Thursday, 8/20/20 – Discipleship – Freedom from the Mire.

Freedom from the Mire

We have such a petty, primitive, puny — human — view of freedom. We think freedom has to do with being released (and it does, but also much more), of being enabled to do whatever one wills, (and to a degree, yes… it can, but much more). We think freedom is a return to a former state of being… a “back to how it should be.” But that is exactly where we go sideways.

God wants to pull us out of the mire all around us, but not simply to set us down again on the earth! No, He wants to pull us out, and up… Up to the heavens… up with Him. “Look up,” He says. “See Me. – Do you see Me?”

Jesus said to Nicodemus,

“No one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again… no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:3,5).

Of course apart from faith in Christ no one can enter heaven, but in another deeper, daily sense it is true also that no one can perceive the Christ Who is standing there beside them, waiting for that one to “feel after Him” (Acts 17:27). Apart from the Holy Spirit no one can “enter in” to the spiritual realities around them.

Elsewhere Paul writes,

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Cor. 2:14).

Jesus further told Nicodemus “We speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen…”

On this, Oswald Chambers comments,

“My spiritual history must have as its underlying foundation a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. To be born again means that I see Jesus…. The new birth gives me a new power of vision by which I begin to discern God’s control.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Aug. 15 entry)

Freedom… true Christian freedom… is in seeing the kingdom of God. One raises his arms to be pulled out higher away from the mire. There is no thought of bringing some little bit of it with Him.

Press on…

Are you interested in being discipled one-on-one in the fundamentals of new life in Christ? Or, perhaps you would you like to begin this journey by turning from your current path and committing your path to Christ? — Use the Contact page and we’ll get you started.