Free to be Free

July 18, 2009

Dear Fellow Travelers,
As I hope you know, tomorrow is Sunday, which means that in roughly 14 hours, I will be privileged to preach again. Preaching is my passion. With few exceptions, I have preached the Good News every Sunday (and many times between Sundays) for the last 30 years, and I have done so, passionately.
For as long as I can remember, that passion has burned at “white-heat” within the sanctuary of my soul; to be sure, the passing years have not diminished the passion. I must admit that for quite a few of those years, I was passionate about error. Oh, I thought the message I was preaching was truth, but when one is deceived he does not know it, and I was deceived—big time and on several fronts.
How were my eyes opened? Actually, I had to face the fact that my belief system, most of which was unquestioned, was not producing freedom—not in me, not in others. Jesus, however, was very clear: you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. To be sure, I was anything but free; in fact, I was a slave to religion. Obviously, I did not know the truth!
Even after all the years of living in the freedom that Christ died to give to me, I still ask myself this question: Are those who listen to my sermons experiencing the freedom that Christ died to give to them, or are they still imprisoned to religion.
Surely, the folk, who attend the church I pastor, have heard the gospel enough times to be preaching it themselves, so my mission is not to continue to pound the gospel into their heads; instead, my mission is to see the fruit of the gospel—FREEDOM—in their lives. It continues to be true: you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free!
Tomorrow my text is this: “For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God” (Galatians 2:19 NASB). In other words, one cannot live to (for) God, i.e. one cannot live in freedom, until he dies to the Law.
I wish each of you could be present and, even more, I wish for each of you FREEDOM—the freedom that Jesus died to give to you.