“Come back next week and we’ll dig a little deeper into what is takes to actually be free.”
This is what I said at the end of last weeks post. Those are my words. It’s an exact quote.
What was I thinking?
There are some people who are really great at taking a large topic and condensing it down into concise statements that make sense. That’s not me. I tend to be a little wordier. As if you hadn’t noticed. 😉
I Want to Affect Your Appreciation
The more I thought through the topic of fighting for freedom the more I came up with to write about. Any attempt at condensing it into one blog post seemed like a travesty. The topic deserves more respect and care than that.
You guys ever see the TV show Sports Night? It’s a great little show about a group of people who are creating a nightly sports show in the vein of SportsCenter. If you haven’t, you should see it. Ask me, I’ll let you borrow my DVD’s.
Anyway, there is a great bit in one of the episodes that defines the battle I’m having with this topic of fighting for freedom.
One of the producers (his name is Jeremy) is putting together his first highlight package for a baseball game. The show has a lot of games to cover that night, so each game is probably only going to get 10-15 seconds of airtime. Jeremy tries his hardest, but his first cut of the game is eight and a half minutes long. What ensues is a hilarious battle of creative differences. Jeremy wants to affect people’s appreciation of baseball. He wants to show “the battle.” Casey, one of the anchors of the show is just trying to convince Jeremy to “make it shorter.” Eventually, Dana, the executive producer has to get involved, telling Jeremy, much to his chagrin, that the cut should just have three particular items in it. Jeremy complies but ultimately feels that the life was sucked out of the piece.
Gosh, I feel so much like Jeremy right now.
Constraints
Constraints are great. If this was my job (like it was Jeremy’s) and my editor said they needed 2,000 words on fighting for freedom with three main bullet points, I would find a way to give them just that. You would get the gist of the topic, but it would be missing it’s life. Fortunately for me, this is my blog (haha!) and I have no such constraints. I am my own editor.
If I just cut down what fighting for freedom means, if I condense it down into a few bullet points that squash it into one post, then I do the entire topic a disservice. I would have done what I said I was going to do (“… we’ll dig a little deeper into what is takes to actually be free.”), but that wouldn’t really serve you well. I want to serve you well. I want this to be a great resource for you both now, and into the future.
You Are Free …
For now, let’s get started with a little introduction.
Last week we established that you are already free. You are no longer held captive by anything.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. – Galations 5:1
Just because we are free doesn’t mean that we don’t choose to continue to live in bondage to our sins. It doesn’t mean that we haven’t allowed ourselves to be “burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
There are places in us that we choose to stay enslaved to. All too often we get a taste of freedom and yet choose to turn around and walk right back to our prison cell. There are a number of reasons I believe that we choose to do this, and we’ll get to those in the coming weeks.
… But It’s a War
The thought I want to leave with you today is this: You live in the midst of a great war. It’s battle after battle of arrows and armor and swords and lions looking to devour. It’s a war for your heart. As John Eldredge says in his book Waking the Dead:
“The story of your life is the story of the long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.”
You are free, but you live in the midst of a war unlike any other. It will require everything from you. You must fight if you are to stay free. Freedom, after all, isn’t free.
Coming Up
Next week we’re going to break from this freedom series (that we literally just started) to celebrate a certain blogs birthday (our little guy here turns 1! 🎁🎂🎉). The week after that we’ll dive right back in and really start to delve into what it looks like to fight for your freedom.