Christian Living

Do We Really Want to be Free?

by Terry Barlow
03/04/14
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Couldn't help but notice in revisiting the liberation of the children of Israel how soon they seemed to forget that the whole process began with their own crying out for deliverance. (Exodus 3, v7-10; Numbers 20 v.16) God responded to their anguished cry by raising up a deliverer in the man Moses. Yet time and again as the process unfolded, they turned on Moses and Aaron his brother and blamed them for the hardships and discomforts involved. Again I am not kidding myself that I would have behaved more nobly in their shoes (sandals). It's easy to look way back in history and take potshots while missing the parallels in our own lives in the present. Human nature is human nature, it is what it is, and it has not improved in the last four thousand years! There IS hardship, and suffering, and deprivation involved in being MADE free, not merely set free. Being made free was a process of having Egypt or bondage removed from their characters once they had been removed geograhically from Egyptian bondage. The external liberation, though dramatic, was the easy part compared to the more grinding, grueling nature of the day to day internal struggle of liberation from slavish habits of conduct. A pastor friend recently made a valuable distinction between a complaint and a lament. The psalms are full of laments which can be poured out safely in the context of fellowship with God and almost always resolve that way into a more positive and victorious outlook. Complaining on the other hand is a toxic exercise transforming us into a bad influence on others. One way or the other we WILL have an influence on our world!  Our prayer is that it be the first or former way.