Living the Life // You Have Been Set Free, Part 8

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Freedom is a great concept. But I’m not all that much into concepts, unless they make an impact for good in my life and yours. So the thing that I want to discover is how … how can you and I actually live the life of freedom? Really!

Okay, so Jesus came to set the captives free, that’s what he said of himself. Luke chapter 4, verses 18-19:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Hey, that sounds a lot like freedom to me. That’s the promise that Jesus holds out to you and to me. It’s great, but a lot of people who believe in him don’t experience that kind of freedom. So, either he was lying when he said that – I give that option a fairly low probability – or those people are doing something wrong, a much higher probability you’d have to say.

There’s a battle going on inside each one of us between living for Jesus and living for ourselves. You and I are essentially pretty selfish individuals and, if you’re anything like me, we have a propensity to go wondering off, living our lives for ourselves rather than for Jesus.

It’s almost as though we’ve been given freedom but we decide to head straight back into a prison again so compelling is this desire of ours to botch up our lives, that we need some help. Fortunately, that’s no surprise to God and it’s something that he’s already given us in the form of the Holy Spirit. Galatians chapter 5, verses 16-17:

Live by the Spirit I say and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.

There’s the battle between what the Holy Spirit would do in our lives and what we would do of our own accord. And here’s what I’ve discovered: the things that I want to do end up robbing me of the freedom that Jesus wants to give, the freedom in fact that he’s already given me. And let’s face it, those things by and large, are not good things. Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 and 21:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissentions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I’m warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Not a very salubrious list is it? I mean come on, God only tells us not to do the things that are going to hurt us. The things that are going to rob us of the freedom that Christ came to bring us. Listen to the Holy Spirit and he’ll keep you away from those things. He just will.

Do you know what I’ve noticed? The more I make a point of spending some quiet time with Jesus each and every day, the easier it is to avoid sin.

Most days, first thing in the morning – I’m a morning person you see, I always have been – I just spend a quiet half an hour or so with the door of my study closed and my Bible open. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Now, often there are things on my mind: stresses, pressures, this isn’t going quite the way I’d like, there’s a struggle in a relationship over there, whatever.

It can get you down can’t it? The burden, the load, the pressure, and when you’re carrying that sort of stuff around you start behaving badly. You do, you get cranky, you get agitated, resentful. There’s bitterness in your heart perhaps. And man, on those days the devil is going to have an absolute field day with you.

But somehow in that quiet time with Jesus, he stills my heart. Invariably I end up walking away and starting my day with an incredible peace with this joy in my heart. And it’s much, much harder for the devil to attack me and to tempt me. Have you experienced that too? You see I think that what’s going on there is that the Holy Spirit is doing his work in us. Lifting God’s word off the page, etching it into our hearts so that it becomes part of who we are. And that, that bears fruit in your life as opposed to the rubbish that you and I are prone to carry on with. Paul goes on in Galatians chapter 5, verses 22-25 by contrast he says:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. There is no law against such things and those belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

That fruit of God’s goodness just naturally grows out of those times with the Lord each day. I think, I think that’s what it is to walk in the Spirit. Look, I’ve tried doing it the other way, just racing off and doing it all by myself. But each and every time the devil trips me up. Each and every time he robs me of my peace and my joy. Each and every time I end up bound up in my old sinful ways again instead of living out the freedom that Jesus died and rose again to give me.

Jesus didn’t just do the whole cross and empty tomb thing for us 2000 years ago, he also sent his Spirit to live in us to make those things real, to make the freedom real. The question you have to ask yourself is, "Why do we imagine that we can go it alone?" Why do we rush into our day and try to do things in our own strength when we know, I mean, we know 100% that we’re going to fall flat on our faces. That the devil is going to attack us from every direction because he knows that our flesh is weak. Why do we do that? I don’t know but we do. People do it over and over again and then they wonder why they’re not experiencing the freedom that Jesus promised.

Think of it like this: you have electrical power running to your house. The Government or the electricity company have gone to a lot of trouble to string the power cables, to put up the generation plant, to supply the power to your house. But when you come home at night and it’s dark, you don’t switch the lights on. You bump into walls and doors, you complain about the darkness, it’s cold but you don’t switch the heater on. You complain about the fact that not only is it dark but it’s cold as well.

Okay, I get it, it’s a bit of a crazy example, but that’s my point. Because that’s exactly what so many people do. They believe in Jesus. God went to a whole bunch of trouble, not to mention pain and suffering, to set us free from the darkness and to give us the power to live our lives for him today. But we don’t want to tap into that power, we don’t, as it were, switch it on. We live dark, cold lives and then we wonder why it’s not working so well. Jesus said a few things about the Holy Spirit. One of them, John chapter 16, verse 13 was:

The Spirit will guide us into all truth.

Another, Acts chapter 1, verse 8 is that:

When the Holy Spirit comes upon us, we will receive power.

Gee, truth and power. Truth, isn’t that what Jesus said would set us free? Knowing the truth. Power, isn’t that what enables us to walk in that freedom? If this is getting under your skin just a little bit, then good. Because I know that God is calling you back to him today. Back to those quiet times each day, back to that intimate fellowship. Back to that place where He will fill you with his truth and his power. That’s how to lay hold of the freedom, that’s it.