A Free Slave
Hosea 5:4 AMP
“Their [immoral] practices will not permit them to return to their God”
Free at last, free at last! How free are you really? How free can you really be if every time sin comes calling you drop everything and run? Every time evil presents itself you quicken? When sin texts your phone, you reply instinctively. Every night, incognito, disguised, hidden, you make room for sin to have its way. Does that sound like freedom to you? Because it surely doesn’t to me. Our evil deeds, our self-serving acts; they would have us think we are masters of our own lives, all the while giving them control. It’s a trick to keep us enslaved, all the while laughing at our submission.
A free slave. If I’m free, why am I still being labelled a slave? Typically, oppressors like to remind the people they oppress that they are in power. They call them the names of their past to keep them in the mindset that they will never be more than this thing. It’s a label. A tag to wear as a symbol of your captivity, but you’re supposed to be free, so it doesn’t quite make sense does it? Doesn’t it sound familiar though? A free slave, a Christian living in sin. Sin would have us baptized, filled and be regular attendees involved in ministry, but still whipped, still being led away by our own fleshly entice. Jesus told us we’re free and yet, we sit in our sin and wallow and cry because “I’m never going to be more than this, so why fight?”. We’ve all been there, we know it’s true. We’ve condemned ourselves, doomed ourselves to hell. Freedom is found in truth. He is truth. He wiped our slate clean but condemnation holds us captive, with shame and guilt reminding us of every old sin until fear pulls us back to it.
Imagine a cage and you’re inside, not seeing a way out. You’re trapped and panicking, tormented with the hope of freedom but you see no windows, no door, and so you stay there; weeks, months, years. Open your eyes this time and look again, you’ll see that the way of escape was always wide open, His hands stretched out before you, calling you out. The entire time, He was there waiting, your eyes were just closed. That’s what condemnation does. It keeps you walking around in an open cage with your eyes closed, thinking you’re trapped. So we make our beds in cages and lay there, dumbbells on our chest, we sleep heavy. Days pass, months pass, waiting for freedom to come, when all we had to do was open our eyes, reach for His hand and walk out.
Freedom is yours, receive it.
By T. A. Wright
