.: Freedom to Love :.If you’ve ever met me you know that I like to eat. I am always anxious to spend time with people, and one of the best ways to do that is over a meal. (So if you’re ever wanting to grab a bite with someone you know who to call) With that being said, I end up going to lots of different restaurants and trying lots of new dishes. I love the adventure in this process.
A couple of weeks ago, I was on another eating adventure. I met my friend at a restaurant that neither of us had been to before. I thoroughly looked over the menu, and found what I wanted. Our waiter returned and took my friend’s order, I was up next. After I placed my order the waiter hesitated, looked at me and said, “You really don’t want that”. I was caught off guard by his comment. That had never happened to me before. And a series of thoughts went through my mind:
“Should I trust this guy?”
“Who are you to tell me what I should eat?”
“Maybe, he just saved me from a big mistake.”
“What in the world should I get now?”
“Why shouldn’t I get it?”
So I asked the most practical of my thoughts, “If that’s not good, what IS good?” The waiter responded, “Well, everything else really … just not that.”
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It’s funny to me after growing up in the church, and working in a church for the last 5 years, how many people think being a Christian is about not doing certain things. I see it with people inside the church and outside the church. For some reason we have projected this idea that God is all about us keeping the rules. All God cares about is that we “don’t sin”.
The tragedy in all of this is that through the way that we live our lives as Christians, and through how we project ourselves as a Church to the rest of the world, we have missed out on the very thing that God tells us he is all about. And this isn’t just about what Jesus did, this has been God’s plan since day one.
Take a minute to read Genesis 2:15-17. Most of the time when we hear that passage we focus on that God told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But we totally miss out on the fact that God told them they were free to eat from ANY tree in the garden.
God put Adam & Eve in a garden will of choices, and what I love about our God is that there was only one wrong choice. Everything else was good, everything else was in God’s will.
Too often we get caught up in, "well God wouldn’t have us do that", and what happens is we miss out on what God would have us do. Because when we really look at it, there are endless possibilities to what we can do. God has placed us on a planet full of choices, and he has given us the freedom to choose.
Jesus’ life demonstrated this for us as well. In his book, Wide Open Spaces author Jim Palmer focuses in on this life that God has for us, and how Jesus demonstrated it through his life. “Jesus lived and breathed a freedom to love, not a freedom from hate and selfishness. His focus wasn’t on being free from sin. But being alive to love.”
May we live a life freed to love everyone, and to be open to all of the directions the Holy Spirit is moving. May we not be more focused on avoiding sin, but rather let us focus on being empowered to love.
Love at the Core,
Devin
