Are you free? I mean, do you feel like you are free?
I've been doing a little pondering this afternoon. Freedom is an interesting concept. It's interesting to me how it unfolds, or what it really is in the end. I used to think that freedom was the ability to do whatever I felt like doing. When I lived my life that way, the end was usually pretty miserable. Even if I achieved what I had set out to, it was never as great as it was supposed to be. It actually turned into this bondage, a bondage of pursuit, always trying to work toward the thing that was finally going to bring me a sense of peace, a sense of significance. My need for peace and significance was so strong that it would cause me to neglect everything that didn't fit into that pursuit. A singularly selfish endeavor, even if service to others was involved. Talk about a mess! After many years of successful disappointments and disappointing failures, I met someone who showed me what true freedom really is. He showed me that freedom was about actually having that peace and discovering what my significance really is and where, (or more accurately Who) they come from. If you haven't guessed by now, that "someone" that I met was Jesus Christ, and that peace that I was longing for could only come by Faith in Him and that the discovery of ones significance comes by obedience to Him. It's Him who makes us significant. The Bible teaches us this.

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."

I ask, what can be so bad about being a follower of Christ? Are the principles of love, generosity, sacrifice, loyalty, honor, respect and justice the things that will make a bad life? Does embracing these principles make one less free? I suppose so, less free to hate, be greedy, selfish, disloyal, dishonorable, disrespectful and lawless.
The freedom that comes from Christ was purchased at a great price, His sinless life on a cross, given so that we can be saved from the ultimate result of sin and have freedom from sin that destroys. And He makes it available to us, all other forms of freedom come to an end. His gift is eternal!

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage."