[Faith-talk] Good Night Message for Tuesday, October 9 2012

[Paul]

Well, it's that time again, time for another good night message.  How was your day today? Mine was good, by God's matchless grace and His providential care.  For those of you in other parts of the world, you are either beginning your Wednesday or perhaps in your afternoon.  Wherever you are, I hope that your day is going well also.

Today we begin the first of sermonette articles.  The title of the first one is "God's Kind of Freedom," written by John Strong.  Bible quotes are from the King James Version.  The article is rendered as follows:

There are few more important matters to our ongoing well-being as Christians than an accurate view of our freedom in Christ.  Satan will do whatever he can to cloud our view.  In so doing, he will hold us bound, so we lose some of the joy God wishes us to possess, hindering the advancement of God's kingdom.

When a person becomes a Christian, he enters a new state of being.  God says that "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1).

Before we can to Christ, we were under God's condemnation (John 3:18) and were "by nature the children of wrath" (Eph 2:3).  We could not please God, we were headed for an eternity in hell apart from God and His blessings, and we had no idea what was going on.  We lived under God's condemnation and judgment.

We are now free from that condemnation; God looks at us in a whole different light.  Previously, He saw us as people He loved but who were under His wrath and judgment.  Now He sees us as His beloved children, free to be loved by Him and to love Him in return.

God did not stop from giving us freedom from condemnation--He went further in His work in us.  Where there was bondage and death, He brought freedom and life.  "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).

Do we understand the import of these words? We are free from sin; that means sin's power over us is broken.  Yes, we still sin, but we can refuse to.  Our refusal has authority now because God has changed our nature.  We have the power to do right and please God.

We have the freedom to do right and good.  We can succeed because we have been from sin's stranglehold upon us.  We still struggle and are sometimes overcome by sin, yet with God's help, we can do right.

Our struggle with sin will continue until we reach heaven.  That is the bad news.  The good news is that we can make progress in overcoming sin because God lives in us through His Spirit and is hard at work in us to help us succeed.

We are free to not sin; we are free to live righteous lives for God here and now.  Let us forsake the call of sin to live again in bondage.  We are free; may we use our freedom and do right, reveling in the wonderful freedom God has given us.

Thanks, Brother John, for your insightful article, and I pray that readers here will take it to heart.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul