Have you ever found yourself
drawn to something that in your heart you know you have been set free
from? It isn’t that you intend to become
a slave again but you head in that direction kind of like visiting an old
neighborhood you once lived in. You think
to yourself I don’t live here anymore and I never want to live here again but where
you now live they don’t play street hockey so you go back to your old neighborhood
only to find you can’t go back just to play, if you want to play there you
have to live there. Hopefully you follow me.
I recently experienced this and
what I found kind of surprised me.
Why is it that even though I have
been set free I find myself sometimes drawn back to the very bondage from which
Christ has set me free? Is it something
in me that wants to test the depth of my freedom? Something in me that wants to see if the
bondage feels any different than before?
I am not sure, but one thing I have learned contrary to what most people
believe about Jesus’ response to this, is that He isn’t standing there waiting
to beat me with the very chain He broke off me that for whatever reason I have
decided I want to play with. No, instead
I found him waiting while I came to the realization that the lie is still a
lie, the chain is still a chain and still lies in a place of darkness no matter how much light has
come between me and it since He first set me free. I found his heart towards me was exactly as
described in the parable of the prodigal son.
Most of us are at least a little familiar with this story of the son who
goes and squanders his inheritance then finds himself eating pig slop until one
day he ‘comes to himself’ and realizes even his fathers slaves fare better than
he and decides to go back home where he finds his father waiting for him with
open arms. My experience was somewhat
minute in comparison but the heart of Jesus was the same.
Jesus does not turn away from us
in disgust as the enemy would like us to believe so we will feel like we have
no where else to go but further into the bondage. No, if we will turn we will see him waiting
for us to also come to ourselves and realize we really have been set free and
that bondage that was once our identity isn’t our identity anymore. Kind of
like realizing that you once may have lived in that neighborhood and were
comfortable there and even though you miss playing street hockey the truth is
that isn’t your address anymore.
You see just as the word says, it is because of grace that sin no longer has dominion over us because the strength of sin is the law which is why the enemy tries so hard to keep us under it.
You see just as the word says, it is because of grace that sin no longer has dominion over us because the strength of sin is the law which is why the enemy tries so hard to keep us under it.
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