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Christian Network

The world looks like freedom when our spiritual life is largely bound up in fear and compulsion, when spiritual discipline seems mostly like duty and not blessing. At such times we are in danger of believing the lie that the life we left behind was somehow more enriching than the life of a disciple of Christ. The grass appears to be greener in the lives of those who have not given themselves to God. We forget the times of blessing when we knew His touch and the things of this world grew "strangely dim", when being in His presence convinced us that nothing was greater than staying there.

This spiritual amnesia weakens our resistance to transgression. Staying in such a place is dangerous because temptation is never more powerful than when a believer starts to envy those who live in sin and seem to enjoy their condition. Temptation’s voice tells us that we should do as the society around us does and seek whatever gives us pleasure. The idols of the world masquerade as roads to fulfillment and doubting Christians are far more likely to make a wrong turn down one of those roads if they becomes disgusted with their spiritual walk.

The Apostle Paul spoke of the true freedom that comes from living the kind of life, which seems an unbearable bondage to fallen man, a life controlled by God. Life led by the Spirit is a life abundant with meaning, purpose and liberty from all that might destroy us. To reach our full potential in Christ is to, among other things, fully know the freedom from fear that His perfect love makes possible. This is the best conceivable state for any human beings to find themselves in. It is the state of right relationship with our Creator.

The problem is that many of us are still trying to earn our way with God. We mistake fleshly effort for sanctification. The result is slavery to legalism so miserable as to tempt us to see the fallen, Hell-bound existence we once led as superior to it. When much of what we do in the spiritual life is done in the wrong spirit for the wrong reasons the world’s idea of freedom appears attractive. But this is an illusion and a perilous one at that. Sin is crouching at the door and we are ready to open that door self-deluded into thinking it a liberator rather than the cruel captor it is. We have become blind to reality and once again tarry in the self-deception that we lived in before our conversion.

The answer to spiritual amnesia is not to pretend that a rule-bound Christian walk is the real thing. Instead the believer who has been looking at the world through rose-colored glasses needs to seek the true freedom that is given to us through the unconditional grace of God. We desperately seek pleasure in wrong ways because we do not experience enough of the joy of knowing Him in spirit and in truth. When we turn our sanctification over to God we can glory in the freedom of being a deeply beloved child, a child who does not have to worry about being disowned. From that realization comes blessed relief from fear and the ability to live and thrive through the perfect love of our Savior.