No Longer Controlled, But Free

First, this will be Sunday you don't want to miss, so be there!

Have you ever felt, well... Stuck?

Have you ever felt like you are controlled and you can't do anything about it?  Let me guess, at some point or another you have thought, "I want to be a Christian, but I'm not good enough!"  Or maybe, "If I could break these addictions, then I could be a Christian, but there is no way, so I won't even try."

You have a sense of defeat.  Like you won't go anywhere... Ever.

Or maybe, speaking to those who are Christians, you feel like you want to live better, but you can't.  

We all feel stuck -- at some point or another.  We are stuck in a rut that we either don't know how to get out of or feel like we can't get out of, and we are defeated.

I have news: this isn't what God intended.  Do you want to know what God intends to do?  To set you free.  God wants to set you free from a life of control and put you into a house of freedom -- His own house.  He wants to... Well, he wants to adopt you.  

But what is this freedom stuff?  Aren't Christians supposed to do good things?  They can't cuss can they?  Well then how are they free?

Here's the thing: the story of the Bible is not a story about you, or me, chasing God.  Rather, it is about Gods pursuit of you.  He has chosen that even though we messed up, I messed up, you messed up, and chose to please ourselves rather than Him, that He would still pursue us.  Relentlessly.

But here's what happens.  As soon as you recognize what God has done for you, you will recognize the freedom you have, not to serve yourself, but to serve Him and to serve others.  After all, He served you by paying a hefty price on the cross.  That was no small price, and He did it because He was pursuing you.

You are being pursued by your Creator.  He made you.  He formed you.  He loves you.  And most of all, He wants you to love Him back.  That is why He is pursuing you.  He pursues you, and He pursues me so that we will love Him, just like He created us to.  And when we fulfill what we were created to do, we are set free.  

Now here is the challenge:  don't go back.  In the book of Exodus, in the Old Testament, God freed His people.  They began the journey to the land that God had promised to them, but then, when it got difficult, they wanted to go back.  They didn't think it was worth it.  They had been set free!  But they wanted to go back to a bunch of angry Egyptians who would enslave them once again.

Don't return to the slavery.  Don't serve yourself.  Don't serve the world.  Do what you were created to do.  Worship God.  After all, you don't want to return to the constrictions of this world, constrictions from which Jesus the Messiah rescued you.

Galatians 4:1-11