Today I read the following statement: "Being freed is more exhilarating than being free." So True. But on the other hand exhilaration is an emotion often associated with adolescence.(Another characteristic of adolescence is the tendency toward impulsive escapades.) Sooner or later we have to grow up and learn to apply this newfound freedom. Still God has ways of keeping us young at heart. When related to the life of faith I see how we are meant to be around those who are being liberated even long after we have been through that initial experience ourselves. We are to be part of leading more and more people into this initial liberation experience and into ongoing liberation. In that way we are still experiencing being freed vicariously through others who are at that moment in fact being freed like we were. And we are to be experiencing ongoing liberations in various areas of our lives as more and more of these areas are exposed and changed or healed and fall into better line with the faith we profess. Vibrant church life is like this. The excitement never totally dies, there are just quieter stages of it. The early church in the book of Acts demonstrates this. There is the sense that God is on the move, that God is up to something good! That was not only for the so called "primitive church." Any church begins to die the minute it begins to lose that sense.
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