raging around us, but all is calm within us. We can rest in the One who commands those seas.

We are seeing cultural and spiritual upheaval on an almost daily basis. Everything is being shaken. The enemy will surely seek to shake and disintegrate our trust in Him. It will grow increasingly difficult to find a place of rest outside of it all, so we must abide in His rest within it. We know we can be shaken, but we must also know that He cannot be shaken. When the disciples found themselves upon a sea in the midst of a violent, life threatening storm, they panicked because Jesus was asleep in the boat. They thought He was oblivious to their condition. He wasn't. He simply knew that the storm had no power over Him. He desired that they would know it had no power over them either because He was with them. In these days, we may lay hold of this truth as we lay hold of Him. One day, in eternity, we will know freedom from all forms of death and danger, but that day is not yet here. Let us experience, together, His freedom in the midst of all of it. In Him we are free. In Him, we can live above any storm.

Blessings,
Pastor O