A Different Kind of Freedom

Good Morning! Have any of you ever gotten a dog from an animal shelter or dog pound? How about a cat? Why did you want a pet? Was it for companionship; to give you comfort when you are sad; maybe to protect you and your house from robbers?

I love dogs and all of my dogs, for at least the last 25 years, have been rescued animals.

If you’ve ever gotten a pet from a pound or shelter, sometimes you have to pay like $5.00 or maybe more and when you get them home, you know how they act at first! Once they are freed from their cages and brought home, they go nuts! They jump up on you, get on the furniture, potty in the floor, dig holes in the flower beds, bark and howl all night, etc. Cats usually scratch the furniture, climb the curtains, get on the counter and try to eat the fish in the fishbowl! They are so happy to be free from their former lives they think they can do whatever they want. They have to learn that that is wrong. They have to learn they have a different kind of freedom now. Apart from us, they can’t do that. We have to teach them the right way to behave because they can’t learn on their own.

Christians are kind of like that. You see, we were once bound by guilt and sin and it was sort of like being in a cage. Jesus purchased our freedom from sin by his death on the cross. But just because we have freedom in Christ doesn’t mean we can just go out and do whatever we want. Did you know there are a lot of Christians today who think they can? (I don’t mean climb the curtains or bark and howl all night!) We have to learn the right way to behave. The Bible teaches us in Gal. 5:13 says, ‘You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love.’ In other words, we have a different kind of freedom now and we are to live like Jesus lived.

Just as we paid the price for, and freed, our pets to serve us, we are to live to serve God. He will teach us because we can’t learn on our own. Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

Prayer: Dear Jesus, thank you for paying the price and freeing us from guilt and sin. Teach us how to live like you want us to. Amen.