Freedom Choices

Hi all,
Happy Fourth of July.  By my rendering we are celebrating our 236 birthday!!!!  Not quite to Methuselah yet, but it's a good start.
I awoke this morning thinking about this Fourth of July and how we discover and really live in freedom.  Of course, there is no freedom outside of Christ.  I didn't say that, Jesus did.  John 8:34 (NIV) 
³⁴ Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
and just a verse or two later, he says,
John 8:36 (NIV)
³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

What God has done for us in Christ is bring us out of a place where the master of our souls is the Fallen nature...not to say we can't or won't sin; but Sin is not our Master, as long as we seek a life in Christ, and seek His Kingdom first in our lives.  Consider this:

Exodus 6:6 (NIV)
⁶ "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

Romans 6:18-23 (NIV)
¹⁸ You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
¹⁹ I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
²⁰ When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
²¹ What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

My hearts desire is to live in such a way that the life of Jesus becomes more and more real in  each passing day.  I know that there is no perfection in me; but it doesn't mean that I can't be aware of Christ's life as each day comes along.  It's sort of like this:
We live in a land of freedom, but that freedom has come with a huge cost - the sacrifice of thousands upon thousands who both served and fought and died for that freedom to remain.  The founding fathers saw in our nation a place that they said was "a city set upon a hill", a biblical metaphor for the Psalmist portrayal of Jerusalem.
I don't believe that America is blessed above all other countries, and I don't believe that we are a Christian nation.  Our laws and government were put in place by people of moral conviction, and it's obvious that they had a strong Judeo-Christian ethic.


Freedom is not a religious exercise, it's a fundamental inward condition.

We are free because we walk out our lives as free people, not slaves.  But slavery is not an outward ball and chain as much as the inward disposition to claim our own ways and thereby set aside the superior wisdom and freedom of Christ.  I've seen free people in miserable conditions in the third world, and I've seen wealthy materialist people who are slaves to a miserable lifestyle of self.

We don't become free because we strive for individual selfish lives, but because we live our lives for a purpose much higher than ourselves.  We live for the eternity of God in Christ and the loveliness and freedom of his Kingdom.

Happy Fourth to you all,

Peace