“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Galatians 3:26-28
Through Christ we are free… and what the Lord has set free amidst that blessed gift of liberty that comes by the power of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17) none shall be able to enslave…
We are endowed by our Creator with certain blessings as miracles are worked in our hearts and souls and we are brought to places we never had thought that we would be. Nowhere is that more apparent than the freedom from captivity that has been bought by the precious blood of the Lamb. It looks to the furthest recesses of who are and it works within us in the most significant of ways to take us to the places where we need to be. It is there to touch us in the most significant of ways to break the chains of bondage that would drag us down, robbing us of our peace and our hope, our comfort and our solace.
This faith in Christ, it is the great equalizer. It knows not gender or race, nor does it understand the cultural differences that we, in our temporal knowledge, seems to put such a high premium on. It doesn’t matter if we are black or white, Asian or Native, it doesn’t matter if we are male or female, for the unity in that comes through the Savior and the divine reconciliation that we come to know in the Lord only cares of that which is in the heart. No lines, or borders or arbitrary places that we draw can separate us from the love of God as long as we find our peace in the Messiah, looking to Him as the hope of our salvation.
Finally then is the dark power of sin, death and the Devil put to flight. That is the promise of Christ as He tells unto the people, as He tells unto each and every one of us, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-31) No longer will we be ripped and torn to shreds by this world and its grim hold to us, no longer will our bondage to sin chain us to darkness and death, for the unrighteousness of this world shall forever be put to flight as we rest our faith and our hope in the Lord, relying on Him to set us free.
That is the blessed nature of faith, that wondrous miracle to be worked in our hearts and souls, spirits and minds, pulling us from the foolishness of this world to create in us a new, clean heart.
This is the blessed nature of faith, that hope that generations of saints and apostles, martyrs and disciples were willing to sacrifice all they were and all they hoped to be to preserve as our great heritage.
If this is the spiritual captivity that the Lord, our God, in His gifts of love and grace, gives unto us to forever bring us to the blessed air of liberty, then imagine how much more He does amidst the day to day trials of our lives as the pressure mounts and the hardships seem right before us. If His compassion and mercy is there to free us in the most significant of ways, touching the furthest recesses of our hearts and souls to bring us to those places where bondage and slavery no longer can grab hold of us then imagine all that He does, by and through the power of the Holy Spirit, to bind up our wounds and heal our broken hearts. For even as we were once lost, we shall always and forever be found.
This is the transcending promise of the Lord, the promise that moves through our spirits and our souls in the most profound of ways, paving a path in our lives to bring us to His throne where we can praise Him for the darkness that He has lead us from that we might bask in the warmth of His love for us, His beloved children.
Perhaps it may not seem as if our lives are right. There are moments when it just seems like everything that can go wrong does go wrong. There are times when, no matter how hard we try, everything goes wrong and we are left to grapple with this lingering feeling of inadequacy. We are not enough to help ourselves or to find a measure of comfort. All of our peace has been ripped away from us and we are unable to find it again. We have lost a part of ourselves in this journey of life and now… well now we are left to wonder why and what for as the hurt seems so real and tangible in our lives and we can’t help but feel the hurt well up inside of us.
Yet, by and through the love of God, we have hope, for we know that we are never abandoned. Even as it seems like everything in this world is fleeting and we have entered into a grim tunnel of darkness we are not alone, for we have the grace of God to take us to the places that we need to be amidst the compassion that He shows us. We are set free from the bondage of despair and hopelessness, of slavery and captivity, whether it is of the body or the mind, the spirit or the soul as the righteousness of the Lord comes to bear in our lives. Here we come to know that no matter what comes, no matter what happens, God shall judge the wickedness of this world and protect the lives of His people even through the greatest of challenges and the most dire of tribulations.
Perhaps you may wonder why does such evil happen in this world or why do we need to be held captive to such iniquity. You may look around to the plights you feel in your life or the hurt that you see in the lives of others or the oppression that is worked in this world as subjugation and persecution become the weapon of choice to rob some of all that they have. You may think nothing in this world is fair and wonder to yourself why that has to be.
And you would be right, this world is unfair, evil and oppression and persecution and subjugation and captivity is worked in it to rob people of their comfort and their hope as unrighteousness seems so close at our heels.
Yet, as we are left to wonder we also have to be left in wonder, for the miracles of God work to forever set us free, showing us that there is no power, there is no authority that can separate His people from His love amidst their lives. Perhaps we may not always understand, or perhaps, at times we may feel lost and pained as our courage and our strength evaporates right before our eyes, but by, and through, the love of the Lord, we are given a transcending hope that abides within us to show unto us that His grace shall forever be sufficient. After all, if the Lord is standing with us, the same Lord who has forever freed His people, whether from the bondage in Egypt, or from the bondage to sin, who shall be able to stand against us? After all, He is forever and always by our side through all of the dangers of this age and all ages.
This shall forever and always be the transcending hope and the abiding faith that sets us to liberty, blessed be His name for that.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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