Chasing Freedom: the quest for free
When you were a toddler you got your first taste of it…you may have started with the army crawl, perhaps you put one knee in front of the other in your pursuit of electric cords and other dangers glimmering from your side view.
Maybe you pulled up on a chair and cautiously slid a chubby little foot to the right to peek at where mom had gone. One day, your parents put your bare feet down in spiky grass at the park, the big blue sky shined bright overhead and you got your first real taste of possibility.
You ran.
There were bugs to chase, flowers to eat, and the sound of children laughing somewhere just within reach.
You began chasing freedom and have been doing so ever since.
When we become adolescents freedom becomes so important to us that we push for it at every turn. We buck rules, maybe not dramatically, but putting our pencil in just the right location to let it roll off the desk to annoy the teacher, pushing out angst when our parents make us show up for the family reunion or church picnic, not because we don’t enjoy it, but because we don’t want anyone to think we are following their expectations. We start to either reign ourselves in and make our own rules where we can or we bust out of expectations altogether and find anything and everything to rebel on.
Ah, the days of adolescence…fun, exhausting, and important.
To some extent, this fight for freedom will always be with us, because it’s a spiritual battle, not an emotional or intellectual one.
God made us for freedom, but we chase it and search for it all around us, always seeking a little bit more, where freedom already exists. We want control over our life, freedom from the expectations swirling around us, freedom from the pain inflicted by others, shallow or deep.
We want freedom like we want air, and you would think this is only a problem for unbelievers, but it isn’t. No matter how mature we are as Christians we are always discovering what Freedom in Christ means and what that looks like in our lives.
I invite you to lean into this question with me this Fall. Dig deep with us into the six chapters that make up the book of Galatians, a New Testament letter written long ago by the Apostle Paul.
What does Paul know about my search for freedom in the 21st century? It turns out…maybe everything.
Let’s stop chasing freedom together and start sitting in the freedom we have, discovering more of all Jesus gives us, today and each day from here forward, throwing off the expectations of others and resting in the expectations of God and God alone.
Introducing…
Chasing Freedom: A Study of Galatians
Find more information about this study on the Chasing Freedom page under the Books & Studies tab. This study should be available in print in January 2021. Find all the info, as well as free videos and resources to compliment the study on the Chasing Freedom page.