| |
January 04, 2009
|
Freedom!
|
Pastor Brian Shimer
|
|
"FREEDOM: God's Gift, Our Resource"
Galatians
- Here we are at a new theme, a new word to guide us in our thinking and studying this year, the word "freedom". This week that word has taken on new meaning for me, for suddenly after Tuesday's surgery I felt anything but free. I was bound. My body had lost its rhythm, trapped in some way. By Friday evening after some 72 hours of hiccupping and burping and pain I was so very discouraged. The incision site was the least of my problems.
The doctor had told me that although the surgery was delicate 3-4 hours in length to follow the
nerve and not sever it -- recovery would come easily and I ought to be about normal activity within a few days.
I had anticipated that I might even be home from the hospital on Tuesday night, the day of the surgery. I knew I would be convalescing for a couple days, and have lots of time to just lay around and get things done, reading, writing, projects awaiting such a down time. So, I was a bit surprised when it did not go that way.
So after 3 full days of pain and the disorientation that came with it, I felt so discouraged and hopeless really. I knew you were all praying. Folk had come over to pray. My family had prayed. I had prayed. And it seemed an answer was not close at hand.
Friday night, I read Scripture and never had the words "deliver me" "rescue me" "help me" meant more than they did that night. I cried out to the Lord reminding him that I did not want this to go the direction it was going. I prayed clutching my stomach --- there was nothing in the house I could take to help me feel better. Everything I chose for my mouth simply made the pain increase.
As I lay there I thought about the fact that we were to begin the new word "freedom" today and I thought how I have never felt more bound, more "un-free" than I did at that moment. I remembered a scene from a movie that I very much love called Facing the Giants in which one of the characters acknowledges to the Lord that she will still love Him no matter the outcome of the situation she is in.
There on the couch in the dark, cold, living room, I prayed again saying, "Lord even if I can never sing again, even if I can never preach again, even if this leads to a permanent disability of the worst kind, I will love you, I will serve you."
At that hour it did not sound quite that eloquent but it was heartfelt.
- Freedom seemed far from me at that hour - it felt as if I might never experience it, that I might remain in bondage. Indeed I think my family feared I might remain in this state as well -- that they might need to change my name to "Vesi" after the volcano Vesuvius for all my hiccups and burps.
At Gabrielle's wonderful piano recital yesterday morning, God gave me a reprieve. I thought that all the hiccupping and burping had ended, but it was only a reprieve, a demonstration of God's grace that I had peace for 90 minutes. It reminded me that God is in control of this life and all the experiences we have. And God is the author of freedom.
All of us have had points in our lives when we have felt very bound, literally imprisoned or trapped by circumstances, by attitudes, by illness, by relationships. In the context of such experiences what is the meaning of freedom as God intends it? What did freedom mean for the slave in Rome to whom God spoke saying "you are freed from your slavery" even while he remained a slave? What did freedom mean for Paul, the pioneer of freedom in the NT, while he found himself chained for the gospel? What did freedom mean for Jesus, the freest man who has ever lived as he was nailed to a cross and died so that you and I could live?
From these few pictures it becomes clear that freedom is not some absolute that we own, but a gift, a skill even that we acquire as we learn to live lives free in the midst of whatever circumstances we find ourselves.
What has freedom meant to you? Do you have a way in which you view it?
This year I want us to explore freedom - first through the book of Galatians and then through other places in scripture to see how we view it and be able to learn how God views the incredible call to freedom He has given us.
I invite you to begin to look at the places where you feel "bound" in your life. And think about this them verse which tells us that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free and tells us to "stand firm then and do not return to the bonds of slavery".
Now Paul says this into a specific situation in the Galatian experience, but the truth holds that God has made us for a freedom that is as astounding as it is magnificent.
|
|
|