Freedom - The Cry of All Hearts

There are some things that we know empirically. I know that I have to breathe. Whenever I don’t breathe for a period of time, I get very uncomfortable. Now if I don’t breathe at all, I will die.

The first part of that I have experienced, discomfort from not breathing for a period of time. The second I have not yet experienced, but I know it is true.

How do I know it’s true? I know it is true based on what I have read, medically and scientifically, and by viewing people who are not breathing. They are all dead.

Now suppose I choose NOT to believe that a lack of breathing will kill me. How will that change what will happen to me if I stop breathing?

Some things we know by the preponderance of the evidence, whether written, spoken or spiritually discerned.

When I first was introduced to Jesus, I had choices to make. I could choose to believe what I had heard and read or I could choose NOT to believe what I had heard and read. I was free to choose either one, but I was NOT free to choose not to make a choice.

It was testified to me that if I chose to trust in the finished work of Jesus at the cross of Calvary. I also read that in the Bible.

It was also told to me that certain things would occur in that part of me called the “heart” if I chose Jesus that would NOT occur if I did not.

Based on what I had been told and what I had read, I chose to believe.

Now the test of whether I made the right choice would be the empirical test of whether the things happened that I was told would happen.

They did. My “heart” suddenly got a new attitude. I began to understand things I had never understood before.

The Bible became not a set of rules and regulations to follow, but a revelation of God’s love for me and His plan for my life.

I developed a love for people of like mind that my “me exclusively” self would not have entertained before.

Praising and living for the Lord became a top priority, as did growing in the knowledge of the Lord.

One of the most important characteristics God gave mankind was a deep, insatiable yearning for freedom. With the fall of man came a warping of that desire for freedom into a desire for selfishness: I want, what I want, when I want it, how I want it. A kind of “I” trouble.

Still, God has given us one freedom that we can exercise any time we want to: the freedom to choose to accept His free gift of salvation by grace through faith in His Son, Jesus. We are free to choose Him. We are free NOT to choose Him. We are NOT free not to choose whether or not to choose Him.

There are dozens of different “faiths.” You may pick and choose from among them. Not only has God given you the freedom to choose, we live in a “free” country in which you are allowed by the government to choose any faith-system you like. Or you may prefer no faith-system at all. That, too, is allowed. (Not all governments allow that.)

Some of these faiths are predicated on “pleasing” God.

If God is God, the perfect, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creator of all that has been created, what in the world makes anyone think we who are imperfect can please Him by our own volition?

Answer: We can’t. Period. If we depend on ourselves we are totally without hope. We don’t have it in us.

But God, loving His creation, made a way. He came to earth in the form of a babe, grew into a man, bore the penalty of sin on the cross, and rose triumphantly from the borrowed tomb in which He had been laid.

God then sent us a love letter called the Bible. In it He said, among other things, “If we confess with out mouths the Lord Jesus, and believe in our hearts God has raised Him from the dead we will be saved.”

If you have read this far, I need to warn you of something: When you die and stand before a Holy God, who demands absolute perfection and He asks what you did with His gift, the one answer you will NOT be able to give is, “I did not know.” I just told you.

What if you choose NOT to accept the gift?

You are certainly free to do so. No one will try to force it down your throat. (I don’t have the faintest idea why people think that because Christians believe they have the Truth we are therefore “cramming it down their throats.”) The government will not banish you from the country. You will not be beheaded. Your family will probably not “disown” you. Your boss will not fire you.

God will not send you to Hell.

You see, He provided the way to live with Him eternally. You are free to choose that way. But if you don’t, you will have chosen the alternative. Get it? You choose to go! You are free to make that choice!

Would you like to know what freedom is? Here goes: If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

Do you yearn to be free? Choose Christ.