Saturday, March 4, 2017

Wednesday February 22, 2016 Galatians 5:13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

Nick:
Even though I have been freed from all things, I cannot use that opportunity to feed my flesh. I belong to Christ Jesus, and he has crucified my my flesh with its passions and desires. When I am walking in the flesh, my family and people around suffer for it. I have people who I am accountable to. He says to through love serve one another, not selfishly serve ourselves and our desires. It says in Romans 15:1 that we are OBLIGATED to bear with the failings of the weak and not please ourselves. I Corinthians 8:9 says, But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. Once I have come to the place of taming the flesh, God is commanding me that I turn from my self and serve my brothers through his love. I wasn’t freed from my sin to sit here and dwell on myself. He freed me from that as well, so that I could move past that and become a servant to all. If I keep myself free of self thoughts and walk in the spirit, I can be more aware of those opportunities that God presents for me to serve him and his people. My flesh wants things but I have all I need in Christ. Lamentations 3:25 The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.
 
Julie:
I can best explain it this way, we give Trent certain freedoms. We love him and want to see him happy and prospering and growing. But, because he is just a child, he does not know what his boundaries are yet. He is given freedom to obey it and not to abuse it. The reason he does not have total freedom is because he is too young to discern what will hurt him or get him in trouble when doing whatever he wants. He has certain tendancies to disobey the exact thing we have asked him to do. This is caused from a lack of self control. I can give him freedom to play in the courtyard, so he decides to play in the fountain of the courtyard. I gave him freedom, but out of his flesh and lack of self control, he decided to what pleased him knowing it was wrong. The same goes for us. We are children of God and he wants to see us happy and prosper and grow, but not at the expense of sinning. Once we accept Jesus as our Savior, we have been freed from eternal hell. But now we are under the yoke of Him. Total freedom, I can only imagine, is equevelant to total destruction. When you are free to love whoever you want, you are free to love someone who is married or someone too young for you. When you are free to be happy in whatever way, you can stay in a state of drunkeness or strung out. When you want something, you are free to lie cheat and steal to get it. All of this we have the freedom to do, but under Jesus' yoke we don't. We are not called to be free so we can feed our flesh, but instead to glorify Jesus. When Trent obeys, he is glorifying his parents, and when we use our freedom to obey God, we glorify Him.

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